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

12:00am EST - We’re at the half-way point in the month for Rust development and the team is cranking on various features. 

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

Global networked bases

A potentially huge step forward in optimization and quality of life, the ‘global networked bases’ branch has been merged to regular staging for testing. I’m no game dev, but my understanding is it changes bases into prefabs (like the trees and rocks) on the map, which has them render from much, much farther away than before (about 15 squares). This is still very much in testing, so don’t be surprised if things shift. Nevertheless, the fact that it’s on normal staging is a good sign we may see it for the September update! As always, we’ll keep you posted.

HAB Armor

In light of the Attack Helicopter being added, it seems hot air balloons will be getting a buff in the form of armor! No visuals yet as all the work is being done on a separate branch, but it basically looks like some armor abilities will be coming to this niche form of air transport.

No word on if this will be a completely new hot air balloon, or just some additional armor which can be applied (like horse armor, but for HAB’s). We’ll post more as it comes to light.

Attack Helicopter progress

As you may have seen, the Attack Helicopter was merged into normal staging last week! It’s a super agile two-seater heli which packs a punch in the form of a weapon turret (manual) and rocket launchers (firing any type of rocket). 

This week we’re seeing progress 

• Reduced attack heli speed and agility

• Reduced max fuel from 1000 to 500

• AH Gunner: Disabled the 3 mouse icons. Probably unnecessary to constantly remind you that LMB is fire.

• Gunner view is now higher resolution and less blurry/dusty

• Don't allow driver inputs while in auto-hover move

We’ll have the full rundown on the Attack Helicopter as we get closer to September.

Parachutes

In line with the aerial theme of the above, parachutes are also coming to fruition in the near future by the looks of it. 

• Give parachutes their own protection properties, make them a bit tougher

• Takes 4 rifle shots to take down, still needs more tuning

• Improve transitions out of the skydive animation

• Reduced pickup time of unpacked parachute to 8s (was 12s)

• Don't go to the skydiving animation while no clipping

It’s not known exactly when parachutes will land, but we’ll keep you posted as more comes to light.

Boat drift

Boats abandoned out in the depths will soon float back towards land thanks to a new boat drift feature. Live on staging, it looks pretty simple: boats left alone for a little while will start drifting back to the shore.

Backpacks

Over on a separate ‘hack week’ branch, the functionality for backpacks is rapidly taking form. With a ton of commits over the past couple weeks, it looks like this will likely be one of the hack week projects to make the cut and head to full production at some point in the future.

This week specifically we’ve seen work on:

• Drop if wounded (or dead)

• Setting up right click to move items ability

• Will click on your backpack in inventory to pull up your backpack inventory

• Various other things

Other stuff

• Progress on the next building skin, the Frontier skin

• More work on the F-15 flyby - looks like it’ll drop flares

• Wheel will now always be reset to default position on server boot 

• Weapon rack reload menu option has to be held for the amount of time it would take to manually reload the selected weapon.

• Test for new 8x scope mesh & materials

• Some new rocket trails FX work

• Work on the Homing Missile Launcher

• Added hot air balloon name and icon to death screen - for added embarrassment when you're crushed by one

• Initial work on a Scrap Airplane