Creator FAQ

The questions people actually ask. If yours is not here, ask it: an unanswered question is a documentation bug.

Do I need Rust installed?

Yes. Creator renders your map with Rust’s own models, textures, shaders and monuments, read from your own Steam copy and kept in a private snapshot. It never redistributes Facepunch’s art and never modifies your Rust install. See Sync your Rust content.

Can Creator open maps made in other editors?

Yes. Creator opens any Rust .map, including maps made in RustEdit, and places monuments, roads, rivers, prefabs and spawn points itself.

Can Creator open RustEdit maps?

It opens any standard Rust .map, whatever wrote it, including the maps RustEdit writes. What RustEdit stores in its own blocks beside the standard data is a longer answer, and it gets its own page: Import a RustEdit map.

Does it generate maps?

Yes. Pick a size from 1000 to 6000 and a seed, and Creator generates a whole world: terrain, biomes, topology, ground textures, monuments, roads, rivers, rails, powerlines, rocks and foliage. Maps generate against Rust’s own worldgen, which is why a generated map looks like a Rust map rather than like a heightmap with monuments dropped on it. See Procedural generation.

Can I generate on my own heightmap?

Yes, in Creator Mode. Open TOOLS > Procedural Generation…, switch to CREATOR MODE, and tell it where the land comes from: the map that is open, a .raw heightmap you import there, or Rust’s own island. Creator measures the land first and offers a fix when it is not ready (the sea level in the wrong place, or land touching the map edge), then generates the biomes, monuments, roads, rivers and rail on your shape. If your land is a group of islands, it can join them with bridges and run one road around them. See Generating on your own heightmap.

Can I choose which monuments spawn?

Yes, in the same place. Creator Mode lists every monument your Rust content carries. Unchecked means never placed; checked means Rust’s own rules may place it, so a checked monument can still be missing from a map that is too small or has the wrong biome for it. See Choosing which monuments generate.

Is a Creator Mode map still a vanilla map?

It runs on a vanilla server with no plugin: the land, the monuments and the bridges are all ordinary map data. What it is not is Rust’s own generation for that size and seed, which is why the panel says so in red and the confirm dialog says it in words. Standard Mode is the one that matches what a Rust server generates.

Why is generation slow?

Most of the time goes into placing the world’s prefabs rather than computing the terrain, and the first generation in a session is often slower than a second one on the same machine. This is a known open issue rather than a solved problem, and it is honest to say so. Generate at a smaller size while you are learning the tools.

Why did the same seed give me a different map?

Because you re-synced your content. Creator generates against the content snapshot that is active, so a seed is reproducible against that snapshot rather than forever: new Rust content moves monuments and adds props. The older snapshot is still on disk. See Re-syncing, and what it changes.

Will my map run on a server without the extension?

The map itself will. Creator writes standard Rust .map files, and a stock server reads one.

What needs the server extension is everything the stock format has no room for: trigger volumes, IO wiring, loot, vending and NPC profiles, and ziplines. Those ride in Creator’s own blocks inside the map, and without the extension the server ignores them.

Which LLM clients can drive Creator?

Two, and both run on your own PC: Claude Desktop and Claude Code. You bring your own Claude account. Creator holds no key of its own, makes no call to any service and sends no telemetry.

ChatGPT and claude.ai in a browser cannot, in this alpha. Each has a page saying so and saying what would change it.

Why can ChatGPT and claude.ai not connect?

Because of where Creator listens. While it is open it can run a small server, and that server listens on 127.0.0.1, which is your own machine and nothing else: no port is opened to your network or to the internet. Claude Code talks to that address directly and Claude Desktop starts a small program that does, so both reach it. A client running in a browser, or on someone else’s servers, can do neither: it connects by public HTTPS address, and your PC does not have one.

Bridging that gap takes a relay, a small service on a public address that Creator dials out to and that forwards requests back down the same connection. Creator can do its half of that today, but no relay is hosted for this alpha, so there is nothing to point a browser client at. The two pages above have the detail.

What is the confirm card, and why do some things need a click?

Because nothing changes your map unless you say so. Claude can read the open map freely, but a tool that would change something never acts on its own: it returns a proposal, Creator shows a confirm card describing exactly what would happen, and nothing moves until you click it. Dismissing the card is a real refusal, and Claude is told so. There is no setting that turns that off.

Editing the recipe you are building together is different, and deliberately so. When you say “leave the airfield out” or “drop the rail”, Claude is changing a draft nobody has generated yet, so those edits apply as you talk, with no card. The click comes back the moment that draft would actually do something: generating a world, replaying a change onto the map you have, saving, and undoing all wait for you.

Is this made by Facepunch?

No. Creator is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Facepunch Studios. Rust is theirs.

Can I sell or share the maps I make?

Yes. The maps you make are yours, including for commercial use. See Legal.

How much is it, and how many PCs?

Pricing is shown in the launcher’s Shop tab, and your license and the number of PCs it covers live in the launcher: see Licenses and account.

Why will custom items with custom models never be built?

Because it requires modifying client files, which puts the people playing your map at risk of an EAC ban. We are not going to ship a feature that can get your players banned. The same reasoning applies to any request that implies client modification. If Facepunch ever ships official custom-content support, this changes.

What does “alpha” mean here?

The editing and the generation are real and are used to build real maps, and the release engineering around them is young. Expect rough edges in installing, in error messages and in recovery, and expect things to change between builds. See What is Creator?.

Can I undo?

Everything. One thing you did is one undo step, whole-map operations included. A live drag mutates as you drag and commits a single step when you release. A single click with a brush is one step too, so Ctrl+Z right after a click on a freshly generated map undoes the click, not the generation.

Does topology follow the terrain when I sculpt?

No, and this is a design fact rather than a missing feature. Rust’s topology is a flat 2-D bitmask with no height component, so there is no “height” for it to follow. If you raise a hill, repaint the topology you want on it.

Something is not working

Troubleshooting is organized by the message on your screen, so search it for the words you are looking at. If that does not cover it, report it with the diagnostic folder and the support bundle: at this stage, confusing counts as a bug.