Community Update #12

Top image is via RustBR, a very excitable fan-site who translates dev-blogs into Portuguese for all the fans there. It's been an interesting week for Rust. Garry finally made the experimental branch the default on Steam, meaning that launching the game takes you into the uncharted wilds of Nu Rust. Old Rust is still lurking away in the right-click menu, listed as Legacy, but from now on new players will be playing a Rust with procedurally-generated worlds, giant statues, and bucket helmets. Join us! It's also generated a lot chatter about some of the components about the game, and I'll be highlihgting some of that in this post. It was always the intention to see how large numbers of people respond to what's been going on in Experimental, and boy have you had a reaction. But first, a musical interlude...

Keys

This version of Rust has lots of differences from Legacy, and (currently) the most controversial is the key system. We made keys a physical object, which means they can be stolen from you. When someone kills you, if you have a key on you, they can take it and if they know where you live, access your stuff. It's pretty brutal, but that's the point. With more people playing the game, the keys have come under scrutiny. Reddit, in particular, has had a say about it. It's been interesting seeing how convoluted the solutions are, because a physical key is such a simple thing. Via LARgames on Reddit:

I think that with a couple of small features, they could be an amazing way to keep your base secure. One of them being a key ring. It would be a separate inventory from your regular one, but only be able to hold keys. I also think that there should be a server setting that would determine weather you drop your keyring upon death so people that die don't lose their base. (Also, the keyring would be craftable).

I actually agree that a keyring is needed as a separate inventory, but still can't see how we could justify allowing the player to keep it on death given the game's nature. MadMaxGamer on Reddit thinks he has the answer.

First of all let us make keyrings, for those who have more than a key. Then let us take the keyrings/key and bury them. Place the keyring/key in a slot, and with alternate fire looking at the ground, bury them. That way it doesn't take time to do it, and its a safe spot as long as you remember where they are. Hell, you can even take a screenshot of the spot to remember or to share its location with your friends. THEN make it so you get a "dig up keys" prompt only if you look at that spot crouched and for more than 2-3 seconds. I hate keys, but this would be bearable.

I'm not sure the idea of burying them fits in Rust, when we have craftable containers. Meanwhile, Avea's solution on the Faceunch forums is sheer elegance in its simplicity. He crafted a lantern, placed it in a nook in the world, and placed the house key in there. It's really nice to see solutions popping up. There's still work to be done on some other issues, but it's great to see players tackling the problem in-game.

Inventory

There's been chatter about the way the inventory stacks, too. The current set-up, where your select a percentage of a stack depending on where the mouse is makes grabbing whole stacks a bit tricky. It's one of those things where everyone has a solution. A lot of them seem to focus on alt-clicking other keys to specify that you want to split the stack, or you'll collect the whole thing. But it's vegeta897's solution that caught my eye. He even made an animation to explain it. [embed]http://zippy.gfycat.com/DeepSophisticatedHarborporpoise.webm[/embed] I think this, perhaps combined with a quick-selection mechanic that grabs everything, would work.

Navigation

Watching people solve this is one of my favourite things about Rust. There's no roads at the moment--the plan is to have them form according to player movement--but for now players have to figure out where they are by knowing about the land. And when every server has a unique map, that requires a number of skills. I pointed fan-site towards Rustafied last week, and I'm doing so again because it has some great tips on finding friends.

If all that has failed, craft a couple lanterns and place them as high up as you can. Lanterns are visible for a very long distance and a good way of attracting attention. Be warned though, you’re likely to attract the attention of other players nearby and they might not always be friendly.

Sneaky. There's also a suggestion from Redditor GreySoulx that you use the suicide command to warp around the island, but that's hardly in the spirit of things.

Last week, I implored people to not make weapons, and right there in the comments I was defied. At least it's a prop, prepped for an upcoming fan-film from Let's Player MineDatFunky I can honestly that this isn't even the first time I've worked on something where people sent my photos of explosives. Life is odd in games.

Got a rap, or a suggestion, or a build, or anything you want to say about Rust? There's a dedicated forum post, or you can post in timesink of Reddit. I also poke 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. We also have a dedicated site for suggestions and bug reporting. I can't respond to everything, but I read every comment and take it all in. Just be nice.

Dan Bull is Birmingham’s premier game-focused rapper, which is a bit like being the biggest game developer in Walsall. That faint praise isn't faint, really: his work is smart and witty, and he turned his attention to Rust. If you liked it, you can grab it from itunes. Our response will come in the form of an opera, which will debut at the Palais Garnier in 2018.