Rust’s latest devblog is all about glistening male buttocks

A healthy spot of Greco-Roman game testing.

Last time I checked a Rust devblog, creator Garry Newman seemed rather depressed; this time he’s a bit happier. This may or may not be down to the multiple video files featuring rugged, naked gentlemen jogging briskly around Rust’s virtual world, but Newman says that “It finally feels like we’re emerging from the darkness, reaching out for the light.”

I much prefer seeing people cheerful and optimistic, so that’s nice.

This week, much of the talk is of player models, player animations and player buttocks. Where the player model is concerned, it’s “now just animation data and we can drop models onto it.” This is good, because it means if they fancy making some clothing options for players the artist just needs to model it instead of recompiling the whole player. More clothing options means it’s less likely that player models will be jiggling their bits freely in the wind. You can decide for yourself whether that’s good or bad.

The player animation system has been “switched over to Mechanim,” which means Rust’s team can “alter the animations nice and quickly, visually, logically.” This is naturally illustrated by a video of a glistening Adonis going for a sweaty run around a small wooded area. Seriously, if you like male buns, this is the update for you. Tina from Bob’s Burgers would be all over this.

Uh, anyway. There’s also a little talk about netcode. It’s being completely replaced (eek) but this “turned out to be pretty simple” (hooray.) Work is ongoing on procedural maps, tins of tuna and a rocket launcher as well.

As always with Rust, if you want to watch the development process it’s possible to join the experimental branch of the game by opting in to it on Steam (Rust, Properties, Betas tab, select experimental branch in the drop-down menu.) Be aware that you might lose your settings if your switch to the experimental branch and then switch back. Newman adds that if you’re more interested in just playing Rust you should probably “stick to the live branch.”