We want to keep the memories and nostalgia of one of the greatest games ever made alive.
Rust LEGACY! This project was started in June and aims to be the way to keep the flame of
Rust Legacy lit for years to come. Send all complaints to pandemonium in S&Box discord!
Latest Devlog
| Date | Update | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 15, 2026 | Synchronized Day and Night Sky | -panDemonium |
| Lighting and atmosphere received their first complete production pass. The host-authoritative five-minute cycle now gives daytime stronger blue ambient fill, advances night 1.5 times faster, and preserves a genuinely dark blue and purple night. A low-cost sky system was built around native S&box day and 8K star materials with fixed stars and non-volumetric moving clouds. Published-client failures were traced to sky objects living outside the static scene snapshot; placing sky, fog, ambient light, and controllers beneath __GameWorld fixed delivery. A temporary ten-second swap test proved the path, then was disabled in favor of state-driven dawn and dusk fades that swap materials and textures only twice per cycle. | ||
| Jul 14, 2026 | World Rendering Optimization | -panDemonium |
| World optimization became the day's focus. All 7,040 authored trees were converted to fixed GPU Clutter with separate bark and foliage instances, preserving exact placement while retaining collider and gameplay proxies; 8,354 uniformly scaled rocks followed with each authored scale preserved. Obsolete source visuals were pruned, terrain clipmap LOD and shadow cascades were reduced, and expensive test services were disabled by default, producing dramatic frame-rate gains. Clutter exclusion expanded across build parts, loot crates, and proxy players, and the broken military-crate model path was repaired. Inventory and storage stack totals were also standardized to byte-sized values capped at 250 across S&box, MVC, and the live schema. | ||
| Jul 13, 2026 | Authoritative Loot and Resources | -panDemonium |
| Loot spawning moved into a testable production flow. Crosshair raycasts and remote-friendly H, N, and B controls now place, undo, publish, and verify spawn points; joining players receive active crates in sector batches; and a centralized priority queue removes empty containers and independently rerolls crate types on respawn. Original mutant-animal loot data was recovered into a live RadAnimal table, allowing rad wolves and bears to create the existing secure five-minute death backpack with research and blueprint drops. Resource nodes also gained authored spawners, server-authoritative health and inventory grants, sector snapshots, depletion, and queued respawning. | ||
| Jul 12, 2026 | World Foliage and Navigation | -panDemonium |
| Animal combat traces were repaired so bullets and melee can hit trigger-based client proxies without weakening world-hit validation. World authoring then shifted toward navigation and foliage: low-poly Unity grasses, bushes, and trees were converted with correct alpha masks, normals, and clamped sampling; all 7,040 sector trees were replaced by static collider and navigation-blocker prefabs; and 8,358 rocks plus RadTown geometry were classified for baking. Editor tooling now toggles sector state, audits navigation setup, and authors fitted RadTown blockers while preserving alleys. Grass and bush Clutter was kept off dedicated servers, restored to published clients through snapshots, and excluded from RadTowns. | ||
| Jul 11, 2026 | Server-Authoritative Animal Simulation | -panDemonium |
| The animal system came online with draggable spawners for five ecosystem mixes and automatic spawning after world persistence restores. One centralized server simulation now manages NavMesh wandering, home return, chasing, attacks, passive-animal fleeing, health, death, and disconnect retargeting. Clients receive sector-filtered batches and locally interpolate and animate the correct prefab by animal ID. Movement speeds and behavior were tuned per species, only wolves and bears attack, and a globally sorted respawn queue returns dead animals to their original spawners. NavMesh bounds and inclusion tags were repaired, terrain baking was proven, and foundations gained server-only navigation blockers. | ||
| Jul 10, 2026 | Production Weapon Integration | -panDemonium |
| The perfected TestWeapons presentation moved into the real multiplayer scene. Production now resolves scene-authored viewmodels and worldmodels from LibraryItemRenderer, drives the correct idle, fire, and ironsight behavior for Rust and Facepunch-style weapons, bypasses unwanted native sniper-scope behavior, and mounts the owning player's viewmodel attachments with correct local transforms. Snapshot diagnostics exposed why clients could not see the library and guided the scene-networking fix. Starter loadouts also swapped Hatchet and Pickaxe for P250 and MP5A4. The day finished with deterministic client Clutter for grass and bushes plus clutter exclusion for roads, foundations, and ramps. | ||
| Jul 9, 2026 | Smooth Weapon Production | -panDemonium |
| First-person weapon presentation got a major cleanup pass. A clean player-rig test proved smooth camera-owned viewmodels, then TestWeapons adopted the same approach while keeping the custom ironsight library for both self-contained and Facepunch-style weapons. Built-in flashlight, drop, and sniper-scope behavior was bypassed where needed, F/G toggles were redirected to weapon attachments, tool handedness was corrected, and bandages plus held items were fixed so they no longer behave like bullet firearms. | ||
| Jul 8, 2026 | Proxy Weapon Pooling | -panDemonium |
| The TestWeapons scene became a real proving ground for proxy-player equipment. LibraryItemRenderer was organized around item names with ViewModel and WorldModel children, proxy worldmodels were pooled from scene-authored wrappers, and each proxy received reusable attachment instances for holosight, silencer, flashlight, and laser. Clone-reference bugs, attachment parenting, faux flashlight beams, laser beams, and multiple proxy spawn markers were worked through so the system can later move into the production scene. | ||
| Jul 7, 2026 | Loot Tables And Crates | -panDemonium |
| Loot systems moved from research into structure. Rust Legacy loot references were mined for crate and supply-drop behavior, the MVC admin pages gained item and loot-table management direction, and server bootstrap APIs were shaped around authenticated item catalogs, loot tables, and spawn lists. Crate prefab imports, spawn-point authoring, undo support, and server-side looting locks were all planned around keeping container contents authoritative. | ||
| Jul 6, 2026 | Animal Import Pipeline | -panDemonium |
| The animal pipeline became repeatable. Bear, wolf, boar, deer, rabbit, and chicken assets were imported with their core animations, material assignments, and test prefabs, then documented so future animals can follow the same path. Radiated bear and wolf material variants were explored, and the newer S&box fur shader was applied to imported animal fur materials to see how much better the creatures could read in-game. | ||
| Jul 5, 2026 | Attachment State Foundation | -panDemonium |
| The item-state plan grew into durability, weapon attachments, and visible attachment slots. Firearms gained the concept of randomized attachment capacity, inventory icons started drawing filled and empty attachment boxes, and test loadouts swapped in silencer, laser, flashlight, and red-dot items. The work set up durable per-item data so attachments and future wear values can follow an item through inventories, storage, drops, and pickups. | ||
| Jul 4, 2026 | Network Optimization Phases | -panDemonium |
| Networking work shifted toward scale. Player movement packets were trimmed away from armor and active-item payloads, proxy player details moved toward batched lookup requests, and active item or armor changes became their own sector-routed updates. The optimization journal captured rate limits, malicious-burst protection, player-detail batching, and cleaner rules for how subscribers learn only the state they need. | ||
| Jul 3, 2026 | Respawn Placement Rules | -panDemonium |
| Respawn and placement rules moved closer to the real survival loop. Beds and sleeping bags were treated as owner-aware respawn points with cooldown rules, deployables were sorted into terrain-only versus base-friendly placement categories, and C4 stayed as its own special-case attachment item. Server-side placement validation, restart-loaded build objects, and explosion visuals all got more scrutiny so clients and the server agree on what actually exists. | ||
| Jul 2, 2026 | Full Screen Death Flow | -panDemonium |
| The death flow got another visible polish pass after a dead-login test exposed tiny top-left text and a still-spinning observer camera. The death screen now has a hard full-screen blackout fallback, direct LegacyDeathScreen styling, a reference-style red YOU ARE DEAD layout, bottom-right respawn actions, fade timing, stronger combat/movement input blocking, and observer camera look suppression while the overlay is active. This should make death and dead reconnects feel like a real modal state instead of a world view with stray UI text. | ||
| Jul 1, 2026 | Gate and Spike Deployables | -panDemonium |
| Today pushed deeper into deployable building coverage. Wood gate and wood gateway assets were pulled from the Rust project dumps, converted with textures/materials, and wired into placement as a terrain-only gateway plus a socketed gate. The build socket authoring tools gained the support needed to preview that workflow, remote testing got an Up Arrow auto-forward helper and stronger Tab movement stopping, and spike wall deployables were split into small/large variants with server-side contact damage, one-second player cooldowns, persistence health, and starter inventory stacks. | ||
| Jun 30, 2026 | Death Reconnects and Workbenches | -panDemonium |
| Death and reconnect persistence got the hardening pass. Players who leave while awaiting the death screen now save as dead with health zero and no sleeper state, recent-disconnect replay keeps the dead flag, and the live inventory-slot schema drift got a safe bootstrap check. Sleeper reconnects also gained short reconnect protection to prevent mid-spawn damage exploits, while workbench and repair bench assets were imported, converted, material-fixed, wired as deployables, and added to starter inventory for testing. | ||
| Jun 29, 2026 | Deployable Storage Placement Proof | -panDemonium |
| Today focused on deployable placement visibility and storage proof. Campfires and wood storage boxes now place through the server path, register storage sidecars with 8/12 slots, and emit clear SectorBuild/Storage logs; placement diagnostics, hotbar rollback, pillar occupancy cleanup, and the restored four side ramp sockets make failures much easier to track. | ||
| Jun 28, 2026 | Persistent World Storage | -panDemonium |
| World storage persistence became real. Containers now register by global part_instance_id, use type-based slot counts, preserve player-chosen slot indexes, and flow through save/load DTOs so stashes, campfires, furnaces, boxes, large storage, and repair benches can survive restarts without duplicating items. | ||
| Jun 27, 2026 | Armor Visuals and Proxy Sync | -panDemonium |
| Armor visuals moved from research to runtime tools. We cataloged Citizen clothing by slot, added an ArmorVisualTuner with tint controls, saved Cloth/Rad/Leather/Kevlar sets, and baked a compact 1111-style armor state path for proxy players, equip updates, and ragdolls. | ||
| Jun 26, 2026 | Weapon Lab Tuning | -panDemonium |
| Today focused on the TestWeapons scene and the new welcome/devlog surface. The weapon lab gained live viewmodel tuning, ironsight preview controls, crosshair alignment, animation/timing printouts, and a baked M92 9mm Pistol offset so first-person weapons can be lined up faster. | ||
| Jun 25, 2026 | Live Infrastructure and Persistence | -panDemonium |
| Today focused on the surrounding live-game infrastructure: welcome and restart notices, C4 safety, remove/share behavior, player registration planning, server API authentication, and the first real world-persistence save pipeline. The save system now has diagnostics for web API responses, database counts, and queued world changes so persistence can be proven instead of guessed at. | ||
| Jun 25, 2026 | Networking Backbone Kickoff | -panDemonium |
| I will begin writing devlogs. The project was started in early June 2026. I've been focusing on the networking backbone of the game. I think we will be able to maximize the player count because of how we are structuring things and what & how we are syncing using a custom Area of Interest manager. More to come every day! | ||
| Jun 24, 2026 | Proxy Combat and Building Packets | -panDemonium |
| The proxy-player milestone was effectively achieved, then expanded with sector-routed gunshots, melee, jumping, ragdolls, blood impacts, material impacts, footsteps, landings, and hit reactions. Work also began applying the same sector-packet philosophy to building parts, deployables, C4, pooling, and world presentation. | ||
| Jun 23, 2026 | Proxy Player Networking | -panDemonium |
| The network-light player proxy system took a huge leap: bridge requests, hotbar switching, native remote cleanup, proxy movement, appearance, combat routing, and sector-scoped visibility were all tested live. The client shape moved toward one local native player plus nearby proxy players only. | ||
| Jun 22, 2026 | Sector Proxy Direction | -panDemonium |
| Player-object diagnostics exposed the cost of broad native player replication and pushed the project toward lightweight sector-scoped proxy avatars. Tests showed exactly why nearby players should exist locally only when their sector is relevant. | ||
| Jun 21, 2026 | Cloud Server Breakthrough | -panDemonium |
| The first big cloud-server breakthrough landed: clients connected, spawned into the real terrain, saw roads, radtowns, rocks, trees, and each other, and item icons finally showed correctly. Sector visuals and dedicated-server renderer stripping also proved the world could be prepared for serious testing. | ||
| Jun 20, 2026 | Cloud Launch Cleanup | -panDemonium |
| Publish and startup issues were chased down across item icons, scene loading, package visibility, and dedicated-server launch behavior. The work was messy but important: every fix made the cloud server/client loop more repeatable. | ||
| Jun 19, 2026 | Dedicated Server Plumbing | -panDemonium |
| Dedicated-server configuration and master-server plumbing received more attention, including generated config defaults and the path toward cloud-hosted testing. The project moved closer to being something real players could connect to instead of only a local editor experiment. | ||
| Jun 18, 2026 | World Sector Diagnostics | -panDemonium |
| World-sector diagnostics and scene organization improved so trees, rocks, terrain detail, and debug information could be inspected with confidence. This was quiet infrastructure work, but it made later cloud testing dramatically easier. | ||
| Jun 17, 2026 | Sector Tooling Foundations | -panDemonium |
| Sector tooling and world-organization work continued, especially around making the map manageable in chunks instead of treating the whole world as one always-active space. The project started leaning harder into the idea that clients should only care about nearby sectors. | ||
| Jun 16, 2026 | Editor Hotload Stabilization | -panDemonium |
| A stubborn editor hotload problem was traced to compile-time database package dependencies, then cleaned up so tools could load reliably in S&box. That unblocked the in-scene authoring workflow needed for persistent world and sector work. | ||
| Jun 15, 2026 | Legacy Loot and Cooking Research | -panDemonium |
| Legacy survival references were reviewed for loot, cooking, campfire, and item behavior. This helped keep the new systems grounded in the original Rust Legacy rhythm rather than drifting into a generic survival game. | ||
| Jun 14, 2026 | Hunting Bow Prototype | -panDemonium |
| The weapon prototype path moved forward with hunting bow and first-person visibility tests. Function and presentation were separated so weapon behavior could be proven even while viewmodel visuals were still being tuned. | ||
| Jun 13, 2026 | Playable Loop Polish | -panDemonium |
| Work focused on tightening the early gameplay loop: hotbar behavior, inventory expectations, build previews, and the small pieces that make the game feel playable instead of purely technical. These passes helped keep the project testable while deeper networking work was still forming. | ||
| Jun 12, 2026 | Survival Systems Foundation | -panDemonium |
| Legacy Rusted continued its foundation work around survival inventory, build-placement feel, and the shape of the world systems. The goal was to keep the Rust Legacy nostalgia intact while moving toward a server-authoritative architecture that can actually scale. | ||