Devblog 33

Throughout the project we've always had a mindset to avoid game systems. To try to make things be believable in game. While this has worked for us in past instances, it's also very limiting. Don't get me wrong the limits are good, but it's limiting your enjoyment of the game. A small example of this is with the door changes we added last week. You unlock a door, walk through, close it, lock it. The next time you open the door you don't have to unlock it, it just opens - it remembers you. This is a compromise of the ideology above to aid gameplay. So we're compromising our ideologies short-term to benefit gameplay right now.

An update to legacy was released this week that blocked a shitload of server IPs. These were all either fake servers redirecting to another or servers that were artificially inflating their player count.

Andre changed the grass.

So, systems eh? 80% of the community will love this, 15% will hate it, and the other 5% will write comments that start with "Why not just" and end with "instead?". The idea with the cupboard is that you place it in your building. Your friends come up to it and authorize with it. Now no-one but you and your friends can build within a 30 meter radius of the cupboard. Being in the radius of an authorized cupboard gives you extra abilities too, like being able to demolish and flip/rotate other building blocks. This doesn't mean you own your house forever. Someone could break in and destroy or clear your tool cupboard - and take ownership. This would mean that then you wouldn't be able to build in your base, you'd have to break in and steal the cupboard back. If you build a cupboard in the radius of an existing one, the oldest created one takes priority. This is obviously untried and untested. There's a lot to think about, a lot to tweak. My greatest worry is that the cupboard will turn into something that you absolutely have to have in your home - or someone could just come along and drop one on your doorstep, demolish a wall and gain instant access. But maybe that's your fault for not building one? It's something we're going to be testing next week on the dev server anyway - so we'll see how it goes. Also please keep in mind that just because it exists now, it doesn't mean it always will. We might come up with something else in the future that makes it completely redundant.

With this new way of thinking comes a new way of building. Someone mentioned to me that they spend most of their time in Rust hammering shit, and it's true. As cool as all that is.. it isn't really what Rust was meant to be about. So that's gone. No more hammering to upgrade stuff, the resource cost should be the tax - not the 5 minutes of hammering. I have done a lot of work on the build system this week but I'm not quite ready to tell you what I'm doing because I don't want people to get dissapointed when it all turns to shit and I end up doing something completely different.

Not fully finished yet, but this should give you the idea.

Howie concepted the key code lock.. And Tom started modelling it

Goosey made a finishing model. I have no idea when/if/how we're going to implement it.

Dan has been deciding on a base for his lighthouse

Scott got the loot crates done

Some good work this week. It's finally feeling like we're getting to grips with the building system. We hired 3 more people too. Next week, more of the same. Getting the building system finished, testing and handing it off to artists, bug fixes, gameplay and stability.

Xavier started modelling some meat