Rust-Servers.net Blog Feeden
https://rust-servers.net/
Thu, 07 Mar 2024 19:48 CETRust-Servers.net is a Rust servers list. Its goal is to provide an efficient way for players to find a server that suits their needs and also for servers owners to get more players on their servers.60LIGHTING THE WAY
https://rust-servers.net/blog/298/lighting-the-way/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/298/lighting-the-way/Thu, 07 Mar 2024 19:48 CETTUTORIAL ISLAND
A common story we hear from new players is that they have seen their friends/Twitch Streamer/YouTuber playing Rust, so they pick up the game and then bounce off it due to how harsh and unforgiving the new player experience can be. This month’s Tutorial Island is our attempt to provide new players with a safe environment to learn the basic controls and mechanics of Rust before being set loose in the main game with other players.
Everyone will be prompted to start the tutorial when they first spawn this month, if you’re a long term player feel free to decline the tutorial and we won’t ask you about it again. Once the player starts the Tutorial, they will be respawned on a dedicated island where an NPC will guide them through the first half hour of gameplay. This island is tightly controlled and cannot be reached by other players.
Throughout this process players will learn some key concepts:
Basic movement
Crafting
Building bases
Upgrading bases
Respawning
Basic combat
Resources
Looting containers
Cooking
Using Furnaces
Workbenches
Using a vehicle
This obviously isn’t an exhaustive list of everything there is to learn in Rust, but we feel like this is a good starting point for a new player. Our guiding principle when designing this sequence has been - if a player emulates exactly what they did on the Tutorial Island once they get into the main game, will they have a fighting chance?
The tutorial itself should take less than 30 minutes if you’re familiar with general FPS controls and concepts, likely around an hour if you are not a regular FPS player. Once complete you will be dropped off into the main game with the same resources as any other player - completing the Tutorial Island does not give you any advantages in regular gameplay.
For server owners running mods that change core gameplay features, you may find that parts of the tutorial don’t work or maybe showing the tutorial isn’t appropriate for your server (minigame servers for instance). You can control whether the tutorial is active via the “server.tutorialEnabled” convar - it's false by default. While false players won't be prompted to start the tutorial on your server and they will not be able to manually start the tutorial. We’ve added a server tag to help players find and filter servers by their tutorial compatibility, add “tut” to your server tags to advertise your tutorial compatibility. Brand new players will have this filter on when they first use the server browser.
VENDOR UI REFRESH
Our outdated tooltip popup for checking vendor stock urgently needed an upgrade. It felt out of place when compared with the marketplace UI. Thus, a plan was devised to merge both into a single unified system. This update will be rolled out in two parts, with this being part one. This first part fully replaces the old blue tooltip popup with an interface that's clearer, more user-friendly, and scalable. Now, it's easy to understand what you're purchasing and how much is costs. Overall, this first pass on the vendor UI provides a great foundation to expand on.
New Single Vendor Interface
Items are now displayed clearly with the cost and stock counts easily visible.
New Multi Vendor Interface
Accordions are used to hold vendors with large amounts of listings. This keeps everything easy to read, whilst still giving users flexibility to add a bunch of listings.
While working on this, we noticed some QOL issues with finding items before purchasing. The marketplace offers useful features like search and filtering that the standard map doesn't have. It would be great to have these abilities everywhere.
Part two will unify the marketplace UI with the new vendor UI. You will still have to travel to the marketplace to buy things via drone, but the actual underlying UI will be merged together. This will provide the same search/filtering functionalities as enjoyed at the marketplace to the regular map vendor UI, whilst bringing the improved style and ease of use of this new vendor UI to the marketplace.
NIGHTLIGHT
Today, I'm addressing an issue we often hear about from the Rust community. Navigating the game during nighttime. While the night cycle is a cruicial element of the rust gameplay loop, it can be a literal stumbling block not seeing what's directly ahead. The problem of "gamma hacking" (where players unfairly enhance their night vision by tweaking monitor settings), has been a thorn in our side, necessitating a pitch-black darkness (RGB 0,0,0) to counteract such exploits.
To that end I've come up with the "Nightlight" feature. Basically it's a shader that subtly illuminates a small radius around the player, mimicking the effect of natural moon light. This localized lighting ensures that while you can see just enough to navigate at night, the vast darkness beyond remains dark. Distant pixels are kept at absolute darkness (RGB 0,0,0), effectively rendering gamma hacking useless for spotting far-off threats or resources. ( beyond a few meters)
We believe this approach strikes a good balance, enhancing the night experience without compromising fair play. I hope it helps!
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Rangefinder
Rangefinder added to binoculars
Attack Helicopter Flare
Attack helicopter flares now take 30 seconds to reload
Safe Metal Detecting
Metal detectors no longer able to find loot in safezones
Attire Conflict
Visual feedback when switching attire conflict
ITEM STORE UI UPDATE
This month, we’ve made improvements to the store interface. These changes are part of a UI overhaul for the menu screen that we’re currently working through. One of the main improvements is adding in a custom view for each of the general store items, giving a better look at what an item looks like or what is contained within a pack. For example, the Abyss pack, we now show a cut-down version of the trailer, the items contained within the pack in a 3D turntable, media and a bit of information about the pack.
These changes are aimed at improving the experience of using the store, more transparency in regards to what you’re potentially purchasing, and improving it from a visual point of view too.
Store Interface
Re-designed view, with improvements in regards to scaling and legibility of the items.
Store Item Model
We've improved the interface for the model that appears when you tap on an item. A new key addition being an animated 3D version of the skin.
General Store Model
We've added a new view for each general store item. Some of these include cut-down trailers, items contained within as a 3D turntable as well as media and general information about the item. These new views hopefully give a better understanding of what you're getting in the purchase.
HAPIS & OBSERVER ISLAND RETIREMENT
Hapis Island and Observer Island custom maps are being retired today from Facepunch servers. Observer Island was first released in November by community members CollapsedOrange and wheatleymf and Hapis Island was brought back to celebrate 10 years of Rust.
If you're a server owner and wish to host your own Hapis or Observer Island, you can check them out at the following links:
What's the future for custom maps? We're going to continue working with our amazing map-maker community and highlight and host custom maps.
If you would like to start making your own map, check out Rust's wiki[wiki.facepunch.com].
RUST X DAYZ Bundle - Pioneer Survival sale
Rust and DayZ have teamed up for a bundle featuring both games at 40% off!
The Pioneer Survival Pack on Steam features both titles at 40% off from March 7th 6PM GMT to March 14th 6PM GMT.
Both DayZ and Rust celebrated their 10th anniversaries in December, with in-game events, limited items, and Twitch Rivals competitions, marking many years of updates, changes, and content to the games that have kept them thriving with old and new players alike.
DayZ, with its realistic post-apocalyptic world, has evolved far beyond its origins as a hardcore survival mod. It now stands as a deeply immersive experience that continually draws in players with its intricate blend of survival mechanics, open-world exploration, and player-driven narratives, all while fostering a strong and passionate community.
Rust has transformed from a mere survival game to a global phenomenon. There’s always something interesting or dangerous (or both) happening on the island, captivating all kinds of players with its unique blend of challenges, creativity, ways to play, and community spirit.
On March 21st at 19:00 GMT we'll be releasing an optional update to enable this years Easter events and releasing the Chicken costume.
During the Easter event every 24-38 hours in-game hours an Easter egg hunt will begin. You'll have 3 minutes to collect as many eggs as you can. The top 3 players are given special eggs as a reward. These eggs can be cracked open for various types of loot ranging from scrap all the way up to an M249! ]]>COMMUNITY UPDATE 259
https://rust-servers.net/blog/297/community-update-259/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/297/community-update-259/Tue, 27 Feb 2024 19:12 CETART, ART, AND MORE ART! Some old and some new. Few names in the art scene you all might recognize! This is our rust art appreciation post. We love you!!
Monstera gracing us with awesomeness. Definitely someone to tag into your next Rust event if you like having your base decorated!
These were collabs with Rust daVinci.
Who doesn't love a good timelapse! 10 years of Rust.
This is an oldie but goodie from TimTardashian from Charitable Rust last fall!
Annnd then there's this lil guy.
GLOBAL STATS
Periodically we gather a metric ton of stats and put them into these very digestible graphics.
You all recycle a lot of rope!
Stay tuned for the next round!
GIANT CALCULATOR
Ok Philieve Rust did this mind blowing project to showcase how crazy you can get with the electrical system in Rust.
He made a HUGE calculator and explains how he did it!
CREATOR PROGRAM
Did you know we have a creator program?
There are some eligibility requirements and if you don't qualify just yet please do apply in the future!
[facepunch.com]
Minimum of 50 or more concurrent viewers on livestreams for 30 days OR 8000 average views on video content in the past 30 days with a subscriber count of 5000 or more while playing Facepunch games.
Facepunch games are an active part of your channel.
An engaged, active audience that you interact with regularly
Have been creating content for the last 3 months consistently
Age 16+
Check out our website[facepunch.com] and fill out an application with all your creator channels and socials. If eligible, you'll receive an invite!
SHOW ME THE STUFF!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on X or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.
Cover image by MonsteraRust!]]>LUNAR NEW YEAR 2024
https://rust-servers.net/blog/296/lunar-new-year-2024/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/296/lunar-new-year-2024/Thu, 08 Feb 2024 19:50 CETLUNAR NEW YEAR Happy Lunar New Year to everyone! This year, we celebrate the Year of the Dragon. In Chinese culture, the dragon is a symbol of courage, power, and majesty. And to help everyone get in the spirit, we have added both new and old Lunar New Year items to the Steam item store.
But don't forget to decorate your bases with trees (symbolizing wealth and good luck) and wearing this year's lucky colours (yellow and red)!
SPEAR
Prim locked? This magnificent Chinese spear is for the fearless primitive warriors of Rust. This spear is a skin replacement for the wooden spear. Crafted with precision and adorned with intricate engravings, this weapon is not just a tool for battle. It's a work of art that tells a story of power and elegance.
ROCKET LAUNCHER
To celebrate the Year of the Dragon, we have created a beautiful dragon themed rocket launcher with both unique visuals and sound effects.
Differing from Western culture, the Dragon in Chinese mythology is auspicious and supreme. Dragons have the great power to control weather elements, but most importantly, soar through the skies - much like your ejecting rockets.
The dragon rocket launcher is a reskin of the rocket launcher.
NEW YEAR STORE ITEMS
There's a variety of community-made Lunar New Year items on the Steam store as well! ]]>BAGS TO RICHES
https://rust-servers.net/blog/295/bags-to-riches/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/295/bags-to-riches/Thu, 01 Feb 2024 19:53 CET
BACKPACKS
Backpacks have been one of Rust's most highly requested additions for several years, and what is a survival game without backpacks? This month, we're excited to bring you the small and large backpack, allowing players to carry more loot.
Inventory space has become more scarce as more items have been added to Rust over the years.
Small Backpack
The small handmade backpack provides 12 slots & can be crafted for 50 cloth and five sewing kits at a T1 workbench. It is a default blueprint and will take 30 seconds to craft.
Large Backback
The military-grade backpack carries a whopping 28 storage slots and is uncraftable, found in military loot.
How To Use
Both are worn in the backpack slot and drop off your character on death. They can be looted on the ground (be careful if dropping one in a safe zone!) or from inside your own inventory. They take 3 seconds to pickup off the ground and despawn slower when filled with valuable items (up to 2 hours).
Currently, there are no negative effects from using a backpack.
NEW PLAYER REMAINS BACKPACK
To help differentiate regular player remains from the new backpack models we’ve given the player remains a visual refresh. This new model has a new open and closed visual state so you can tell at a glance if a bag has been opened by anyone. There is also some visual debris around an opened bag if the bag has more than 3 items in it.
METAL DETECTOR
The new metal detector allows you to find metal objects hidden beneath the ground.
Use the green lights to find the general area of an object, then when the green lights are all fully lit, hold the right mouse button to start sweeping the ground more closely and illuminate the yellow lights.
When all the yellow lights are also lit up, a flag will be placed. Dig this flag up with any melee tool and grab your treasure!
Different areas of the world will yield different types of loot, for example, what you may find on the beach will be different than what you find at the roadside or fields.
WEAPON CHANGES
I've modified the animations for the SAP/SAR and they should feel a bit less floaty and more snappy when reloading and aiming. I've also reduced the additional recoil added while moving when using the SAP. Over the coming months I plan to take a look at each and every weapon and do another pass at balancing them. This means timings, handling, recoil, and aimcone. I'm not saying the changes will be drastic but I'm aware there are elements that need changing. Stay tuned.
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Legacy Shelter Limit
Players can now only have one shelter placed at any one time
Safezone Warning
When attempting to log out in a safe zone a warning now appears
Compass Death Marker
Death marker now appears on the compass UI
Repair Cost Fix
Some deployables such as the autoturret were unintentionally expensive to repair, this is now fixed.
Rotate Doors
Doors, hatches and embrasures can now be rotated while being deployed using R
Ripe Ripeness
Increased all plants ripe stage duration from 4h to 14h
MILDER SCREEN POST PROCESSING
A recurring community comment is the on-screen hurt, cold, warm and radioactive post-processing is hash, it impacts the screen too much. To address the comments we have made the post-processing more mild.
Above are a few examples, you can find more here[commits.facepunch.com].
REDUCING SERVER SIDE ENTITY COUNTS
As mentioned in our start of the year blog post[rust.facepunch.com], memory usage is a key area of concern this year. One aspect I’ve been looking at lately is entity counts. Anything that gets networked in a Rust server is an entity, so every tree, building block, player, vehicle, etc. What might seem counterintuitive is that many Items in your inventory are also entities, specifically an entity we call a Planner. This is the blue sheet your player visually equips when they are deploying something (eg. a sleeping bag). Any Item that can be deployed in your inventory will have a corresponding Planner entity. This entity is created when the item is created, and will exist on the server (typically in the players hands or at the world origin if they are in a container) until that item is used or destroyed. We need this entity as it handles all the logistics of spawning the deployed version of the item.
To illustrate how many entities this creates we looked a list of entities on Facepunch EU2 towards the end of the November wipe last year. Out of 362,299 entities, 32,455 of them were Planners and are the largest count of entity (the next largest was Walls at 26,015). Since Planners are technically only needed when the player has the item equipped on their belt, this is a big waste of memory and processing time as well as needlessly bloating server save files.
This month we’ve rolled out a change that will only spawn a Planner for these Items once the Item is in a players inventory, then delete the entity when it is moved back into an inventory. This should dramatically cut down on the number of entities taking up memory for no real reason.
We also applied this change to Syringes and Bandages, specifically because these item types also don’t need an Entity if they aren’t in the players inventory and are often stored in large quantities (5,769 and 1,206 respectively in the above EU2 sample). Syringes in particular have been a performance bottleneck for the Industrial system due to the need to create and destroy an Entity every time the item is moved, so this change should have flow on server performance improvements there as well.
We think this change should reduce entity counts on the server by roughly 6-9% but we’ll be monitoring the results over time.
INDUSTRIAL PERFORMANCE
We received reports from several servers this month with Industrial performance issues. After investigating we found some extremely complex conveyor systems moving large amounts of Syringes as the culprit. The above changes to Entity counts will largely solve the issue, but I’ve also added a new convar (Server.industrialTransferStrictTimeLimits) to better handle time budgeting in these situations. While the Industrial system is time budgeted per frame (eg. Only process three conveyors per frame) it struggled if one conveyor took an excessive amount of time (eg. One conveyor takes 15x the allocated budget).
This new convar will allow the conveyor system to stop half way through a transfer if it is taking too long. Crucially it will then resume the transfer from where it left off on the next tick, so the final results should be the same, they may just take longer in real time. From the players perspective, this may result in conveyors splitting things in unintuitive ways (eg. a conveyor splitting into three boxes might do 2 on the first tick, then the last one on the last tick) but it should eventually produce the same result. Therefore we’d recommend turning this on selectively if a server is experiencing Industrial performance issues.
As well as this new convar some general performance optimisations were made, so things should be a little faster across the board in the Industrial system.
MEMORY OPTIMIZATIONS
Despite having some guards in place, asset memory can easily run ouf of control. We keep adding awesome new content and, unfortunately, it keeps increasing our memory footprint. In order to be able to sustain this rate of content expansion, memory usage has to be low and stable, regardless of world complexity. Until we can implement more aggressive and effective streaming, every once in a while we have to sit down and look at what we missed and make the necessary corrections.
On this update we nuked almost 3 GB of memory usage in shader assets, plus a few hundred MB on textures and meshes. This is a bit of a soft start, in regards to textures and meshes, but we expect to reduce memory usge by a few more gigabytes in the coming months.
We do care about memory and performance, and we're actively working on it. This is just the first stage of many that will target not only improve memory usage but also frame rate.
IMPROVED TEXTURE QUALITY
Modern games universally depend on asset compression to maximize the efficient utilization of available system memory. To justify the efforts invested in compression, developers often turn to lossy techniques, which, particularly in the realm of textures, frequently lead to a compromise in image quality. Rust was long overdue for a texture quality review. Below is a before and after.
The improvement in detail and color fidelity can be striking in some cases (right). This is an ugly texture but it's a good example of how compression can ruin a high frequency image. Regions of pixels get merged together and color shifts slightly (left).
Texture compression was being used quite aggressively and, after tweaking some settings, we were able to significantly improve image quality without sacrificing memory. In the end, because a lot of textures had untapped potential for savings, we actually ended up saving runtime memory, at the cost of disk space, while still improving overall image quality.
TEAM MARKERS WITH NV GOGGLES
These were quite mis-aligned while wearing NV Goggles, especially near the screen edges, where they would sometimes float above seemingly nothing. This has now been fixed.
IMPROVED DOOR/GATE VEHICLE BEHAVIOR
Doors and Gates have been cancelling their open/close animation when hitting a vehicle since Modular Cars were introduced, however that would sometimes lead to cases where the animation cancelling would crush vehicles if they hit the Door/Gate from the opposite side. This has been improved this month and colliding with an animated Door/Gate in the direction that it is moving will no longer cause the animation to cancel. This should lead to less cars getting crushed.]]>SURVIVING A DECADE
https://rust-servers.net/blog/294/surviving-a-decade/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/294/surviving-a-decade/Thu, 04 Jan 2024 19:49 CET10 YEARS OF RUST Servers are now wiped and Santa is packing up and clearing out the bodies, but we hope you enjoyed the Holiday Season. We're getting back to work after a couple of weeks off, which is why this blog is lighter than usual, but we're looking forward to the journey ahead in 2024!
This year, we celebrated Rust's 10th Birthday, which has been an incredible journey. Rust is continuing to see year-on-year growth and for a 10 year old game, that's a rather impressive feat.
At a glance, here are some key gameplay features we added in 2023:
Industrial system
Drones
RF Detonated C4
Security Camera
Player controlled turrets
Pings
Double horse saddle
Missile silo monument
Wipe event
Building skins
Sleeping bag limits
Building upgrade effects
Water refresh
Tugboat
Ferry Terminal monument
Wounded info
Chat emoji
Attack helicopter
Homing missile launcher
Parachutes
Armored hot-air balloon
Above and below rail linking
Underground train signals
M4 shotgun
Alongside a metric ton of improvements.
Rust continues to be a labour of love from all of us at Facepunch, and we couldn't have done it without your passion and feedback. Rust has evolved around player feedback. It's not the game we initially set out to develop, but it's a game we're incredibly proud and passionate about to keep developing.
Thank you for being an integral part of this incredible journey, we look forward to delivering updates for the years to come.
If you're interested in learning more about Rust's history or a further look back at 2023, you can view the timeline[rust.facepunch.com] here: https://rust.facepunch.com/rust10
MOVING FORWARD
What can you expect from us in 2024? More of the same! Guaranteed monthly updates every first Thursday of the month, along with frequent fixes, quality of life changes, improvements and holiday events.
Next Month
On February 1st, we'll release the backpack update. Backpacks will be a new craftable attire, allowing the player to carry more items.
Can't wait till February? Backpacks will be publicly playable on Staging next week, allowing everyone to test and give feedback.
Next month we'll also limit the number of shelters players can have placed at any one time.
Forwards
We have a ton of content currently in development, and if you're keeping an eye on our commits page[commits.facepunch.com], you'll already know some of them. This year, you can expect to see new and revamped monuments such as the compound, a tutorial system for new players, motorcycles, revamped server listings UI, new weapons.
A hot topic we see is improving the world and the environment. We have multiple patches lined up in 2024 to improve the world, creating unique buildable areas such as canyons and lakes and improving rivers. Procedurally generated caves, additionally, we'll be exploring and improving cliffs and rock formations.
We also plan to address the defender's advantage of sea-based monuments and events like the cargo ship. We are to rework the harbours, and the cargoship will soon dock with the harbours.
Outlined above is skimming the surface of only a few key features. We have a lot more planned.
But what about?
Performance?
Performance is always an ongoing process. We're constantly adding and improving new features monthly, often hidden in changelogs. There is no magic button to increase performance. Instead, it is a slow process of small gains.
Our immediate attention is on bringing memory usage down, which can provide a more stable and consistent FPS experience for some users. We've already got several improvements ready for internal testing and hopefully release in the coming month or two.
This year, we'll be bringing onboard new hires with a strong focus on performance.
We'll continue to share news on performance in our monthly development blogs.
Global Rendering?
We first announced Global networked bases in September. Global rendering aimed to reduce bases popping in, significantly increase the view distance of player structures and reduce some performance overhead when rendering bases. Immediately we ran into some issues, applied fixes, re-released, and ran into further problems, this process repeated a few times and then went into development limbo.
It was clear to us that we pushed this out too soon, with a lack of internal testing. We're making time over the next two months to thoroughly test and evaluate global rendering with the hope of releasing it publically again in March.
Pets?
If you follow our public commits page, you'll know we worked on pets for several months and suddenly stopped. For several reasons, we halted this project, and it will not be released this year.
Our goal is still to have pets in Rust, but we have several obstacles to overcome first.
We're currently hiring a game AI programmer[facepunch.com] to join the Rust team to help improve our AI and eventually assist in pets development.
Nexus?
Again, if you follow our public commits, you'll have seen the Nexus system. What is the Nexus system? In short, the Nexus system allows us to cluster servers together and enable players to travel from server to server to server using flight and boats, effectively linking an unlimited amount of servers, creating an environment where you can interact with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players and explore multiple maps without the need to move servers permanently. Nexus opens many doors to us, for example, dedicated arctic maps and maps with advanced AI and high-yielding resource maps but with a dangerous environment.
We don't plan for Nexus to replace the current existing server format as you play currently, but rather an optional new way to play Rust if you wish if you choose to do so.
We plan to release Nexus in 2024 when ready, but much work is still ahead of us.
Night times?
Another hot topic within the community, for years between 2015-2019, we experimented with brighter nights. Whatever we tried, we saw many players using third-party tools to gamma boost to see at night and gain an unfair advantage over other players. It's a complex issue to address, if we increase light levels at night, we'll reopen old lessons which we know did not work in the past. Night time acts as a natural time for players to take a break, craft, build or use the cover of darkness to move loot or harvest resources, we want to retain this and allow players to use darkness to their advantage with the use of night vision and light sources.
We do agree that being unable to see entirely at night and unable to navigate around is not a good or fun experience, and we plan to revisit the subject early this year. The aim of the change is to allow players to navigate around at night more easily, if you want to PvP at night, then flashlights and night vision are still a must-have.
Anti-cheat?
A hugely complex topic. We work closely with Epic Games' Easy Anti-cheat, to aid in detecting and banning cheaters in Rust. We don't disclose what we do and don't do when it comes to anti-cheat for good reason. The more information we disclose publicly, the more it can assist cheaters and cheat developers to circumvent measures, it's a huge cat-and-mouse game.
One of the best anti-cheat measures is obscurity. The fewer people know what EAC and we are doing, the better. This comes with the drawback of not communicating enough, on the outside, it appears we're doing nothing. Almost every month, we're shipping improvements or fixing/restricting cheat features. We've fixed several high-priority exploits upon discovery or disclosure within hours through hotfixes we don't note publicly. EAC sometimes pushes several improvements weekly, which are applied when you start the game.
Our promise to you is we're actively monitoring and combating cheaters daily. Our internal systems keep improving, as do EAC. Last year, we overdoubled our support team to aid in player support issues, which included anti-cheat matters. This year we're dedicating more resources into anti cheat than ever and exploring some more radical measures.
Old Content?
We've set aside multiple months in our internal roadmap of light or no content. These gaps are deliberate to allow us to be versatile and adaptive to community feedback, time to focus and address old content, and improve recent content. We have a lot we can keep building upon, not all content we add to Rust is supposed to become meta, but rather adding yet another way of achieving a goal.
At a quick glance, here are just some of the changes ahead:
Older monument reworks and improvements
Continue experimenting and making meta changes to gunplay
Softcore game mode Improvements
Hardcore game mode experimenting
Experimenting with progression
Improvements to AI
Improvements to events such as the patrol helicopter, Launch site APC and Cargoship
World environment
Underwater exploration
Missions
Using our data analytics to identify less commonly used items and balancing
Experimenting with new ways/events to encourage players to engage with PvP
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Ragdolls Improvements
Several server-side ragdolls improvements and fixes following last months changes
Map Focus Hotkey
Pressing F now focuses the players position when the map is open
Scrolling Item Descriptions
Long item descriptions now scroll
TRUST IN RUST - TWITCH DROPS
We're excited to announce that hJune[www.twitch.tv] has teamed up with Rustoria[rustoria.co] again for the next Trust in Rust tournament on Saturday, January 13th. Trust in Rust will be raising money for cancer research this year.
[twitch.facepunch.com]
There will be Twitch drops!
Some exclusives for the event and general drops you can earn from your favourite creator channels.
This is a charity event!
Proceeds from exclusive store skins sales and event donations go to Cancer Research[tiltify.com]. Cancer Research is the world's leading independent cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research, influence and information.
]]>The Labor of Love Award - Final Voting
https://rust-servers.net/blog/293/the-labor-of-love-award-final-voting/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/293/the-labor-of-love-award-final-voting/Thu, 21 Dec 2023 19:02 CET Voting is simple - you can vote for us above in the Labor of Love category. We need you to do it!
But it just so happens that over the last two weeks, we’ve been celebrating 10 years of Rust.
Here's a recap of the last 10 years of development, community, and more - it brought a tear to our eyes!
We’ve seen an unprecedented amount of new and returning players, and the community is now bigger and more engaged than ever before. With teams working around the clock, on almost every continent, we still continue to spend every day monitoring, maintaining, and nurturing the game. And we release monthly updates - without fail - delivering new content, lore, plus regular Twitch drops, and seasonal events.
We had many kind words about all the work we put into Rust and it was clear to many that over the past 10 years, the game has transformed from a mere survival game to a global phenomenon, captivating all kinds of players with its unique blend of challenges, creativity, ways to play, and community spirit. From groundbreaking procedural generation, to some of the most intense player interactions, Rust stands out as a testament to our creativity and we feel, the creativity within the wider gaming industry.
Recall those heart-pounding moments when survival meant outsmarting both the environment and other players. Rust's innovative gameplay has set the standard for emergent storytelling and PvP in the gaming world.
Rust's journey wouldn't be as remarkable without its vibrant and engaged community from all over the world. We, the developers at Facepunch Studios have continually embraced player feedback, ensuring that the game evolves with the input and creativity of its dedicated and growing player base. In the last 10 years, the game has undergone some huge changes, including graphic, physics, and engine updates and rebuilds, all because we’ve wanted to make Rust what it is, and what it could be.
Why vote for Rust? Let's take Rust to new heights! Winning the Labor of Love Steam Award would be the perfect way to honour Rust's incredible journey and the passionate community that has been an integral part of it.
How to Vote:
Make Your Voice Heard! Voting for Rust in the Steam Awards is quick and easy. Here's a step-by-step guide:
Visit the Steam Awards Page: Head over to the Steam Awards page on Steam.
Select the "Labor of Love" Category: Find the "Labor of Love" category, a perfect fit for Rust's emphasis on our commitment to the community and collaboration.
Cast Your Vote for Rust: Click on Rust to cast your vote and show your support for the game that has defined a decade of survival FPS.
As we celebrate Rust's 10th anniversary this month, let's unite and propel the game to new heights for many more years to come!
Vote for Rust! ]]>MERRY RUSTMAS!
https://rust-servers.net/blog/292/merry-rustmas/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/292/merry-rustmas/Sat, 16 Dec 2023 15:24 CETMERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY HOLIDAYS! From everyone at Facepunch, we'd all like to wish you a Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone!
Rust and its DLC packs are currently on sale till the end of January with up to 50% off.
The Christmas Event is once again live! If you haven't been around for this before, here's what you can expect:
Every once in a while you will hear the sound of jingle bells. Run outside and look for a gift! Two gifts are spawned per player, in a radius of about 40m from where you are standing. Run up and bash it open to receive your Christmas presents. They come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. If you have enough small presents stashed, you can "trade up" to a medium or large. The contents of each present vary, but you'll find a mix of resources, weapons, and candy.
Once again, you will be able to find Santa hats and reindeer antlers, both of which can be worn and provide a decent amount of protection. There’s also a lickable candy cane club, and two types of stockings. If you hang a stocking inside your base when the jingle bells ring the stocking will fill up with loot. The larger stocking has a higher chance for better items and both last around 5-10 refills.
The advent calendar is a craftable deployable available to everyone during the Christmas event. Once placed you can claim an in-game surprise once every in-real-life day from the 16th of December.
The Christmas event ends on January 4th @ 19:00GMT
Have fun!
GINGERBREAD CAKE MINES
Run, run fast as you can, the gingerbread men are coming! Gingerbread houses have mysteriously started appearing throughout the world, leading to an underground dungeon, smelling a little like grandma's baking, but be careful, it's not going to be a cakewalk if you enter!
Server owners can adjust the portal count using the xmasdungeon.xmaspopulation convar.
RUSTMAS STORE ITEMS
We have brought some items from previous years, now purchasable from the Rust Item Store.
Since last year the festive garland pack now includes a double door garland. If you've already purchased this pack, you'll now be able to craft this item.
TWITCHMAS
This year, we've teamed up with Twitch to celebrate this festive season. To commemorate this landmark partnership, we're dropping winter-themed items, as seen below.
Please also be following the Rust Twitter so we can DM you. If we do not get a response within 1 week of the winner announcement a new winner will be chosen.
Evaluation
Submissions will be judged based on the following:
Creativity
Design
Judging will be performed by Facepunch Staff.
Bonus points if you remove the UI and your graphics are set higher than 1 :)
Terms
This competition is run by Facepunch Studios Lt. The competition ends on January 4th 2024 23:59UTC. No more than three entries per person. The winner and runner-up will be selected based on which Facepunch thinks is the most original/creative and any decisions Facepunch makes will be final. The winner and runner up must claim their prizes within one month of the closing date (which Facepunch may exchange for an alternative of the same or greater value). Our terms of service apply to any content you make for the competition: https://facepunch.com/legal. Winning entries must pick items from the Rust marketplace with market value.]]>10 YEARS OF RUST
https://rust-servers.net/blog/291/10-years-of-rust/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/291/10-years-of-rust/Thu, 07 Dec 2023 19:46 CETRUST 10TH ANNIVERSARY
This month marks Rust's 10th birthday. We’ll celebrate from today till the 16th of December with in-game birthday cake, hats, throwbacks and some new items.
Rust has undergone significant evolution since its launch in 2013. It initially began within the Unity Engine 4, playable in a web browser. Later, a standalone version launched on Steam early access, the beginning of which is now known to most as Rust Legacy. With rocky foundations, a complete overhaul was done to what we have today, known as Rust reboot, or just Rust nowadays.
Over the past ten years, Rust has sold over 16 million copies (not counting console).
Rust Legacy 2013
Rust exceeded everyone's expectations and has grown yearly for ten years. We have delivered monthly updates for ten years straight, as we continue to expand the Rust development team, we have no plans to stop providing you with guaranteed monthly updates.
Rust Reboot 2015
Below are some exciting metrics we've achieved over the past 10 years.
If you're interested in learning more about Rust's history, you can view the timeline here:
On behalf of everyone at Facepunch Studios, we'd like to wish you a Happy Holidays. In the January end-of-years blog, we'll discuss how 2023 has gone, what we've achieved, what we learned, and our upcoming plans for 2024.
PINATA
Take your best shot at the new Pinata deployable, available to be crafted for 500 wood. Destroying the Pinata will drop a random selection of goodies, remember to share with your teammates.
CONFETTI CANNON
Mark the occasion with the Confetti Cannon! Simply light the fuse and sit back while the confetti rains down.
LEGACY WOOD SHELTER
Remember those first few hours of Legacy Rust? Farming resources for your first big base, and needing a place to call home in the meantime? The shelter was the answer. Now it's back!
The shelter comes with an included door, key lock and even a small radius of building privilege! The perfect start to your Rust journey.
Shelters will decay naturally, provided the door isn't interacted with (by someone with a key or ownership of the shelter) at least once a day. Make sure you keep using your shelter in order to keep it! Shelters placed within a tool cupboard radius will use TC upkeep as normal. They can also be repaired with the hammer, the same as any other deployable.
Hello! I'm Ian, the new Gameplay Programmer! I remember cowering in my shelter back in 2013 Rust. It's incredible knowing I'm giving new players the same experience I had back in the day by bringing Vincent's awesome model to life.
I can't wait to bring you more in the future.
LEGACY BOW DLC
The legacy bow is a limited-time only store item which is only purchasable during the month of December. This bow skin pays homage to the first-ever bow model in Rust.
LEGACY WOOD BUILDING SKIN
Available now from the Rust store is the new Legacy Wood building skin, the first Wood building skin. Owning this skin will allow you to change the visuals of your wood tier base.
This skin is for sale at the Steam store. To use, simply equip your hammer tool, display the wheel, and enable building skins. This should reveal the skin's wheel on which you may choose Legacy Wood upgrade.
M4 SHOTGUN
The M4 shotgun was first introduced way back in Rust Legacy in 2013. To celebrate 10 years of Rust, we've decided to revive it. The M4 is an uncraftable military-grade shotgun; unlike other shotguns, the M4 has a much stronger range attack.
The M4 shotgun is a rare drop in high-end loot crates.
LEGACY FURNACE
The Legacy Furnace is a free skin for the furnace based on the original model from 2013.
To earn the Legacy Furnace, simply play for 3+ hours during the month of December. The furnace will be automatically issued to your Steam Inventory to use!
Fun Fact - The original furnace was made of starter rocks copied and pasted together in the shape of a furnace.
UPDATED PAINT UI
The paint UI has been in need of an overhaul for a while and that's what it got this patch! Not only does it look way better than before, it also has a lot of new features and improvements.
New features:
Eraser tool for all types of signs
Colour picker tool
Made the brush size and opacity options sliders (instead of buttons)
Added a brush spacing option as a slider
Added a more natural looking paint brush
Added two air brush types
Button to reset the camera to face the object straight on
Button to switch the preview lighting on or off (removes glare at some angles)
Allow chatting while in the painting UI, with a button to hide it
Bound Ctrl+S to the save button
Added a button to download the image currently being edited to your desktop
Now have bindable convars for controlling the tool and brush options while painting
paint.selectedtool lets you set the current tool (as a number starting from 0, wrapping around at the end)
paint.selectedbrush lets you set the current brush
paint.brushsize sets the brush size slider
paint.brushspacing sets the brush spacing slider
paint.brushopacity sets the brush opacity slider
Note: These function as convars so binds like "bind L meta.add paint.selectedtool 1" will switch to the next tool
Note: You may need to re-open the paint UI after adding a bind when the paint UI is open
Improvements:
Fixed ugly UI, made it easier for us to maintain the three different types of paint UIs
Added canvas scaler so UI isn't tiny at large resolutions
Fixed gap visible between preview and right UI at some resolutions
Clicks on top of UI will now never paint on the sign
Added tooltips to all buttons so it is clear what they do
The Contact Shadow option has been in the Experimental section for some years now. I believe the main reason for this is related to a very obvious over-darkening of Grass/Foliage shadows. Foliage materials have a shadow intensity option that allows artists to control penumbra darkness, making it a bit more realistic. Contact Shadows, basically, ignore that parameter.
Last month, I decided to go over it and fix the problem, while tweaking and optimizing the effect in the process.
It should now look a lot more seamless when toggling on/off, respecting shadow intensity while still grounding the grass.
HAPIS ISLAND
Continuing with the theme of throwbacks to celebrate Rust's 10th Birthday, you've asked, we've listened, Hapis Island is back.. again! This map version is community-made and based on the 2018 version. If there's one thing the Rust community doesn't lack, it is passion.
We plan to host Hapis Island until March 2024.
We're hosting two servers of Hapis Island across different regions. These can be found in the official server list by searching "Hapis"
US - 54.39.130.95:28015 EU - 51.210.222.218:28015
IMPROVED RAGDOLL BEHAVIOUR
Player ragdolls - the floppy state a player's body enters after being killed - have been revamped this month.
They can now collide with all vehicles in the game (trains, cars, boats, helicopters etc), where previously they simply fell through. Issues with ragdolls stretching out unnaturally have also been eliminated. If you ever saw a corpse where the interaction wasn't lined up with the visible ragdoll, that's fixed too.
Old Behaviour
When a player died, a corpse entity used to spawn that was basically just a pelvis-sized collider, which was physically simulated on the server. The position of that "corpse" would sync with every client.
On the client side, a separate "ragdoll" object would spawn, that was a whole visible person with a full set of physically simulated limbs. That ragdoll was attached to the server-side-simulated corpse basically by a tight spring.
The corpse object controlled the actual loot interaction.
Essentially the intention was:
Let the client do the work of simulating a whole body. We don't really care how their arms and legs are positioned, on the server. If it's different between clients, also don't care.
Keep the loot interaction consistent between clients by simulating just that part on the server.
Keep the (client-side) ragdoll and the (server-side) corpse together with the spring.
In reality, things were not perfect:
If a player died somewhere like the top of a wall, the corpse might fall down but not the ragdoll, or vice versa. Since the collision setup was quite different between (server-side) corpse and (client-side) ragdoll - only the pelvis area matched - this was relatively common. The result would be a mismatched position between corpse and ragdoll, sometimes putting the interaction in a strange place.
The client-side ragdoll joints really did not like working with the pelvis position data that was coming from the server. If movement was sudden, rather than just ending up in the wrong place, the ragdoll would sometimes stretch out unnaturally.
If a ragdoll was on a moving vehicle, things were especially bad, to the point that we couldn't enable ragdoll collision with vehicles at all. Things would happen like a ragdoll dangling under a scrap heli because it had fallen out but the "corpse" hadn't.
This was exacerbated by the fact that the client-side ragdoll physics simulation didn't work well with the fact that the vehicle was being moved on the server, rather than simulating on the client like the ragdoll was. Although the physics did work, they acted like the surface had zero friction, so the ragdoll would tend to slide around while the server-side corpse wanted to stay put - and the spring kept trying keep them together.
New Behaviour
My first instinct for the simplest fix was to try just locking the ragdoll to the corpse, rather than using a spring. That would force them to stay together.
Unfortunately locking the pelvis to a position that was coming from the server, whilst simulating all the connected joints on the client, made the physics system very unhappy. Trying Unity tricks like using 'rigidbody.MovePosition' versus '.position', projection on or off, more solver iterations etc didn't really help. The limbs would really want to stay where they were while the pelvis pulled them around, and you'd just end up with a horrifying stretched-out ragdoll instead of one that was simply in the wrong place. Plus the limbs still had some of the old problems, like the zero-friction-on-vehicles issue.
The pelvis also didn't always simulate well for a full body, since it didn't have any of the connected torso/legs/arms/head, so it'd try to go places the full body didn't want to go. The spring allowed for that kind of leeway, but a fixed connection didn't.
So ragdoll-on-vehicle support was going to require either writing a custom physics solution for simulating the limbs on the client plus making something better for the pelvis simulation on the server side, or moving the whole ragdoll simulation to the server.
Ultimately the custom physics solution was going to require most of the same work that a fully server-simulated ragdoll was, on top of being difficult to code on my own in a way that came out superior to what Unity has already managed with 7,700 employees. So server-side ragdolls was the winner.
The new ragdolls work like this:
A corpse spawns on the server, and that corpse is a fully simulated ragdoll with limbs etc.
The base position of that corpse syncs to the client like it did before, but now the limbs also sync, in an efficient way that's packed into a couple of 32-bit integers.
The client no longer has a ragdoll object that's separate from the corpse. The corpse is the ragdoll, and it's simulated only on the server.
That basically eliminates all the problems at once, apart from the performance cost on the server of simulating more than it did before. To handle that, I've made sure that ragdolls stop simulating as soon as they've settled down, including when they're on a moving vehicle. Overall the performance cost on the server is low, and behaviour is much improved.
Reverting
If anything does go wrong, there is a new 'serversideragdolls` console command that can be set true or false. It's now true by default, but setting it to false will immediately revert to the old system.
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Industrial Pipe Colors
Added teal, orange, pink & purple
Sprinkler Water Fix
Fix sprinklers wasting up to 40% of water (4 or 9 planters)
Fixed Tugboat FPS
Tugboats were rarely causing a large FPS drop when coming into range
Car Lift Pickup
The car lift can now be picked up when not in use
Hot Air Balloon
Fixed Players falling out of the hot air balloon
Heli Crate Remodel
Updated patrol heli crate
Fixed Explosive Ammo Splash
In some situations, explosive ammo was not correctly applying splash damage
Square Sun
Did you ever notice the sun was square sometimes? No? Well, it's fixed
Controls Search
Added a search box to the binds sections of the options menu
Drone ID
Drones now show their ID inside the player's inventory
Ore Harvesting
Ore collection tools now have a slightly further attack, no longer have to duck/crouch to harvest
Bandage Revive
You can now revive players by using a bandage on them, restoring a small amount of health
OIL RIG RADIATION
Exactly 1 year ago we increased the respawn delay of oil rigs from 30min -> 1 hour.
We noticed something strange though... the monument was sometimes taking hours (plural!) to refresh. After looking into it we realized some players were staying on Oil Rig & blocking the respawn for a number of reasons; ranging from farming resources to siting afk in vents to grief the monument.
Radiation will now appear on oil rig 30 minutes after the hacked crate unlocks. It will apply low but consistent radiation (regardless of what armor you are wearing) forcing players to leave oil rig after the event is over.
We also resolved the issue of players leaving a single item inside the hacked crate to keep the crate's map marker on the map when it was "empty".
To communicate this new change with radiation there are multiple danger indicators when it starts:
Note: that the alarm sound has changed what danger is signifies: it has changed from "heavy scientists incoming" to "radiation starting".
These changes should ensure the Oil Rig event keeps refreshing & you always have loot to fight over.
END OF YEAR RETIREMENTS
As the year ends, we look back at what has and hasn't worked well, we have decided to make the following changes:
Hardcore
Hardcore was released in August 2022, a game mode aimed towards veteran players, with creature comforts such as safe zones, team systems and maps disabled. Since its release, hardcore has seen a declining player base, and we feel now is the right time to retire Hardcore from official servers.
It was an exciting game mode for us to experiment with, but we missed the mark on its implementation.
We have collected a lot of community feedback for if and when we choose to revamp this gamemode in 2024.
Hardcore can still be enabled on community servers.
Barren
Barren was introduced as a map to cater for the low-end system and before the introduction of custom maps. We've made some advancements in performance since, regular community use of custom maps, and declined user base on Barren servers, we feel now is the right time to retire Barren.
We also think Barren looks ugly and not a good representation of Rust.
CHRISTMAS UPDATE
On December 16th at 19:00GMT / 14:00 EST, we'll be releasing an optional server and client update to enable the Xmas event and some festive features!
During this period anyone that purchases 2 (two) subscriptions from any participating Rust Streamer will earn an exclusive Creator Computer Station to use in game! Participation is open to any Partner or Affiliate on Twitch, streaming Rust.
There are some qualifications and steps involved to redeem[rust.facepunch.com] the Creator Computer station please inquire the FAQs on our website for more info!
On December 11th at 8:00 pm GMT a team of 150 well-known Twitch creators from around the world will compete in this massive global Rust competition, taking place over 5 days with a prize pool worth $100k.
[twitch.facepunch.com]
During the Twitch Rivals event, Rust Twitch drops will be enabled for 5 days from selected participating channels, and well-known streamers such as hJune, Welyn, Willjum, Panpots, Buddha, DisguisedToast, Mendo and many more.
We'd like to thank Rustoria for working with us and Twitch to make this event possible.
Another monthly round-up of data that we've captured in the last 30 days. We've got a lot of data at hand but we're trying to pick out the more interesting bits to share.
The data shown below is only from Facepunch official servers, we eliminate data from community-run servers to ensure accuracy within the data we share.
]]>COMMUNITY UPDATE 258
https://rust-servers.net/blog/290/community-update-258/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/290/community-update-258/Mon, 27 Nov 2023 17:06 CETSTEAM AWARDS Rust's 10th Anniversary is coming up and we would love nothing more than for all you loyal Rust players to nominate for us in the Steam Awards - Labor of Love!
In the last 10 years, the game has undergone some huge changes, including graphic, physics, and engine updates and rebuilds, all because we’ve wanted to make Rust what it is, and what it could be. But what has really blown us away is the great milestones that have been achieved within the community such as:
Regularly being in Steam’s top 10 most played games
350+ content updates
16,000,000+ copies sold.
$1,703,923+ raised for multiple charities
960,000,000+ hours watched on Twitch
244,000+ peak player count
75,000,000+ Twitch drops claimed
151,000+ peak player average per month
124,000+ Steam workshop items posted
If you feel we are deserving of your vote, we'd love for you to give Rust yours in this category and we have no plans to stop crafting and refining our rewarding and multi-purpose game any time soon!
And stay tuned for Rust 10th anniversary celebrations!
SUPPORT A STREAMER CAMPAIGN
Beginning December 7th till December 31st 2023 we will be hosting our very first Twitch Support a Streamer Campaign[rust.facepunch.com]!
[rust.facepunch.com]
During this period anyone that purchases 2 (two) subscriptions from any participating Rust Streamer will earn an exclusive Creator Computer Station to use in game! This functions just like the current computer station, but in style.
Keep an eye on our socials and the official website for more details and who you can watch to get the creator computer station!
Well well well ...he did it! Bloorprint hit 2 MILLION subscribers. I do believe this makes him the highest subscribed Rust channel to date? Please do correct me if I'm wrong.
With his great achievement he's also created what he calls his "magnum opus". A nearly 4 hour masterpiece to commemorate the long road that got him here.
Settle in, grab some popcorn, and give this man some of your time (and a thumbs up).
Congratz Bloo, we're proud of you!
COBALT - THE DESCENT
Another long-time coming project SyntheticKill as been working on is out! Tons of cameos in this one including yours truly as the Exposition Commentator.
Had a few hitches a long the way with ever-changing Rust development causing some delays in his cinematics but we got there!
Is this how YOU saw Rust lore happening?
FANCYORB'S GLOBAL WARFARE
Alright so as many of you may know FancyOrb did a huge event this summer involving tons of creators and their pals to do a Global Warfare event.
The map was a replica of earth in its entirety. Every region was battling to maintain control of their territory and take control of others. Blood was shed, politics were fierce, and treaties were undermined.
This epic story FancyOrb narrated shows exactly how events unfolded. 300% worth the watch!
This event will take place again next summer even bigger and better. Stay tuned!
IF RUST WAS AN ACTION MOVIE
Dyl Dip make this cute little action cinematic short!
Is this where we call Vin Diesel?
SHOW ME THE STUFF!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on the Twitterverse or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.
Cover image by Alpha!]]>Vote for Rust in the Steam Awards!
https://rust-servers.net/blog/289/vote-for-rust-in-the-steam-awards/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/289/vote-for-rust-in-the-steam-awards/Tue, 21 Nov 2023 19:01 CET
The Labour of Love award perfectly describes our past ten years of development as:
With teams working around the clock, on almost every continent, we still continue to spend every day monitoring, maintaining, and nurturing the game. And we release monthly updates - without fail - delivering new content, lore, plus regular Twitch drops, and more.
We provide regular updates on our efforts to ensure the community are aware of what’s happening in game and behind the scenes - plus, we have brought in a range of new mechanics, skins, monuments, landscapes and graphical and gameplay improvements - with many of these also monitored and improved on post-release.
We listen to the Rust community and use their feedback to influence balancing and fixes that have encouraged all sorts of innovations within the game. Each month sees us constantly impressed by what the community can create and exploit.
And looking at just the last 12 months, we’ve brought players tug boats, helicopters, drones, parachutes, train linking, decorative items, storage, and more.
In the last 10 years, the game has undergone some huge changes, including graphic, physics, and engine updates and rebuilds, all because we’ve wanted to make Rust what it is, and what it could be. But what has really blown us away is the great milestones that have been achieved within the community such as:
Regularly being in Steam’s top 10 most played games
350+ content updates
16,000,000+ copies sold.
$1,703,923+ raised for multiple charities
960,000,000+ hours watched on Twitch
244,000+ peak player count
75,000,000+ Twitch drops claimed
151,000+ peak player average per month
124,000+ Steam workshop items posted
1,054,000+ Community followers
980,000+ Steam reviews
7,200,000+ Twitch followers
353,000+ X Followers
12,400,000+ YouTube views
160,000+ YouTube subscribers
If you feel we are deserving of your vote, we'd love for you to give Rust yours in this category and we have no plans to stop crafting and refining our rewarding and multi-purpose game any time soon!
And stay tuned for Rust 10th anniversary celebrations!
]]>COUPLING THE RAILS
https://rust-servers.net/blog/288/coupling-the-rails/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/288/coupling-the-rails/Thu, 02 Nov 2023 19:46 CETABOVE AND BELOW RAIL LINKING
This month we are finally connecting the above-ground rail network with the underground. While playing on servers with a world size of at least 4250, you will find one or two rail tunnels allowing you to seamlessly travel between the underground and above-ground networks.
To do it, simply take a train inside one of the tunnels, drive it down a short slope and you will be inside the underground network. All wagon types are fully compatible with both networks regardless of their length allowing for new gameplay opportunities.
To top it off, we also made some visual tweaks to the network that fix light leaking issues in small areas like the stairwells, as well as made some other minor tweaks and fixes.
UNDERGROUND TRAIN SIGNALS
For a while now we've had signal lights in the underground train tunnels, but they were always off. They're now fully functional and can be used to see what's up ahead.
- A green light means the block is clear. - A red light means the block has something in it - a train or a barricade. - A yellow light means the next block has something in it, so you can get prepared.
A "block" is the section between two train signals. If there's no next signal, it's the rest of the track, either to the end of the line or the next 500m if it's further than that to the end of the line.
WIRE TOOL RECONNECT
Not only did we couple the rails this update: we also allowed you to re-couple your wires!
If you have done electrical before, you know the pain of unequipping a wire tool and having to re-run the wire from the top to bottom of your base all over again. (or yelling for a teammate to place a root combiner quickly!)
Note: If a teammate blocks industrial with a wall as you have your wire tool holstered it will resume right before the industrial pipe is blocked.
We also added the ability to reconnect existing wires to avoid rerunning them through the base. This speeds up redesigning circuits and will make reconnecting long wires significantly easier. Use right click to reconnect, hold right click to disconnect & clear wire.
ITEMS ON VEHICLES
Dropped items no longer fall through vehicles. You can now drop items on trains, cars, boats, helicopters etc and they'll collide properly.
Dropped items do have some mass, so they can weigh vehicles down a bit if there are a lot of them. But you can still fly a scrap heli load of stuff across the map.
FRONTIER BASE DECOR PACK
New this month is the Frontier base decor pack DLC, a wild western-themed collection featuring ten new items and 17 variants.
The pack can be bought from the Rust Steam item store or in-game.
Fish Trophy
Put your best catch on display for the world (or at least your teammates) with the Fish Trophy! Simply insert a fish to make it appear on the mount. Try interacting with the mounted fish to get a peek into the life of a fish in Rust.
Hunting Trophy
Caught something a bit too big for the Fish Trophy? The Small and Large Hunting Trophies allow you to stuff and mount the heads of your foes. To get started you’ll need to use the new Skinning Knife to harvest a corpse, this will result in a special Head item that can be mounted.
The Large Trophy can display a Shark, Bear, Boar, Wolf, Polar Bear, Horse and Stag head.
The Small Trophy can display either a Chicken or Humanoid head. When harvesting a player or NPC, the head clothing worn by that person will be displayed on the mounted trophy.
Once a Trophy is mounted you can mount extra matching heads onto the stand, this will be tracked and displayed along with the name of the creature or player.
Wooden Frontier Bar Doors
Make a stylish entrance with the Wooden Frontier Bar Doors. These can be installed into a Wall Frame and operate like a regular Double Door except your player opens the doors like a gunslinger walking into a saloon. You can also open the radial menu to access the kick option, giving you even more style when opening the doors.
Wanted Poster
Look your enemies in the eye, all the time, even in your own base with the Wanted Poster. You can interact with a deployed wanted poster to assign a player to it, this will put the players mugshot and name on the poster. You can select from any player in your contacts (any status) or from your friends list. The Wanted Poster comes with 3 additional skins with different styles and sizes.
Torch Holder
Don’t throw out your starting Torch yet, now you can put it in this fancy holder to provide some quick illumination in your base. Once you insert a Torch you can interact with it to Ignite/Extinguish it and it will react to any nearby Igniters or sources of water (Water Buckets, Water Guns, Sprinklers, etc). The Torch Holder works the same with all Torch skins, even the Abyss Torch.
A mounted lit Torch will decay at the same rate as it would if held in a player's hands and will break eventually.
Rocking Chair
Had your fill of dull, lifeless chairs? Ditch the mundane and embrace the spirit of the frontier with the Rocking Chair. It's the quintessential piece for the player who appreciates both comfort and aesthetics. This chair marries practicality with a touch of rustic charm. Movable with your inputs, it's a remarkable blend of both function and form, ideal for your base. Just make sure you don't act like a gunslinger whilst seated!
Frontier Planters
Now you can grow your crops in style! Whether you want to grow corn or hemp in a disused minecart, an abandoned bathtub or a hand-crafted rail road planter, the new planters will allow you to plant 2,3 and 9 of your favourite berry seeds.
Give your hemp farms that wild western look with the new frontier planters!
Single Item Weapon Racks
Short on space? The three new single item weapon racks let you mount and proudly display your favourite or most essential items. Place them somewhere convenient and easy to grab!
Storage Barrel
Two new storage items, the vertical and horizontal storage barrels.
IMPROVEMENT FIXES & HIGHLIGHTS
Water Catchers
Water catchers now fill even faster following last months changes
Jackhammer Repair
The jackhammer can now be repaired inside the workbench for free
Jackhammer Refill
Jackhammer can now be refilled in the repair bench for free
Planter Pickup
Planters can now be picked up with a hammer
Repair Bench Auto Skinning
Autoskin items by holding shift while right clicking into repair bench
Saddlebags
Increased slots per horse saddlebag from 6 to 12
OBSERVER ISLAND
Observer Island is a 4K-sized custom map created by community members CollapsedOrange and wheatleymf. Observer Island features custom mountains, road/train bridges, train tunnels, unique monuments, arch rocks, a unique map layout, and manually sculpted cliff formations.
The goal of this map is to encompass all the elements of vanilla Rust while expanding upon them with new features, making map exploration more engaging. It also aims to refresh vanilla gameplay with new building locations, unique map layout, and various other enhancements, including some secrets.
CollapsedOrange and wheatleymf dedicated time to experimenting with ideas frequently suggested by players for procedural maps. As you explore, you'll notice custom caves, mountains, large forest areas, several underwater monuments, and arch rocks that allow you to build inside them, just like in the old, simpler days.
In addition to the new map features, lots of effort has gone into building custom monuments. While some are relatively simple, others are far more complicated. They might even lead to a well-hidden secret monument…
It’s worth mentioning that this is not “new Hapis”. But instead a unique map layout with its own features, so you can always come back to this map if you ever feel tired of procedural maps. We had fun making it, and we hope you will enjoy it too. Please let us know what you think about this map!
Servers
How to play?
EU - connect 195.60.166.70:28020 US - connect 216.39.240.158:28015
For server owners, since this is a custom map made by the community, this map will be available for purchase from November 9th in the lone.design[lone.design] store. This will include a full map, related plugins and permanent access to all future updates.]]>COMMUNITY UPDATE 257
https://rust-servers.net/blog/287/community-update-257/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/287/community-update-257/Thu, 26 Oct 2023 13:37 CESTSPOOKY SCENES Rust daVinci blessed us with a walkthrough of their Halloween town on the Method Games RP server[methodgames.github.io]. Village will be up till Nov. 2nd if anyone wants to check it out!
BREAST CANCER CHARITY
October 27th-29th
Some of our most badass babes in Rust are getting together to do a Breast Cancer Research[www.bcrf.org] fundraiser this weekend!
Tune into BeccaSomething[www.twitch.tv], MuyDala[www.twitch.tv], Jennifer[www.twitch.tv], Peachieeo[www.twitch.tv], Terpsicat[www.twitch.tv] & many more to watch some chaos and donate to the cause!
There will be tons of giveaways including VIP/Queue Bypass to many of your favorite community Rust servers along with some Official Rust DLC items.
[donate.tiltify.com]
Support these awesome ladies by tuning in and donating[donate.tiltify.com] to the cause!
PROJECT LAZARUS
Providing some signal boost for the upcoming Project Lazarus[theprojectlazarus.com] event!
Event participants are invite only but if you're interested in getting involved check out their discord[discord.com] for more information.
IBIZA RUST
u/ReptarKitawa made this super rad party base on Rustopia US Large. Gives me Ibiza Party vibes and looks like a great time! Last I checked it was still alive too if you want to stop by and have some fun!
SHOW ME THE STUFF!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on the Twitterverse or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.
Full Blog Here[rust.facepunch.com]]]>HAPPY HALLOWEEN
https://rust-servers.net/blog/286/happy-halloween/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/286/happy-halloween/Mon, 23 Oct 2023 19:53 CESTHAPPY HALLOWEEN! The Halloween events are now enabled! Once roughly every two in-game days, a candy hunt event will begin. You'll have 3 minutes to collect as many candies as you can. The top 3 players are given special loot bags as a reward. These candies and loot bags can be opened for various types of loot ranging from scrap all the way up to an M249!
If you don't make the podium, that's okay. The candies you collect can be upgraded for better loot.
There are various items available to help you during your hunt. The Pumpkin Bucket will allow instant pickup of candies and the Scarecrow Wrap and Ghost Costume will provide you with an advantage via Candy Vision.
The Halloween event will run until November 2nd.
Have fun!
GRHRRR..
What to do with all them body parts? Let's build a monster! To start building your own monster, first, you must slay scarecrows and mummies that roam the lands. Once you've collected a head, torso and legs, craft yourself a Frankenstein's table and place the body parts within the table.
Awaken your new pet monster and control it by pressing "P".
The monster will follow your orders without question. It'll follow you around the map, defend you if attacked and help slay foes you wish to attack.
If you're having trouble accessing the pet menu or already have a key bound to "P" then use the following console command: bind X +pets or open the in-game controls menu.
THE RIFTS
Cultists are said to have been opening portals throughout the world, others believe it's a Cobalt experiment code-named R.U.I.N gone horribly wrong. Not much is known about these portals or what they do, only a few chads have entered and made it back alive.
Do you dare to enter?
Server owners can adjust the portal count using the halloweendungeon.population convar.
NEW HALLOWEEN ITEMS
This year we've added three new Halloween-themed items, one purchasable and two free.
Dracula Mask & Cape
Purchasable this year is the Dracula mask. The mask offers early-game head protection and requires ten pieces of cloth to craft.
The cape is a robustly thick outer garment that provides superior protection to the wearer. Capes can be found on the corpses of the undead.
Wooden Stake
A stake adorned with unique properties makes it able to release the soul of undead creatures with a single strike and yield extra loot from their remains.
Stakes can be found on the corpses of the undead.
HALLOWEEN COMPETITION
We're excited to announce Rust's second pumpkin carving competition!
Using Rust's in-game carvable pumpkin item, carve a design worthy of pleasing the horrid creatures at Facepunch.
Winner
£250 worth of skins of their choosing.
Runner up
£125 worth of skins of their choosing.
How To Submit
Once you’ve carved your best and scariest pumpkin design, take a screenshot and upload the image to X, formally known as Twitter, tag us & use the hashtag #RustHalloween2023
The winner and runner-up will be announced from Rust's official Twitter account on November 8th.
Evaluation
Submissions will be judged based on the following:
Creativity
Design (Not required to be Halloween themed)
Judging will be performed by Facepunch Staff.
Terms
This competition is run by Facepunch Studios Lt. The competition ends on November 5th 2023 23:59UTC. No more than three entries per person. The winner and runner-up will be selected based on which pumpkin carving Facepunch thinks is the most original/creative, and any decisions Facepunch makes will be final. The winner and runner-up must claim their prizes within one month of the closing date (which Facepunch may exchange for an alternative of the same or greater value). Our terms of service apply to any content you make for the competition: https://facepunch.com/legal. Winning entries must pick items from the Rust marketplace with market value. Designs uploaded or aided using third-party applications will be disqualified.
HALLOWEEN ITEMS
Last years Halloween items have been raised from the dead, head over to the Rust item store[http//Last+years+Halloween+items+have+been+raised+from+the+dead%2C+head+over+to+the+Rust+item+store.].
Hockey Facemask
Hide your facial deformities with this creepy hockey mask.
The Hockey Facemask skin is a reskin of the Metal Facemask.
Cultist Deer Torch
The Cultists must have dropped this while opening the portals throughout the world.
The Cultist Deer Torch is a reskin of the starter torch. Once the torch skin is selected or crafted, you'll respawn with this skin.
Baseball Bat
It wouldn't be a zombie apocalypse without hitting zombies in the head with a baseball bat!
The Baseball bat is a reskin of the mace melee weapon.
There is also a bunch of Halloween themed skins on the Rust Item Store!]]>SOLID FOUNDATIONS
https://rust-servers.net/blog/285/solid-foundations/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/285/solid-foundations/Thu, 05 Oct 2023 19:46 CESTTURRET INTERFACING A common complaint we have been hearing for a very long time as the over-use and abuse of turrets. To combat this we've added "Turret Interference" Basically this means that only a certain amount of turrets (sentry.maxinterference) can be active in any particular area ( sentry.interferenceradius). subsequently activated turrets will emit a blue electrical glow and fail to acquire any targets.
There is no hard limit on the number of turrets you can deploy, only a limit on the number of turrets to be activated at any one time within 40m. For example, you may choose to enable 12 of your outdoor turrets but keep your indoor turrets disabled or you can set up smart circuits to detect players and power up turrets when needed.
Hopefully this addresses some of the concerns we've been hearing regarding this issue, and we plan to iterate and improve, we'll be watching the feedback.
SMG BALANCE
While SMGs are not intended to be used in long range engagements, some of the clips sent to us are a little out there.
I've reduced the aimcone on SMGs slightly so that more rounds will land in the center during sustained fire. I've also given the MP5 a bit of a buff, it'll deal slightly more damage and have less bullet drop. The burst mode has also been improved, yielding higher accuracy and less recoil.
QOL IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Updated TC Layout
TC contents and tools are now one page with +1 tool slot
Vehicle Dismount Settings
Adjust how long it takes to dismount a vehicle per type (Ground/Air/Aquatic/Horse)
Toggle Vending Machines
Can now hide Vending Machines from the map view
Bad Weather
Higher chance of rain, storms and fog
Water Catchers
Water catchers now fill much faster when it rains, even faster in stormy weather
Small Battery
Small Battery now outputs more power and has a higher capacity
Underwater Visibility
Underwater is now slightly brighter
Tug Boat Player Respawn
Players are now unable to respawn on Tug boats if too close to water monuments
Workbench Radius
Workbench radius has been slightly increased, allowing crafting from further away
BRUTALIST BUILDING SKIN
Available now from the Rust store is the new brutalist building skin which allows you to change the visuals of your stone base.
This skin is for sale at the Steam store. To use, simply equip your hammer tool, display the wheel, and enable building skins. This should reveal the skin's wheel on which you may choose Brutalist upgrade.
HOMING MISSILE LAUNCHER SCOPE
In the last update we released the Homing Missile Launcher, and some keen-eyed players probably noticed the sleek digital scope attached to it. We're now happy to announce that this scope is fully functional, and allows for a full ADS view as you doom your whirly-twirly foes.
UNITY 2021 LST SERVER UPDATE
Last month, we rolled out a Unity engine update for the server. After prolonged monitoring, we're confident to say the upgrade has resolved several long-standing server crashes dating as far back as 2019.
While most server crashes and stalls are resolved, we have identified another AI-related stall we're investigating.
Overall, servers should now be more stable.
GLOBAL NETWORKED BASES...AGAIN?
Last month we launched Global Networked Bases as an experimental feature... and disabled it 4 hours into wipe. Despite monitoring for a week on staging, it still managed to DDOS servers and make bases invisible on certain hardware!
Although all known issues have been resolved, this feature is still considered experimental and disabled by default.
If you want to give it a whirl, look for "Global Rendering" in the options menu & remember to restart your game after enabling or disabling it!
CACHED BROWSER
Tired of waiting 60+ sec for your favourite server to show up? Try enabling the "Use Cache" button & click "Refresh" to load all servers instantly!
Note: although this should be an improvement over steam's server browser, it is still considered experimental and disabled by default.
RUST INSIGHTS - SEPT 2023
Another monthly round-up of data that we've captured in the last 30 days. We've got a lot of data at hand but we're trying to pick out the more interesting bits to share.
The data shown below is only from Facepunch official servers, we eliminate data from community-run servers to ensure accuracy within the data we share.
HALLOWEEN UPDATE
On October 23rd at 19:00BST / 14:00 EST, we'll release a mandatory server and client update to enable some new spooky features!
Server owners, please remember this date.
CHARITABLE RUST 2023 - WATER
October 12th - October 19th
Watch your favorite streamers and earn Twitch drops all week.
Tune into the official Rustafied channel[www.twitch.tv] for the main event filled with mini games, art contests, talent shows, and more!
Special Charity Store Items
All week we will have unique charitable items up on the item store. These items are exclusive to the event and account-bound. Proceeds from these store purchases go to charity: water[www.charitywater.org]!
Tune into the official Rustafied channel[www.twitch.tv] for the main event filled with mini games, art contests, talent shows, and more!
Special Charity Store Items
All week we will have unique charitable items up on the item store. These items are exclusive to the event and account-bound. Proceeds from these store purchases go to charity: water!
Get Involved!
Are you a content creator wanting to participate and help fund the charity? Want to donate?
Keep an eye on our socials for more info in the upcoming weeks.
IN GAME ART
I'm a sucker for a good speedpainting and the community did not disappoint this month.
Rust daVinci bringing us a dramatic black and white.
MonsteraRust captured a couple of divers and a birb.
RUST MINIATURES
u/Smecken has been working on an entire Rust miniature set. Base, accessories, minicopter, the works! Been challenged with getting the entire thing completed in 2 months. We'll follow up with this project!
TWITCH HIGHLIGHTS
Going to keep it real. Steam does not let us embed Twitch clips. If you want to see some funny Twitch moments head over to our blog[rust.facepunch.com] for a better viewing experience :)
SHOW ME THE STUFF!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on the Twitterverse or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.
Cover image by Alpha!]]>AIRBORNE
https://rust-servers.net/blog/283/airborne/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/283/airborne/Thu, 07 Sep 2023 19:49 CEST
ATTACK HELICOPTER
The Attack Helicopter is now available to purchase from the Air Wolf store at Bandit Camp for 2250 scrap.
Gunner
The main special feature of this helicopter is the gunner seat. On the front is a turret similar to the deployable autoturret, where you can equip a gun and ammo. At the side pods, rockets can be loaded in - HV and incendiary type only.
The gunner can then aim and shoot both of these while a pilot flies the heli. Simply interact with the gunner monitor and start blasting! Fire1 [left mouse button] will shoot the turret and Fire2 [right mouse button] launches rockets.
If the gunner has flares ready in his or her inventory belt, those can also be held and manually thrown to deflect any oncoming homing rockets from the new homing rocket launcher - this is a new feature for passengers in all Rust helicopter types, not just the attack helicopter.
Pilot
The pilot is the driver, but can also fire rockets (left mouse button by default), albeit without the handy exact-point-of-impact guide that the gunner gets.
Standard flares can also be loaded into the rocket storage area along with rockets, and the pilot can fire them out (right mouse button).
The attack helicopter is fast and powerful when armed, but it was still be taken down with a well-aimed rocket.
HOMING MISSILE LAUNCHER
The Homing Missile Launcher is a new craftable addition to your armoury that allows you to more efficiently fight flying targets while out and about. To get started simply load a Homing Missile into the Launcher and start aiming at a flying target. You’ll notice a lock-on bar will start filling in. Once locked on you can fire, but be sure to keep aiming at the target or the missile will fly off course. Changing weapon or reloading will also disrupt the targeting.
From a pilot's perspective, there are a few tools at your disposal to evade these new threats. You will hear a warning lock audio indicator in every helicopter when a missile is fired at you. The simplest tactic is just taking evasive manoeuvres - the missile lock requires a direct line of sight so getting something solid between you and the launcher should keep you safe. If that’s not possible, flares are your next best bet. Any passenger can throw Flares to disrupt any incoming missiles. The Attack Helicopter also has a dedicated Flare button that can launch flares via the secondary attack button (RMB by default).
The NPC piloted Patrol Helicopter has also been upgraded with Flare functionality, it will automatically fire Flares when a missile is launched at it.
The Homing Missile Launcher requires a Workbench Level 2 and can be crafted for 20 HQM, 3 Metal Pipes, 1 Tech Trash and 1 CCTV Camera.
Homing Missiles require a Workbench Level 2, and two missiles can be crafted for 3 Metal Pipes, 200 Gun Powder and 1 Tech Trash.
PARACHUTES
The parachute is a new craftable item that allows you to slow your fall from great heights, as well as travel silently over long distances. Once you’ve acquired one, you will need to equip it in the new dedicated backpack slot on your character’s clothing bar. Once equipped you’ll be able to press Space while falling through the air to deploy the parachute, slowing your descent and allowing you to manoeuvre your way through the sky. Your movement keys can help you manoeuvre while in mid-air, allowing you to tilt forwards to fly faster, back to slow down and left and right to turn.
You can use weapons while flying, but doing so will prevent you from steering. Simply holster your weapon again to regain steering controls.
Your flight can end either via you hitting something solid or cutting your lines with the Dismount key. After your flight an unpacked version of the parachute will drop in front of you, to use the parachute again you’ll need to hold the pickup key for 8 seconds to pick it up again. Each use will lower the condition of your parachute by 20% and a parachute will become harder to control as it loses condition. A damaged parachute will fall faster and fly forwards slower. At extreme damage levels you could still take fall damage when landing the parachute.
If you hit something solid you can take damage based on your speed, up to 80HP at top speeds.
The additional slot in your inventory has been added to the locker interface so you can store parachutes with loadout kits. Parachutes are a special new type of clothing that can be equipped alongside full-body clothing like Hazmats.
Parachutes can be targeted by SAM sites, Auto Turrets and players on the ground while in mid-air.
You can craft Parachutes at a Tier 2 Workbench for 2 Tarps, 2 Sewing Kits and 50 Cloth.
ARMORED HOT HAIR BALLOON
The hot air balloon can now be upgraded with a new armor upgrade.
Equipping the armor will boost the overall health of the balloon whilst also providing additional cover and protection.
The new armor upgrade can be purchased at the Bandit Camp vehicle parts vendor.
GLOBAL NETWORKED BASES
You normally only see bases ~300m away. Get ready: this feature cranks up the view distance of player structures up to 1500m away!
In the past, SAM sites could appear out of nowhere, only becoming visible after the missiles are headed your way. You should now be able to spot SAM sites & enemy bases long before you come in range!
This doesn't just benefit you in the air. While on the ground you can scout roof camping towers & big bases before you are in danger. You will notice the world feels much alive with evidence of player activity all around you.
I know you're thinking "Won't this cause performance issues?". Well, turns out the new rendering system is significantly more efficient than unity's normal one. The majority of computation is on the GPU which allows us to keep performance parity while rendering 25x the amount of bases. This also sets the stage for additional performance improvements in the future.
This feature is currently disabled by default as it required a lot of changes. Look for "Global Rendering" in the option menu to enable it.
WEAPON RACKS
The Weapons Rack Pack is now available from the Rust item store. Weapon racks introduce a quick, versatile and functional weapon and tool storage solution. With a Weapon Rack, you can efficiently organize, store and display your tools and weapons like a true survivor.
The weapons rack pack lets the player craft three different sized wall-mounted weapon racks and a single floor storage solution.
Furance glow was broken, it's now fixed and improved
Fluid Switch & Pump
The Fluid switch and Pump now stack in the inventory
Non-learnable blueprints
Improved UI to clearly feedback certain blueprints that cannot be learnt
Hot Air Balloon Decay
When hot air balloons become stuck, they'll decay much faster
END OF THE WORLD
When players drove vehicles to the edges of the world and went out of bounds, we killed the player and vehicles, This wasn't great as we gave no feedback for when this was about to happen. Now vehicles are unable to leave the map bounds - we now apply a force on the boat/aircraft, making it impossible to escape.
Additionally, boats, if left unattended/idle for 2 hours, will begin to be forced back to shore gradually.
WINDOWS 8.1 SUPPORT DISCONTINUED
From October 28th, Rust will no longer support Windows 8.1. As technology continually evolves, so do our system requirements. In January 2024, Microsoft will officially discontinue Windows 8.1 support[support.microsoft.com], no further security updates and software updates will be made available.
We highly recommend that users currently running Windows 8.1 consider upgrading their operating system to a more recent version, such as Windows 10 or newer, to ensure optimal performance, security, and compatibility with future updates.
TWITCH DROPS
From September 7th-14th we will be having a Twitch Drops event featuring some of your favorite creators.
Recently we implemented a dashboard that gathers data constantly on how Rust is played. We have information on all kinds of things ranging from how much wood is harvested to what the most used gun is. Something we want to get better at is showcasing some of that data. So going forward we're going to try and have a retrospective of interesting data from the last wipe.
The data shown below is only from official servers, we have eliminated data from community-run servers to ensure accuracy within the data we share.
We'll try and vary the content as much as possible, so next month you might see other different types of information featured.
Let us know what type of data you'd like us to share.]]>COMMUNITY UPDATE 255
https://rust-servers.net/blog/282/community-update-255/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/282/community-update-255/Tue, 22 Aug 2023 17:58 CESTTWITCH DROPS[rust.facepunch.com]
Save The date!
September 7th-14th we will be having a Twitch Drops event featuring some of your favorite creators.
[twitch.facepunch.com]
More details on this coming soon, watch our socials in the upcoming weeks!
Charitable Rust[www.charitablerust.com] is right around the corner (October 14th) and with that comes another set of Twitch drops and store items all going towards charity!
Rustafied[www.rustafied.com] is hosting a community skin contest[www.charitablerust.com] for this event. There are rules and parameters in there, please read them! :)
Contest Rules
Use #CR2023 as official contest tag in Steam workshop.
No re-uploading old or previously submitted skins.
Do not steal or use any copyrighted or otherwise trademarked content.
Must be 100% original work (can work with others if all are listed on workshop page).
Must follow all basic workshop submission rules and standards.
If using the charity’s logo, it cannot be used on any weapon skins. Only Charitable Rust logo may be used on weapon skins.
Submissions must be high quality and Hi-Res, normals properly done/baked.
Cannot contain offensive or sexual content.
Don’t forget upload limit for the amount of skins you may submit.
u/renan0803 has had a Rust Insights project going on for a while. They collected player insight data from a slew of r/playrust Reddit users and compiled it into a bunch of readable statistics!
We did tweak the original a bit to make it more blog-friendly but you can still see it here.
Very cool to see in this format. Keep an eye out for the next rendition if you'd like to partake in future surveys!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on the Twitterverse or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.]]>WOUNDED
https://rust-servers.net/blog/281/wounded/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/281/wounded/Thu, 03 Aug 2023 19:47 CESTWOUNDED INFORMATION I've changed the wounded UI so that it now displays additional information relating to your wounded status. It will now tell you the probability of recovery as well as how many seconds are left until recovery/death.
Remember: Maintaining full water and food will grant you a higher probability of recovery, and a large medkit in your belt will grant 100% chance of recovery.
CHAT EMOJI
Chat Emoji is a new feature this month that allows you to express yourself in some new ways. You can access the new list of emoji’s via the emoji button on the right of the chat. From there you can search for a specific emoji as well as change the current selected skin tone for all of your emoji’s. You can also type a : into the regular chat box and start typing to get an autocomplete that you can navigate with the arrow keys and Enter.
In addition to the animated emoji’s you can also use the internal item name to create an emoji using the item icon (eg. :wood:).
Server owners can also create their own emoji's for use on their servers, placing 256px png or jpg images in the "serveremoji" folder in their root directory will automatically expose those emoji for use by players on the server.
Emoji's are not currently compatible with chat in Rust+ although we’re planning on exploring this in the future.
BRICK BUILDING SKIN
Available now from the Rust store is the new brick-building skin which allows you to change the visuals of your stone base.
This skin is for sale at the Steam store. To use, simply equip your hammer tool, display the wheel, enable building skins, this should reveal the skin's wheel on which you may choose brick style upgrade.
IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS
Server Crash Loot
Crafting queue items are no longer lost if a server unexpectedly shuts down
World Models Stack Size
Some world models now reflect the amount dropped.
57 Art Bug Fixes
57 Art Bug Fixes, see the change log for full details
BURST MODULE IMPROVEMENTS
Burst modules have been buffed. While using a weapon with a burst module, The time between each shot in the burst has been reduced, and the overall recoil felt by the user has been decreased. In addition, aim cone has been reduced, resulting in a much more accurate and viable fire mode.]]>COMMUNITY UPDATE 254
https://rust-servers.net/blog/280/community-update-254/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/280/community-update-254/Thu, 27 Jul 2023 17:57 CESTRUSTOPIA INVITATIONAL
July 29th-30th
[rustopia.events]
Rustopia Invitational Tournament[rustopia.events] is this weekend and they boosting up the Project Hope[www.projecthope.org] charity! Project Hope is expanding access to mental health care for health workers, refugees, new mothers, and communities around the world.
Catch all your favorite content creators battling it out this Saturday & Sunday!
[rustopia.events]
The Rustopia Invitational[rustopia.events] is a point-based event that rewards players and teams for individual kills on other players and team-based events.
The event will be split up into three separate stages to allow for the best gameplay and pacing.
The first day will be gathering resources and PvP-styled events.
The second and final day will be primarily raiding other teams for their points
Here is a brief overview of the Rustopia Invitational server:
Team Limit of 12 – No allies or cross-teaming (this includes merge raids)
3x Boosted Gather and Resource Rate
There is a 75-minute – 2-minute day and night cycle
Advanced Team Sharing (Auto auth to TCs, Codelocks, Turrets etc.)
Boosted loot tables (better barrels and boxes)
RayC[www.twitch.tv] will be casting the event and most of the team captains will be streaming it as well!
If you'd like to be a part of this event you can help by donating[donate.tiltify.com] to Project Hope!
While we're at it I'll mention they 3D print and paint literally everything[lootroom.com] Rust.
Where else can you get a hot dog eoka?
SHOW ME THE STUFF!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on the Twitterverse or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit. ]]>COMMUNITY UPDATE 253
https://rust-servers.net/blog/279/community-update-253/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/279/community-update-253/Fri, 30 Jun 2023 17:56 CESTRUST IS ON SALE![rust.facepunch.com] From now until July 13th Rust and other Facepunch titles are on sale!
Just in time for our new Abyss content being released on the 6th. wink wink
Save up to 50% off our entire library. Tell your friends!
In this event, the map is the world with every continent, country and island. This event acts as a normal rust server where you can build anywhere you want. But with the map being the world, territories will be fought for, and wars will breakout between civilizations.
This is an open event to content creators and viewers! Join the Global Warfare discord[discord.com] to be more involved.
There will be in-game items and packs you can buy as well. Proceeds go to charity!
Destructoid published an article a few days ago discussing the most toxic online gaming communities.
We're happy to announce Rust did not make the list! While this list itself is a bit of a uncalculated grab-bag from subreddits, I'm glad you all figured out to to keep your caps lock keys in check.
More stats on their site as to how they got to these super duper accurate numbers. Keep up the good work!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on the Twitterverse or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.
Cover image by Dust!]]>BAGS TO BATTLES
https://rust-servers.net/blog/278/bags-to-battles/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/278/bags-to-battles/Thu, 01 Jun 2023 19:51 CESTSLEEPING BAG LIMITS[rust.facepunch.com]
This month we’ve decided to limit the maximum number of respawn options to 15 per player. This is a big change and not one we make lightly, so we thought it would be a good idea to explain our thinking.
While this is an inconvenience to certain playstyles, we believe adapting to this change will lead to a healthier and more interesting game. Back in October 2020[rust.facepunch.com] we revised the death screen, unintentionally making it trivial to manage a large number of bags. This led to situations where players could respawn rapidly and rejoin fights in ways that work against the goal of death being meaningful in Rust. Ultimately we want placing new respawn points to be an interesting decision rather than something done as often as possible.
We explored alternatives such as adjusting the respawn radius on bags or grid based approaches. Unfortunately this was simple to bypass and too complicated to communicate to players. Increasing the cost of bags/beds wouldn’t have solved the issue as large groups could easily overcome any additional resource requirements.
To help manage respawn options we have made them visible on the map while alive. We also added the ability to unclaim bags you aren't using anymore. There is a new toggle on the right side of the map (below the layer controls) to hide bags while alive.
There are multiple ways to see how many bags/beds you have placed: a count on the icon as well as a notification after you place a bag/bed.
To prevent malicious behavior (such as "gifting" bags to other players and filling up their quota) you will find a new “Bag Gifting” option in the options menu. This will allow you to limit who can assign a bag to you. The choices are:
Anyone (default option)
Team (teammates + friendly in contact system)
Disabled (nobody allowed)
Server owners can change the maximum bags per server with the convar "max_sleeping_bags". If you would like to disable it for your server, set it to "-1".
We will keep an eye on this change over the coming months and make changes as required.
To say that our building upgrade effect was dated would be an understatement. I don't think it has been adjusted since its inception. I've taken some time to improve the effect, and bring it in to this decade. When you upgrade a building block, you will see it constructed piece by piece over the course of one second.
Keep in mind that this is a client-only effect and the upgrade still happens immediately on the server. You can also disable this effect in the options menu. In the future, we may expand this build-over-time effect into a feature, so that very large deployables, such as watchtowers don't just appear in one frame but rather will need to be built over time.
If you ever wanted to know what it's like to build a home out of refurbished containers, wait no more! Coming to you this month is a new building block skin with the appearance of shipping containers and some new and unique features alongside it.
When you first build using the skin, the initial color of the container blocks are randomized. They come in 16 different colors - here is a lookup chart of the available colors:
If you wish to change the look of your crib, you can now use the spray can alternate function (RMB) to display a selection wheel of the available colors and repaint your walls.
It's worth noting that the last color you spray-painted with will now be the new building blocks color used when you build additional shipping container blocks.
We look forward to see how creative you get with this new skin!
We’ve made some improvements to the map marker system based on your feedback from their improvements in the April update.
You’ll now notice a new list of the current markers on the top left of the map screen. Clicking on these will move the map to that marker and you can delete the marker from that UI without having to move your camera, this should be helpful if you need to clear a marker quickly to place a new marker.
The marker labels can now show an extra character on the compass, the visibility of the marker labels has been improved when placed over snow, you can now hide your team leaders markers on the map and compass via the top left menu as well as several bug fixes.
Pings have also seen a set of improvements based on community feedback.
One area that was flagged was being notified when a teammate has placed a ping out of your view. To help this, each ping type now has a unique sound effect and the compass will flash briefly to indicate where the new ping has been placed.
General usability has been improved; pings can now be placed immediately when the binoculars are equipped (don’t need to zoom in) and binoculars now have a crosshair for more precise placement. Pings can also now be deleted regardless of what you are holding in your hands.
Finally, the ping UI itself has been scaled up slightly and pings now fade out once they time out instead of being deleted immediately.
We've improved the way our internal memory pool handles thread safety. This should not result in any immediate changes, but it allows us to ensure we won't introduce resource contention performance issues as our multithreading scales up, particularly around networking and serialization. If you're a server owner and you notice a performance decrease from this change, please let us know.
Players can now connect to a server using both the game port and the query port. This also fixes steam://connect link issues that were introduced back when we started enforcing separate query ports on servers. If you're a server owner and you want to use steam://connect links on your website, please make sure to use the query port in those links, not the game port.
For a while now we've just had one long idle. It's pretty repetitive & also if you're sitting on top of a horse, you end up just getting shook around every 4 seconds. I wanted to see more variation.
There is now a short base breathe anim, and lots of small idles that play randomly after a few seconds or so. There are larger actions ( like a shake of the body or head toss) as well as smaller ones ( like a tail swish or ear flick). The result hopefully looking more natural in game.
For server owners - I updated the logic for the server wipe timer to support timezones properly. The default configuration aligns with force wipes so it shouldn't need any changing for most people. Make sure the time is set correctly on your servers!
Monthly: First Thursday every month at 19:00 (London time)
Weekly: Every Thursday at 19:00 (London time)
Biweekly: First and third Thursday of each month at 19:00 (London time), but splits 3 week gaps into 2+1 weeks for months with 5 weeks
Internally it is now using cron expressions using the Cronos[github.com] library. If you'd like, you can use a custom cron expression for your wipe timer by setting the wipeCronOverride convar.
You can also use a different timezone for wipes by setting the wipeTimezone convar to an IANA timezone name (see TZ identifiers on this page[en.wikipedia.org]).
There is now a printWipe console command which shows debug info about upcoming wipes which can help you set up your configurations correctly.
From June 11th to June 17th, Twitch drops will be enabled to support the Bellum, a Hispanic community event featuring Auronplay, Grefg, Ricoy, Agustabell, Illojuan, Rubius, and many more.
Learn more about drops at https://twitch.facepunch.com/]]>COMMUNITY UPDATE 252
https://rust-servers.net/blog/277/community-update-252/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/277/community-update-252/Sat, 27 May 2023 15:47 CESTCREATOR PROGRAM[rust.facepunch.com] Earlier this week we launched our Facepunch Creator Program in efforts to collab with our creators more.
This program is a work in progress and mostly lives in a special private discord where we can all bounce ideas off each other and work together.
[facepunch.com]
Currently applications are only open for Rust but we will explore options for some of our other titles in the future.
For more information on eligibility and the application process you can check out our creators site!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on the Twitterverse or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.]]>Twitch Rivals Rust III Event
https://rust-servers.net/blog/276/twitch-rivals-rust-iii-event/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/276/twitch-rivals-rust-iii-event/Tue, 16 May 2023 20:00 CEST
]]>R.U.S.T.
https://rust-servers.net/blog/275/rust/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/275/rust/Thu, 04 May 2023 19:50 CESTNUCLEAR MISSILE SILO[rust.facepunch.com] This month we bring you an all-new monument that we have been quietly working on for the past few months, the Nuclear Missile Silo.
While exploring the map you will run across a small military base that will be marked from the distance by a tall radio tower. While unremarkable from the outside, the base hides a secret. In its center you will find a large hatch that will allow you to access a large underground network of tunnels.
Jump in while the hatch is open and you will find yourself inside a deep underground missile silo that hosts a massive ICMB. Remember that while you're in you can't go back easily, so be prepared before you enter.
As you explore, you will find various rooms filled with loot and a new dangerous type of Scientists who will shoot anyone trying to interfere with their experiments. Fight your way through and take the elevators to the bottom of the structure and you will find a nuclear warhead connected to a laptop displaying an ominous countdown.
To exit the monument you will need to find a security room that contains a button that will temporarily let you out. The room also contains a computer station that will allow you to access several security cameras and spy on any potential campers.
As the countdown to the cycle reset approaches zero on the laptop in the missile silo, the amount of NPC activity around the island will increase. Vehicle patrols will begin on roads and fighter jets will patrol the skies. Future wipe events will include infantry patrols and bombing runs.
The Thompson and MP5 have received a buff to their accuracy. Both weapons will now have a higher probability to land center hits during extended fully automatic fire. In addition, the Thompson recoil will favor one side for slightly easier control. While SMGs are not intended to be used for long range engagements, we are aware that their usefulness at range should not be 0%. We will continue to monitor and make adjustments over the following few months.
Available now from the Rust store is the new Adobe building skin which allows you to change the visuals of your base. This skin is for sale on the Steam store. To use, simply equip your hammer tool, display the wheel, enable building skins, this should reveal the skin's wheel on which you may choose Adobe style upgrade.
This skin is equivalent to the stone building tier for stats.
We'll be releasing more building skins in the near future.
To complement the new shotgun ammo world models released in the last patch. I have been busy making the metal counterparts for the pistol and rifle ammo world models. Alongside the new world models, I have also made different versions for the different ammo types. So now you will be able to tell the difference between normal and explosive ammo.
So now no more losing the raid because you picked up pistol ammo instead of rifle ammo!
The camera view in Rust+ got some rendering improvements. Players no longer look completely out of place and everything is now lit according to the time of day. However, other lights (campfires, torches, etc.) will not show up yet.
I've adjusted the ranges for players to show up in the Rust+ CCTV feeds so players need to be closer to cameras to be seen in Rust+ (now 30m vs. 100m theoretically). I also added a new range for the player's name to be sent to Rust+ so you can't see names of players far away (now 10m or closer). These are controlled by the following server convars:
camerarenderer.entityMaxDistance (for general entities, which is just trees for now)
camerarenderer.playerMaxDistance (default 30, can set to 0 to never show players)
camerarenderer.playerNameMaxDistance (default 10, can set to 0 to never show player names)
Rust+ bots have been getting out of control so we've decided to implement a few changes to make them less effective.
Disallowed Rust+ from viewing all static CCTV cameras (eg. oil rigs)
Crate and explosion map markers are no longer sent to Rust+
Cameras are only usable from Rust+ when you aren't connected to the server
Entity/player data is now randomized by the server to make it harder for bots to understand
Player names are only sent to Rust+ when close enough to the cameras
We'll be monitoring further Rust+ Bot development. Automation of game input actions must be kept to a minimum using Rust+. Extensive automation of game actions such as CCTV cameras and Drones to gain an unfair advantage is not ok.
On May 16th at 8:00 pm GMT a team of 160 well-known Twitch creators from around the world will compete in this massive global Rust competition, taking place over 5 days with a prize pool worth $100k.
During the Twitch Rivals event, Rust Twitch drops will be enabled for 5 days from selected participating channels, and well-known streamers such as hJune, Welyn, Willjum, Panpots, Buddha, DisguisedToast, Mendo and many more.
We'd like to thank Rustoria for working with us and Twitch to make this event possible.
The following hardcore servers are being retired due to low player activity.
EU hardcore facepunch 2
EU hardcore facepunch 3
EU hardcore facepunch Small 1
US hardcore facepunch 2
US hardcore facepunch 3
US hardcore facepunch Small 1
We'll be looking at implementing improvements based on community feedback to the hardcore and softcore gamemodes in the coming months.]]>COMMUNITY UPDATE 251
https://rust-servers.net/blog/274/community-update-251/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/274/community-update-251/Mon, 24 Apr 2023 17:47 CESTTWITCH DROPS[rust.facepunch.com]
This thing deserved its own section. Ok_Marsupial6435 has created a life size airsoft autoturret!
Seems it's a work in progress.
"It will feature 2-axis AI motion tracking using CV, 2 T-motor pancake actuators, a servo for the trigger, and a STM32H7A3 microcontroller. It will mirror the game mechanics exactly. Most of the parts are CNC aluminum, weighing about 60 lbs."
Dust recently embarked on a somewhat self-taught adventure of re-creating 3D rust scenes using Blender. I've always been a big of fan of this type of art style. We see a lot Youtube creators adopting these for thumbnails. Happy to see it getting more love!
Here's a handful of scenes he's made. Enjoy! :)
He asked we give a special shoutout to the 3D artist community! He said they helped him out a lot with learning and were very welcoming!
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on the Twitterverse or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.
Cover art by Dust! ]]>MAKE YOUR MARK
https://rust-servers.net/blog/273/make-your-mark/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/273/make-your-mark/Thu, 06 Apr 2023 20:00 CESTMAP MARKERS[rust.facepunch.com] Map markers have received an upgrade this month, with the maximum amount of markers increasing to 5 and a new set of controls to help you store useful information along with your map.
Placing more markers is as simple as using the RMB as normal, and markers are deleted in the same way. If you have reached the maximum number of markers (5 by default) you will need to delete another marker to make room.
To edit a marker simply click on it with the LMB and use the controls that pop up. You can select from multiple colour and icons as well as adding a label. Note that the label will be slimmed down to three characters when displayed on the compass.
If you are the leader of a team all of your teammates will see all of your markers, as well as their own.
Pings are a new system to help you more effectively communicate to your teammates when using reconnaissance tools like cameras, drones and the binoculars.
While using any of those items (and holding down RMB when using the binoculars) you can double tap (KEYBIND) to pop down a ping. All of your teammates will see this ping, even if you are not the team leader.
Single tapping the ping key will place a contextual ping when possible, for example placing a node ping when aiming at a node, a loot ping when aiming at a storage entity or a gun ping when aiming at a dropped weapon.
Double pressing the ping key will place a red hostile ping, designed to represent danger.
You can also hold the ping key down to access a radial menu with all of the ping options in case you need more flexibility.
Single tapping while looking at a ping will cancel it, otherwise the ping will expire in 10 seconds.
The new double saddle item lets two players mount and ride a horse. This is in addition to the old single seater saddle, so the choice is yours!
Wild horses spawn with a single seater saddle and you can swap it for a double seater via the horse radial menu, if you have the required saddle item (and the other way around!).
Both saddle items are available for purchase from the stablemaster or via crafting.
The new refresh for the world models has finally arrived. Finally, you will be able to tell if you have dropped HV, Incendiary, or Normal Rockets! Alongside the world model refresh new world models have been created for the different types of shotgun shells.
Some of the items that have had a world model refresh are :
Road Sign Gloves
Snap Trap
High-Velocity Rocket
Incendiary Rocket
Shotgun Ammo
Hopefully, soon there won't be any more brown burlap sacks on the island!
I've made a few improvements to the computer station UI this month.
You can now use arrow keys or mouse wheel to switch between selected entities. The UI will also now show the health of the entity you're currently controlling.
We have an existing console variable - vehicleDismountHoldTime - that can be set to a value above zero to enable hold-to-dismount on vehicles. This is now also used if you're remote-controlling a drone at the computer station. Setting it even to something small like 0.2 seconds can be a simple way to avoid accidentally dismounting and crashing your drone.
This month we extend our analytics platform by recording gameplay stats on official servers.
There was actually an existing analytics system in place but it only showed totals for the whole game such as "100M stone mined per day". That doesn't tell us much, we are looking for more detailed info like:
max sulfur per hour you can mine
number of players gathering the same nodes in forest vs snow
how quickly you get into fights while farming based on base location
how far players travel to farm
etc
We are still in the stage of rolling it out so we don't have many pictures to show off.
A couple months back I made a commit to see if doors could be placed on top of deployables, which caused a bit too much excitement. It needed some extra fixes but now should work[files.facepunch.com]!
After upgrading to a 7950x3d I realized you can't change CPU affinity when EAC is running. I added some commands so anyone can change their Rust's core affinity & process priority. You can specify multiple ranges of cores, like "0-7,15-23"
Everyone should try using cpu_priority high and see if it makes any difference.
If you have a 7950x3d, try using cpu_affinity 0-15 to keep Rust running only on v-cache cores.
You can add these as steam launch parameters too: '-cpu_priority high'
Multithreaded networking is now enabled by default for both client and server. This should help with performance of both the client and the server, particularly with network encryption enabled, which should be the case on most servers.
As an additional optimization, we improved the way our memory pool handled contention between multiple threads to ensure there are no negative performance edge cases from all those additional threads.
Earlier last month, we also addressed an issue where one thread was spinning at 100% utilization at essentially all times with multithreaded networking enabled. Since this was resolved, there are now no known issues and we really recommend all server owners to leave multithreaded networking enabled.
It's now possible to launch or reset Rust into safe mode - a basic, extremely low quality settings config to help diagnose problems. You can use safemode with a new button in the Options menu or by passing the -safemode command in the Steam launch settings. You should only use this feature if you are advised by our Support team or are experiencing problems with launching the game. Using this feature will overwrite your current settings so be sure to back them up beforehand.
For the next week, every 24-38 hours in-game hours an Easter egg hunt will begin. You'll have 3 minutes to collect as many eggs as you can. The top 3 players are given special eggs as a reward. These eggs can be cracked open for various types of loot ranging from scrap all the way up to an M249!
If you don't make the podium, that's okay. The painted eggs you collect can be upgraded to Bronze eggs once you collect 10. If you collect 10 bronze eggs then you can upgrade to a silver egg, eventually all the way to gold!
There are various items available to help you during your hunt. The Easter Basket will allow instant pickup of eggs and the Bunny Onesie and Ears will provide you with an advantage via Egg Vision.
The Drone is a new player-controlled craftable deployable, operated from the Computer Station. Easily damaged from impacts. Can be picked up and deployed just about anywhere - but it doesn't have the best signal, so you'll need to control it using nearby Computer Station.
The Drone can be unlocked from the tier 2 workbench tech tree.
Select the item and click enable RF, then set a frequency. An RF Broadcaster or detonator can then be set to the same frequency and as soon as the C4 detects the signal, BOOM. Please note that C4 deployed outside of your building privilege zone will decay after 24 hours. Also, anyone can pick it up (with a 5 second delay) so keep a look out when using it during raids. Use it to set traps in your own base or for controlled demolition of someone else's. There has never been a better time to bankrupt a clan!
A new player-craftable CCTV Camera system can be used for real-time surveillance and security when paired with the Computer Station. This camera has pan, tilt, and zoom capability and must be placed on a ceiling.
All cameras now require 3 power instead of 5.
The PTZ camera can be unlocked from the workbench level 2 tech tree.
Autoturrets can now be configured to be pairable with a Computer Station. While the autoturret is turned off, there is a new menu to set the ID which you can then add in your Computer Station.
When connected to an autoturret from a Computer Station you will take control of it so you can look around and even shoot at things. However, the camera on the autoturrets don't have a great view of far away objects.
The autoturret cannot be controlled whilst in peacekeeper mode.
Something that has constantly been requested in Rust+ is the ability to view cameras. I've tried a few different solutions to get that working but had nothing that worked good enough until recently. You'll now be able to add cameras from a paired server in Rust+ and view them from your phone!
This is an alpha release of the feature. I'll be working on improvements over time but, if there are any issues found, it may be disabled or limited to preserve server stability. Server owners can control this feature using the 'camerarenderer' set of convars.
The signal from your cameras has got to travel a long way to get to your phone so everything is low quality but you should be able to make out most things in the world.
All of the new, controllable cameras can also be used from Rust+!
You will need to make sure you have the very latest version of Rust+[rust.facepunch.com] from the App Store or Google Play. You will need Rust+ native version 0.0.29 as seen in the Rust+ settings. This version of the app is currently in the process of being released so you may need to wait a bit if no updates are available on your device yet.
It was great to see the response to the Industrial Update last month, particularly the bases filled to the brim with pipes! As well as some general bug fixes and performance improvements, we’ve made some QOL improvements this month to help with some of the more common complaints. As always we’ll be improving this further in the future so please keep the feedback coming.
New Filtering Options
There is now a new option when modifying filters to allow more advanced controls. You can now change a filter to require ANY of the listed items, ALL of the listed items, or NONE of the listed items. The default is Any, which is the behaviour from last month.
There have also been some changes to the number based filters, there are now 3 different number fields you can modify per item: Min, Max and Buffer.
Maximum is unchanged from last month, it will stop moving items if there is greater than the amount provided in the output container.
Minimum will now only move if you have greater than the supplied amount of items in the input container. For example, if you set minimum to 40 wood and you have 50 wood in the container, 10 will be moved.
Buffer is the old minimum behaviour, and will only move items in predetermined buffer sizes. For example, if you set Buffer to 40 wood and you have 50 wood in the container, 40 will be moved. This is helpful when supplying the Industrial Crafter with items required for crafting.
Minimum, Maximum and Buffer are only available when using “Any” and “All” filter modes, these options are not available when using the “None” filter mode.
To help understand buffer transfers there is also a new UI that shows any transfers in process.
Placement Improvements
The minimum distance between pipe points is now dramatically smaller, allowing for neater pipe placement around corners. There’s a new colour available (green) and “soloing” a connection by pressing RMB while looking at a plug will now keep the connection highlighted even if mousing over other entities. You can also now hold SHIFT when placing a pipe to make it collide with deployable entities, this can help run pipes around boxes and other objects in a more natural looking way.
Crafter Improvements
The Industrial Crafter now has 4 blueprint slots, allowing you to craft multiple items without having to connect conveyors to the blueprint slots (although those connections are still possible). When a crafter is deciding what to craft, it will look left to right and craft the first blueprint it has the required ingredients for.
Network Size Limits
The maximum size and depth of Industrial networks has been increased to 32 (from 16). This should allow more complex networks without having to resort to inserting extra containers. Along with this the behaviour of some item movement logic has changed: daisy chained boxes will now be filled in order rather than items being split up between them (the splitter will still split stacks though).
When the vending machine is destroyed, it drops no loot. This was too incentivise players to sell high-value items and discourage raiding player-run stores. Over the years vending machines have undergone many changes, such as drone trading via the market terminal. We've also seen players use vending machines to despawn loot in various methods and act as additional base armour.
From today, when the vending machine is destroyed, it'll now drop 50% of the loot stored inside.
We have spent the month thoroughly testing and fixing multithreaded networking and are happy to report that as of the writing of this post all known issues with it have been addressed. In order to play it extra safe we will continue testing it on official servers over the coming days and then release a server update to enable it by default for all servers. As a reminder, if you're a server owner, feel free to test things ahead of time by adding the -networkthread startup parameter to your server.
Simultaneously, we will continue testing it on the client internally and then enable it for all clients by default next week.
Can hold Shift to place entities on top of other deployed entities
Reworked Maximum and Minimum filter behaviour and added a Buffer mode
Added 3 more blueprint slots to the Industrial Crafter
Improved pipe generation performance and fixed pipes being regenerated too often
Added a green pipe colour
Added an extra slot for storage adaptors on the front of small boxes
Electric Furnace and Storage Adaptor performance improvements
Buffer transfers will now be cancelled if a conveyor is turned off or runs out of the item mid-transfer
Added a UI visualisation to show what buffer transfers are in process
Conveyors will now turn back on when they receive power if they were on when they lost power
Reduced volume of Industrial sounds
Industrial Crafter will now only make noise when it is crafting
Industrial Crafter will now pulse red if it’s output storage is full
Various server garbage collection improvements
Fixes
Looking at another entity while an IO connection is solo’d will now maintain the solo visualisation
Fixed being able to place storage adaptors in places where they would intersect with other colliders (eg. top of a small box placed under a workbench)
Fixed some cases where blueprints wouldn't respect number based item filters
Fixed sometimes being unable to build in areas where pipes used to be
Ziplines should now be much less likely to kill the player if they collide with the terrain
Ziplines should now use alternate paths more often if the terrain is too close to the desired zipline
Fixed some cases where the Repair resources required UI wouldn’t appear when attempting to repair an entity
Fixed contacts button staying disabled permanently after connecting to a server with contacts disabled
Fixed water catchers no longer filling up with water when connected to a full water container
Fixed edge case where underground train tunnel entrance would not connect to underground train station
Various fixes for multithreaded networking
]]>INDUSTRIAL UPDATE
https://rust-servers.net/blog/271/industrial-update/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/271/industrial-update/Thu, 02 Feb 2023 20:27 CETINDUSTRIAL[rust.facepunch.com]
Bring new levels of efficiency and unlock new avenues for automation with this month's set of Industrial entities. With these new tools you can move items around your base as well as craft items automatically without you needing to lift a finger.
Storage Adaptor
The Storage Adaptor is the starting point for most of your Industrial plans - simply attach an adaptor to an existing storage entity to make that entity compatible with your Industrial systems. The adaptor does not require power.
Some entities have more than one slot that a storage adaptor can be attached to for ease of placement. Typically the storage adaptor can use all inventory slots on it's attached storage for input/output, although there are some exceptions:
When attached to a furnace the Input will insert items into the Fuel/Inputs item slots while the output will remove items from the output slots
When attached to a locker the storage adaptor will only access one partition, to access all partitions you'll need to place three storage adaptors
The storage adaptor is compatible with:
Tool Cupboard
Large Wooden Box
Small Wooden Box
Small Furnace
Large Furnace
Refinery
Electric Furnace
Locker
Fridge
Drop box
Vending Machine
Industrial Conveyor
The Conveyor is responsible for moving items from one entity to another, generally via Storage Adaptors. Once powered and turned on the conveyor will look for items in containers connected to its inputs and then divide those items amongst its outputs.
By default a Conveyor will move any item it can find, but you can also assign a filter to have more precise control over exactly what items you're moving. Each Conveyor's filter can have up to 12 items or categories (resources/components/clothing/etc). When a filter is assigned the Conveyor will only transfer items that pass those conditions. You can also assign values to each item in a filter to control quantities, by setting the Maximum amount (don't send resources if the target container has over X of that resource already) and Minimum amount (only send resources in a minimum batch of X size).
You'll also find a Filter Pass and Filter Fail electrical passthrough, these will activate based on the current state of the conveyor allowing you to control other parts of the Industrial network based on what items are being moved around.
Pipe Tool
The Pipe Tool is how you connect industrial entities - if you've used the Wire or Hose tool before you'll be right at home. Pipes come in 4 colours to help identify what's going where. Same distance rules apply here except that the anchor points need to be a small distance apart from one another and that pipes cannot go through building blocks or Vending Machines. They can go through deployables like doors.
Industrial Splitter/Combiner
These work as you'd expect, allowing you to funnel or split the flow of items. In the case of a splitter connected to the output of a Conveyor, the Conveyor will spread its resources across all of its connections (eg. a Conveyor connected to a splitter which connects to three boxes that wants to send 600 wood will send 200 wood to each box).
Industrial Crafter
Once attached to a workbench (any tier) the Industrial Crafter allows you to automatically craft items once provided with a blueprint and the required materials. Simply insert the blueprint of your choice in the blueprint slot, insert the required materials, connect some power and turn it on to start producing items.
The Industrial Crafter has built in Industrial slots (so no need for an adaptor) so that you can use Conveyors to insert materials and then extract the finished result. There is also a Blueprint In/Out Industrial slot allowing you to swap out the blueprint being crafted. The Crafter can only craft items that are appropriate for the workbench it's attached to and will take the same amount of time to craft an item as a player would.
Electric Furnace
To complement the Industrial items we're also releasing the new Electric Furnace. It works similarly to other furnaces with a slightly accelerated smelting rate except that it requires power instead of a fuel item. This also means that it doesn't produce charcoal.
Limitations and Server options
To maintain server performance there are several limitations to prevent Industrial networks from becoming too out of control. There is a hardcoded 16 container input/output limit for each conveyor. This means that as well as the max depth limitation of regular IO, a conveyor will only be able to see the first 16 containers it encounters in the input/output network.
There is also a hardcoded limit on how many items in a stack a Conveyor can move in a single tick - 32. If a stack has a count higher than this it will be moved gradually over several ticks.
There are also several convars to control the speed and efficiency of industrial systems:
server.conveyorMoveFrequency - How often conveyors attempt a move (default 5s)
server.industrialCrafterFrequency - How often crafters attempt to craft something (default 5s)
server.maxItemStacksMovedPerTickIndustrial - How many whole stacks a conveyor can move in a single tick (default 12)
Previously doors would show "Open" as the default option whether you had the code or not, requiring you to randomly stumble upon doors you couldn't open, beeping in your face then requiring you to holding E to bring up radial menu and select unlock.
The new default options are as follows:
first placed = "change code" (to quickly set your code)
unauthorized on codelock & auth on TC = "enter code"
authorized on codelock & unlocked door = "lock door" (to prevent leaving doors unlocked)
This should allow you to see at a glance what you still need to enter a code on & open the codelock UI much easier.
Train wagons containing crates now have different variants of varying qualities. Overall should be seeing wagons with much higher-quality loot from crates.
Performance is always a hot topic but it is difficult to address without having an accurate image of the problem. This month I setup logging of client performance and displayed them in various graphs.
This has already proven to be useful. We noticed that exclusive fullscreen had lower FPS than borderless. Rather than guessing, we were able to query the database and confirm it.
See below for various graphs to get an idea of the insights we are seeing & some interesting data.
Overall FPS
First up is median FPS across all hardware. It doesn't give a full picture: players with 60hz monitors are included beside 144hz gamers.
A better metric may be comparing average fps to monitor refresh rate to see how many players are getting lower FPS than their monitor supports... something we will look at in the future.
Best Performing Hardware
These charts clearly shows how Rust is CPU bottlenecked (no surprise). What is interesting is how much the extra cache does: a 5800x3D is on average 50% faster than a 5950x!
Please don't use this as an excuse to go buy a better CPU as performance is subject to change... but do use this info so you avoid buying a new GPU for Rust then being surprised when it yields no performance improvement (at this time).
Hardware Capacity
~75% of the playerbase is running 16GB or less of RAM.... perhaps we should really prioritize why Unity is hogging all the RAM.
The majority of players (73%) using 1080p... yet only 2.5% of players using 4k?!
Popular Hardware
Looking at most popular CPU & GPU we find that it is similar to steam's hardware survey but differs slightly as for Rust. Here are some GPUs as % of total:
Our Metrics:
GTX 1650 = 6%
GTX 1060 = 2.5%
GTX 2060 = 5.5%
RTX 3060 = 7%
RTX 3090 = 0.6%
RTX 4090 = 0.2%
Graphics settings
30% of people using motion blur 👀 only 5% of players using SMAA, 20% of players using primarily windowed mode (not borderless)... all interesting. I thought more players would have turned shadows off.
Operating System
Our Mac playerbase is very small, only 0.3% of players.
Yet even stranger are the people still on Windows 8... laptops perhaps?
Future
Next steps are to expand to gameplay metrics. Technically.... we already have some gameplay stats but they are very limited: "total wood gathered", "total kills", etc.
Better gameplay metrics will give us the ability to drill down to specific information such as:
We've been aware of some server performance degradation with large scale farms and Water Catcher networks for a while and we've made some improvements this month to hopefully improve the situation.
The primary performance issue at play here is the amount of processing required when an entity in an IO chain switches on or off. Under normal circumstances this doesn't happen that often but water containers are considered On when they have water and Off when they are empty. When a chain of Water Catchers are connected and sending water down a chain each container will turn on when it receives the water and then turn off as it passes the water to its next container. Water transferring is quite quick and responsive, this results in rapid sequences of entities turning on and off repeatedly which sends a lot of network updates to any clients in range and involves a lot of (largely useless) IO processing as the network changes state so rapidly.
To solve these issues water will now take 10 seconds to start draining once it's inserted into a container. This means that when water travels through multiple containers each container in the sequence will build up a buffer (usually 50-100 water) in each container. This allows the same water flow as before but mostly prevents the containers rapidly turning on/off. The result is that a small sequence of 3 full barrels connected to each other powering a sprinkler used to be sending 10-20 network updates every few seconds will no longer send any updates at all while the system is active, only a few updates when the system runs out of water. This should improve performance primarily on the server but receiving less network traffic will help client performance as well.
We've also modified the behaviour of Water Catchers, when a Water Catcher is going to generate some water, it will now deposit its water as far down the chain as possible. This means that if you have 3 Water Catchers connected to a Water Barrel, the catchers will actually never receive water at all, instead the water will be deposited directly into the barrel.
In a benchmark of 1000 water catchers connected to each other, we found that the server's IO would become unresponsive after several minutes of gameplay as the system became overloaded with water transfer processing. With the above changes server IO performance remains instantaneous even if we artificially limit the servers frame rate.
There is also a new optional server convar "server.waterContainersLeaveWaterBehind" that modifies the draining behaviour to leave one unit of water behind in a liquid container that drains into another container. This keeps the container in its "On" state permanently and further helps performance. Since this is a change in functionality it is disabled by default, if your server is still experiencing IO performance issues due to water entities turning this on may improve performance.
Today we're permanently retiring Hapis Island map. Hapis Island was first introduced in April 2015 by Petur, inspired by the original Rust legacy map. Over the years, Hapis has gone through countless revisions to where it is at today.
Why Retire Hapis?
We're a small development team with no dedicated staff focusing on map design and creation, our mapping attention is focused on procedural maps. Hapis has continuously been developed on the sidelines as a lower-priority project with any free time Petur has. Free time is harder to find nowadays as we focus more on larger, longer-term features with a higher level of polish. Hapis Island needs a lot of attention requiring hundreds of work hours to be polished and kept fresh, which we can't currently give it.
Hapis Island is missing many key features we've added over the past couple of years, zip lines, subways, new monuments and above-ground rail systems, to name a few. When Hapis can support newer features it often takes an extra month, or few for the features to be introduced to Hapis, leaving players waiting and disappointed, some features, such as the rail systems Hapis can't currently support due to a lack of internal tools.
This isn't the end for static maps on Facepunch servers, we'll be working with the custom map community to fill this void over the coming weeks and months.
We have upgraded the client engine to Unity version 2021.3 earlier this month. Initially there have been a number of issues from the upgrade, but we've gone through and addressed all the major ones with several small patches.
This new version of Unity should open up new possibilities for both performance and visual improvements that we're hoping to introduce over the coming months. A big one is Unity's Burst compiler that will help us transition existing code in the Jobs system to a higher performance version of it.
Unfortunately the upgrade also introduced a bug in fullscreen exclusive mode that caused a significant performance degradation compared to borderless fullscreen mode. Due to this we had to retire fullscreen exclusive mode. If you're encountering issues that seem related to this, please contact our support team to figure out a workaround for your specific setup.
The server build of the game will remain on 2019.3 for this month while we continue testing the new engine version to make sure the server build is stable enough for a wide release. More on that hopefully next month.
We've been working on a major networking performance improvement called multithreaded networking. This will apply to both the client and the server, but naturally it will have a significantly higher impact on the server. Due to the nature of the change we wanted to make sure it's working as intended before enabling it by default, so we're first going to start testing it on select official servers this month before hopefully enabling it by default on all servers next month. If you want to start testing it before then, simply add the startup parameter -networkthread to your server or client. Please note that this is a highly experimental feature that may cause significant problems when enabled.
As announced in the November[rust.facepunch.com] and December[rust.facepunch.com] devblogs, we are working on a number of networking improvements that require us to retire server query port sharing. Because of this, we have requested that all server owners that are still using this feature update their server startup parameters to use a query port that is separate from the game port.
We have decided to pull the trigger and finally retire query port sharing this month. If you're a server owner who still hasn't updated their server startup parameters, please make sure to do so immediately.]]>Community Update 249
https://rust-servers.net/blog/270/community-update-249/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/270/community-update-249/Fri, 13 Jan 2023 18:16 CETTWITCH DROPS[rust.facepunch.com]
They are back!
Join us! Starting Sunday January 15th at 1PM PST / 9PM GMT for the next Trust in Rust Charity[trustinrust.co] tournament!
[twitch.facepunch.com]
hJune[www.twitch.tv] and Rustoria[rustoria.co] teamed up to raise money for YouAreRAD[youarerad.org].
They're a mental health and counseling charity that gives back to the community. With the funds raised from the event RAD provides FREE therapy sessions to the Rust community in return. Tune into the event to find out how to take advantage of this offer and get signed up!
Store Items
There will be amazing charity and event-specific item skins on the store this week only. They are exclusive & non-tradable as the proceeds go to RAD.
Twitch Drops
Starting January 15th 1PM PST / 9PM GMT Twitch drops will begin!
Our friends at Corrosion Hour[www.corrosionhour.com] have done quite a lot of guides in the past but this Rust Glossary[www.corrosionhour.com] is good if you're trying to be a cool dad in front of the kids.
[www.corrosionhour.com]
"To bridge the language gap between veteran players and those spawning in for the first time, we have compiled the RUST glossary of terms and phrases to lift the veil, so to speak."
It's basically a decoder for all things Rust slang. Goes through abbreviations and callouts one would need to be in the know.
Even if you are a Rust veteran it's rather amusing to go through some of these and see how we've evolved over the years.
FancyOrb is usually known for his curated experimental and event challenges. He's dusted off his pickaxe and played an actual Rust wipe with the best botanists this side of launch.
If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on the Twitterverse or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.]]>SURVIVING 10 YEARS
https://rust-servers.net/blog/269/surviving-10-years/
https://rust-servers.net/blog/269/surviving-10-years/Thu, 05 Jan 2023 20:00 CETBACK TO WORK[rust.facepunch.com] Servers are now wiped, Santa is packing up and clearing out the bodies, we hope you enjoyed the Holiday Season. We're getting back to work after a couple of weeks off, which is why this blog is lighter than usual, we're looking forward to the journey ahead in 2023!
Later this year will celebrate Rust's 10th Birthday, which has been an incredible journey. We have some big plans to finish out the year, we'll share details in the coming months.
In this blog, we'll look back at 2022, some of Rust's achievements, and give a sneak peek at what to expect from us in 2023.
What can you expect from us in 2023? More of the same! Guaranteed monthly updates every first Thursday of the month, along with occasional hotfixes and holiday events.
NEXT MONTH
In February, we'll release the industrial update, which includes the electric furnace, item piping and filtering, allowing you to automate many aspects of your base storage troubles.
Can't wait till February? Starting tomorrow Rust Staging Aux2 branch will be publicly playable, allowing everyone to test and give feedback.
HAPIS ISLAND RETIREMENT
Additionally, in February, we'll be permanently retiring Hapis Island map, this will be your last month to play Hapis.
We'll be launching another map maker competition in the coming weeks.
FORWARDS
We have a ton of content currently in development, if you're keeping an eye on our commits[commits.facepunch.com] page, you'll already know. This year you can expect to see new monuments such as the Nuclear Missile Silo Monument, Ferry Terminal and more. New DLC such as building block skins, new items and weapons and so much more.
We're excited to announce that hJune[www.twitch.tv] has teamed up with Rustoria[rustoria.co] again for the next Trust in Rust[trustinrust.co] tournament on Sunday, January 15th, 2023.
[trustinrust.co]
Tournament starts at 1:00PM PST / 9:00PM GMT.
THERE WILL BE TWITCH DROPS!
Some exclusives for the event and general drops you can earn from your favorite creator channels.
THIS IS A CHARITY EVENT!
Proceeds from exclusive store skins sales and event donations go to You Are RAD[youarerad.org]. Rise Above the Disorder is a non-profit metal health organization that provides counseling for a lot of the gaming community.
They are creating a fund for our very own Rust community. Anyone, anywhere, can have access to free therapy sessions regardless of their financial situation so they can begin on their journey of healing.
More details to come later. Watch socials and our community blog next week!]]>