This week is Hack Week for the RUST team! During this quick sprint, the team spends time working on their ideas for interesting features for the game. You might remember a few Hack Week graduates who made it into RUST in the past, like the Emoji System and weapon racks! This week, a handful of new ideas have sprung up in the commits, and we’ll go over some of them now!
Hack Week projects
We’re curious about which Hack Week projects you are excited about or would like to see implemented in RUST. Pick your top two choices below if you’d like to contribute your vote to our poll. Read the sections below for more information about each project if you aren’t settled on a favorite yet.
Voxel raiding
Imagine watching bits of wall fall away as you’re rocketing through a neighbor’s defenses. You’d get a bit of an insight into what’s on the other side of the wall before fully committing and get the satisfaction of seeing just how poorly designed the interior may be.
This feature sounds pretty great from the raider’s perspective. I’m not sure how the owner would feel about wall holes revealing the other side with much less effort than blowing out the full wall, as the current implementation requires. Would this voxel effect require a special ammo type? Could low-level explosives cause voxel destruction? Could you fire through a voxel hole to damage another wall in the interior, raiding all the way to the center of the base without ever having to set foot inside? Lots to think about.
Wave Mode
Bring on the classic invasion mode. But RUST style. Wave mode would allow enemies to spawn and attack when night arrives. According to the commits, scarecrows are currently spawning, but we really hope that any enemy type could be set to spawn during the waves.
Would the number of enemies spawning in each wave increase each night? Could player accomplishments during the day affect what and how many spawn during that night’s wave? Do wave mode enemies despawn when the sun rises, or would low-pop servers become a nightmare sea of wandering NPCs? Could all of these dimensions be configurable with convars? This feature could be good times!
Skin Viewer
Who doesn’t want the ability to try before you buy? The Skin Viewer project has seen a few other hack weeks by now, dating back about 9 months. This feature, if you don’t remember, would allow users to try on Steam Workshop skins and get a look at how the item looks before applying them.
Gammagotchi
Obviously, this feature would have nothing to do with RUST and surviving a hostile environment, and obviously, I really want it. But can I feed it and clean up its poops via RUST+? This little handheld pet could have lots of in-game applications, I’m sure of it. Just as long as I can hand it off to my friends to take care of while I’m busy playing other games.
Other developments in this RUST update
- A new shotgun model is being developed – the Benelli M4
- The Tutorial Island branch is receiving a lot of commits this week
- Tool cupboard storage adapter slots are getting moved to prevent walls from blocking the inputs
- The mirrors that were removed from the Frontier Decor DLC are being reworked in the ‘fastmirrors’ hackweek branch. The hope is to make them more performant so they can be released.
- Server-side player movement is another hackweek branch getting a lot of commits.
- Commits show that the clan system will have a scoreboard and scoring system.
- Various actions by clan members can either gain points for the clan or lose points.
- The Powerplant Monument is being reworked. No visuals yet.
- Alistair officially announced yesterday that the remaining official hardcore-mode servers will be retired on December 7th’s update.
- Frontier and Gingerbread building skins are still yet to be released, but when is still speculation.
Connect with Shadowfrax
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Thanks for reading, and see you in the next RUST update!
Video Transcript
Greetings, survivors, and friends; Shadowfrax is here with another infodump on what’s coming down the pipes as far as Rust development is concerned, and first up this week is another hack week! And if you know, you know that this is where the TEAM is unshackled for a few days to do whatever they really want. And once they’ve been tasered, handcuffed, and brought back to their desks, they then get on with working on some interesting side projects. (Which I must hasten to add may or may not ever make it into the game).
So, let’s see what’s in progress there and first up Voxel raiding.. No, not ram-raiding with a Vauxhall. Rather, that building blocks could be destroyed much more granularly and well. I think this video illustrates it best. Explosives could more realistically do damage in a radius of the blast and offer some more interesting raiding and defense strategies. With each wall being made of 16 smaller segments and, on the flip side of the wall, repairs could also slowly fill in gaps rather than an entire block at a time. And I believe the idea is that unless all segments of a wall are destroyed, the wall would still technically exist and could be repaired. I’m not sure if decay could work in the same way, but I’m guessing yes.
You may remember me sharing this handheld Rust console from a previous hack week. Well, artist Tom has followed this up with a Gammagotchi this time around, which he himself admits is a bit of a silly project. I mean, fancy having the responsibility of keeping a character in a game fed and alive while in a game where you’re keeping a character fed and alive, whilst probably failing to do so in real life? No harm in a bit of fun, though, eh?
There’s work to try to get those mirrors working properly on the ‘fastmirrors’ branch, you know, the ones that weren’t able to be included in the frontier décor pack because of performance issues, so we may eventually be able to gaze upon ourselves.
There’s the viewer for checking out workshop skins before applying them, that’s still being worked on; a long-term project, it seems.
A rework to Cliffs is another hack week project, although there’s no info about exactly what it would include.
Server-side player movement aims to move player movement to be handled server-side. Again, early days, and nothing to show yet on how this performs.
Rust expression is an interesting branch that seems to be getting a ton of commits, and this is of particular interest to me as it focuses on the idea of a programmable microchip-type IO entity that could really expand the capabilities of the electrical systems we have already, and would be incredible, especially for creative servers, think Minecraft command block type thing. More on this one when I get it!
There’s also a Wavemode being worked on, which seems to be a horde defense game mode with nighttime events and scarecrow attacks being mentioned.
All of these, of course, being hackweek projects, are in no way guaranteed to be in the game. Although we know some, of course, do end up being added, such as the chat emojis for one. But, as always, they are all SUBJECT TO CHANGE.. and only time will tell.
In other news, there have been a couple of optional server and client updates for a few bugs that were introduced recently, and the top storage adaptor slot on the tool cupboard is being moved closer to the center so the input doesn’t get blocked by walls.
On to works in progress now, and there’s quite a bit here with the nexus system having some more commits this time to add clan score events, which will both gain and lose points for your clan depending on your actions, such as killing unarmed players = bad, or destroying a Tool cupboard owned by another clan = good.
There’s a new version of the powerplant being worked on, apparently. It’s still in the grey-box stage at the moment, so there are no details to share yet.
Tutorial Island is being worked on quite hard. It’s still a way out, though. A new Benelli M4 shotty is being made around the back. Again, there is nothing to show yet.
There are new building skins, such as the frontier one as shown previously, and this may, I believe, be next month’s DLC OF THE MONTH. To be confirmed, it will certainly go well with the recent décor pack. There’s also a gingerbread building skin also shown previously, which will be a seasonal item soon.
And lastly, it was announced yesterday that FP will be retiring the remaining official hardcore servers on December 7th. As they say, “It was an interesting game mode to try out, 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. “
Let me know how you feel about this, and indeed, what, if any, of the other things I’ve shown this episode interest you in the comments below, please!
That’s you all extremely up to date now. Like, subscribe, and follow me on Twitch and all my socials. And if you fancy supporting me, you can do so with super thanks, YouTube memberships, and on my Patreon. All links are below; I shall catch you all soon, but in the meantime, keep calm and stay Rusty, cheerio.
Shadowfrax
