Parachutes and loot trains

12:00am EST - Another week in Rust development and the development team is moving forward with new features and functionality.

Given this is a 5 Thursday month, the update will come out next week on July 7th. Our update preview stream goes live at 1pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the week.

Parachutes

A new way of descending from great heights is on the way. The initial functionality for parachutes is being worked on a new branch this week. Based on commits, players will be able to deploy parachutes if there is 20m of clear space below. They’ll then be able to float down and either steer the parachute or aim a weapon (not both at once). Upon landing, players will be able to pack the parachute back up with a timed process.

It’s still not clear exactly how parachutes will be obtained in game and how many jumps they will last. We’ll keep a close eye on this branch to see if it gets merged in for the July 7th update.

Trainyard update

More progress on the Trainyard update branch this week. Along with work on integrating the rails on the Trainyard monument with the above rail network, there is a whole new monument being worked on which appears to be a new place to gather ore on the map. Moreso, it appears as though the ability to transfer resources via new loot train wagons is also in the works.

On top of that, also on this branch, light switches are being added to various monuments around the map. It looks like this will allow players to turn on and off various lights around monuments, adding a new dynamic to looting in game. All of this has yet to be merged into staging, however, I suspect it will be merged with main shortly. We’ll have a full write up on all of this with the update post next week (provided it makes it in).

Hapis progress

Hapis is getting a bit more love this week with work on some new monument additions. Along with desert versions of the supermarket and gas station, it appears a preliminary version of the arctic base is also being worked on. These changes are still on a separate branch so no word if they will make it in for the July update.

Loading improvements

Playing around on the staging branch, the team is testing some new techniques for loading the required assets in the game. Instead of having every single thing load in while you’re joining a server, they are playing with techniques to load certain bundles asynchronously. Also, they are starting asset warmup in the background as soon as the game loads. All this should improve loading times into servers. Best of all, it looks like it’ll make it in for the July update.

Other stuff

• Admin panel for viewing signs and edit history added

• Idle animations added for the inventory character model

• Fixed crosshair not appearing when first person spectating

• Fixed hit markers not working in spectate mode

• Work on a new UI for furnaces started

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