Rust - The Battle for Honeypot Hill - Update #4

Good afternoon all. Sorry for the late update. I was hoping to come back with something more substantial than "editing continues" and it took a bit longer.

TL;DR on this post:

• I've mostly finished the first 15 minutes of the video and it's right here for you. Thank you for your patience all.

• The whole video is completed in draft form (phase 1) and it's about 1 hour and 22 minutes long. Each segment is now being send through refinement, animation, etc. Turning into its final form (phase 2). I might try and release batches of individual segments as they're completed.

• I've made this editing sheet here for anybody who would like to track progress. It's a tad bare-bones for the moment.

The timeline looks like this:

So process wise, I was able to mostly complete 'phase 1' at the start of last week. This means that the entire video is watchable end to end. But it is extremely rough.

For now it's really my eyes only. There are large segments of the draft video that consist of basic clips with no animations, flat text tiles in Premiere. And clip after clip of crudely typed out instructions for when I pull the various clips into Adobe After Effects.

I generally find that's the easier play. For I can rapidly import multiple scenes into After Effects and run through their animations in short order, especially using pre-made text templates. All an attempt to be efficient.

Speaking of efficiency, you'll note eventually that the first 15 minutes of the video is tonally very different from the later part. As mentioned in the previous update. This is because I start with some complaints about Rust's gameplay loop, which of course requires examples which I cannot provide.

Therefore I've been going down the rabbit hole of basebuilding tutorials, Rust tips and tricks, etc. Looking for specific examples of the mindset I'm whinging about. Especially in easy to digest visual form.

This came with its own unique challenge. For a great many of these videos are playing soundtracks, or narrating what they're doing, as part of their own attempts to engage the viewers. The same is true of the various Twitch.tv clips. The livestreamers are often talking, laughing, etc.

Which is a little bit of a hassle if you already have dialogue recorded higher up in the timeline.

Therefore, in an attempt to hear things smoothly on screen (and for other reasons I'll cover in a moment) I looked into setting up a local Rust server, within which I could simply re-record the audio with the same weapons.

And it works:

This was actually extremely easy to do. Rust has many faults. But admin tools are NOT one of them. They are extensive, easy to understand and quick to deploy. Much of this stuff takes mere seconds.

• I have the ability to rapidly spawn any item, weapon, base object, etc. Record said audio or get a clean view of something.

• I've taken the liberty of quickly teleporting around to create clean "ambience" sounds for every single biome (snow, jungle, desert, etc). Those I can easily use in clip after clip.

• I'm able to zip around and record static props that might be useful to talk about. Animals, balloons, the MLRS system, the oil rig, etc. All without having to go through the hassle of logging onto a real server and gathering the necessaries.

And here's the fun part.

This took a bit of trial and error. But I was able to get a backup of Dinklebeans Rust server from August.

And whilst I wasn't able to restore the bases (errors on each attempt, not sure why). I was able to find the exact same .map file, upload it to a dropbox link, and give the server the command to retrieve that map, rather than generate a new one with the same seed.

Meaning I'm able to do all of these recording shenanigans on the same map we played. All of it completely identical.

If there's a scene in which I describe going up a hill and being "within visual range of the MLRS site". Yes I could try to find a clear shot of it in the footage on the 24th of August. Maybe then freeze frame it, blurry in the distance.

Or I could just log into the custom server, teleport there, slay every NPC by console, look at the MLRS site and film. A task measured in seconds. With no weird audio in the background.

When describing the firing of the MLRS system on the night, I could use the footage kindly given to me by viewer "Ruddly". But that was only recorded in 480p. And he didn't even get a clear view of the rockets because...he was trying very hard to not get shot in the face.

One can be forgiven for some shoddy camera work:

None of that is a concern for me. An admin with god mode and no clip. I can record the missiles firing in close up, from multiple angles.

The custom server should provide excellent and efficient way to record B-roll background footage.

I plan to go even further.

For in the final battle sequence there are lots of moments where explosions happen. Most notably a moment where we are struck with an MLRS strike. Thwarted by our SAM turrets.

This is going to be part of a musical montage. Where the camera is going to rapidly cut between different perspectives, different reactions, etc. But with the admin tools I can make it look so much more cinematic.

• I was going to use the noclip camera to float amongst the explosions for ultra close up shots.

• Fly the camera from the sky to the ground to give the impression of the view from the missile. Or the opposite with SAM sites firing back.

• I can rebuild the SAMS and fire the MLRS site again and again with no cooldown. To see what the turret do. Something nobody filmed.

• I plan to try and build a sort of "Potemkin base". Rebuilding Honeypot Hill, but as an empty shell. To exist purely in the background for any establishing shots, etc. But also in the background as these missiles explode in several action shots.

So yes, lots of fun to be had with the admin tools. Now that I have a local server to do it.

Let me know what you think of the segment. And of course there was this other short one from earlier, for anybody who missed that.

The plan is to keep working these segments through phase 2. And deliver them to you as often as I can.

Thanks all.