Frontier and Gingerbread building skins! | RUST Update 21st September 2023
It’s truly been a summer for content, what with RUST’s copious Building Skin Packs and cosmetic packs like the Abyss Pack and the Weapon Racks Pack. These packs have been released alongside RUST’s regular content updates each month, summing up a substantial effort for the development team. Today, we get an early preview of two more projects in development, thanks to the horse with a nose for juicy RUST gossip. And pies.
Frontier Building Skin
Finally, a building skin for the early game. And by early, I mean way early. Like, Legacy early. The Frontier skin is a skin for wood building pieces and is meant to hark back to the days of Legacy RUST. The aesthetic of the Frontier skin is that of worn driftwood, hastily fashioned together to provide a crude shelter against bears. The interior side of the wall is more methodical than the exterior, with framing and studs in the right places. No word yet on when the Frontier building skin is set to release, but we’ll let you know when we know more.
Gingerbread Building Skin
It makes sense–the assets were already created for the Gingerbread Tunnels last December; why shouldn’t we get a chance to use them to build our own Gingerbread houses? This skin isn’t available for testing yet, so expect the finished product to look much different than what you see here. And given the nature of the beast, we can probably expect to see this skin show up sometime in December.
The Gingerbread skin, along with the Frontier skin, is still in early development, so what you see in today’s update may change by the time the skins go live.
Other changes in this RUST update
- The Brutalist Skin is now available on staging for user testing
- The Brutalist Skin is the next skin pack and is intended for the armored top-tier building-grade
- Some have critiqued the skin as too similar to stone and not visually strong enough to be a top-tier, reinforced concrete.
- Copious commits regarding the Tutorial Island feature, intended to help new players acclimate to Rust’s unique style
- Efforts to link the above and below-ground rail systems continue this week.
- The Homing Missile Launcher will be receiving ADS support soon
- A new base_decor_DLC branch has opened in the commits
Be sure to browse Shadowfrax’s past RUST videos, and don’t forget to subscribe to his channel for alerts on his latest work!
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Thanks for reading, and see you in the next RUST update!
Video Transcript
Greetings survivors and friends, Shadowfrax here with your weekly Rust data burst and today a first look at a couple of new building skins that aren’t yet even on Staging but that are nevertheless in the files and being lined up for the near future, no doubt.
If you enjoy this video, please leave a like and a sub below; I’d appreciate it and also, tell me your thoughts on these skins and Rust DLC in general, please.
So, of course, last week I showed and told the Brutalist skin for top tier – available for testing on staging right now – and you chaps definitely had some thoughts on that in the comments, which I’ll get to a little later in the video.
But first, as also mentioned previously, a building skin for ‘vood’ is being worked on called “Frontier,” and here’s a first look at it… And I must just say this is all extremely SUBJECT TO CHANGE, it may look a bit different when it finally drops, but as it stands, I think it’s really looking as I hoped it would.
The aim, I believe, is to recreate a similar appearance and feel to the original Rust Legacy stuff, with an emphasis on the “hastily nailed together made from bits of old pallets and driftwood look.” Which I think it pulls off very well. There’s a bit of variety in the panels, and the detail on the inside is rather nice.. with stud work and noggins everywhere. And I really like the small touches of bent-over nails and things carved into the wood here and there, which you can tell they had fun with.
The only issue I have with it is that the standard wood doors and window frames are a lot lighter in comparison, but I don’t know; maybe that’ll help you find them more easily at night?
I don’t think this is due to be released for another couple of months, so don’t hold your breath, but we definitely need a wood-building skin, and something tells me this will be a popular one.
But I would like to know what you think about this? Wood, you use it? Wood you? Let me know below, please.
Not only but also.. there’s yet another skin in the works, which I’ll walk you around next.
So, as I also mentioned quite recently in the before times. There was word in the commits regarding a gingerbread house skin.. and why not? The textures were already created and ripe for the milking. Plus, let’s be honest, this is the perfect trap base skin if ever there was one.
Again, this is not yet testable but is still available in the files. Just note that it is also very much SUBJECT TO CHANGE… The finished skin is going to look a lot better than this; I had to slap this thing together very quickly in an editor without anything snapping together properly, so apologies for the horrible base design, gaps between wall pieces, and probably quite a bit of missing icing on the corners, etc. Hopefully, you get the idea, though.
There are absolutely no prizes for guessing when this one will be released.. and I believe the word is that it’ll be a seasonal item only in December.
Again, let me know what you think. Is this a bit silly? Or can’t you wait to get your teeth into it? Tell me in the comments, please.
There is yet more base décor stuff to talk about in a moment, but going back to the brutalist skin from last week’s video. You chaps were quite “brutal” about it in the comments, weren’t you? And I get the impression that there are some mixed feelings about it…
I know a lot of you really liked the look and feel of it but on the “constructive criticism” side of things.
Mostly, the sentiment seemed to me to be that it looks too much like stone and too plain, especially from a distance. The blockwork on the inside looks a bit wrong for Brutalist. It looks a bit too weak for top tier as it is and should be a stone skin instead, maybe. And there needs to be more detail on the concrete, like exposed rebar, spalling, and cracks/staining, to make it stand out. Etc etc.
Well, it does seem like the TEAM is taking note of this feedback, and I can tell from the commits that they are tweaking the textures a bit. The changes haven’t been merged into Staging as of filming this, but I’ll keep an eye on things and let you know when they are.
Now, base builders (as long as they have the cash) have never had it so good, it seems, with all this choice coming in cosmetically. And in line with this, this week, it looks like a new branch has popped up called base_decor_DLC.. now there isn’t very much to go on yet, but I can see mention of a torch holder.. so would this be a place to hang your lit torch for a more homely dungeon feel? What else might be part of this DLC? Personally, I’d like to see that wallpaper for base interiors that was mentioned in a devblog about 40 years ago.
Or maybe some gate skins?
Or how about this, a set of sign letters like the ones from the “spermket” that you could use to write big important messages on your base with? If they lit up, that would be even better.
It does seem that we’ve had a sizeable DLC every month now since May, and probably one a month for the foreseeable future. There should be plenty of interesting stuff to come. But what do you think of the amount of DLC these days? Does it bother you, or do you like the choice on offer?
On to tweaks on existing stuff now, and there are some improvements coming to the homing missile launcher, including better explosions and ADS.. A fix to Minicopter push behavior.. better checks when deploying parachutes.. and boats drifting back to shore shouldn’t collide with the cargo ship.
Weapon racks are getting support for being able to mount musical instruments on them.. there’s some kind of optimization pass being done on traps.
There’s a wall debris fix to stop armored doors from being blocked by debris and another to block the placement of floors attached to the same point.
And the dismount timer convar for vehicles is split up into several, each of which can be adjusted separately for different vehicle types.. for instance, parachutes and zip lines in one category, submarines, boogie boards, and inner tubes in another.
There is, of course, still a lot going on to link up the above and below-ground rail networks. There is no ETA on this as of yet, but it’ll be a game-changer when it happens.
The tutorial island is being worked on hard to ease new players into the mechanics of hitting things with other things and associated activities.
And lastly, there are commits about a Dracula cape, which thankfully won’t make your hair disappear because we all know where that sort of thing leads.
Well, that’s you up to date and all nice and current. Leave me a like, comment, and sub below, and you can support me if you like with Patreon, YouTube memberships, and super thanks.
Come and watch me on Twitch, follow me on my socials for updates, including my steam group, and I shall catch you all soon, but in the meantime, keep calm and stay rusty. Cheerio.
