Community Update 28

I thought I'd highlight a build at the top of the post. Partly because there's another Frank Walls piece of art in the body of the post, partly because it's a beautiful and precise piece of architecture, and partly because the builder identifies herself as 'catwoman'. This is more than the typical Rust trap house, but a place where the screams of those that came before will still be echoing off the walls when others join them.

It's a labyrinth, I - for one - would like to see more of those. People get in through the entrance and then have to find their way to the exit. It's proving to be more difficult than I imagined, but it's come off quite alright. It's a nice way to get really creative and offer other players in the game a lot of fun.

I've always loved things like this existing in the world, bringing interesting experiences that you can stumble upon. The building is pretty innocuous: just a square plopped on the beach, but inside you're lost in a Kubrickian labyrinth. I wonder how many Newmans have starved to death in there? Anyway, if you take anything from today's blog, please have an urge to make more features on the landscape. They really tie the world together.

This is Valhalla v3. Mega-builders Grym and Thor's response to the Top O' The World Challenge, where you need to claim the top of the server you're on and post screenshots of what you did up there. Hearing that they got involved will probably make a lot of you want to run and hide, because challenging him to build things is like challenging SuperMan to "bend this", but I'd urge you to reconsider. I'll tell you why after you stare at this gallery. It's impressive, and in fact they spent days building it before the server broke tells you everything. It was probably the stairs that did it. You don't want to try and outbuild these dudes. However, I have to point out that they built this on a very quiet server with admin powers, so weren't impacted by the whims of passing rock wielders.

The original Rust trailer is a wonderful, optimistic look at life on a Rust server. It was a deliberate choice, because at the time survival games really seemed to focus on the negative aspects of being on an island full of potential murderers. Garry chose to focus on the camaraderie, the communal building, and that moment at the end of the night when a fire is warming your weary feet. He's a dreamer. Giosepe Luiz got in touch with his re-imagining of the trailer, using a more recent version of the game Giosepe also runs PlayRustBR, an unofficial fan site that translates the devblogs. He's very nice.

Rust has ballistic weaponry, which means there's always an element of uncertainty whenever you fire a gun. It's not too uncertain--you won't shoot a gun and have it turn into a small vole--but you won't know precisely where the bullet will land. But you can make an educated guess, and it's possible to test things out to help with that. Youtuber Treboras has done it for you: he built his own shooting range within the game to test out the weapons. He hit upon the idea of using windows as targets, which is borderline genius: lines of window walls will give you a good idea of the bullet's parabola without stopping it if it's on target. He also made a whizzy 3D presentation. It's really good stuff and you should subscribe if you're interested in Rust's shootybangs. We've already killed the console command in this video for clients, btw. To use it you need to be an admin on a server, and even then using it will eventually tank your framerate. And why would you want to do that?

Armchair game design is one of my favourite things. It's just fun seeing what ideas and solutions people come up with for the game. Smyek's reddit thread focussed on Airdrops, and the different things that could be done with them. Even better, he produced a small infographic. I like such dedication to an idea. The dead paratroopers are properly creepy. Ew! The response had some fun suggestions. From thezlog:

For the spacecraft, maybe the night before, you can see a fairly bright "star" (aka space craft/satellite) moving across the sky. The following night it crashes. Helicopter could come "visit" rad town, and I love the idea of them firing at Newmans to keep them back. Maybe we can somehow cause the chopper to crash (do enough damage), resulting in loot.

I love the idea of tracking a space ship. Good stuff.

Ridiculous megafan Frank Walls has another piece of fan art: this time he's turned his art cannon to the notion of Rust being a "prison" and blasted some art. He's called it The Panopticon, though I think he might've been a little bit confused about what one actually is.

I saw it mentioned somewhere that Rust island might be a prison. This was something I thought about when playing Legacy, and was one of the back story ideas I thought about. So what if it was a prison? Perhaps at one time it would have actually been staffed by people that watched over the island. Even if all they did was watch and collect data about what the prisoners did. Over time maybe the prisoners banded together, breached the walls of this panopticon, and took control of the island.

Good stuff, Frank.

Think you're working on something awesome? Tell me all about it. There's a dedicated forum post, 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. 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.