Facepunch studios programmer Garry Newman has posted a yearly review that contains a bit of interesting fact: Survival game Rust has now made more money than his eponymous Garry’s Mod, or Gmod. With Rust having grossed $142 million at 9 million copies sold, it has surpassed GMod at a humble $108 million. GMod has still outsold rust in terms of copies, however, with 16 million total sales. This might come as a surprise to some, because GMod is 15 years old this year, while Rust released in 2013. Doing the math, that means both games have sold over a million copies for each year of release, while Rust has sold 1.5 million for each year. 

The post also contains details on Facepunch’s release from earlier this year, Chippy—that sold about 10 thousand copies. Compared to other games from Facepunch that’s not great, but it’s pretty good for the post-indie apocalypse Steam environment. Anyways, here’s the big Rust thing from this year: Horses. Who doesn’t love a horse. Nobody, that’s who.

You can read Facepunch’s entire yearly review over on their website. Warning: Contains sales figures, console game announcements, other business stuff. 

The headline says it all: Rust, the game about waking up naked and alone on a strange island, mere hours away from death due to exposure and starvation, now has tubas. And not just tubas! The game's first paid DLC, announced last month, also includes a piano, a drum kit, guitars, a trumpet, a pan flute, and other cobbled-together instruments—all of them fully playable—of the sort you'd expect to find on a Gilligan's Island with guns. I'm sure no one will annoy anyone with these.

The Rust Instrument Pack goes for $10/£7/€8 on Steam (although it's 10 percent off until December 12), and in a nice touch you don't need to own the DLC in order to enjoy the tunes. You'll have to purchase the pack to be able to craft the instruments, but once made they can be shared between all players or taken off of corpses as regular inventory items. Static instruments are also available on a new music stage in the Compound so everyone can give them a try.

Unlike the squeezebox and fiddle in Sea of Thieves, for instance, which play preset tunes on a button press, these instruments in Rust can be manipulated more finely: "They all use a completely overhauled music system that allows you to play specific notes (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) across multiple octaves," developer Facepunch explained. And if you happen to have a MIDI-compatible device lying around you can plug it into your PC and use it to interact with the instruments in a more musical manner. The acoustic guitar already in the game has also been converted to work with the new system.

Here's what you can craft, and what it costs to do so:

• Wheelbarrow Piano (200 Wood, 100 Metal Frags)
• Junkyard Drum Kit (200 Wood, 100 Metal Frags)
• Shovel Bass (50 Wood, 75 Metal Frags)
• Sousaphone (100 Metal Frags)
• Jerry Can Guitar (25 Wood, 50 Metal Frags)
• Xylobones (50 Bone Fragments)
• Plumber's Trumpet (75 Metal Frags)
• Cowbell (35 Metal Frags)
• Canbourine (25 Metal Frags)
• Pan Flute (20 Metal Frags, 5 Cloth)

The update also enables legs, which Rust developer Garry Newman gave us an unexpectedly horrific behind-the-scenes look at last month. "Legs" sounds simple enough, but like most things involved with game programming there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. 

As usual, there are a number of other fixes, changes, and additions in this update. Loading times have also been improved (although Newman noted, accurately, that if you really want to speed things up, buy an SSD), and horses are now better able to navigate rocks and radtowns—although they might sometimes do weird things like, say, teleport onto signs (this is being worked on). And for owners of Garry's Mod, there's a new GMod Tool Gun, a hammer replacement to celebrate that game's 15th anniversary. Full details are up at facepunch.com.

It's fun to get a look at how the sausage is made in games, and Rust developer Garry Newman opened the doors to his butcher shop in a blog post today. The post reveals that Newman has wanted for years to let players look down in first-person and see their own legs while playing Rust, rather than traveling through the world as a disembodied camera in the same manner as most first-person games.

"We have a skeleton with the player model on it (which is what casts the localplayer shadow)," the post reads. "We want to show it, but we also want to manipulate the bones in a way that they don't conflict with the player's view. But if we do that the shadow would be all fucked."

The solution Newman finally came up with? Rendering a different model. "So what we do is basically copy the third person model (which creates the shadows) and manipulate the bones. The manipulation isn't anything complicated, it's just a case of tucking shit behind the camera," Newman writes.

Above: Gif made from video at Garry.tv

"There's a couple of extra things we have to do. When you're crouched and look down, we pull the viewmodel back so it doesn't clip through your knees."

While that solution does indeed look convincing from a first-person perspective (above), it's both funny and a little alarming to see what's happening behind the scenes to achieve it:

Above: Gif made from video at Garry.tv

As you can see, the player's shadow is intact and both it and their body will look perfectly normal to them, but "tucking shit behind the camera" technically turns the player into a weird stretched taffy monster. It's reminiscent of the disturbing gymnastics required to let players peer over cover in Crysis.

You can read the full post for more behind-the-scenes magic (there's a reason the models above don't show the player's arms) at Newman's blog. And while we're on the topic of Rust, we also learned this week that it'll release its first paid DLC next month, which will contain 10 new playable musical instruments.

Rust is getting some more new stuff next month, and for the first time ever you'll have to pay something extra for it. The first premium DLC for Rust will feature playable musical instruments, 10 of them in all, including a piano, drums, sousaphone (pictured above), and yes, even a cowbell.

The premium DLC will cost $10, though Rust's devblog says it will be initially discounted. The DLC will arrive on December 5, though the instruments are available now to play with and try out for free on Rust's staging server branch.

These aren't just instruments where you hold down a key and they automatically play a song. "We've created a whole new control system to play the instruments," the devblog says.

"You can now bind the standard note range (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) to any key. From there you can bind sharp and octave modifier keys which allow you to play over 20 notes on some instruments." This new music system will be applied to Rust's existing acoustic guitar as well when the DLC arrives. You can also plug in a MIDI device and play some of the instruments in real time.  

Here's a look at some (nude) players in a jam session:

Even if you don't purchase the DLC, there are still ways to join in on the fun. If a DLC owner crafts a musical instrument for you (or if you murder someone and take theirs) and you'll be able to play it. 

And if you're worried about being hounded at all hours of the night by roving sousaphone and xylophone players, no need to worry. Facepunch's community support manager Errn tweeted that the instruments will have their own dedicated volume slider.

Here are the rest of the instruments in the DLC: