DevBlog 183
Halloween is here, with an unholy update of skeletal remains, graves, burning skulls, and network encryption!
Video Update
Halloween Items
Happy Halloween! To get into the spirit of things, we’ve added some new decorative Halloween deployables. There’s a scarecrow and a skull fire pit available on the Steam item store.
Happy Halloween! To get into the spirit of things, we’ve added some new decorative Halloween deployables. There’s a scarecrow and a skull fire pit available on the Steam item store.
In addition, we’ve replaced the existing resource pickups with Halloween themed ones for Metal, Stone, Sulfur, Wood, and Bones. For the period of Halloween (next patch) they will yield 50% more resources as well.
Loot Chance Equalized
I’m doing a bit of a test here. I’ve made it so that loot items all have an equal chance of dropping in their tier. It was bad enough that some tiers had 40 items, to make it so some of those items had a 1/10 chance of dropping was ridiculous. I hope this makes some unattainable items a little easier to get, but just know all of this will be squashed soon when I do what I mentioned last devblog and set up dedicated rarity categories for each drop slot. Either way, let me know!
I’m doing a bit of a test here. I’ve made it so that loot items all have an equal chance of dropping in their tier. It was bad enough that some tiers had 40 items, to make it so some of those items had a 1/10 chance of dropping was ridiculous. I hope this makes some unattainable items a little easier to get, but just know all of this will be squashed soon when I do what I mentioned last devblog and set up dedicated rarity categories for each drop slot. Either way, let me know!
BoneFollower Fixes
Even though we’re ditching this element soon, I ended up fixing a bug that would cause objects that were parented to another object to sometimes lag behind their parent while it was in motion. This was noticeable in vehicles and when people were running: you’d see the weapon models one frame behind their position. This is now fixed.
Even though we’re ditching this element soon, I ended up fixing a bug that would cause objects that were parented to another object to sometimes lag behind their parent while it was in motion. This was noticeable in vehicles and when people were running: you’d see the weapon models one frame behind their position. This is now fixed.
Garage Door
The garage door is now in game and works exactly how you’d expect. You’ll find it in crates, and though we don’t have vehicles yet, I’m sure people will be able to find a use for these in the meantime. Check it out:
The garage door is now in game and works exactly how you’d expect. You’ll find it in crates, and though we don’t have vehicles yet, I’m sure people will be able to find a use for these in the meantime. Check it out:
Player Model Tweaks
Tom and Taylor brought up an issue regarding the player models elbows/wrists (in 3rd person). It looked really distorted. I investigated further and realized Unity was doing something funky with the bone rotations. Fortunately, I was able to track it down and correct the player animations, so their bones are oriented the way their supposed to be. The elbow and wrist joints should look more natural now, but there’s still room for improvement by adding more polygons around those joints and tweaking the vertex skinning.
Tom and Taylor brought up an issue regarding the player models elbows/wrists (in 3rd person). It looked really distorted. I investigated further and realized Unity was doing something funky with the bone rotations. Fortunately, I was able to track it down and correct the player animations, so their bones are oriented the way their supposed to be. The elbow and wrist joints should look more natural now, but there’s still room for improvement by adding more polygons around those joints and tweaking the vertex skinning.
Decal Biome Tinting
This week I made a small, albeit visually important change to decals, like footsteps or bullet impacts, when applied on terrain. They always had the same base color, independently of their location. I’ve now modified the shader to apply color variation according to the biome they’re placed at:
This week I made a small, albeit visually important change to decals, like footsteps or bullet impacts, when applied on terrain. They always had the same base color, independently of their location. I’ve now modified the shader to apply color variation according to the biome they’re placed at:
New Tree Shader
As part of a future vegetation aesthetics revamp, I’ve implemented a new tree shader to roll out support for proper physical-based lighting and specular, using a new two-sided foliage approach, as well as thin subsurface scattering.
As part of a future vegetation aesthetics revamp, I’ve implemented a new tree shader to roll out support for proper physical-based lighting and specular, using a new two-sided foliage approach, as well as thin subsurface scattering.
This shader will first be tested on a different project (Moss) and rolled out to Rust later in a more robust form. Unfortunately, taking advantage of this shader requires non-trivial artwork, so I’m sparing you from disappointing programmer art.
Optimizations
There have been some complaints regarding performance this week, so I took a couple of days to take care of some low hanging fruit. Some of these might make an immediate difference, some might make a difference only in populated areas, while others may only affect performance on specific player states:
There have been some complaints regarding performance this week, so I took a couple of days to take care of some low hanging fruit. Some of these might make an immediate difference, some might make a difference only in populated areas, while others may only affect performance on specific player states:
- Added particle collision distance LOD on both Flame Thrower and Turret
- Disabled particle collisions on corpse flies effect
- Disabled particle collisions on plant seed effect
- Reduced Sky Reflection texture resolution
- Optimized bloom post-effect even further; 2x faster on CPU
- Optimized image effects composition engine
- Optimized frost/cold effect; 2x faster
There is still a lot to improve but it’s hard to prioritize with so work ahead of us. We’ll do our best to keep optimizing any chance we get.