Been reflecting on games that were good such as Rust back in the 2019/18/17 days and was wondering if there was a way to play the older Rust versions; so I took a couple days to wrap my head around to actually getting it to work.
Firstly I found a discord server that had the older Rust versions and they were hosting servers for them. Then I was like I really want to see and experience the good devblog 199 days and before; so there’s a thing called “DepotDownloader” which you can go on steamdb and literally download any version of Rust you want and the server.
There is a bit of information to get it working properly which I was mainly in the dark for and one major thing I got from someone on that Rust discord. So I will explain how to actually do it. Btw you can do this for any game on steam but some files will obviously differ.
Download DepotDownloader
Unzip and go into the main directory of where the DepotDownloader.exe is and click on file tab (top left) and open power shell. Also make sure that the directory address doesn’t have any unsupported symbols like I did with using ‘.
Go to steamdb > search Rust > depots > there’s 2 ones that you need, Rust Client - Common and Rust Client - Windows 64. When you go into those depots you can see all the manifests which are basically the versions of the game.
Find which version of Rust you want.
Go back into the powershell and type “.\DepotDownloader.exe -app {App id} -depot {Depot id} -manifest {manifest id} -username {steam username} -password {steam password}” and replace everything that’s in { } with the information you need. The reason why you need to add your steam login is because it needs to verify that you have the game but you can’t do it with the server one since doing without it makes an anonymous login since it can’t be connected to your account (I didn’t know this until a day after trying all this).
Once you downloaded both the Common and Win 64 version, combine the files together and you got yourself that version of Rust.
Repeat steps for the Rust Dedicated Server (which you just search in steamdb).
Now for the server to work you need to turn off eac. I don’t know if there is any other ways but this is what works for me. I made a batch file to sort that out entirely:
@echo off :start RustDedicated.exe ^ -batchmode ^ -rcon.port 28016 ^ -rcon.password "sugma" ^ -rcon.web 1 ^ -server.secure 0 ^ -server.eac 0 ^ -server.encryption 0 ^ -server.port 28015 ^ -server.level "Procedural Map" ^ -server.seed 1 ^ -server.worldsize 4250 ^ -server.maxplayers 100 ^ -server.hostname "Displayed in the Server Browser List." ^ -server.description "Displayed in the Server Connection Window.\\nSecondary text." ^ -server.url "[<https://yourwebsite.com>](<https://yourwebsite.com/>)" ^ -server.headerimage "[<https://yourwebsite.com/serverimage.jpg>](<https://yourwebsite.com/serverimage.jpg>)" ^ -server.logoimage "[<https://yourwebsite.com/serverlogo.jpg>](<https://yourwebsite.com/serverlogo.jpg>)" ^ -server.identity "myserver" goto start
And when you got that sorted, just run the batch file and you can join the server.
I also use RustAdmin rcon for ease of managing players/commands.
So yeah I got that working and just admiring how good we got it back then. Obviously going back around pre devblog 150-ish is gonna look like shit and dated which would probably play like shit also but 2017/2018 versions are a lot more enjoyable than playing today’s bullshit.
I was curious that I looked at every single Rust devblog and mainly looking at the main changes for recoil and general features. And one thing I really found interesting is the transparency of the development of the game. Back in alpha Rust you see they actually tell you the reasons on changes and express the feeling on those changes. These days around 2021/2022 you don’t see that anymore and I wonder if it’s linked to how casual the game has become after all these years. Has Helk lost the passion that he transferred his role and doesn’t care too much now or it isn’t that black and white that he just want’s to make a game for everyone. Which ever the reason is it, was a bad call for the general identity of the game and how we saw the game to be.
You see the old concept art of it potentially being in a steampunk dystopian style with giant gears and rusted robots etc. It just feels gritty like fallout but feels more authentic. I guess they didn’t want to go into the route due to a more realistic approach but just judging these concepts, it would of been pretty cool to see having more interesting and memorable landmarks to pvp in. Would have a lot of things to work with as far as content and story as well. But all in saying if it’s balanced and keeping that high-risk high-reward skill-gap gameplay that it had before.