Gleaming! Rust overhauls recoil and inaccuracy
Sandbox survive 'em up Rust [official site] has launch a sizeable update reworking how gun recoil and inaccuracy work. It should now feel more like a traditional first-person shooter, developers Facepunch Studios say. Thursday's early access update also fancied up parts of the map Hapis Island, making them a lot more interesting, and added a new one-way drop box for players to easily dunk items. Let's talk pew-pew!
Facepunch's Maurino Berry explained the changes in last week's dev blog:
"I've made the gunplay in Rust feel a little bit more in line with traditional first-person shooters, and I think this is a good thing. There are three major changes. First, you're going to notice less horizontal recoil so it'll be easier to maintain your target. Secondly, you're going to notice that, for rifles, the first shot is pretty much dead accurate and the longer you hold down the trigger the more inaccurate it gets by way of an increasing aimcone. This means you'll be able to tap at targets for high accuracy or you can risk spraying more rounds down range which are less likely to hit their targets. Lastly, I've implemented recoil compensation. This means if you're holding down the trigger and the weapon is riding up, as soon as you let go of the trigger it will correct back to the original aim position."
This system is "absolutely not complete", Berry said. "This is a first pass at a different recoil system, and I'm sure some weapons are way underpowered and others are way overpowered." So they'll be tweaking things along the way.
The old way was friendly to cheaty cheaters too, who could use scripts to reduce the effects of recoil and do murders better. Speaking of, the update included a few checks to thwart and log hacks.
The recoil changes aren't all that's fixed with guns. After noticing the shotgun trap fired shot across a square spread of inaccuracy, rather than the usual cone method, Berry found every gun in the game shared the problem.
"All weapons had their inaccuracy calculated in a square instead of a circle. I ended up cleaning it up and implementing the proper math so aimcones are actaully circular now. The big deal about this is it means when we calculate how inaccurate something should be it will cover about 20% less surface area (read: 20% less inaccuracy). Whoops..."
You big sillies!
Overhauled prettiness around Hapis Island, a pre-made map (as opposed to its procedurally-generated ones), includes reworking the west coast, making forests denser, adding new caves and mines, and modernising radtowns using newer assets. More prefabs and areas are coming to Rust at large.
Check out the devblog for full patch notes and details on things coming in future updates (new hand models!).
Rust has been in early access since December 2013. Facepunch still don't have firm word on when it'll launch-launch but they are getting close. Facelord Garry Newman recently blig blag blogged about what early access means to different people, and suggested Rust is almost done with it.
"To me it comes down to a single question:
"'If early access didn't exist – would we release this game?'
"Once you put it in these simple terms, it's easy to answer. We definitely would have released it by now. We obviously wouldn't have stopped updating it yet (and we don't plan to stop updating it after we leave EA), but it would have been on Steam by now.
"So our plan is to add a bit more help to the game (so first time players can actually open the inventory menu without reading guides on the internet), and then quietly slip out of Early Access."
Shhh! Until then (and after then), updates continue.
Disclosure: former RPS contributor Craig Pearson works for Facepunch Studios.