1:00pm EST - Our update preview stream is live! twitch.tv/rustafied

12:00am EST - The team is pushing a bunch of new features and fixes as we pass the halfway point for Rust development this month.

Our update preview stream goes live at 1pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the week.

Hardcore on AUX2

The newest game mode, Hardcore, is officially playable on the AUX2 staging branch! If you missed it, Hardcore is a new, more raw Rust experience in which a bunch of features are limited or removed. 

Here is an overview of Hardcore:

No teams
Team system and contacts are disabled

Limited chat
Local chat limited to 100m, no global

No maps
In game map is disabled, no compass, and map seeds are hidden from external sources

No safe zones
Peacekeeper NPC’s and sentries are removed from monuments

No crawling
Crawling while wounded has been removed

Limited bags
5 max sleeping bags per player

Monthly BP wipes
Both maps and BP’s will be force wiped each month on Hardcore servers

Remember, Hardcore does not impact vanilla gameplay, it is a completely separate game mode set on the server level. If you’d like to test it out, join AUX2 by right clicking Rust staging in your steam library, go to ‘properties’, ‘betas’ tab, select AUX2 from the drop down then allow your client to update.

Given it’s being tested publicly now, I’d say it’s likely Hardcore will go live with the September update. We’ll post more information as it’s available. 

Edit: Hardcore is confirmed to be coming September 1st!

Flickering fixes

A fix for some long-standing flickering issues is in the works on the ‘precision fixes’ branch. Specifically, water flickering when using TSAA has been resolved. Also, far away shadows should no longer flicker as well!

Combatlog improvements

The ‘combatlog’ console command is receiving some improvements this week. Along with an overall reorganization of the code, the command will now show more information about desync times. Also, they have removed the ping field. No visuals yet as it is still on a separate branch.

Pets

A bit more progress on the ‘pets’ branch this week. Specifically, there’s been some initial work on a harness for taming pets and they’ve added an initial inventory for pets. Also, a Mastiff dog model has been added and the other dog models have been updated to fit some new rig work. 

All of this is still on a separate branch, so visuals and various specifics are still up in the air. That said, it does look like you’ll be able to tame different dog types (and maybe other animals too). We’ll have more information once it comes to light.

Single pickup notice

Some changes to pickup notices are in the works. Now, when gathering a bunch of the same resource type, it’ll count up the total amount in one notice instead of showing many notices in succession. This should not only look better, but also improve performance, especially when dealing with rapid collection tools like jackhammers.

New reclaim terminal

A fresh reclaim terminal is in the works for softcore servers. Here is a preview:

Other stuff

• Fixes to the news section

• More work on procedural caves

• Add global.consolescale to change the font size in the console window

• SetHorseBreed now only requires admin (was developer only)

• Fixed trophy collision