Monument blockers are balanced and event saving improves

2026-W35 · 24 Aug to 30 Aug

Ninety-two branches reached main in the last week before the staging wipe. Player-facing work included monument blocker balance and preserving event crates through a server restart. Sources outside this week are labeled as earlier context or later follow-up.

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Branch work is not a promise: some of it ships in the next update, some of it never ships.

Commits
655
Developers
37
Branches
112
Merged to main
92

Monument blocker balance

Pre-release work adjusted monument blocker demolition costs, added a health bar and set a 24-hour decay grace period. The blockers subsequently shipped in September. Destroyed blockers stay gone; decay affects blockers that remain intact.

6 changes

main/Monument_Blocker_Balance

  • Hitting a monument blocker now shows a health bar.#616341
  • Blocker protection and health adjusted, then lowered again to one C4 or five satchels.#617645
  • Blockers at Launch Site, Military Tunnels and Missile Silo tuned individually.#617543
  • Small Oil Rig got its own blocker.#617649
  • Blockers now decay, with the decay grade period set to 24 hours across all of them.#617828
  • Fixed explosive ammo doing no damage to blockers at all.#618252

Events keep their loot through a restart

Work improved saving for oil rigs, Cargo Ship, Patrol Helicopter, Bradley and satellite crash sites, including preserving their crates across server restarts. The listed fixes cover specific event-state problems rather than guaranteeing every possible restart case.

6 changes

main/improved_event_saveloading

  • Both oil rigs keep their crates through a server restart.#616302
  • Cargo ship keeps its crates and runs more loot cycles, with random gaps between them.#617438
  • Patrol helicopter, Bradley and satellite crash sites save correctly instead of losing every crate.#617509
  • Oil rig radiation still restarts after a server restart even if the force reset fails.#617562
  • Fixed non-puzzle crate and barrel spawns on both rigs being set to never respawn.#618273
  • Hackable crate flag and visual fixes.#617396

High quality metal ore

HQM becomes something you mine off a node rather than only smelt. The work this week was mostly about making it rare enough not to break progression.

5 changes

main/hqm_ore

  • HQM ore texture and collectible art added, with prefabs.#617430
  • HQM spawns split into their own population so they can be made much rarer.#617557
  • HQM node spawn rate cut by 66%.#617629
  • Collectable yield lowered from 8 to 5.#617750
  • Added to the general random ore spawner at weight 5, plus a dedicated spawner with doubled respawn delays.#617769

Composter rework

The composter was running on its own code path and had drifted. Merging it into the normal cooking code gave it a progress bar and automatic starting, and shook out a pile of bugs on the way.

6 changes

main/qol_compost_ui

  • Composter code merged into the normal cooking code, so it shows decomposition time like a furnace.#617799
  • It now starts automatically when you put something in, using the apartment stove's code.#617803
  • Smelt speed increased so it behaves the same as before without splitting stacks.#617809
  • Fixed items that are both cookable and compostable, such as meat, using the wrong time.#617813
  • Fixed a four year old bug that let you move items into a furnace output by splitting them.#617814
  • The loot panel says Composter instead of Furnace.#617812

Vehicle armour breaks into panels

Attack Helicopter and armoured hot air balloon panels detach as vehicle health falls, opening gaps that expose their occupants. The panels are tied to vehicle-health thresholds rather than independent panel health pools.

5 changes

main/attackheli_armour_damge

  • Attack helicopter left, front and right panels toggle their colliders and visuals when removed.#617463
  • Main cabin collider shrunk so shots pass through the gaps that opens.#617470
  • Armour falloff adjusted.#617665
  • Balloon armour split into chunks that break off individually.#616245
  • Balloon armour now reports the parent balloon's health.#617946

Marketplace needs the grid

The Bandit Camp market terminal is being wired into August's power grid, so drone deliveries stop being an always-on service.

Layout of Power Plant
3 changes

main/marketplace_power

  • The market terminal now needs charge from the Power Plant to work.#616172
  • Terminal UI explains the power requirement.#616385
  • A power icon shows when the marketplace is unpowered.#617515

Character creator

Work continued on the main menu character creator. Most of this week was making the preview render live so the face tab updates when you change race or skin colour.

4 changes

main/character_customisation

  • Earlier context (2026-08-22): Icons render live, so changing race or skin colour updates the face tab immediately.#616009
  • Earlier context (2026-08-22): New animations added to the creator, plus a click animation on each option.#616064
  • Earlier context (2026-08-22): A dust effect and a live background were added behind the model.#616048
  • Earlier context (2026-08-21): Fixed categories not working properly.#615872

Frogs, rabbits and squirrels

Small ambient animals being prototyped next to the livestock work. Worth watching mainly because it shows how much of a branch gets cut before it ships.

4 changes

main/Livestock_animals/critter_animals

  • Frogs look for shallow water and start croaking.#616288
  • Basic rabbit and squirrel setup, with animations and prefabs.#617485
  • Critter network range reduced so a map full of them is cheap.#617928
  • Later follow-up (2026-09-01): First pass at the squirrel interest mechanic.#624744

Deployable optimisation pass

A batch of mesh and texture optimisations gathered from several small branches. Nothing visible on its own, but these are the objects that fill a base, so the saving multiplies.

3 changes

main/prop_optimisations

  • Bin bag piles, card tables, gutters, small stashes and mixing tables optimised.#618065
  • Large wooden box, wooden storage box and bed optimised.#618070
  • Gun display racks had their weapons and hooks merged into single meshes.#618098

Render pipeline and DLSS

The new render pipeline gained DLSS support and had a set of visual bugs cleaned up before merging. This is groundwork rather than something to look for in game.

4 changes

main/render_pipeline_testing

  • Earlier context (2026-08-20): DLSS support added to the new render pipeline.#615639
  • Earlier context (2026-08-20): Fixed underwater lab window refraction and the noise texture on volumetric light beams.#615025
  • Earlier context (2026-08-21): Fixed a lighting pass memory leak.#615877
  • Earlier context (2026-08-19): Radial blur added and wired into explosion effects.#615057

Also this week

  • Swamp trees now give 1000 wood instead of 300. #616179
  • A tool cupboard can change its upkeep rate based on how many players are authorised on it. #616164
  • Wearables can muffle game audio, which is being used to make heavy helmets deafen you. #616154
  • A deepsea.terrain_everywhere convar enables deep sea terrain and ocean colour across the whole map. #616141
  • Later follow-up (2026-08-31): Jukeboxes snap when deployed. #618619
  • Later follow-up (2026-08-31): Admins get on-screen status indicators, starting with infinite ammo. #618627
  • Rugs no longer block installing a workbench upgrade. #617625
  • The boat building station can be deployed on servers with a non-default ocean level. #617918
  • Wooden armour parts and the crystal AR were added to the skin viewer. #617991
  • A texture pass found the radiation dart shipping at 4K on every platform. #616234
  • Earlier context (2026-08-23): Modular car steering retuned, with no struggle multiplier while the handbrake is on. #616107
  • SAM sites are being buffed against drones, with a configurable detonate distance. #616185
  • Staging wiped on 27 August for save 288. #617700
How this digest was read

Read from Facepunch's public commit log: 24 Aug to 30 Aug, 655 commits.

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