[2022] March 2022 Update

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Monument Lighting
This month we’ve made visual improvements to some of our older monuments to get them more consistent with the quality of our new content. This includes changes such as adding darkening volumes to interiors to prevent them from becoming too bright during the day, adding new lights and effects, tweaking existing lighting and other minor visual improvements.




As a result, the interiors should feel much darker and more atmospheric. The monuments that we’ve changed so far are the Supermarket, Oxum's Gas Station, Bandit Camp and Launch Site and we plan to improve more of them over time.



Soundtrack Release


This month we're really excited to announce the release of Rust's official soundtrack - available now on Steam, music streaming services and a handful of digital stores. This initial release (Volume 1) is comprised of 29 tracks clocking in around 1 hour and 45 minutes of music.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1701720/Rust_Soundtrack/

Alex originally wrote a lot of these songs for our update videos but he's been expanding them into more fleshed out, standalone pieces of music. There's also some songs he has written to fit the occasional calm moment in game that you won't have heard at all yet.

Alex is in the process of getting these songs chopped up and implemented to playback dynamically in game as well. Around half of the new tracks are ready in this update, and the rest should follow shortly.

Listen now on your favourite music streaming platforms, including:

Spotify[open.spotify.com]
Apple Music[music.apple.com]
Bandcamp[facepunch.bandcamp.com]
YouTube Music
Amazon Music[music.amazon.com]
And many more digital music stores!


Improved vehicle body visuals


This month we've been exploring new ways to improve the visual experience when driving vehicles. While we initially explored dedicated viewmodels for vehicles (floating arms in front of the camera) we settled on using the full body mesh with tweaked hand logic. You can see this most obviously on the Snowmobile, the driver seat of Modular Cars and the Workcart, while it's visible but less obvious on the Minicopter and Scrap Transport Helicopter.

This approach allows us to highlight the hand IK on vehicles like snowmobiles and cars so you can see your arms turning. There's also some subtle camera movement if the player model leans or moves (like on the Snowmobile).




Magnet Crane Cleanup


We looked at the junkyard magnet crane this month to see if some bugs and the general feel of it could be improved.

It's now a bit more stable to drive, and old issues like the driver not quite visually syncing up with the cabin as it rotates are fixed.

Another concern with the crane was that with its controls being pretty complex, it was easy to burn through your fuel just learning them. To combat that, we've reduced the fuel it uses at idle by 80%, and the maximum fuel it uses when not holding anything by 25%. So if you're just practicing moving the magnet arm and rotating the cabin, your fuel will only be being consumed at 20% of the rate it was before.

Snowmobile Cleanup
We added some small final touches to the snowmobiles.

Most were minor bug fixes, but an obvious one is that animations are improved, with the driver now getting visually bumped around at times, and showing an idle animation cycle. Audio is improved as well, with the snowmobile revving more realistically when driving up hills.

For game balance, the arctic base snowmobile no longer comes loaded with any fuel.


World Model Update
There are some assets that need world models and some that needed refreshing so towards the end of last year Tom completed a number of new and updated world models, these are now in-game!




General QOL

• Slower Car Decay - Cars decay 4x slower when left outdoors
  
• Alt Look Restrictions - Restrict how far up a player can look with alt look while looking down
  
• Water catchers & barrels now decay - Should lower the number of catchers and barrels that are left outside
  
• Large Furnace Heat - Large furnaces now provide comfort and heat
  
• Monument Loot Hiding - Monument loot no longer spawns when players are within 20m of the spawn point
  
• Phantom Footsteps- We believe we've now fixed a long standing issue of hearing phantom footsteps

Night Vision and post fixes


We've had reports of the NVG effect being blown out for a while. When we looked into it, we realised that it only looks incorrect on procedural maps.

After a lot of digging, we found that there was a post process volume placed inside one of moon pools set to global rather than local erroneously.

This means that it was being applied all of the time and messing with exposure settings. This also means that it's had an effect on the overall exposure of the game for while also, although this has been a bit less apparent than with NVG.


Search and loading screen update
The loading screen was long overdue for a revamp, you'll now see server stats and a more clear tooltip sections while loading into the server of choice.



In a future update, the background image will randomly change through a preselected gallery on each load.

Additionally, we've added support for tag filtering to the server browser to make finding servers of interest easier.




Changelog

• Added support for tag filtering to the server browser
  
• Added new in game music
  
• Added 14 new world models
  
• Updated loading screen
  
• Improved arm and body visuals on some vehicles
  
• Improved 3rd person keycard animation
  
• Can no longer reskin doors that are open
  
• Can now switch to and from Ice Rifle skin regardless of ammo or attachments
  
• Added support for infinitely scrolling MIDI knob convar bindings (see MidiConvar.BindKnobRelative convar)
  
• Restricted how far a player can alt look up when looking down
  
• IO Entities can now decay (fixes Water Barrel, Water Catcher, Above Ground Pool, Boom box, CCTV, Connected Speaker, Counter, Disco Floor, Sprinkler, Wind Mill, Car Lift, Paddling Pool, SAM turret, Search Light, Smart Alarm, Solar Panel, Sound Lights, Telephone, Water Pump not decaying when placed outside of a base)
  
• Removed slot 8 input bind
  
• Renamed slot 7 input bind to "Holster Item"
  
• When opening the inventory the currently equipped belt item will automatically be selected
  
• Modular cars take 4x longer to decay
  
• Increased local player voice volume when recording a cassette
  
• Junkyard magnet crane is more stable to drive
  
• Junkyard magnet crane now uses 80% less fuel when not driving around, and 25% less fuel when not carrying anything on its magnet
  
• Added Always Sprint to the game options. If enabled, sprint key behaviour is inverted. Player sprints by default, and holding the sprint key will return them to walk speed
  
• Improved lighting in the Supermarket, Oxum's Gas Station, Bandit Camp and Launch Site
  
• Large furnace now provides a small amount of heat and comfort
  
• Added BuildingDark and BuildingVeryDark volumes for map makers
  
• Polar bear should no longer migrate to warmer climates
  
• Horses now trigger pressure pads
  
• Fixed a case where changing weapon while gesturing would lead to incorrect viewmodels (missing attachments)
  
• Fixed case where changing clothing while inventory was full would sometimes incorrectly delete an item
  
• Fixed rounding issue when using Pure Ore Teas leading to an ore node giving 1501-1505 resources (now gives 1500)
  
• Fixed some out of date radio stations
  
• Fixed phantom footsteps continuously playing
  
• Fixed incorrect sfx footsteps playing
  
• Fixed modular cars using no fuel if they had multiple engine modules and one of those modules had no components
  
• Fixed magnet crane arm movement speed slowing down at low server framerates
  
• Fixed magnet crane driver not syncing up visually with the crane itself when rotating the cabin
  
• Fixed magnet crane magnet hurting the driver if it was positioned as close as possible to the cabin
  
• Fixed magnet crane treads sometimes animating in the wrong direction when turning
  
• Fixed the snowy edges of ice lakes also being considered ice by modular cars and snowmobiles
  
• Fixed the Tomaha suspension snapping to the wrong position when active updates stopped
  
• Fixed a sleeper loot exploit
  
• Fixed CCTV clipping exploit
  
• Fixed BBQ looting exploit
  
• Fixed pickle jar desc typo
  
• Fixed Excavator puzzle reset bounds exceeding the prevent building volume, causes player to die when logged out
  
• Fixed missing passthrough name on DLC industrial wall lights
  
• Fixed oil hunt mission reward only being 50 scrap
  
• Arctic base snowmobile no longer comes with 20 low grade fuel
  
• Arctic base snowmobile garage no longer spawns puzzle loot