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

12:00am EST - Another week in Rust development and the team is trucking on forward progress.

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

Game crashes and hotfixes

You may have noticed a couple updates to your Rust client as you peered at your Steam library this week. You also may have experienced an increased number of client crashes earlier in the week. Long and short: there was an update to fix something which caused more crashes, so Facepunch reverted it.

Tugboat progress

Rust’s latest watercraft continues forward in development this week with more features and functionality being added to the Tugboat branch. Along with a bunch of commits around the Tugboat model and physics, it appears several spawn points have been added on the map for the new Tugs to spawn (specifically, 2 spawn points at each Harbor).

Also very interesting, it appears as though players may be able to use the Tugboats as a mobile spawn point - with the ability to potentially put a bag or bed on the boat itself. No visuals or specifics yet as it is still on a separate branch, but we’ll keep you posted as more about this new boat floats to the surface.

Other water related activities

A bunch of other water related things are happening on various other branches, too. Over on the diversuit branch, the team is working on finalizing the torch along with the diver assault rifle. Based on commits, it looks like this Diver suit could be part of an upcoming DLC.

Over on the water 5 branch, the team continues work on various improvements to the in-game water system. Merged into Aux2 a couple times this month, it looks like the team is testing these new features internally prior to release.

Also on Aux2, the Ferry Terminal is getting tested and finalized for its future launch. Not clear exactly how this will be used in the game, this Terminal will spawn near the Harbors and could have something to do with the server to server transfer body of work which has been in progress for a while now. As with all this stuff, we’ll keep you posted as more comes to light.

Base optimization progress

Over on the ‘global networked base’ branch, progress continues on optimizing how bases render for each player - standing to improve performance and reduce hitches. Although most of the commits mean little if you’re not a game developer, the main takeaway is that bases will essentially be loaded in as prefabs on the map - similar to how tree’s and nodes are. As you get closer, the quality of the base will improve.

This should reduce instances like where you’re traveling in a minicopter quickly across the terrain and experience a huge drop in frames / stutter as a ginormous base, previously invisible, quickly comes into frame. Really excited to see how this one pans out as it stands to mitigate one the biggest causes of hitches to plague the game since inception.

Other stuff

Bunch more shader improvements
Weapon racks work (finishing touches, added a light bar on top of wall mounted racks)
A bit more work on props for the Nuclear Missile Silo
More bear animation updates