[2022] Zipline & Rail Update

Procedural Rail Network
The first iteration of the procedural rail network is now live! Any map size 4250 or larger should have a single railway in the shape a ring going around the entire island.



This is just a tech test / proof of concept for now, so there's no official gameplay element to it yet. Please report any weird looking areas you might encounter.



In the near future, you can expect driveable above-ground trains.


Powerline Ziplines
Powerlines have had an upgrade this month, with new platforms and ziplines now appearing across procedurally generated maps. To access the zipline you'll need to climb to the top of the new platforms that are attached to some powerlines. Once at the top, you can use the zipline to travel to another platform further along the chain of powerlines or to nearby monuments.



You can speed up on the line by holding forward and jump off at anytime with the jump key (just be careful of the drop!). Colliding with anything solid while on the line will also knock you off the line, this includes trees, players and vehicles, so use with care.



We'll be improving the generation of these over time to connect more monuments, as well as exploring ways for players to place their own ziplines in the future.


Achievements
Since launching out of early access in 2018 Rust's achievements have served as a way for new players to learn the basics of the game. Unfortunately they haven't kept up with the amount of new content added to the game every month so we've made a set of 18 new achievements to earn. As usual, achievements can only be earned on official servers.




Monument Lighting Continued
We have continued improving the lighting setup for our monuments. This month we have focused mainly on the monuments such as; Lighthouse, Fishing Villages, Stables, Excavator, Arctic Research Base and Airfield.



The degree of improvements varies depending on the monument. Some of the newer monuments like Fishing Villages, Stables and Excavator received only minor updates. This includes changes such as adding darkening volumes to interiors, adding new ambient lights and enabling interior lights during the daytime.



Other monuments like Lighthouse and Arctic Research base received more extensive upgrades, which includes a whole lot of new lights, that will make the monuments significantly brighter during nighttime and more atmospheric during daytime.



The monument that received the biggest upgrade this month is the Airfield. Here we have added not only new lights and darkening volumes, but also tweaked some materials and added a lot of new prop dressing to bring it to the same level of quality of our newer monuments.





General QOL

• Landmine Update - The landmine has received a visual refresh
  
• Loading Background - Loading screen image will now alternate between images
  
• Magnet Crane - Further improvements to the junkyard magnet crane handling

Steam Networking
We have updated Steam Networking to the latest version, which comes with a number of important performance improvements. It's still disabled by default, but we will run some tests on various official servers to provide feedback to Valve regarding any potential issues. In the medium term, we hope to switch all servers to Steam Networking by default.


Official server analytics
Balancing Rust can be a daunting prospect given the wide variety of play styles and content. With that in mind, this month we're releasing our first pass of server analytics for official servers so we can start to gather some data about how you play Rust. While this will be invisible to you, we're hoping to use this data to better allocate resources to parts of the game that need work as well as identifying balance issues.

If you're playing on an official server, thanks in advance for helping us out. We'll be sure to share any interesting stats that pop up.


Twitch Rivals
On April 14th at 8:00 pm GMT a team of 80 well known Twitch creators with 40 players from North America (team Disguised Toast) will face off against a team of 40 players from Europe and Latin America (team Alexby11) in this massive global Rust competition, taking place over 48 hours with a prize pool worth $100k.

During the Twitch Rivals event, Rust Twitch drops will be enabled for 3 days from selected participating channels, well-known streamers such as hJune, xQcOW, Welyn, Silithur, BaboAbe, sykkuno, Ray__C, LakshartNia and of course the team captains Alexby11 and Disguised Toast.



Over the course of the 48 hours, teams will build up their bases and supplies. During this time, teams can gain access to additional resources by getting kills, completing objectives, and claiming crate drops. The final hour of the competition will be an all-out battle, as both teams try to raid the opposing base. The team that collects the most dog tags will win.

We'd like to thank Rustoria for working with us and Twitch to make this event possible.

Learn more at twitch.facepunch.com


Easter Event
On April 14th at 19:00 BST / 18:00 UTC / 14:00 EST we'll be releasing an optional update to enable this year's Easter egg hunt event, more details to follow in an upcoming blog on the 14th.


Changelog

• Powerline ziplines
  
• 18 new achievements
  
• Server analytics on official servers
  
• Added dog tags (for event use only)
  
• Generic snowmobile model updated to include visible lights
  
• Updated landmine model
  
• Magnet crane pedals now animate and have IK for the driver's feet
  
• Added a blue light to the Magnet Crane c*ckpit. When the magnet crane cabin is within 10 degrees of facing straight forward, it lights up
  
• Holding the crouch key while in the Magnet Crane now automatically rotates the cabin back to zero
  
• Debug camera controls while spectating or in demos now uses the players movement bindings instead of WASD
  
• Made lighting improvements to Airfield, Arctic Research Base, Excavator, Fishing Villages, Lighthouse and Stables monuments
  
• Loading screen now alternates between a selection of images
  
• Hopeful fix to prevent certain crashes when switching servers
  
• Fixed missing passthrough name on DLC industrial wall lights
  
• Fixed camper module rear lights not working correctly
  
• Fixed magnet crane physics behaving strangely when the magnet arm was extended far out in front
  
• Magnet crane is now much less prone to 'digging in' its magnet arm, getting it stuck in the ground without being able to easily back out
  
• Fixed players being able to grip on to the sides of the train tunnel elevator shaft while falling down it
  
• Fixed not being able to kick passengers from the taxi module
  
• Fixed not being able to hear notes played from deployed instruments while mounted to something
  
• Fixed the helmet slit overlay blocking the status effect UI, and fixed the scope overlay being in front of the helmet slit overlay
  
• Fixed the autoturret idle animation moving more slowly at higher server framerates
  
• Fixed Rust's graphics Quality setting defaulting to 0/6 ("Super Potato") on first install. Set the default to 4/6 ("Good")
  
• Fixed loading screen text overflow
  
• Fixed Ice AK showing an extra particle effect in first person