Community Update 19

The top image popped up on the Steam Community: there, amidst the gifs of broken ragdolls, the screenshots of homoerotic Newman action, and misc things that have little connection to the game, was a cartoonish representation of Rust that caught my eye. I was mostly amused that the man was wearing pants, tbh, but it's a very clean and clear painting of something that's happened to everyone. I also like the little shacks dotted about the background. Nicely done, Binu. If you have a Rust drawing that you're proud of, let us know. I love seeing how people interpret the game, no matter what direction they take it in. Speaking of that.

Pop quiz: when you look at the Rust logo, what do you see? I see a game logo, or at a pinch a slanty Creeper. What did Ozzie Fox see when he peeked at the Rust logo? He saw Rusti, a... thing. I'm lost for words. He's taken the Rust logo and turned the prongs into ears and a goatee, and the central square into the creature's nose. And the creature is a ball of fur with floating appendages. This is a HALO jump of creative leaps. I find the smile unnerving. What's odder is he placed it in Rust's world. Imagine thumping through the undergrowth, stalking a boar in the moonlight, when this grinning circle of fear and loathing busts through the treeline, almost certainly pursuing a like of other players like a happy puppy looking for friends. I'm sorry, Rusti: the world just isn't ready for whatever the hell you are. Click the image as there's more to see. A scream made real. That's what this is.

AKA: wait for the drop. With the reworked building system being pushed out on Friday creating a whole new wobbly version of Rust, there was a certain inevitability about what was going to happen. If you give gamers the ability to build things, they will build things that climb straight up. That is the law of sandbox gaming. And if you give games the ability to build physics-enabled towers, they will build things straight up and then knock them over. It's a constant. And so it was that the only two people who reached out to me about the new Rust building abilities, did so with videos of collapsing towers. First was Peter Hansen, who used his towers to facilitate a raid before dropping them both in elegant and controlled demolitions. And then there was canuck_rob's crumple. He managed to make his tower collapse almost in on itself. Now we've got that out of out system, I have an architectural challenge for any readers of this: build something that collapses when one block is removed. It can't be a tower, though. Tweet us what you've made and I'll put the best in a future update. It can't be a pyramid, either.

That's because the new building weight system puts an end to a Rust server staple: the inverted pyramid. To acknowledge its passing, here's a video from Wooptidoo doo showing off his impressive build. It took four days to make. I like it for a few reasons: the build is pretty--including a structure that frames it--and the video attempts to capture the elegance of it in a time-lapse. But being Rust, there's also a moment where the filming is interrupted by a murder, and followed on by the revenge of the videographer. Rust: where beauty and violence go hand in hand. Wee hint: f1 and vis.chat 0 are your friend when making videos.

I've always liked buildings that exist for nebulous reasons. Homes and storage areas are Rust staples, and because of the harshness of the environment and the ability for another player to take what you have, they're the main focus of the community's creative energy. But a player new to a Rust server is in a wonderful position of discovery, and I'd love it if more people followed in BlueSkilly's steps and built broken things. This build was made to feel dilapidated; to be peeked at through the trees and evoke that idea of discovering something old and lost. I wonder if the new building system will provide a better way of doing this? Just build a normal house and whack away the foundations. Or just overfeed your player and run around the top floor. I was going to spend some time discussing the notion of Ruin Value, but when you discover who popularised that notion (rhymes with 'Kitler'), you back away and quietly close the door. Much better to instead send you in GrymThor's direction. He's already been featured here, as the builder of some immense tree-houses, and I'm trying to get him to provide some builder secrets for the new system. He's already tried it out, and discovered that his usual designs now need to be supported by pillars. With them all in place, Grym's careful spirals take on a different look. Yup. He's made roller-coaster. I wonder if he'd be willing to build one in the woods, bushes and trees jutting up between the foundations and pillars? Abandoned theme parks are so post-apocalypse.

There's a dedicated forum post, or you can post in inky depths of Reddit. 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. 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.