[2022] Above-ground Trains Update

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

Above-Ground Trains
We wanted to get some trains onto the above-ground rails this month.

We have some more train content in the works, but for this initial release we're mostly reusing existing assets in order to provide something to try out until that content is ready.



The above-ground Work Cart closely resembles the underground one, but now has coupling points at each end that can connect to other train cars. The bogies (also known as trucks - the wheel assemblies) have also been updated to rotate with the track more realistically.



We've taken some static train wagon models that we had and made them functional. These don't actually do anything special yet, but they spawn along with Work Carts on the new rail sidings and they can be shunted around.



The Work Cart train engines take low grade fuel as usual. Their target speeds at low/medium/high throttle are constant, but their acceleration and pulling ability are affected by gravity and how many couples wagons they're pulling as you'd expect. If your long train can't make it up a hill, it's possible to use multiple Work Carts in a multi-engine coupled setup for more power.



Coupling happens automatically when wagons collide at a low to moderate speed. High speed collisions will not couple, and may take damage instead. Uncoupling is manual - simply interact with the coupling point.



Rail Network Branch Lines


The rail network has received secondary lines that branch off the main line and merge back onto it. This all happens entirely procedurally with no need for predetermined prefabs aside from the rail mesh itself, which results in a very flexible system that can cover a wide range of use cases as we expand the rail network in the future. For now, these branch lines are just where the trains are spawning. We will see how things work out and go from there.


Rail and road foliage improvements


The foliage / bushes spawning next to rails and roads have received some optimizations to eliminate their overhead as you move around the world. They now also spawn in larger clusters with varying coverage, resulting in some dense areas and some open areas, which allowed us to also reduce their total count as a performance improvement without having it affect the visuals too much.

Zipline Improvements


Ziplines seemed to be well used last month, but there were too many cases of ziplines failing to connect, leading to zipline platforms with no connections. I've improved the procedural generation process this month in a few different ways.

Ziplines are now better at routing around obstacles, allowing ziplines to go via 2 separate mid-points before arriving at their destination. I also added zipline arrival points at Sewer Branch, Stables, Lighthouse and Dome.

All of these changes combined have improved the number of ziplines on procedural maps by about 40%.


Death screen Improvements


The death screen has been improved this month with many NPC's getting custom icons and proper translations. We've also improved how we show your death information if you suicide while downed. Previously doing this would result in the death screen showing your death as a suicide, preventing you from seeing the name and weapon of your attacker. This is now fixed and you will see the last attack details even if you suicide while downed.



Client Performance
Client performance was identified as a growing issue last month so we all put some time aside to try and improve performance this month. We've made good progress in some key areas:

• Fixed a regression introduced last month that was generating a lot of garbage and causing stutters. This was deemed high enough priority that we released it in a hotfix early in the month.
  
• Identified a bug that was preventing lasers and some other heavy systems from budgeting their performance correctly (This was also affecting server performance).
  
• Significantly reduced network traffic from planters and plants getting watered by sprinklers.

Performance is always a high priority for us and we've got more improvements being worked on for future updates.

General QOL
SAM Site Damage - SAM Site can no longer be damaged by bullet type damage

Junkpile scientists - NPCs have returned to junkpile spawns


Community UI Improvements
We've integrated several pull requests from the Community UI Github project this month, bringing improvements like blocking keyboard input while in text boxes, better item and skin rendering as well as fixing a handful of bugs. Thank you to Ailtop, Jake-Rich, shooter46 and Mughisi for the contributions.

We have some more improvements to this system in the works, specifically to improve rendering and network performance on rapidly updated UI displays.


Hapis Island
Some of you have been waiting for Hapis Island to return after last year's graphical overhaul broke it. This is just a little heads-up to tell you that we are aiming for it to finally go live again in next month's patch.

Twitch Drops
Starting from today till May 12th 23:59UTC Twitch drops are enabled for Rust Twitch streamers. You can earn special and unique skins simply by watching your favourite Rust Twitch streamers.



During the final 24 hours of the Rust Twitch drop campaign, all drops will be moved to general.

Learn more at twitch.facepunch.com.


Changelist

• Added rail network branch lines
  
• Added above-ground trains
  
• Added 4 type of train wagons
  
• Improved client performance
  
• Improved zipline placement and monument integration
  
• Reduced network traffic of sprinklers watering large amounts of filled planters
  
• (Community UI) Added support for natively showing item icons (thanks Mughisi)
  
• (Community UI) Added support for read only and multi line InputFields (thanks shooter46)
  
• (Community UI) Added support for the NeedsKeyboard component
  
• (Community UI) Adding "needsKeyboard" to an InputField will block keyboard input only while that input field is focused
  
• Improved and fixed several issues in collection of official server analytics
  
• Improved rail and road foliage performance and visuals
  
• SAM Site can no longer be damaged by bullet type damage
  
• Reduce the chance of vehicle parts from junkpile_j
  
• Fixed grenade launcher reload error when first person spectating
  
• Fixed long ziplines disappearing when the player is at the end of the line
  
• Fixed a bug that was disabling the performance budget of budgeted systems (lasers, walk animations, etc)
  
• Fixed incorrect prevent building bounds when building around zipline wires
  
• Fixed very long ziplines disappearing when a player was near the end of the line
  
• Fixed several overly strict antihack configs resulting in unable to damage construction
  
• (Community UI) Fix countdown not working (thanks Ailtop)
  
• (Community UI) Fix RectTransform only being added when a graphic component is added (thanks Jake-Rich)
  
• Fixed junkyard keycard not respawning