What's New in Rust's "Devblog 125" Update

Devblog 125, released on September 1st, 2016, was the one players had been waiting on for two months: the full graphics overhaul finally left its branch and hit the live game, bringing brand new lighting, harmonized biomes, and a server wipe to go with it. It also declared war on gamma cranking, folded in the revamped Military Tunnels and an early Lighthouse, rebuilt Savas Island, and shipped the long-promised Bone Armour rework.

The Graphics Overhaul Arrives

Two months after posting a to-do list aimed at making Rust's environments look "a bit less like a cheap Nintendo 64 game," the environment team patched in the results. The clutter that used to spawn everywhere was reined in, the different elements of each biome finally worked in harmony, and the lighting was completely new. The advice in the devblog itself was simply to go look - and to bind your screenshot key first.

Anti-Gamma: Nights Are Dark Now

Gamma cranking - the classic de-facto way to play Rust at night - was rendered useless. No matter what setting you cranked, there were simply no details left in deep shadows for your monitor to pick up. The team even offered a half-apology for never having implemented that handheld lantern back in the day, hinting that an updated torch might be needed too. Color grading was also forced on all clients as part of the same push.

Military Tunnels, Lighthouse, and Two Months of Dungeon Art

The long list of monument improvements shown across the previous two months of devblogs finally merged in. The short summary:

• A new Lighthouse monument (added in work-in-progress form - the interior wasn't accessible yet)
• More work on the Airfield
• A total revamp of the Military Tunnels
• New Power Substation mini monuments

The Lighthouse's scope had grown along the way: the interior layout was being made more complex, with broken staircases, simple platforming puzzles, and alternate paths planned to make it more interesting to explore.

New Savas Island

Savas Island got fixed up after some neglect - broken loot chests, upside-down buildings and the like all repaired - and gained three mines built from the game's modular dungeon pieces. Better yet, it picked up a vanilla game-mode variant for fans of small maps. For server owners: SavasIsland runs conventional vanilla Rust on the tiny map, while SavasIsland_koth remains the old action-packed loot bonanza (which was also fixed and improved this patch).

Bone Armour and Combat Fixes

The reworked Bone Armour made it in after an extra materials pass - making the old set look, in the artist's words, like a bad cosplayer's attempt at the new one. A Deer Skull Mask shipped alongside it, and Cactus Flesh was added as a new item.

On the combat side, a long-standing weapon firing rate bug was squashed. When a weapon came off cooldown between two update frames, the next attack time was calculated off by around half a frame - trivial for semi-auto, but in full-auto the error accumulated until your weapon could genuinely fire slightly slower or faster than someone else's. In the devblog's own words: absolutely horrific, never should have happened, now fixed. Weapon owner mismatches also started being logged to the combat log.

Works in Progress

The Vending Machine neared the end of texturing, with unseen polygons (the underside, the inside of the drawer) removed to free UV space for a higher-res texture. Notably, it was shown fitting into a doorframe deployable, letting traders separate the back of the machine from the front for extra protection. The MP5 Sub-Machine Gun finished its modelling stage, prompting the comment that the game was starting to look more and more like Rust Legacy.

An experimental spiral stairs building block was also prototyped on a private branch. The pros: a 1x1 footprint, the ability to meet doorways in their center every floor or at half-block height on alternate quadrants, and quick descents. The cons: slow climbs if you hug the center column, and constant mouse movement to keep your aim on the path. Triangle-block spiral stairs turned out to be impossible - not because of the slope, but because the surface left for the player is too tiny. As the devblog put it, players are too fat to allow for it. On square blocks, though, it worked.

Sound and Animation Polish

The LR 300 got its dedicated sounds, world item physics sounds received the most noticeable polish pass, and work continued on calm, sunny-day ambient music. Viewmodel elbows across all the rifles were also tucked in after Helk pointed out the left arm was sticking out oddly - a posing habit the animator traced back to making Counter-Strike 20 years earlier.

The changelist wrapped up with fixes for god rays, distorted water reflections, particle motion blur, occasional TSSAA darkening, climate color grading, and - a fan favorite - swimming in tunnels no longer being a pain in the ass. With fresh lighting, dark nights, and a forced wipe, Devblog 125 was as close to a new-game-smell patch as 2016 Rust got.