Mapper Snowballfred was kind enough to let me peek into the map he's been working on, and as you'll see it's a lot different from the sort of places you're used to. In his Laputa-inspired Skylands, chunks of ground have been wrenched into the sky, floating on crystals, balanced by windmills, and tethered together. It's very unfinished, but still striking.
He told me: "I wanted to create a map that was completely immersive for players by using as many of the tools given to us in the SDK. I was a huge fan of the idea of Ruin, and the movie Castle in the Sky, so out came a hybrid from that.
"I wanted to make a smaller map and maximize the play area by adding in large, inhabitable subterraneous areas below oceans (would love some form of volumetric lighting prefab for those too xD). As well as adding in all the floating elements, the map will also allow for additional play space, so by the time it's all finished it should be roughly 3 x 2.5k maps."
Scroll, scroll, and scroll some more through the Rusty Cartographers Discord, and you'll eventually hit the good stuff. TBH, sometimes--most times--it's not really a whole map that impresses. Just the glimpses of what people are making. Right now a lot of what WheatleyMF shares is scenes from his mapping experiments, but they're incredibly striking. There's a lot of work like this in Garry's Mod, and I love seeing what people are doing with Rust, particularly when it fits the theme of the game, like this spooky forest.
Here marlya! explores the depths of a custom map.
Not a lot to go on with that, but I liked the atmosphere of the video. There's a definite trend among mappers in placing monuments beneath the ground and lighting them with the crystals.
Where's a good place to play custom maps? Shadowfrax and Rustography are hosting a few every month, all across the globe. Here's how to join.
And finally... I discovered this random trailer for a random server on Youtube. That crystal...
I had to see it for myself, so I hopped on.
If you fancy seeing it life, in the F1 menu type join 78.108.65.19:28019.
That man LOLOUT has continued his series where he crafts very Rusty items that he feels could fit into the game. This week it's a Waterpipe Rifle, using a baseball bat for a body...
The last name in raid cams Rizza Gaming has one again recorded a large battle. His beady eye roams through this clan battle, picking up the little stories of the larger battle. A LOT of ammo was blasted in this video, and there's a nice twist.
Those videos take ages to put together, sub a sub and a like would be a very nice thing to do.
We've had maps and concepts, so let's finish on a mod. This is a fun idea from Colon Blow, a hacker plugin that lets you hack into code locks and more.
Probably needs lot more interativity, but I like the concept.
Think you're working on something awesome? Tell me all about it. Share your map designs, show off a game-mode from your server, let us see your cool base.
There's a dedicated forum, or you can fish for upvotes in the subreddit. I also shuffle around the the Steam Community, so feel free to show me to things from there. You can follow and respond to Rust on Twitter, and I'm on there as well.
He told me: "I wanted to create a map that was completely immersive for players by using as many of the tools given to us in the SDK. I was a huge fan of the idea of Ruin, and the movie Castle in the Sky, so out came a hybrid from that.
"I wanted to make a smaller map and maximize the play area by adding in large, inhabitable subterraneous areas below oceans (would love some form of volumetric lighting prefab for those too xD). As well as adding in all the floating elements, the map will also allow for additional play space, so by the time it's all finished it should be roughly 3 x 2.5k maps."
