Rust-Servers.net Blog Feed en https://rust-servers.net/ Thu, 03 Oct 2024 19:48 CEST Rust-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. 60 THE WORLD UPDATE 2.0 https://rust-servers.net/blog/309/the-world-update-20/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/309/the-world-update-20/ Thu, 03 Oct 2024 19:48 CEST


RADTOWN

One of the emblematic locations from legacy Rust makes a comeback: Radtown.



We turned this monument from a bunch of blocky garage buildings, into a refreshed new gameplay space. We tried to preserve the proportions and purpose of each location while opening up new paths and adding way to improve the flow of movement and cover throughout.

Exteriors





Interiors







CLIFFS

We have completely reworked all cliffs in the game. The new cliffs come in two types, tall coastal cliffs placed close to the ocean and sloped inland cliffs covering hills and mountains.

A lot of effort was made into making them not only look realistic, but also easy to traverse. You can run up the inland cliffs with ease, while the coastal cliffs can be scaled by jumping on the rocky ledges and protrusions.




In addition we have added many new coastal rocks close to the shore to further spice up the world.






REVAMPED ROCK FORMATIONS

We have completely revamped all large rock formations in the game and decided to bring back some of the old fan favorites.



Formations such as the god rock, anvil rock and arch rock all return to the game. Completely new rock formations have been added and some of them even spawn off shore allowing for more base building possibilities than ever before.






UNIQUE ENVIRONMENTS

In Rust, you will now find several different canyons, lakes, and oasis of various sizes in each procedurally generated map.

Canyons, Lakes, and Oases – each offering a fresh way to play with their own pros and cons. Canyons provide narrow pathways for ambushes but can be risky to navigate. Lakes create opportunities for resource gathering and farming but leave you vulnerable in open water. Oases are lush safe havens with valuable resources but will become hotspots for fierce competition.

Canyons

These towering landscapes offer fresh opportunities for ambushes and base building. While the narrow pathways and steep drops make for thrilling combat and strategic locations.



Canyons can be rich in resources, but don't get too greedy and get caught out.

Lakes

These scenic water bodies add a new twist to the gameplay, offering great spots for fishing, resource gathering, farming and base-building by the shore. However, the open water leaves you exposed to attacks, and swimming can slow you down when trying to make a quick escape.



Oasis

These rare paradises amidst the harsh desert. These lush areas are perfect for setting up base, gathering, farming, and finding vital resources like water. But be warned: Oases will attract other players looking to take advantage of these havens.





RIVERS

Rivers are now longer, flow more naturally, and widen the longer they get. This as well as the new unique environments required a larger water system overhaul to support different water types at any altitude.



The ocean is now fully culled underneath the terrain, and lakes no longer stretch beyond their boundaries. Overall, it's a much more robust and future proof system.

https://files.facepunch.com/paddy/20241002/rust_worldUpdate_rivers02_11.jpg



HIGH CALIBER REVOLVER

The High Caliber Revolver is a hand-crafted, single-action revolver that uses 5.56 ammo. Built for precise, long-range shots rather than rapid fire, it demands a steady hand for maximum accuracy. Its slower fire rate reflects the single-action design, but the power and precision make each shot count.




Unlockable at a Tier 2 workbench, the High Caliber is for survivors who prioritize accuracy and impact over speed.



LEGACY WOOD PILE

Welcome back wood piles! These will spawn in the snow, and temperate biomes.



They function just like our traditional ore piles, but for wood! Harvestable with a rock, hatchet or chainsaw. A great source of wood early in the game to start off your Rust journey.



DIVE SITES

Ocean Wreck Buoys
We’ve remodelled the old floating bottle indicators on the surface of dive sites into more solid buoys. They are much more visible which will help with finding dive sites.



Dive Sites
The Dive Sites themselves have been refreshed this month, with an entirely new set of three possible options replacing the old sites. All sites now spawn the same amount of loot (6 crates). Each site has new unique environment art and topology.



Flora and Fauna
Alongside the new Buoys and Dive Sites, we've overhauled the underwater foliage with a graphical update, and tweaked the visuals on fish so they behave more naturally. You might even find a couple of other critters down there.






DIVER PROPULSION VEHICLE (DPV)

We've added small new handheld dive vehicle this month. The DPV can be crafted and kept in your inventory until you need it.



It's then used like so:
  • Select it and deploy it into any water that's at least 1 metre deep
  • Interact with the fuel tank and add some low grade fuel
  • "Mount" it to hold onto the handles and drive it around



Using the DPV, you can travel underwater significantly faster than you could by swimming. Once you're done with it, simply dismount and pick it up. Fuel will automatically be removed and added to your inventory, or dropped if you don't have any space.

Note: Currently players will need to manually remove fuel before picking up the DPV. This will be corrected in a hotfix asap






WATER WELL UPDATE

Waterwells aren’t exactly the most popular monument in Rust, so this month we decided to make them a little more interesting. You will now find a new vendor at some NPC’s that can offer a random selection of teas and farming equipment that shuffles every X minutes.



What’s special about this NPC is that this is the first vendor that is available in non safe zones. This means they can be killed! If that happens they will respawn after a while, but that won’t trigger the vendor to refresh or have any loot so there’s no real purpose. Try and be nice!



You will also find a new food cache with basic teas and high quality food items, and some planters that are automatically filled with random plants periodically. These plants have a high priority of having good genes, so they’re a great way to give your farm base a quick boost.






RADIOACTIVE WATER

We've added a new gameplay feature to the world: Radioactive Water!
This is available at two locations in the new Radtown monument. Players will be able to harvest it with any regular water container, be it: a bota bag, water jug or the tanker module for vehicles.



Radioactive Water has a few properties: splashing it on plants will instantly kill them, splashing it on players (via throwing your water from a container, or via a sprinkler) will irradiate them. Carrying a large amount of it in your inventory will damage you, and finally looting a players body will irradiate you if there's enough radioactive water in their inventory.

These properties make Radioactive Water a great choice for a number of things: from instantly resetting your farm, to being a great counter to those players raiding you in full gear.



The backend work done on Radioactive Water opens up a number of gameplay possibilities in the future as any item (in code) can now be marked as Radioactive.



We can't wait to see what creations you come up with!



FRONTIERSMAN PACK

This month we're introducing a new addition to Rust's permanent store, the Frontiersman Pack.

The pack includes three items: Frontier Hazmat Suit, Frontier Hatchet, Blunderbuss




Frontiersman hazmat suit

The Frontiersman Hazmat is a handcrafted survival suit, built for those who brave the wilderness. Forged from durable felt and leather, it’s designed to shield its wearer from the harsh weather, unseen enemies, and the dangers of the wild. The Frontiersman suit is a hazmat replacement skin that can be applied while crafting the hazmat or skinned using the repair table. The Frontiersman suit offers no in-game bonuses.




Blunderbuss

The Blunderbuss is a handcrafted, frontier-inspired shotgun that brings a classic, rugged aesthetic to the Double Barrel. This skin reimagines the weapon, turning it into a more traditional tool of survival from a bygone era



Frontier Hatchet

Inspired by the traditional tomahawk, featuring a rugged design with several charms attached. This unique skin transforms the hatchet into a symbol of frontier survival.



Available now on the item store.



WALLPAPER CHANGES

Based on your feedback following last month’s wallpaper release, you can now place wallpapers on building block hardsides, but only inside your base!

Any exposed hardside wallpaper will be removed by the next decay tick.



QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES

Spray Can Improvements
Spray Can will now remember the shipping container colour through deaths and restarts

Note World Model
Note World Model Added

Underwater Visibility
Underwater visibility improved, allowing for enhanced long-distance sight

Repair Bench
The repair bench now displays icons alongside text for repair costs.



CHARITABLE RUST 2024 - TWITCH DROPS

October 12th - October 19th!
Join us and Rustafied[www.rustafied.com] for the annual Charitable Rust[www.charitablerust.com]! The main event takes place on October 12th from 11:00AM EDT until 11:00PM EDT On Rustafied's Twitch channel[www.twitch.tv]. Tune in for tons of mini games, talent shows, and some of your favorite creators battling it out in Rust Reborn's[rustreborn.gg] Bedwars! Check out the full schedule here[www.charitablerust.com].

There will be 4 store items this year. Proceeds go toward the Direct Relief[www.directrelief.org] Charity. These store items will be account bound. Meaning, you will not be able to sell or trade them once purchased.

[twitch.facepunch.com]

You will be able to collect all the Twitch drops for the remainder of the week on any Rust stream[www.twitch.tv] with drops enabled!



WORLD UPDATE 2.0 SALE - 40% OFF RUST
.
To celebrate the release of The World Update 2.0, Rust is now 40% off until October 8th!

Whether you want to role play, survive as a solo, find a new duo partner, or finally join your friend's clan, The World Update 2.0 is here to bring a fresh new feel to Rust for you to explore!

Or why not use The World Update 2.0 sale to gift Rust to that friend that would make a good survival partner?

There’s no better time to jump in to build, explore, raid, and survive with legacy items returning, new weapons and a hazmat, a new monument, AND the newly tuned terrain!

{LINK REMOVED}



MAP MAKER WARNING

If you're a map maker, please note that next month, we'll be removing the old rock and cliff assets from the game. Map makers should update their maps with the new rock assets to maintain compatibility.

The reason we're removing the old assets is to ensure we're keeping the game running as optimal as possible and not needlessly loading unused assets into memory.]]>
TIME TO KILL https://rust-servers.net/blog/308/time-to-kill/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/308/time-to-kill/ Thu, 05 Sep 2024 19:45 CEST DIGITAL CLOCK
Meet the Digital Clock, a new craftable item, a simple but powerful addition to your base's electrical setup.



When powered, it displays the current server time
  1. Consumes 1 power
  2. Available at the Tier 2 Workbench
  3. Craftable for 100 Metal Fragments

The clock also allows you to set up alarms. When an alarm goes off, the power will pass through, allowing you to trigger any sort of circuit inside your base at specific times.

Whether you want to automate your farms, activate traps, or control lighting systems, you can set up to five alarms simultaneously.



CGO WEAPON ATTACHMENT

A powerful new cutting-edge experimental weapon attachment for those who crave more damage and speed in their shots. The Gas Compression Overdrive attachment boosts projectile damage and velocity, allowing you to hit harder.



However, this extra power comes with trade-offs, a slower fire rate and increased recoil. If you can handle the extra kick, this attachment is maybe for you.

The GCO attachment works on the following weapons: Thompson, SAR, SAP, M92, M39 and the Custom SMG.



WALLPAPERS

This month, we're adding wallpapers, a new way to decorate your base's interior.



Wallpapers can only be applied to the interior side of your walls. Purely visual, they don't provide any additional protection, are easy to remove and won't interfere with the deployment of any other items.
  • Default blueprint
  • Crafting cost: 20 cloth per wallpaper piece
  • Includes 'Vintage' default skin in 4 colours - blue, red, green and yellow



Just like other deployable items, wallpapers can be skinned during crafting, in a repair bench or after being deployed using the spray can.

Wallpaper Starter Pack
In addition to the 4 wallpapers skins unlocked by default, you can purchase the Wallpaper Starter Pack which features 22 extra wallpaper skins for styling your base.



Skins included in the wallpaper starter pack, as pictured above:
  • Clouds
  • Yellow Stripe
  • Blue Diamond
  • Fleur (3 variants)
  • Retro (3 variants)
  • Subway (2 variants)
  • Geometric (2 variants)
  • Polka Dots (3 variants)
  • Wainscotting (3 variants)
  • Venetian Plaster (3 variants)





The Wallpaper Starter Pack is available for purchase in-game or through the Steam's item store.



COLOURBLIND ACCESSIBILITY

As part of my Hackweek last month, I explored some ways we can make playing Rust more accessible for players that experience different forms of colour blindness. Colour blindness is experienced by up to 8% of men and 0.5% of women, so it likely affects a good portion of our player base.

We’ve tried to identify problematic areas in the game world, as well as in our UI, and then make those colours configurable so every player can customise the look of their game to meet their needs. Since colour blindness comes in many forms, we’ve exposed each option individually as well as some presets that we think will help for more common forms of the condition.



We’ve exposed the following options:
  • Tree marker colours
  • Health Bar colour
  • Hunger Bar colour
  • Hydration Bar colour
  • Team Name tag colour
  • Enemy Name tag colour
  • Ally Name tag colour (eg. marked friendly in the contacts system)
  • Monument blocked colour (the new radius that appears when building close to a monument)
  • Mushroom colour



We also adjusted the contrast of the icons in the Hunger/Health/Hydration bar to make them stand out a bit more when in snowy/very bright regions.

Please get in touch if we’ve missed a colour you find problematic to see, or if there are other accessibility options you think could help make playing Rust more comfortable. You can contact us via the F7 report menu, or opening a new Support ticket[support.facepunchstudios.com].



TUNNEL NETWORK VISIBILITY LAYER

Way, way back in the ancient times of December 2022[rust.facepunch.com], we shipped a feature that allowed us to separate the above ground and below ground networking groups, improving client performance and reducing network traffic. Unfortunately, we had to disable it pretty quickly on launch as we discovered an edge case where a small number of elevators that started in the above ground layer and ended in the below ground layer would teleport players into a void. To resolve this, we needed to rework how elevators functioned internally.

This work has finally been completed, so we’re re-enabling the feature this month. Fingers crossed the feature sticks this time! This change should be invisible to players and offer better performance.



ERRORS QOL

I think it was time to say goodbye to this debug gibberish spammed in chat everytime you try to build anything.



These errors have been moved from the chat to toast messages, which are just as responsive and most importantly, visible to players playing with the chat disabled.

We wanted to reduce the confusion by making these errors more specific, when possible.

The common "Cannot build in this area" now becomes "Blocked by X", mentioning the name of the entity blocking you. It works with deployables, vehicles, building blocks and players.



The infamous "Too close from another building" error message will now be "Too close to X". It will also briefly highlight the building block in question.

When trying to upgrade a building block, you'll now get a clear explanation of what exactly is preventing the upgrade.

We've also re-ordered the message priority of a few common deployables. So you now get "Must be placed on a construction" instead of "Not enough space" message when trying to place a bed on the terrain for example.

A new convar has been added if you prefer to keep the error messages in chat:
  1. client.errortoasts_in_chat



LOCALIZATION

A lot of effort has been put into improving Rust's localization this month.
  • Most of the UI screens are now displaying right-to-left languages correctly
  • Many screens with truncated texts have been fixed
  • Unlocalized texts have been addressed
This is ongoing work, it's not finished yet, and more improvements are planned for the coming months.

Thanks to everyone contributing to Rust localization, dedicating their time to make the game more accessible to non-English speakers.



WORLD UPDATE PLAYTEST

Today, we're opening Rust Staging - Aux02 beta branch for public testing to gather feedback and bug testing ahead of next month's world update release, which is one, if not the most significant updates, this year.

The World Update aims to address many long-standing community requests surrounding the world. The update will revamp cliffs, rivers, dive sites, and add new, unique environmental areas such as canyons, lakes, and desert oases. Additionally, some throwbacks to Legacy Rust by bringing back an updated Radtown monument and Legacy Wood Piles.





There is plenty more to look forward to with a new weapon, the high-calibre revolver, new Hazmat skin, and so much more.

We're excited about this world update and want your feedback to allow us to adjust and tweak as necessary. As a note of caution, everything on the branch is subject to change, and map wipes will happen at irregular intervals over the month.

The world update will be released on October 3rd.

How to access
To access the playtest, please follow the steps below:
  • On Steam download Rust - Staging Branch
  • Right-click Rust - Staging Branch on your Steam library, and select Properties
  • Navigate to "Betas" tab
  • Next to "Beta Participation" select "aux02 - upandcoming"
  • Steam will begin to download and apply the update
  • Open Rust - Staging Branch via Steam and play

How to give feedback
To give direct feedback in-game, press F7 and fill out the form, additionally, you can join our Discord[discord.gg] and discuss the changes in the channel "staging-aux2"

Mappers
An unfortunate side effect of this revamp is that new assets will be added, and old assets will be removed. This will cause some instability for custom maps and map makers, one example is the older cliff and rock formations will be removed.

We'll post updates on the exact changes in community mapping Discords and our social media closer to release.



TWITCH RIVALS : BASE INVADERS



Buckle up! Base Invaders is back!

This Tuesday, tune in from 8PM BST // 3PM EST as *20* teams of 5 battle it out for up to $1000 per player for the winning team, from a $50,000 prize pool! With a 20x gather rate and teams only being allowed one base and one Tool Cupboard at a time, players need to score points with kills, by controlling hard points, or by destroying enemy Tool Cupboards and more!

The teams feature a range of PvP community favourites, as well as creators from our recent Home-Brewed event, and more! For the full list of teams and rules head here[schedule.twitchrivals.com].

Heads up:
The exclusive hoodie and pants Twitch Drops for the Twitch Rivals stream will only be live for roughly 5 hours on Tuesday the 10th of September, on the Twitch Rivals official channel[www.twitch.tv].

The rest of the Twitch Drops will be available from the start of the event until Sunday 15th.

Don't forget to sync your Twitch and Steam accounts at https://www.twitch.facepunch.com/!

And remember - Facepunch will never DM you about Twitch Drops or giveaways. Beware of any fake websites and scams!



WELLIPETS X RUST

Wellipets’ iconic Frog Boots were added to Rust as a gift for players who owned the game while it was in Early Access between 2013-2018 - as a thanks for supporting us while we took the game from its very humble and janky beginnings, to becoming what it is today.



And now, we've officially partnered with Wellipets to unite both the digital and physical world - An IRL Frog Wellington Boot in original Rust colours (one green, one black), and an exclusive in-game Frog Boot Helmet if you buy the Rust edition of the boots.

Executed in black and Batrachian green and contrasted with their hallmark yellow eyes, these wellington boots boast a distinctive colour combination, both as a legacy Rust item, and now a real, practical but fashionable item.
They feature a ladder grip outsole to provide improved traction during wet weather and are decorated with hand painted details at the logo and mouth.



Every physical pair comes with a key to unlock the new in-game item, once shipped. The boots are expected to start shipping at the end of November.

Discover the story and pre-order your pair here: https://wellipets.com/wellipets-x-rust



MODDING API BREAK

Heya! My name is Daniel, I'm a new member of the Rust development team - I've joined about a month ago. My primary objective is to work on Performance and it's various facets for Rust. I'm hoping to be posting about the ongoing work in the future.

In the coming update, I've made some changes to code that we'll be shipping that will break some mods that rely on our internal object pooling utility, Facepunch.Pool. If you're the owner of one of these mods that see errors around invalid use of "Pool.Free", then you should try switching to "Pool.FreeUnmanaged", and if that still doesn't work, then "Pool.FreeUnsafe"(in last case if you're using FreeUnsafe with a collection, make sure to clear it).

I'm making this breaking change because our old API were unsafe and allowed for memory leaks and bugs. Instead, I've introduced a couple replacements that aim to be stricter and as a result safer.

Pool.Free is now 3 separate methods:
  • Pool.Free<T> where T : Pool.IPooled or a couple collections with T : IPooled. Calls Clear() and optionally returns each element back to Pool
  • Pool.FreeUnmanaged<T> where T is a collection of non-IPooled-implementing types. Calls Clear() or an equivalent
  • Pool.FreeUnsafe<T> for any T, just returns it back to pool
The following methods are marked obsolete and will be removed when October Update lands or have been removed:
  • Pool.GetList - obsolete
  • Pool.FreeList - obsolete
  • Pool.FreeListAndItems - obsolete
  • Pool.FreeMemoryStream - obsolete
  • Pool.ClearList - obsolete
  • Pool.FreeDynamic - removed



LINUX DEDICATED SERVER UPDATE

Our dedicated server builds on Linux currently support Debian 10 / Ubuntu 18 or later. Due to third party software we rely on slowly removing support for these platforms, we will soon be forced to change the minimum requirement for our Linux dedicated server builds to Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20 or later. If you're hosting your own server or offer managed servers to your clients, please update to Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20 or later as soon as possible.]]>
STAY ALERT https://rust-servers.net/blog/307/stay-alert/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/307/stay-alert/ Thu, 01 Aug 2024 19:53 CEST TIN CAN ALARM
This month, we're adding the Tin Can Alarm, a new primitive trap made from hanging tin cans.





Crossing its wire will trigger the trap and cause a loud clatter, alerting anyone nearby to your presence.

You can deploy it anywhere from your base to inside monuments. Use it strategically to cover access points and defend your positions.



REPLICATED BUSH SOUNDS

This month, we are changing how the classic bush rustle sounds work. Bush sounds will now be audible to players around you. Just like with footsteps, you now need to take care of when you make noise in bushes. Going slower through a bush makes a quieter sound than when running through it.



This change will also cause the rustles made in hot air balloon tarps to be audible to players nearby, and operates in the same way as the bushes.



UNDERWATER ITEMS



Dropped items that end up in bodies of water will now sink more realistically instead of just dropping like they are still falling through air. As well as slowing down and getting shifted around by currents they will also emit some bubbles as they move and when they hit the ocean floor. This should make finding these items a little bit easier.



ZIPLINE IMPROVEMENTS

We’ve made several changes to the powerline zipline system this month to make it a bit more pleasant to use.
  • Ziplines will now pick the furthest possible destination instead of the closest
  • We’ve increased the maximum length a zipline can run from 150m to 185m
  • Ziplines can now terminate at a higher point on the powerline structure and will pick these higher destinations when possible, reducing the amount of climbing required to continue the zipline.
  • You can no longer get dismounted by trees when on a zipline. We already had several systems in place to prevent trees spawning in zipline paths, but it still happened very rarely.
These changes should result in longer, higher ziplines that are safer to use.



NPC VENDOR PRICE CHANGES

After looking over the data from last months wipe, it was clear that the dynamic vendor pricing system wasn’t operating as well as it could have. It tended to drop to 50% off all items relatively quickly in the wipe. We’ve made a couple of changes this month:
  • Price changes now operate in real time rather than based on in-game time. This should be more understandable and will work correctly on servers that manipulate in-game time.
  • Price changes now take place every 5 real time hours. Last month the prices changed every 15 minutes in real time by default, so this will make the prices change much more slowly.
As usual we’ll keep an eye on this and make changes going forwards.



QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES

Trains break barricades
Trains can break through barricades that are deployed too close to the tracks.

Bike fast turns
Hold the Crouch key while driving to perform a faster turn

Sidecar bike physics
Sidecar bikes now drive more like regular motorbikes.

Horse terrain holes
Horses can now enter terrain holes - Train tunnels, the launch site ramp etc.

Fire mode switch
Switching your gun firemode will now play a sound.

Storage Adaptors collision
Can now walk through Storage Adaptors attached to boxes.

Hurt screen overlay toggle
Can now turn off the blood on screen when getting hurt.

Saved code lock input
The last entered code is now saved between sessions.



SHOCKBYTE X RUST - PARTNERED SERVER HOSTING

We're extremely excited to be partnering with Shockbyte[shockbyte.com] for managed server hosting rental!

[shockbyte.com]

After seeing their work with the Minecraft community, and hearing great things from existing Rust users, we've decided to partner with them in an official capacity - endorsing their stability and reliability. You can enjoy full file access, full customization, and oxide support.

[shockbyte.com]

Promotional Offer
As part of the promo, new customers can receive an in-game Tool Cupboard skin by renting a server of any tier[shockbyte.com]! Once your new server is delivered Shockbyte will send you information about how to get your sweet freebie!





Here's Shockbyte's story so far:
"Born from a passion for multiplayer gaming in March 2013, Shockbyte has become a leading provider of game server hosting. Over the past decade, our team of dedicated gamers has delivered reliable multiplayer servers worldwide to over 700 thousand customers. Since October 2019, we have supported the Rust community, continuously improving our services based on feedback. Our mission is to simplify game server hosting, allowing absolutely anyone to create their own multiplayer community with ease.

With a growing network of global locations, comprehensive DDOS protection, and a commitment to 100% uptime, Shockbyte has become a trusted provider for Rust communities. We understand the complexities of server hosting and are beyond thrilled to now offer our expertise in a partnered capacity with Facepunch. We believe this is the most exciting era for gaming and are proud to provide community-driven hosting opportunities.

By harnessing player feedback we’ve recently completely revamped the hosting experience and we’re extremely excited to be soon rolling out this new modern experience alongside our partnership with Rust. Our top-tier global hardware and robust DDOS protection ensure the Rust community receives only the best multiplayer support. At Shockbyte, our focus is on delivering an enjoyable online experience, committed to innovation and excellence."


We look forward to hearing about your experiences with their servers and you can get the skin by signing up to any level of hosting through this link[shockbyte.com] or use code: SBRUST at checkout for 25% off your first month!



TWITCH DROPS!

Here we go again! We have worked in a group of your favorite Twitch Streamers and Youtubers that you might recognize!
August 8th - August 18th, 2024

[twitch.facepunch.com]

Be sure you get synced up at https://twitch.facepunch.com/ so you don't miss out!]]>
COMMUNITY UPDATE 262 https://rust-servers.net/blog/306/community-update-262/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/306/community-update-262/ Tue, 16 Jul 2024 16:07 CEST FACEPUNCH'S 15TH BIRTHDAY!


Happy Birthday to us!
Facepunch officially turned 15 not too long ago and we wanted to celebrate the occasion by making all of our games 50% off - including Rust and all Rust DLCs!

You can get your discounts on all Facepunch games through the Steam store.
Rewind to 2009, when Garry, released Garry's Mod: a sandbox game with no rules, from a mod, to officially listing it on Steam. No objectives, just pure, unadulterated freedom. Want to create a giant robot out of bathtubs? Go for it. Fancy launching a thousand explosive barrels into the sky? Why not! Garry's Mod was, and still is, the ultimate playground for gamers with a wild imagination.

Fast forward to 2013, and we began work on Rust. This isn’t just any survival game; it’s a brutal, post-apocalyptic showdown where you start with nothing but a rock and a dream. Gathering resources, building shelters, forging alliances—or betraying them—Rust has taken survival gaming to a whole new level. It's a place where the only rule is: trust no one, but have fun trying.

And now, in 2024, we're working on our biggest update for Rust yet, with more Twitch events planned, and even more cool things to come to the game for all types of players. There has never been a better time to play Rust.



LOOTROOM 3D PRINTS

[lootroom.com]

It's Official - You Can Now Get Licensed 3D Printed Rust Items!
After years of watching from the side lines, we're proud to officially announce that we've partnered with Lootroom[lootroom.com]!

Lootroom are now our partner for fully licensed 3D printed guns and more. So we're now working closer with them, providing this lovely and dedicated team with in-game assets to ensure that they continue to deliver high quality products to Rust fans.

Here's Lootroom's story:

"It's mid-2018 and during an exciting Rust weekend with good friends, we kept joking about the fact that furnaces in Rust always have to be running. This gave rise to the desire to have a small real Rust furnace on the desk - as a reminder of this great wipe. It didn't take long and it became clear: a 3D printer was needed!

The test phase went well and we were so impressed with the result that we published the furnace on various platforms and received a lot of positive feedback. When the first purchase requests came in, we knew that the whole thing had potential and that there were many Rust enthusiasts around the world who shared our interest in IRL loot.

After some preparation, a first small online store was created and the perfect name with the necessary domains was also found - Lootroom. Initially, our store only consisted of the furnace in various sizes, followed by the Eoka and the P2. But after countless requests, the Rust AK default was added in May 2020 after a slight delay due to Covid-19 - a real monster compared to the smaller products we had previously offered. For us, this also involved a learning and conversion process, as our previous way of working was geared towards the smaller items. For example, we needed new shipping boxes.




Lone Design, the online store for Rust server plugins, became aware of us quite early on and we were also able to offer our products there - and thus reach even more Rust players. At the same time, we also set up a successful Etsy store and have since broken the magic mark of 1k sales and 100k turnover.

As we became better known, we received more and more requests for different skins and other irl loot. We created internal ranking lists with the most requested items, which we then gradually worked through. Over the years, we have continuously expanded our store and now stock more than 70 different Rust items.

A special milestone was achieved in September 2021: together with one of the most successful Rust content creators ever - Blooprint - we had his Blooprint SAR on offer for a limited time. The demand was overwhelming and it gave us great pleasure to see how much gamers around the world celebrated our products.



We invested in more and more modern 3D printers, a new online presence and founded the official Lootroom GmbH in September 2022, based in Nuremberg, Germany. We now operate more than 20 3D printers that print IRL loot almost continuously. Our factory is streamed live on Twitch, Kick and YouTube to give anyone interested an insight into the creation process.

Naturally, we prioritize the quality of our handmade products while also maintaining a consistent stock to ensure prompt shipping. Customer service and engagement with the Rust community are equally important to us. We have already shipped to over 45 countries around the world and look forward to every new customer that we can make happy with our IRL Loot. We put a lot of passion into our unique products.
All of this now leads to the possibility to offer our products as officially licensed Rust IRL loot. We are very hyped and incredibly excited to be working with our friends at Facepunch."




Please go and show them some love, and place an order for your favourite weapon or prop.

They look fantastic as decorative items and we have many around the office and a few of us even have them up in our homes!



TWITCH DROPS

FancyOrb's Global Warfare 2!
FancyOrb's[x.com] Global Warfare is soon here, with all your favorite creators will be involved with Twitch drops[twitch.facepunch.com]!

[twitch.facepunch.com]

Drops will be available across the entire Rust category on Twitch[www.twitch.tv].

Be sure to get synced at https://twitch.facepunch.com/connect to claim your skins!



LEGO RUST

Reddit user ABRISSBIRNE27 showing off some epic Rust themed lego sets they made with rebrickable.

Wonder if we could convince Lego to do something official?






YOUTOOZ

We're starting to see everyone's Youtooz[youtooz.com] figures reach their new homes and we're curious, do you keep yours in the box or do you let them out in the open?



And where in your base are you placing your in-game items?

We loved working on these with Youtooz and we can't wait to show you what else we've got cooking up with them...



The limited edition run of the Heavy Scientist and the Hazmat figures ends soon - get yours here![youtooz.com]

And don't forget to tag @playrust[x.com] and @youtooz[x.com] in your pics!



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 Magoo[www.instagram.com]!



FULL BLOG HERE[rust.facepunch.com]]]>
ROAD RENEGADES https://rust-servers.net/blog/305/road-renegades/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/305/road-renegades/ Thu, 04 Jul 2024 19:47 CEST MOTORBIKES


Motorbikes can now be found at several monument locations. One is a single-person bike and one has a sidecar as well, where a second player can sit and use weapons.

These are relatively fast and nimble vehicles, useful for quickly traversing the map using low grade fuel. If damaged, they can be repaired with a small amount of Metal Fragments.







BICYCLES

Bicycles can now be found across the map on roadsides, and also at several monuments. The standard bike takes one player, but a three-wheeled variant allows a second player to sit and shoot from the rear.



The bicycles aren't as fast or strong as the new motorbikes, but they're easier to acquire, and they don't use any fuel. Instead, they slowly consume your own food and water levels.



Holding Sprint while biking will have the driver stand up and give you a bit more temporary power and speed. Sprint mode will also automatically engage if you're struggling up a hill. This feature wears out after a few seconds and needs time to recharge.



HANDCUFFS AND PRISONER HOOD

Take your enemies captive with the new Handcuff and Prisoner Hood items!



Use the Handcuffs on a surrendering (friendly gesture) or downed player to take them prisoner - restricting their inventory, belt, use and interact options.

Handcuffed players can be pushed around and forced into vehicles and other mountables.



Place the new Prisoner Hood on your victim to block their vision and disable their map access, preventing them from seeing where you are taking them.



Handcuffed players can hold their attack button to progress the unlock minigame. Fill the progress bar and the Handcuffs break, releasing you! Unlock progress is tied to the Handcuff item condition so that you can always eventually get free - but being damaged or pushed will temporarily interrupt your breakout attempt!

Additionally, performing the friendly gesture - at any time - lets other players inspect your full inventory and modify your belt - a great way to show you're not a threat or hiding something valuable!



TRAVELLING VENDOR

We've added a brand new event! The Travelling Vendor. The vendor will spawn naturally on maps with ring roads (4000+) and traverse the roads.



The vendor sells a selection of wares: from basic building materials to some of the best items in the game. Each time the vendor spawns a random selection of items are chosen to sell, along with a different price each time. If you're lucky, the vendor will decide to sell something at a discount, so keep an eye out!

To get the vendor to stop just run up to it, but don't stand blocking its way for too long or you will be ignored. It can't wait on you forever! It doesn't take too kindly to gunfire or selling to hostiles so make sure you're on your best behaviour.

I want to say a huge thanks to the Rust Discord Community for their incredible work in helping debug and improve the vendor.



QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES

Ceiling Light Wiring
Ceiling lights IO points are now easier to target

Improved Barricade Placement
Can now place barricades on rocks and dirt roads



DYNAMIC VENDOR PRICING

To introduce a little more variety into the NPC vending system, this month we have introduced a change that increases or decreases the sale price of items purchased with scrap based on that item’s popularity.

The way it works is we now keep a running total of the average number of items sold every 6 in-game hours. Every 6 hours if the number sold is less than the average then the price of the item will drop by 5% for the next 6 hours (down to a minimum of 50%). If the number of items sold has increased above the average then its price will be increased by 10% (to a maximum of 100% extra, or twice the price). We will be starting prices at 200% so they will likely drop for a while before settling to the “market” price.



An example of the logic:
  • The average amount of SAM sites purchased in a 6 hour window is 150, and the current price has no increases or decreases.
  • At the end of a 6 hour window we check and see that 155 SAM sites have been purchased.
  • Since the average has gone up, we raise the price by 10%.
  • Since the price is now more expensive, sales drop to 120 over the next 6 hours.
  • Since this is below the average we then drop the price by 5%, which results in a 5% price increase in total.

You can see the current discount and price when looking at an item on the map or in-person, the price displayed is the final price and there’s a small indicator that communicates what the current price change is and what that item’s initial price was. You can easily tell at a glance what items are cheap and what items are expensive, as well as how much they’ve changed price to make informed purchasing decisions.

We’ve only applied this to sales where the currency paid is scrap - vending machines that offer scrap in exchange for items (fish market, resource exchange, etc) are unaffected. This will also not apply to player created vending machines.

Why are we making this change? We believe the NPC vending meta can be shaken up a bit and this seems like a fairer change than us just arbitrarily changing a bunch of prices across the board. This way the prices will increase and decrease based on player behaviour and will vary from server to server. As usual we’ll monitor how this goes over the next month and make changes as necessary.



FURTHER MEMORY IMPROVEMENTS

Building on last month's work to reduce the overall number of objects in Rust to save memory, this month we are rolling out even more improvements. We applied the same principle (reducing the number of objects by combining them when possible) but at the project level, so that most assets are already combined and streamlined in the build and don’t need to be processed when starting the game up. The streamlining process we use here is even more aggressive and results in even greater memory savings while also reducing time spent processing assets.

As well as these optimisations, we’re going to be making last month's renderer improvements now enabled by default.

We believe this approach combined with last month's improvements has resulted in about a gigabyte of reduced memory usage on a fresh server.

This was a huge effort as it involved manually modifying hundreds of assets across the entire game. Thanks to the valiant efforts of our QA team we’ve identified many cases where slight unintentional material and colour changes occurred but it’s possible some more snuck through into the release so please let us know if you see anything that looks incorrect!

Just like last month, we have more improvements in the pipeline for next month including memory improvements to monument foliage and a new process for loading monuments that will hopefully reduce loading times and further reduce memory usage.



UNDERWATER VISIBILITY

Underwater visibility has been messed up for a while now. It was an unintended consequence of us rewriting the way we shade things underwater, to make it more flexible.

That low visibility has now been fixed, but we might continue to tweak it some more in subsequent patches.



ANTI-CHEAT UPDATE

Since our last anti-cheat update back in April[rust.facepunch.com], we have banned an additional 65,181 accounts, 10,297 of these were temporary, and the remaining 54,884 were permanent bans. Here's the breakdown per patch:

June - Seismic Shift:
  • 14,949 permanent bans
  • 5,898 temporary bans (86.39% of which were automated)
  • 117,554 reports

May - Meta Madness:
  • 19,876 permanent bans
  • 2,755 temporary bans (91.80% of which were automated),
  • 111,094 reports

April - Waves of Change:
  • 20,059 permanent bans
  • 1,644 temporary bans (94.67% of which were automated)
  • 96,473 reports

NOTES
  • Patch-specific report data is only from Facepunch Official servers due to data reliability originating from non-official servers, the total number of reports across all server since April is 3,645,165.
  • Bans that were later reverted are excluded from these metrics.
  • Bans are placed for multiple reasons. The numbers above do not strictly reflect only cheat-related bans, but cheat-related bans make up the vast majority of bans.
  • A single player can receive multiple bans, for example, if a user is temporarily banned and then later switched to a permanent ban, this is counted as 2 bans in the above metrics.
  • Over the last 31-days, we've had 1,751,457 unique players, and close to half a million daily active players. Using the metrics above, it could be interpreted that 1.2% of the player base are cheaters, it's very common for cheaters to use many accounts over the course of the month. Cheaters often receive an account suspension, get another account, receive another ban, rinse and repeat inflating the true number.

The above is to provide context and transparency, not to state we're doing a good job, there is much more to be done in this area, and we are continuing to work on it.

NEXT
In the last anti-cheat blog update[rust.facepunch.com], I discussed how we've limited the information cheaters can read and abuse from network data, such as knowing players health and buried stash locations, authorization lists from turrets and tool cupboards. The holy grail would be not networking nearby players and items you can't see.

If a player is behind a hill and you can't see them, don't network the player. If a tool cupboard is inside a base, don't network the tool cupboard. This is server occlusion, and it's difficult to get perfect. We're currently experimenting with this and hope to do a slow rollout over the coming months, pending further internal testing.

Additionally, we're currently working on many experimental features to disrupt cheats, some of these changes are nearly completion and will be deployed Soon™.

Last month, we teamed up with a third party to handle takedowns on our behalf. One of the core objectives is aimed at cheat-related material. The takedowns will be made at the request of Facepunch staff after manual review. There is no automation, and there is no room for innocent content to be taken down.
  • In the past 30 days, we've taken down over 300 cheats-related media on social platforms
  • We're working on several other legal fronts, which are too early to discuss

The next anticheat update will be in November



CREATIVE MODE

Creative mode is a new set of native tools Paddy and I have added which allows players to freely build, place and experiment without needing additional plugins. You can enable creative mode for everyone on your server using the server convar "creative.allUsers" or enable it just for a specific player using “creative.toggleCreativeModeUser PLAYERNAME”.

Once enabled, there are several convars you can enable which overrides standard build and placement restrictions:
  • creative.freeRepair - allows resource free repairs and bypass the repair cooldown
  • creative.freeBuild - makes all building blocks free and adds the option to spawn blocks in a specific grade. Also allows the Hammer to upgrade and downgrade blocks for free.
  • creative.freePlacement - removes most placement restrictions when deploying objects. Will allow building in building blocked zones, in other TC zones and when intersecting other objects.
  • creative.unlimitedIO - allows an unlimited amount of line points and raises the distance limit when wiring IO entities to 200m. Also adds an invisible colour option in the colour wheel.

This was originally made to help our Media team more efficiently build and film content, but we also see this being helpful for QA purposes as well. Hopefully you find it helpful too!



TWITCH DROPS - JULY 26-AUG 2ND

FancyOrb's[x.com] Global Warfare event takes place and all your favorite creators will be involved with Twitch drops[twitch.facepunch.com]!

[twitch.facepunch.com]

Drops will be available across the entire Rust category on Twitch[www.twitch.tv].

Be sure to get synced at https://twitch.facepunch.com/connect to claim your skins!]]>
COMMUNITY UPDATE 261 https://rust-servers.net/blog/304/community-update-261/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/304/community-update-261/ Mon, 24 Jun 2024 14:54 CEST EPIC DESK MOUSEPAD CREATOR COLLABS
[epicdesk.shop]

We're back with some amazing EpicDesk[x.com] creator collabs for giant mousepads!

BLOOPRINT

[epicdesk.shop]

[epicdesk.shop]

SEBBYK

[epicdesk.shop]

[epicdesk.shop]

OILRATS

[epicdesk.shop]

To order check out their website[epicdesk.shop] as each of these deskpad campaigns have different end dates and shipping dates! They are ALL limited editions. Once they end they are gone forever!



SAVE THE DATE!

Coming Late July FancyOrb[x.com] is bringing you Rust Global Warfare 2!

You won't want to miss this! There will be Twitch drops[twitch.facepunch.com] and all your favorite creators involved.



If you're a creator and you want to be involved with this event join the FancyOrb Discord[discord.com] for updates and how to sign up!



CHARITABLE RUST

Charitable Rust[www.charitablerust.com] isn't until October, however, if you are a skin artist and would like to be involved with designing charity items for the Item store or Twitch Drops - pay attention over the next few weeks!



Skin contest is slated to take place for the entire month of July!

Contest Rules
  1. Use #CR2024 as official contest tag in Steam workshop.
  2. No re-uploading old or previously submitted skins.
  3. Do not steal or use any copyrighted or otherwise trademarked content.
  4. Must be 100% original work (can work with others if all are listed on workshop page).
  5. Must follow all basic workshop submission rules and standards.
  6. If using the charity’s logo, it cannot be used on any weapon skins. Only Charitable Rust logo may be used on weapon skins.
  7. Submissions must be high quality and Hi-Res, normals properly done/baked.
  8. Cannot contain offensive or sexual content.
  9. Limit of 5 skin submissions per creator.
  10. Skins must be submitted by midnight (23:59) PST July 31, 2024.

More info, rules, regulations, and branding assets can be found here: https://www.charitablerust.com/skins



HELK SHRINE

Hedge[x.com], Monstera[x.com], daVinci[x.com], and a few others from the Art community made this googley-eyed glory shrine of our savior Helkus Maximus.





It's probably best if we don't ask too many questions.



OH, PORGIE.

I'm just going to leave this here...





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 Furthi[x.com]]]>
SEISMIC SHIFT https://rust-servers.net/blog/303/seismic-shift/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/303/seismic-shift/ Thu, 06 Jun 2024 19:49 CEST SEISMIC SENSOR
This month we're adding the Seismic Sensor, a new electricity-powered deployable.



When powered, it will listen for nearby explosions and send a power signal when detecting any.
  • You can configure its range from 1 to 30 meters (one foundation = 3 meters)
  • It will output a different power value depending on the type of explosion detected
A non-exhaustive list of power values from explosives:
  • 1 power = F1 Grenade, Beancan
  • 2 power = Explosive ammo, Satchel
  • 3 power = C4, Rocket

The idea is to let you detect and trigger circuits when you're being raided. Alarms, traps... the possibilities are infinite, we're excited to see what you will come up with!



BARRICADE PLACEMENT

Traditionally, we blocked all forms of building inside Monuments. This made sense back in the day when Monuments were small in size and number, but over the years, the amount of land they take up has increased significantly.

We want to reward players who pick a strategic location during a fight, but it's hard to pick a good location when you're in an empty field!

This is why barricades can now be placed on the terrain around Monuments. This allows you to take cover as you enter and exit monuments, as well as take cover inside the open fields inside Monuments.

Applies to:
  • Wood barricade
  • Stone barricade
  • Concrete barricade
  • Sandbags

Remember: Monument Structures, Concrete, and Roads still block barricades at this time.

Decay and melee protection has been adjusted to account for more relaxed placement
  • 15 minute decay
  • 8-10 hits with melee



SEE DEPLOY GUIDE OF TEAMMATES

Behold the ability to see what your teammate is placing and where it will be placed! This should clear up the exact location your teammate(s) are shouting while trying to build.

By default, it only will show your teammate's deploy guides when you are building. This can be changed via the options menu to 'Always Show' or to be disabled.





VISUAL FEEDBACK FOR BUILDING BLOCKED

When allowing barricades to be placed into Monuments we realized... it's not that clear where the building blocked of Monuments actually starts!

You will now see a red outline around the edge of monuments.



This can be toggled in the options menu.

Server owners can disable it via a convar if conflicts with custom Monuments.
Monument building radius
We also took the opportunity to adjust the building blocked size of some Monuments.

Larger
  • Gas Station
  • Lighthouse
  • Mining Outpost
  • Super Market
Slightly Larger
  • Dome
  • Launch Site
Smaller
  • Arctic Research Base



QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES

Faster Code Locks
Once a code is set, the "last used" button is much faster at entering the code

Bone Fertiliser
Bone fragments can now be used in a composter to create fertiliser

Faster Window Crafting
Window glass, shutters and bars now craft in 15s instead of 30s

Skin Names
See the name of skins at the Repair Bench, and a link to get them

Helicopter Handbrake
Idle helicopters no longer drift down slopes

Reduced Speed Penalty
Horse armour doesn't slow your horse as much

Salvaged Hammer Buff
+100% damage against deployables

Mixing Table Ammo Recipes
Added HV Ammo & Incendiary Ammo to mixing table

Industrial Conveyor UI
Easier to search and setup industrial conveyors

Block Explosives In TCs
Prevent players from stashing their explosives in TCs

Hammer UI Consistency
Hammer always shows all options to reduce misclicks

Reduce F15 Volume
Reduce volume of F15 by 50% to reduce strain on ears

LOD Improvements
Fixed monument prefabs appearing invisible from far

Planter Autofill
Hold Sprint to auto plant all held seeds in a single planter

Vendor Attachments
Able to see the attachments on weapons for sale in vending machines

Chainsaw hit radius
Adjusted the chainsaw hit radius to make it easier to hit the trees' X mark



INSTANT REJOIN

While a queue is better than nothing (who remembers the days of spamming reconnect?), we want to avoid players getting stuck in a queue at all: especially when it's due to a crash.

We have made a few changes to allow players recently kicked from any server to skip the queue.
  • Holds your spot
  • 5 minutes max
  • Any type of disconnect (kick, internet outage, crash, alt + f4)




WIRE SLACK

When using the wire tool, you can now adjust the amount of slack in your wire using your mouse wheel while holding LEFT SHIFT.

It's purely visual, it doesn't change anything gameplay-wise, and it also works with hoses and Christmas lights!



PAINTING IMPROVEMENTS

I worked on a bunch of improvements for sign painting this month based on community feedback. There's a mix of QoL and bug fixes, but they should all improve your painting experience!

Changes
  • Made the painting UI follow your UI scale option
  • Added a convar to switch which side the painting UI is on (paint.leftsided)
  • Increased the maximum brush size to 100 (was 32)
  • Fixed brush sizes below 2 drawing nothing sometimes
  • Fixed drawn brushes overlapping within the same stroke
  • Fixed weird color blending behavior for the softest brush
  • Fixed portrait and landscape frames using an incorrect aspect ratio paint texture (no more squishing and export inconsistency)
  1. This makes painting behave more like other apps
  2. Fixes low opacity values not actually actually being low because the brushes overlap



ELECTRICITY QOL

Medium battery size
Reduced medium battery size by ~15%, now fits under half walls

Tesla Coil & Igniter healing
Tesla Coils and Igniters are now healed by your tool cupboard overtime

Electrical Furnace
Now automatically turned ON or OFF depending on whether they have power

SAM Site
Added a new input to switch your SAM Site targeting mode using electricity

Solar Panel
Solar panels no longer take conditional damage when picked up

Wiring near vehicles
Vehicles no longer prevent you from wiring components



FISHING CHANGES

We’re making several fishing changes this month to try and shake up the broader fishing meta. Our current issue is that it’s quite trivial to endlessly produce fish from a safe zone, then converting that fish to scrap. It’s not the fastest way to earn scrap but it is pretty reliable.

Our intention with the range of fish available to catch was always that you would work your way up the chain - catch a sardine, use that to catch a trout, use that to catch a shark. By allowing raw fish meat to be used as a bait you could easily gut one fish and catch dozens more fish with that meat, which could then be converted into even more fish.

To break this loop, this month raw fish meat is now only worth 0.5 bait (and can be used in stacks of 3) - whole fish can (and should) be used as bait but you now run the risk of losing that fish when casting out. The idea is to introduce a risk/reward mechanic. Do you cash out with your current trout catch or do you put them on line and go for the sharks?



To balance out this reduction in bait, we’ve made several other forms of bait more useful. Several bait types can now be “stacked” - if a fish requires 5 bait to be caught and you stack two Worms worth 2.5 each, you can now catch that fish. This behaviour is applied across worms, grubs, berries and small fish, making these baits more viable. We’ve also increased the bait value of human meat (1 -> 3), bear meat (5 -> 10) and wolf meat (5-> 10). The stack amount can be seen next to the bait value when selecting the item in your inventory.

The Survival Fish Trap became a bit neglected after we introduced the Fishing Rod, so this month we’ve adjusted it to make it more relevant. The trap now uses the same underlying fish/bait system as the rod, meaning you can catch different fish in different water sources as well as catch better fish based on the bait provided. The only mechanical difference between these two fish sources is that the trap cannot catch the same fish as it has used as bait and the trap has a 50% chance to lose the bait without catching the fish.



TECH TREE COMBINING

In order to save some space in bases, I’ve modified the Tech Tree menu to now allow you to browse and unlock techs from lower Tech Trees (eg. Access T1 techs from a T2 bench, access T1 and T2 trees from a T3 bench). Use the tabs in the top left of the screen to switch between available tech trees.

The workbench tax from last month's update is applied based on the Tech Tree level, so there will be no scrap cost changes as a result of this change. The tech tree also now opens immediately when accessing the workbench, saving you a click.



RENDERER MEMORY SAVINGS

In hack week this month, I explored ways to reduce our memory usage, an area that is a real priority for us this year. While a lot of my experiments weren’t workable, one did actually end up saving several hundred megabytes of memory for very little cost, so it’s shipping as disabled by default this month.

A renderer in this case is simply a thing that is visible to the player - a crate, a rock, part of a structure, etc. Importantly for performance each renderer has LODs (Level of Detail) - lower quality versions of each renderer that we switch to based on the distance to the players perspective. In Unity each of these LODs typically lives on a child object of a master parent object, so Barrel01 will have a child Barrel01_LOD0, Barrel01_LOD1, etc that we switch to. What I discovered during hack week is that in a proc gen map of 4.5k size, we can have upwards of 1.3 million objects in the world, each of these objects has some overhead (we need to store its position, rotation, what the object does, etc). In a renderers case, for every single renderer we had 3-5 child objects, one for each LOD level.

I realised that in most cases each LOD object was just sharing a duplicate of all the information except for a different model, so I modified the system to detect when this happens and consolidate all needed information into a single object, then delete the child objects. By applying this to every renderer in the world, I was able to delete 385 thousand objects from the world, which had a combined memory saving of 484mb - pretty significant!

This combination process is run every time the game is launched, we’re currently working on a change to make most of these modifications before we build the game, which should yield further savings next month.

Due to how risky this change is (deleting 385 thousand objects has had some unintended side effects that we’ve now fixed), we’re shipping this new feature off by default, but we’ll monitor it’s usage through the month and likely turn it on by default sometime next month. The convar is graphics.collapseRendererLOD and you’ll need to restart your game after turning it on or off. Let us know how it goes for you!

tldr: 400k less objects
500mb less RAM



HORSE IMPROVEMENTS

It would be amiss to say horses have not had their share of issues over the last few months. So following community feedback I looked into a solution that would resolve the difficulties players have had with horse navigation.

Alongside some minor adjustments to prevent horses from getting stuck and preventing unnecessary stamina depletion, I introduced the ability for horses to walk backwards. This seemed like the most logical approach to alleviate horses getting stuck and should be an overall improvement to navigation.



CINEMATIC ENTITIES

I've added a few more cinematic entities this month for Rust creators to use in their video and image projects. These can be spawned by server owners/admins and can be hidden via console with pre-assigned group numbers.

The new additions include:
  • More spot and point light (red/blue/green variants)
  • Unlit backdrops and cyc walls (green/blue/black/white/grey variants)
  • Flags/cutters (small/medium/large variants)



Visibility Commands
Cinematic entities assigned to different groups which allows them to hidden if desired. Use the command cinematicentity.hideobjects followed by group numbers to hide them.

Cinematic entities are now assigned to specific group numbers which allows them to be hidden if desired. Use the command cinematicentity.hideobjects followed by one or more group numbers to set their visibility to hidden.

The groups are setup like so:
  • 0 = nothing (makes all entities visible)
  • 1 = lighting
  • 2 = backdrops
  • 3 = props
  • 4 = misc (flags/cutters)
You can hide one or multiple groups in the same command line - for example:
cinematicentity.hideobjects 1 - Hides lighting only (keeps light effect but hides the mesh)
cinematicentity.hideobjects 1 2 - Hides both lighting and backdrop meshes
cinematicentity.hideobjects 0 - Shows/un-hides all cinematic entities

You can also hide cinematic entity groups in demos with cinematicentity.demohideobjects followed by the same group numbers above. To revert to the visiblity of the entities back to their original states from the demo recording, use cinematicentity.removedemooverride



TWITCH DROPS

Join us for the Bellum Redemption event June 10th-17th!
There will be Twitch drops so be sure you get synced[twitch.facepunch.com]!

[twitch.facepunch.com]

Please be aware of scams. Facepunch will never contact you. Only ever use our official website.
https://twitch.facepunch.com/



TURRET INTERFACE VISUAL FEEDBACK

Turret interference has been effective at preventing players from surrounding their base in 100s of turrets, however it lacked feedback on how exactly to stay under the limit.

Turret interference will now be shown while holding a wire tool and looking at a turret.



It will also be shown in the hotbar while building.



While this is accurate most of the time keep in mind this only counts turrets you are authed on (it ignores enemy turrets). This mismatch is required to prevent players from holding a turret and seeing how many turrets are inside an enemy's base.


FULL DEVBLOG HERE[rust.facepunch.com]]]>
META MADNESS https://rust-servers.net/blog/302/meta-madness/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/302/meta-madness/ Thu, 02 May 2024 19:50 CEST AIMCONE REDUCTION
Any movement in rust would modify your baseline Aimcone so that shots taken while in motion were somewhat inaccurate. This was supposed to discourage "running and gunning". The problem with this is that *any* kind of motion while in a firefight puts you at a disadvantage (minor dodging) and increases the amount of RNG experienced by the player.



What I've done is reduced this penalty to zero to start, and blend it up to the full amount after 4 rapid fire shots. This means is you can now strafe and dodge while tap firing and not experience a huge aiming penalty, however full auto will be penalized.

I've also adjusted the Aimcone curve modifiers for a few weapons so that more shots have a higher probability of landing closer to the center. This has been applied to the Custom SMG, SAP and LR300.




WEAPON + ATTACHMENT UPDATES

Weapon mods have received some love this month.

BURST MOD
The duration between bursts while using the burst mod has been significantly reduced to 2x firerate instead of 3x firerate.

HOLOSIGHT
The holosight mesh has had its edges thinned so that less of your vision is obscured while using it. This is a stopgap until we produce a new model for it. I've also fixed the Holosight reticle being affected by motion blur.

MUZZLE BRAKE & BOOST
Both the muzzle brake and muzzle boost have had their negatives reduced, they now have less damage reduction and less damage falloff and should prove to be far more useful.

LR300 TWEAKS
In addition, I've made some changes to the recoil, damage fall off, bullet velocity, and burst mode of the LR300. This should now be the best in class AR.

Everything subject to change.



SAFEZONE RECYCLERS

Starting today, Recyclers in safezones have been nerfed. Their cycle time has been increased to 8 seconds and they now yield 80% of what they used to. This is the price you now must pay for safety.



However, the recyclers found at monuments have the same cycle time as before but now yield 120%! This is to reward players taking the risk out in the open.



While I am aware that a great many keyboards may be smashed as the death screen fades in over the droning hum of the active recycler, I still have hope this helps usher in a new era of roaming and monument combat.



SALE SALE SALE!

Some great items were not used because they were way too expensive. To that end I've made the following changes:
  • HV Ammo - Gunpowder cost reduced significantly, and the yield per craft increased to match non HV ammo.
  • Torpedos - Craft yield increased from 3 to 5.
  • Incendiary Rockets - The cost has been drastically reduced and their damage + flame spread increased.
  • Drones - Tech trash is no longer a requirement for drones.
  • HMLMG - Gear cost has been reduced.



EXTERNAL STRUCTURE CHANGES

Large External Gates and Walls now require the player to stand still for 1.5 seconds when placing, making them less useful for immediate PvP encounters in the wild. We felt that being able to place down such large structures in a short amount of time felt at odds with our style of combat that rewards situational awareness and environmental tactics.



WOODEN BARRICADE RESIZE



To fill the void left by the external wall changes regarding dynamic cover during PvP, we have doubled the size of the deployable wooden barricade. The wooden barricade remains instantly deployable and provides a moderate amount of cover on-demand without being overpowered or polluting the landscape with large, unsightly deployable.

This is without a doubt a large shift to PvP, we'll be monitoring these changes carefully



BRADLEY CHANGES

Some further tweaks to the Bradley this month.

Scientists now spawn in stages, based on the Bradley's health, and there's some Heavy scientists thrown in the mix now, too.

  • At 80% health, 2 scientists will spawn
  • At 60% health, 4 more will spawn
  • At 40% health, 6 final scientists will spawn



There's also been some tweaks to make some of the Scientists more aggressive and use varying attack angles.



DOOR CONTROLLER

You can now use door controllers without worrying about raiders abusing them to open your doors! This is accomplished by unpairing door controllers once your TC is destroyed & requiring code lock authorization for pairing.

They also are much easier to setup as they can now be placed just like code locks.

This should reduce the pain of constantly opening and closing the doors of your base... especially when your teammates tend to leave them open.



  • Now deployable on doors like code locks
  • Automatically paired when placed
  • Added 2 new side inputs : 'Open' and 'Toggle'
  • Unpaired when the associated tool cupboard is destroyed
We also carried on improving electricity by adjusting components and fixing various bugs this month. Thanks again to the community for reporting bugs and suggesting ideas.

The full change log of each component can be read in the section at the bottom of the blog[rust.facepunch.com].



PATROL HELICOPTER CHANGES

We know the latest helicopter changes had some mixed feedback, so we've revised them. No go zones should feel a lot more fair, and most major bugs experienced with heli since the last update are now patched.


  • Monument Crashing - the helicopter will now attempt to crash at a nearby monument on death. It won't crash at monuments with safe zones: outpost, fishing village, etc. This can be disabled by server owners via: patrolhelicopterai.monument_crashing
  • Flee Behavior - heli would previously flee when it sometimes didn't mean to. Damage to start a flee has been tweaked, ensuring a flee every time you quickly remove 30% of its overall HP.
  • Numerous Fixes & Improvements - heli will now properly target you on boats, cargo, trains and other moving entities. Targeting fixes and performance improvements have been made throughout the code. More legacy bugs: such as heli not exploding immediately on impact with certain terrain are also fixed.



LAUNCH SITE LOOT

The Launch site loot had received an overhaul. Before, the loot inside the main building shared the same respawn group as the rest of the launch site, meaning loot inside the main building was never guaranteed. Loot had a chance to spawn elsewhere at the monument, which felt discouraging when completing the puzzle and running the main building.



The main site building now has a dedicated respawn group, which guarantees 23 loot crates when the puzzle resets.

Additionally, more loot now spawns throughout the monument.



UNDERWATER IMPROVEMENTS

Underwater vision has been improved substantially. You can now see much farther when using goggles and even more so when viewing out a submarine porthole.

In addition, the surface accuracy of submarine torpedoes has been vastly improved and torpedoes were made cheaper to produce by way of an increased craft yield. Lastly, the duo submarine fires torpedoes slightly faster than the solo.




BUILDING QOL

Tool Cupboard Auth Friend
Can authorize other players on a tool cupbard
Demolish High Walls
Can demolish high walls & gates for 10min after placement
Fixed High Wall Snapping
Hold SHIFT to disable snapping
Foundation Placement
Fixed foundation placement under roofs & floors
Foundation Debris
Foundations now drop debris
Floor Debris
Floors now drop debris



TECH TREE CHANGES

We’re making some changes to how the Tech Tree works to try and incentivise new styles of play. Starting this month you will notice that the T2 and T3 workbench tech trees now have a tax rate applied to them which will increase the cost of unlocking items. We’re starting this at 10% for T2 and 20% for T3. This cost increase only applies to unlocking via the Tech Tree, researching items via the Research Table is unchanged.



Our thinking behind this is that we feel the Tech Tree progression path has become a little stale and needs to be shaken up, but we don’t want to lose the advantages that the Tech Tree brought to progression - making difficult to find blueprints attainable in a way that felt fair and not as at the mercy of RNG. While there are a number of avenues we can use to try and make both forms of progression feel more balanced this feels like a simple and understandable starting point.

As with all of our changes we’ll be closing a close eye on this and will likely make further changes in the future.





CARGO SHIP CHANGES

It’s been great to see the reception to last month's Cargo Ship/harbor update, we hope you’ve all enjoyed some very (very) intense firefights. Based on the feedback we received we’re making a couple of changes this month:
  • The Cargo Ship will now dock at both harbors (if they exist) on a map before leaving. Note that any containers that have already been placed on a ship will be deleted when it starts its approach to the next harbor.
  • You can now mouse over the ship on the map to see if it has already docked.
  • The containers that are spawned to be placed on the Cargo Ship will now be spawned when it starts its approach (about 100m away from the harbor) rather than when the ship arrives at its dock, giving you more time to hide in the containers.
  • The container spawn points have been mildly tweaked so that all of the containers should be accessible, although you might need to do some climbing.
We hope these changes make the event a bit more understandable at a glance as well as make the combat encounters more interesting.



VIEWMODEL RENDERERS

Since implementing a dedicated viewmodel renderer system back in April 2021[rust.facepunch.com], all of our viewmodels have been split between the old and new system. The primary stumbling blocks were viewmodels with lots of particle effects and lights (torches, flamethrowers, etc). While we covered most of the high impact cases of viewmodel jittering by supporting guns (how often do you use the birthday cake on oil rig?) we’ve been wanting to consolidate everything for a while. This month we’ve updated all of the viewmodels to use the new renderer so they should appear smooth and jitter free regardless of where you are in the world. The affected viewmodels:
  1. Both flamethrowers
  2. Water Bucket
  3. Beancan Grenade
  4. Molotov Cocktail
  5. Flashlight
  6. Birthday Cake
  7. Garry’s Mod Toolgun
  8. Poker playing cards
  9. Lunar New Year spear
  10. Minigun
  11. Paddle
You should see no visible changes if it's all working correctly.





AI PERFORMANCE FIXES

I've investigated and addressed a couple of AI performance issues that were causing the AI to take longer to process than necessary, especially on servers that have been running for a while.

This should help with AI server performance across the board.





EFFECTS PERFORMANCE

After noticing occasional framedrops during gunfights, I've spent some time investigating the issue and found out that our impact effects prefab warmup wasn't working as intended.

All impact effects are now warmed up correctly during loading times.

This should drastically reduce the stuttering when spawning a big amount of effects prefab for the first time (e.g when a fight starts and bullets start flying). This has a very little if no impact on loading times.



MAP UPLOADING

Procedural maps are now automatically uploaded from game servers to our backend so players can just download them instead of generating them when they first join the server.

This should significantly reduce the time it takes to join a server for the first time after it wipes. It may also reduce the number of players seeing "Rust is not responding" popups while joining servers for the first time.



HARMONY 2

Harmony is Rust's built-in modding platform shipped with the server. It powers modding frameworks like Oxide & Carbon, as well as standalone mods.

We upgraded from Harmony 1.2 -> Harmony 2.3 which brings us up to date with the latest features & additional stability.

This requires mod authors to recompile their Harmony mods. Fortunately the majority of mods only need to change a single line.

Before
using Harmony;

After
using HarmonyLib;

Players shouldn't need to worry as the majority of large servers already started updating their mods before the update went live. Server owners please keep an eye out for mod updates as every Harmony Mod will needed to be updated.



ELECTRICITY CHANGELOG

Tesla Coil, Igniter
To stop them from self-destructing, they are now disabled upon reaching <10% of their max health.
No longer take damage when picked up

Electrical Branch
Reduced minimum branch out power from 2 to 1

Button
Reduced press time from 5s to 1s

Storage Monitor
Will now recognize partial stack changes and pass power through when removing or adding a items to a stack

Splitter
Fixed power distribution issue when not all outputs were used

Memory Cell
Fixed side inputs triggerable by 0 power circuits

Timer Switch
Fixed an issue where its side input was triggered inconsistently by circuits update (e.g: industrial conveyor updating its state)

Counter
When set to 'Show Passthrough', it now displays its passthrough even if nothing is connected to its output
No longer requires a connection to its output to display its passthrough when set to 'Show Passthrough'

RF Receiver
Updated recipe:
- Metal Fragments 100 → 150
- Tech Trash 1 → 0

RF Broadcaster
Updated recipe:
- Metal Fragments 100 → 150
- Tech Trash 1 → 0

RF Transmitter
Updated recipe:
- HQM 5 → Metal Fragments 100
- Tech Trash 1 → 0

RF Pager
Updated recipe:
- Metal Fragments 50 → 100
- Tech Trash 1 → 0

AND, OR, XOR Switch
No longer emit light when unpowered

Industrial Conveyor
Can be placed upside down again

Industrial Light
No longer referred as Simple Light when looking at IO connection handles

Smart Switch
No longer referred as Switch when looking at IO connection handles]]>
COMMUNITY UPDATE 260 https://rust-servers.net/blog/301/community-update-260/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/301/community-update-260/ Thu, 25 Apr 2024 18:30 CEST RUSTIC REEF AMUSEMENT PARK
Last blog I showcased many of the big-hitters in the Rust Creative Arts community. This month they have literally combined forces to play together for an entire month and managed to make a giant amusement park on the water!

I present to you: Rustic Reef





From a life size DDR game, to a roller coaster. They even managed to mimic a ferris wheel.

The masterminds behind this project are: DaVinci, Philieve, Monstera, and Silverfox.

Philieve breaks down who's doing what and how the whole project came about.



DaVinci gives us the scenic tour!



And pyromaniac Silverfox shows off his firework skills.



I'll try and do a better job of giving you all a heads up next time they do a project like this so people can experience it in real time! Absolute legends.



ROCK - BOXING CHAMPION

Who is the greatest rock fighter in Rust? Can a "nobody" defeat the Rock - Boxing World Champion?





COUNTING SARS

Balding Bus brings us a real toe-tapper Rust parody music video!





IRL RUST ELECTRICAL

Our friend over at Real & Game has outdone himself once again.

Made an entire Rust electrical setup IRL.





TWITCH DROPS

Soon™



SHOW ME THE STUFF!

If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on X or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.
]]>
WAVES OF CHANGE https://rust-servers.net/blog/300/waves-of-change/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/300/waves-of-change/ Thu, 04 Apr 2024 19:51 CEST CARGO SHIP DOCKING
We’ve given both Harbors a fresh coat of paint this month, with a significant amount of visual and gameplay changes. These changes support the new Cargo Ship docking process, which allows the ship to adjust it's course and dock with the harbor.





Each harbor has a new island that can be reached by crossing a rotating bridge, floating containers or a daring set of jumps across cranes. This island becomes a stronghold once the Cargo Ship docks as it becomes sheltered from the rest of the harbor.



The ship will pick the first harbor it passes to dock and will only dock once. Once docked, the cranes in the Harbor will spring into life and move several containers from the docks onto the deck of the ship. These containers have openable doors and can be hidden in, so they present a new way to smuggle aboard the ship and another threat for players already on the ship to contend with. These containers will be deposited in locations that are generally above the deck, in some cases by several meters. This should present an interesting tactical situation when attacking the ship as well as defending it.

We’ve also added two ship doors above the water line that allow access to the lower interior level of the ship and provide additional ways to board or traverse the monument while the ship is docked.



By default the Cargo Ship replenishes it's loot every 10 minutes - up to 3 times. When the ship docks at the harbor it will attempt to trigger one of those loot refreshes, although if all three have already happened it will be unable to spawn any more loot.

The Cargo Ship horn will sound 60 seconds prior to it's departure - once you hear that horn it's time to get moving or you might end up back out at sea.

We think these changes combined will lead to Cargo Ship being a much more contested PvP environment for groups of all sizes. We're also interested to see how a traditionally lower intensity monument like the Harbors adjust to periodic bouts of high intensity action.


OILRIGS

The Oilrigs receive an upgrade this month, with an underwater access. This new way to get onto the Oilrig will add a path into both structures Level 3 floors.

This provides a different, and possibly safer way into the monument. It is also a way to counter the players on board by short circuiting the docks at the rigs water line.








The extra rooms inside see the addition of a CCTV desk that allows you to observe in place the camera feeds of the monument.



MINIGUN

The iconic minigun has been added to the game which is used by the Heavy Scientists. It takes a moment to spin up, but when it does, it unleashes a massive amount of ammunition, making targets much easier to hit.



It's a rare drop useable by players and you must be at a workbench level 2 to add ammunition to it as it cannot be reloaded in the field. It also takes 1.5 seconds to spin up and lowers your movement speed while the spin is engaged.



RETRO TOOL CUPBOARD

We're thrilled to announce Rust's first-ever tool cupboard DLC skin! The Retro Tool Cupboard can be crafted as usual using the skin picker or applied to an existing Tool Cupboard using the Spray can item.



The Retro Tool Cupboard monitors display live information such as upkeep time, resources, and the number of blocks used to calculate upkeep costs. However, the data is only visible on the monitors when authorized.



The Retro Tool cupboard doesn't require power, the lower half of the Retro Tool Cupboard behind the glass panel displays current inventory upkeep amounts and tools.




When approaching the Retro Tool cupboard design, we felt aesthetics were critical. The tool cupboard is the heart of any base and should be instantly recognizable.



You can purchase Retro Tool cupboard skin in-game or at Steam's item store.



MILITARY FLAMETHROWER

In addition to the minigun, the Heavy Scientists have had their arsenal upgraded with a new, military tier flamethrower. This weapon deals massive damage to targets up to 12 meters away and creates walls of fire - which can be used for area denial.



I've also modified how flamethrowers deal damage to players making them an extremely effective PvP weapon.



PATROL HELICOPTER IMPROVEMENTS

The patrol helicopter was one of the largest banks of 'older' code still in the game. It's stood up well, but there were a bunch of fixes and improvements that needed to happen. Let's start with the improvements.

Orbital Strafing/Strafing Changes
The regular helicopter attack strafe was getting pretty old. It followed a regular pattern and most of our values were fixed internally. This has been changed. During an attack run the helicopter will randomise a bunch of values, including: rocket amount, drop off distance, turn speed etc. These are relatively minor adjustments, but they should help make each new fight with the helicopter feel a little more fresh.

We also added a new attack phase in the strafing run. The helicopter will turn, begin orbiting your position and pummel you with rockets from all directions. This will randomly happen after each strafe. It's super fun to play, and helps bring back the excitement and danger of taking heli.



Aggro Improvements
A new 'zones' feature has been introduced. These are invisible to the player. When a player damages heli a zone is updated/created and the zone is assigned a score. This score is based on how much damage heli has taken from that specific zone.

Heli will now seek out targets based on zones and damage scores rather than the perceived randomness of before. When there are minimal players and by extension - minimal zones. Heli will work similarly to before, but when more zones are introduced heli will prioritise attacking the people that are attacking it, in a more controlled and deliberate manner.

You are still free pickings to the side gunners, but your house shouldn't be blasted anymore in the confusion.

No-Go Zones
When taking heli, the basic principle is to get, and keep aggro. No-Go zones make this a little more difficult, and now encourage some movement when taking heli. When a zone performs enough damage to heli too quickly, then that zone is marked as a no-go zone. Heli will flee the area, and attempt to avoid it as best as it can. This is to encourage heli to get out of areas that are going to kill it too quickly. Encouraging bigger groups to chase, build defenses as they go and bring more PVP to the whole map.

Bug Fixes/Changes
A bunch of legacy bugs that existed with heli are now patched. These include being stuck on targets, disappearing mid-fight, not exploding in the ocean, as well as a bunch of proxy issues that were fixed by the aggro adjustments. Other adjustments have also been made to how heli patrols work, and you should see it moving around a bit more now, rather than just sticking to the monuments.

Server Convars
  • patrolhelicopterai.use_danger_zones - this will enable/disable the no go and aggro zones. When turned off, the helicopter will largely behave the way it used to with target picking and aggression.
  • patrolhelicopterai.flee_damage_percentage - this sets the required percentage of damage done to heli in order for it to flee and create a no-go zone. A value of 1 or over will effectively disable no go zones and stop the flee mechanic.

It will no doubt need some further revisions and changes after this release. Keep us updated on how your heli takes go. Have fun!



ELECTRICITY

This month we are taking care of our fellow electricians! Bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and major changes are coming to electricity.

CHANGES
First of all, we removed any power requirements from all logic gates.

Being creative and adding logic to your circuits won't be at the expense of acquiring a linear or exponential amount of power any more. While being a great quality of life for master electricians, we also believe that removing this pain point will increase the use of electricity in general.



Therefore, the following components won't require power or drain batteries anymore:
  • Splitter
  • Electrical Branch
  • Blocker
  • Root Combiner
  • Memory Cell
  • RAND Switch
  • XOR Switch
  • AND Switch
  • OR Switch
  • Timer
  • Switch
  • Smart Switch
  • Counter
  • Pressure Pad
  • Button

Any other active components like turrets, sensors, lights, etc.. remain unchanged and will still need power to function.

BUG FIXES
These power limitations were also overly amplified by a multitude of power drain bugs and unintended behaviors that we worked on fixing.

Here are the most important ones:
  • Fixed AND, & OR gates draining batteries on both sides instead of only the side with the highest power input
  • Fixed auxiliary inputs/outputs draining power unnecessarily
  • Fixed memory cell draining battery on both sides instead of from the active output
  • Prevent electrical branch from draining power when nothing is connected to its branch out side
  • Fixed unpowered components draining batteries, much more common now that branches do not waste power anymore

QUALITY OF LIFE
Along these changes, we worked on improving how you deploy electrical components:
Fixed the differences between the deploy guide and the actual position where your component is placed
Components are now aligned to walls and won't rotate based on your view angle
You can now align your components together when deploying them on walls by holding left shift

This applies to all electricity, industrial and fluid items. We're planning on extending it to any type of deployable in the future.

NEXT STEPS
There as more fixes and improvements that didn't make it into this patch. Expect more in the coming months, including plans to rework some components and extending their functionalities.

Many thanks to our electricians community for pointing out bugs and suggesting ideas.

FULL CHANGELOG

Splitter
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
  • Now distributes power evenly across all outputs and add any remaining power to the earliest outputs, ensuring no power loss
Electrical Branch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
  • Won't drain any power when nothing is connected to its left side
Blocker
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0

Root Combiner
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0

Memory Cell
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
  • Fixed draining battery on both sides instead of from the active output
  • Fixed power passthrough being shown on both outputs instead of on the active one
  • Side inputs won’t drain power any more
RAND Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
  • Now passes power when ON and blocks power when OFF
  • Now resets to OFF
XOR Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0

AND Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
  • Fixed batteries getting drained when only one side is powered
OR Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
  • Fixed batteries getting drained on both sides instead of only the side with the highest power input (if both input have the same power, the first input is chosen by default)
Timer
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
  • Side inputs won’t drain power any more
  • Now configurable when unpowered
Switch
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
  • Fixed aux inputs draining power
  • Fixed aux inputs passing power through
  • Fixed red LED not showing up when receiving power but toggled off
Counter
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
Max target number: 100 -> 999
  • Side inputs won’t drain power any more
  • Fixed power passing power through when under their target value
Pressure Pad
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0
  • Fixed blocking power passthrough for a bit when triggered
Button
Power Consumption: 1 -> 0
Active Usage: 1 -> 0

Laser Detector
  • Now deployable on any surface angle
  • Tweaked handles position to make it easier to wire
Ceiling Light
  • Fixed being powerable using only 1 power instead of 2
Flasher Light
  • Restored blue material emission when ON
  • Tweaked handles position to make it easier to wire
Reactive Target
  • Now resets itself automatically only after being knocked down
  • Won't generate and pulse 1 power when lowered manually
  • When both lower and reset inputs are powered, the one with the highest power takes over
Industrial Conveyor
  • Fixed aux output passing 1 power regardless of the current energy
Industrial Crafter
  • Now drains 1 power correctly when ON
Small Generator
  • Aux inputs won’t drain any power any more



ANTI-CHEAT UPDATE

At the beginning of the year, In the development blog Surviving a Decade, I mentioned, "This year we're dedicating more resources into anti-cheat than ever", this is a commitment we're dedicated to, and I want to share more information about what we've been up too.

Over the past couple of months, we have slowly eliminated or limiting information leaks which cheaters abuse to aid them in several ways. For example, players health, Tool Cupboards and turret authorization lists could be read in the network data, allowing cheaters to use and gain a further unfair advantage. These are now fixed.

In continuing efforts to battle cheaters and clean up many long-standing issues, especially around information leaks, buried stashes are no longer networked, meaning cheaters will no longer know where stashes are buried.

There is much more to be done in this area, and we are working on it.

Expanding the support team size over the past year has allowed us to get more support staff focusing on anti-cheat, which includes going in-game and dealing with and disrupting cheaters directly based on player reports. Some staff over the coming months will be dedicated solely to anti-cheat measures full-time. This isn't limited to Facepunch servers, but across the board.

In addition to the above, we've deployed some stricter measures surrounding anti-cheating, eliminated several priority exploits, and will deploy further measures soon.

In the last month:
  • 26,954 bans have been applied
  • 22,542 of which were permanent
  • 4,412 of which were temporary
  • 949,422 cheating reports received
  • 90.8% of bans were applied automatically
  • Since the 1st January 2024:
  • 84,753 bans have been applied
  • 71,371 of which were permanent
  • 13,382 of which were temporary
  • 3,116,133 cheating reports received
  • 92.9% of bans were applied automatically
Based on fiscal quarters:
  • 72,849 bans applied in 2023 Q1
  • 65,608 bans applied in 2023 Q2
  • 81,682 bans applied in 2023 Q3
  • 55,672 bans applied in 2023 Q4
  • 81,084 bans applied in 2024 Q1
Notes
  • Bans are placed for multiple reasons, the numbers above do not strictly reflect only cheat-related bans, but cheat-related bans do make up the vast majority of bans.
  • A single player can receive multiple bans, for example, if a user is temporarily banned and then later switched to a permanent ban, this is counted as 2 bans in the above metrics.



BRADLEY SCIENTISTS

The Bradley has some new passengers this month!

Scientists can now deploy from the Bradley to help defend it with some extra firepower.



This applies to both the Launch Site Bradley and the Bradley that spawns along roads at the end of the month.



IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS

Seed Sack World Model
Added new seed world model

Mushroom World Model
Added mushroom world model

Monument CCTV Station
New dedicated CCTV station within monuments



SRV DNS SUPPORT

I added support for SRV DNS record to Rust. This means you can now create nice domain names for your servers without needing to specify the port (or be forced into the default port).

I also used this added information to improve the favorites list. Servers that have a working DNS record set up would save the domain name when favoriting so that favorites should never break as long as the domain name is pointing to the right place.

More information on how to set this up is on the wiki[wiki.facepunch.com].



PING ESTIMATION

If you have searched for new servers in the browser you probably noticed the large amount of fake ping: it's impossible to have 30ms ping to both a US and EU server. This is a side effect of certain forms of DDOS protection and has forced us to create a custom system to estimate ping rather than use steam's ping value.



There is a new checkbox below "Use Cache" called "Estimate Ping". We will enable this by default in the future once we confirm the estimated values are more accurate than the existing ones.


FULL BLOG POST
[rust.facepunch.com]]]>
EASTER 2024 https://rust-servers.net/blog/299/easter-2024/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/299/easter-2024/ Thu, 21 Mar 2024 20:02 CET EGG HUNT
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.

Have fun!


CHICKEN COSTUME

This year we've added a new costume DLC attire, the chicken costume! The chicken costume is a lower body attire which can be crafted with cloth and wood.



You can find the clucking chicken costume in Rust item store along witht he rest of our Seasonal items!

]]>
LIGHTING 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 CET TUTORIAL 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.

Head here to grab both games now!


EASTER UPDATE

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!
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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 CET ART, 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.


Something from the man himself.



This art gallery though...


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.
  • Adhered to our TOS[facepunch.com] and Code of Conduct[facepunch.com].
  • 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 CET LUNAR 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 CET 10 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! :steamthumbsup:
]]>
MERRY RUSTMAS! https://rust-servers.net/blog/292/merry-rustmas/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/292/merry-rustmas/ Sat, 16 Dec 2023 15:24 CET MERRY 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.

[twitch.facepunch.com]

Learn more at twitch.facepunch.com



RUSTMAS BASE DECORATION CONTEST

We are excited to announce the annual Rustmas base decorating competition is back!

We're looking for the best festive base Rust has ever seen!



Winner
£120 worth of skins of their choosing and two Rust DLC/Items.

Runner up
£75 worth of skins of their choosing and one Rust DLC/Item.

How To Submit
Once you’ve completed decorating your base, take some screenshots or video and upload them to X/Twitter using the hashtag #Rustmas2023

The winner and runner up will be announced from Rust's Official X/Twitter account on January 12th.

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 CET RUST 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
  • Optimized 2D painting implementation so long, quick strokes don't kill framerate


SHADOW INTENSITY POLISH

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!





TWITCH SUPPORT A STREAMER

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! 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!

https://rust.facepunch.com/support-a-streamer



TWITCH RIVALS

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.

Learn more about this event at Twitch Rivals[schedule.twitchrivals.com]
Learn more about drops at http://twitch.facepunch.com/




RUST INSIGHTS

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 CET STEAM 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!

More info & FAQs:
https://rust.facepunch.com/support-a-streamer


BLOOPRINT 2M SUBSCRIBERS

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 CET ABOVE 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!)

Short demonstration here[files.facepunch.com].

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 CEST SPOOKY 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.

Cover image by LostDoesArt!


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 CEST HAPPY 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 CEST TURRET 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.

Make sure to get synced! https://twitch.facepunch.com/

Main Event!
October 14th & 15th

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]!

Get Involved!
Want to donate?

Full event and participation info can be found at https://www.charitablerust.com/

Keep an eye on our socials for more info in the upcoming weeks.




Full changelog here.[rust.facepunch.com]
]]>
COMMUNITY UPDATE 256 https://rust-servers.net/blog/284/community-update-256/ https://rust-servers.net/blog/284/community-update-256/ Fri, 22 Sep 2023 19:41 CEST CHARITABLE RUST 2023 - WATER


Twitch Drops!
October 12th - October 19th

Watch your favorite streamers and earn Twitch drops all week.

Make sure to get synced! https://twitch.facepunch.com/


Main Event!
October 14th & 15th

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?

Full event and participation info can be found at https://www.charitablerust.com/

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.



If you missed last month's community blog, check out the real-life Rust weapons rack[rust.facepunch.com].


IMPROVEMENTS & FIXES HIGHLIGHTS

Pumpjack & Quarry
Pumpjack & Quarry model have received a refresh

Hot Air Balloon Fuel
The Hot Air Balloon now uses slightly less fuel

Furnace Skin Glow
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.

[twitch.facepunch.com]

Get your watch time in!

Be sure to get synced at https://twitch.facepunch.com/ so you can successfully claim your drops.


RUST INSIGHTS

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 CEST TWITCH 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!

Be sure to get synced at https://twitch.facepunch.com/connect so you can successfully claim your drops.


CHARITABLE RUST SKIN CONTEST[rust.facepunch.com]



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.

Entry deadline is August 29th!


REDDIT INSIGHTS[rust.facepunch.com]

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!


IRL WEAPON RACKS[rust.facepunch.com]

No sooner did this hit the staging (beta) announcements and our friend over at Real & Game made some IRL weapon racks in what felt like a few days.



https://files.facepunch.com/Errn/1b2111b1/IMG_20230730_231100.jpg


He also recorded his whole process. This is pretty impressive!



Drilled all 600 holes by hand.


WEED FARMERS[rust.facepunch.com]

We have another banger from the Weed Farmers!

Bandit Camp is the promiseland.




SHOW ME THE STUFF!

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 CEST WOUNDED 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 CEST RUSTOPIA 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!


SHARK BAIT

Alpha brings us another amazing cinematic short.

JAWS



Cover image by Alpha as well!


I WANT IT THAT WAY

I'm just going to leave this here.



What a bop.


TWITCH HIGHLIGHTS

Riqqeloff[clips.twitch.tv] is shooting fish in a barrel scrappy.

JENCEEEENAAAAAA[clips.twitch.tv]

Poor Bloo[clips.twitch.tv] ...lol


LOOTROOM

Last week Lootroom[lootroom.com] teased us with a tweet of an IRL Gamba Wheel.

I can think of about 14 streamers that need this.

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.
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