1:00pm EST - Our update preview stream is live! twitch.tv/rustafied

12:00am EST - With one week since the update and forced wipe, we’re seeing some various fixes plus forward movement on upcoming features - and a fresh hackweek!

Our update preview stream goes live at 1pm EST. Follow @Rustafied for news throughout the week.

Fixes

As is common after a large monthly update, we saw some hotfixes go live since forced wipe. Here are some highlights:

• Fixed wolves look at the player head instead of the player's crotch

• Fixed wolves looking behind them for too long when fleeing

• Fixed wolves jumping excessively high to reach unreachable players

• Tweak leap trajectory to be more believable

• Fixed wolves roaming too far from their territory, potentially straying from their pack

• Fixed wolves dying when stranded in an environment they don't like (eg seaside)

• Fixed wolves not fleeing when hit from far away with molotov or fire arrows

• Fixed wolf being unable to switch target

• Multiple error fixes

• Exploit fixes

Hackweek

It's that exciting time again—Hackweek is back in action! For those who might not be familiar, Hackweek is a special period where developers get to break away from their usual tasks and work on projects of their choosing for about a week. While not every project developed during Hackweek makes it into the final game, many of these creative bursts have led to some awesome features in the past. Here's a sneak peek at some of the Hackweek projects that are bubbling up so far. Stay tuned, as these bursts of creativity could lead to the next big thing in the game!

• Player catapulting - part of the siege weapons work, allowing you to catapult a player

• Buryable loot - New loot container which can be buried with a shovel then found with a metal detector

• Chicken coup - Initial work on a coup for players to raise chickens

• Horse rewrite - Various fixes for horse movement, stopping, and jumping

• Sync vars - Looks like some type of syncing of settings between clients and servers

• Player graves - Bury empty player corpses with a shovel to place a grave, pay respects at grave to view player name, killer name, born and death dates and times and the name of the player who laid them to rest

• Deployable targets - New targets for aim practice (a human-like one and a dueling tree)

Wolf changes

Since rolling out the new wolf AI last week, we've been busy making adjustments and improvements based on your feedback and our observations, including a couple of hotfixes. Here's what's new with the wolves:

• They've fixed an issue where wolves weren't scared off by fire when the player was standing on a tall object. Now, wolves will approach more cautiously, flee immediately when you swing your torch, and also back off after jumping if the fire is still burning

• To better balance gameplay, they’ve temporarily reduced the wolf population and pack size to three

• Wolves will now give up stalking after a period if they haven't dealt any damage, and they'll give up much quicker if they see fire

• Additionally, they've done some code cleanup and other minor tweaks to enhance the overall behavior of wolves in the game

These changes should make encounters with wolves feel more realistic and manageable. 

Siege weapons

The development of siege weapons in Rust continues to gain momentum! The team is currently deep into enhancing the animation work for catapults, refining the steering mechanics of ballistas, and making progress on the siege tower ladders and models. While it’s still up in the air when these new siege mechanics will officially make their debut in the game, rest assured that the team is pushing hard to integrate these powerful tools of warfare. We'll keep you updated on the progress and let you know as soon as we have a clearer timeline for when you can start laying siege to your enemies' bases!

Other stuff

• More work on Ice Sculptures (likely part of Xmas event)

• More work on vines (looks like you’ll be able to swing from vine to vine)

• More work on shields

• Improvements to shaders

• Improvements to explosions

• Added a bunch of colored wood panel tiled cube prefabs for map makers/modders

• Fix NRE in gesture escape menu options

• Fix RPS dialog staying on if player is disconnected mid game