Whilst Bohemia are happy to offer a roadmap of what to expect from DayZ over the next twelve months, Garry Newman and the Facepunch team working on Rust are less happy with sticking to such a rigid structure. “We don’t need that kind of pressure” he says. But he does want players to know what to look forward to in the future, so he’s published a mind-map detailing all the elements that are currently on Rust’s drawing board.
The mind-map contains a fascinating array of features, fixes, and ideas. They’re broadly split into categories based on what their priority is, and how definite it is that they’ll become part of the game. For the exciting stuff you want to follow the purple lines into the yellow, where a bunch of ‘definitely’ features can be found. Here you’ll see words like ‘mining’, ‘weather cycles’, ‘farming’, and ‘vehicles’. They’re all features that the community have been praying for since Rust launched, and so it’s great to know they’re definitely on Facepunch’s mind.
‘Island hopping’ is something the team are looking at, which will mean being able to change servers whilst (presumably) keeping your kit in-tact. Interestingly in the ‘Server Transitioning’ section of the mind-map there’s a note that reads ‘via Sea’. Is the plan to swap servers by jumping in a boat and literally sailing to a new island, transitioning from one server to another as you hit the beach?
Garry explained why the mind-map has been published rather than a traditional road-map: “It allows us to see our grand plan on a single screen, to jot down our ideas in a logical way. It doesn’t have the same pressures as a traditional roadmap, there’s no dates, no times. If we change something we can follow the tree and see what else it affects.” So remember: nothing is set in stone. Some things could well rust away. (Sorry).
The Rust blog entry also reveals some new features that are now live in the game. Weapons have had a little tweaking, with better hit detection and a better damage system implemented. Animal animations have been improved so they won’t moonwalk so much, and that cosy red hoodie from the legacy build of the game has finally arrived in the new build. Hooray!