Walk the map

Walk mode puts you on the ground as a player: Rust’s eye height, its walking, sprinting and crouching speeds, a jump, and a limit on the steps and slopes you can climb. It answers three questions without leaving the editor: can a player get here on foot, how does this place read from eye height, and how long is this route on foot.

It is a first look, not the game. The real test of a map is still a server, and Test in Crucible Local Server is how you run one.

Enter and leave

1. Point the center of the view at the ground where you want to stand.
2. Press F3, or choose VIEW > Walk Here, or click WALK beside the tool buttons at the top left of the view.

You land on the ground under the center of the view, the same point a PLACE uses, facing the way the camera faced. If the center of the view meets no ground in range, you land straight below the camera.

Press F3 again, or Esc, to leave. The fly camera resumes at the spot you walked to, looking the way you were looking, and a line at the bottom of the view says how far you walked and for how long.

Walk mode says why when it will not start.

When	What it says
No map is open	”Open or generate a map first: walk mode walks the map”
You are in the prefab workspace	”Walk mode is a map view: switch back to the map first”
The map is still loading its prefabs	”Wait for the map to finish loading, then walk”
A dialog is open	”Close the open dialog first”

Move

Input	What it does
Mouse	Look. The cursor is locked while you walk, so no button is held.
W A S D	Walk. These are the fly camera’s own movement keys, so a rebind of those carries over.
Hold Left Shift	Sprint
Hold Left Ctrl	Crouch
Space	Jump
F3 or Esc	Leave walk mode
F12	Screenshot, from eye height
L	The camera light, which is as useful in a cave as it is in the air

While you walk, the keyboard belongs to the walker. No tool key fires and no Ctrl shortcut does either, because Ctrl is crouch: leave walk mode to save, undo or edit. F3 is rebindable in Preferences > KEYBINDS like every other key on Keyboard shortcuts; jump, sprint and crouch are fixed.

If the window loses focus, the cursor is released and you stop where you are. Click the view to carry on.

Nothing about walking is an undo step and nothing is saved: no route, no position. Leaving puts everything back as it was except where the camera is.

The readout

The tool pill at the top left reads WALKING while the mode is on, and one line under it follows you, for example “Speed 2.8 m/s · Slope 12 of 45 degrees · Height 34.3 m · Walked 120 m in 0:43”.

Part	What it means
Speed	How fast you are actually moving.
Slope	The ground under your feet, against the steepest ground you can walk up.
Height	Your feet above sea level.
Water	How deep the water over your feet is. Shown only when they are wet.
Walked	The distance and the time since you entered: a route timer.

When the ground under you is not plain walking ground, the line says so in brackets: “too steep to climb” where you can stand and move sideways but not up, “sliding” where you cannot hold, “in the air” and “afloat”.

Preferences > GENERAL > Walk readout turns the numbers off and leaves the keys line. The deep-water line and the line about prefabs not being solid show either way.

Which numbers are Rust’s, and which are not yet

Walk mode reads its numbers from the game where the game’s files carry them.

	Value	Where it comes from
Walk, sprint and crouch speed	2.8, 5.5 and 1.7 meters per second	Rust’s own code
Eye height	1.5 meters standing, 0.9 crouched	Rust’s own code
Body	1.8 meters tall (1.1 crouched) and 1 meter wide	Rust’s own player
Where swimming begins	Water 1.17 meters deep over your feet	Rust’s own code

Three limits are not in any file Creator may read, so they are not measured yet. Until they are, walk mode uses stand-ins and says so under the readout (“Step, slope and jump limits are stand-ins: not yet measured in the game”).

	What walk mode uses	Why that value
Steepest slope you can walk up	45 degrees	The limit Rust builds its walking animals and scientists with. A player’s own limit is UNKNOWN until one is walked up measured ramps on a server.
Tallest step you can walk up	0.505 meters	The same source, and UNKNOWN for a player for the same reason.
Jump	1.5 meters at most	The most a Rust server lets a jump rise before it suspects flying. A real jump is lower, and how much lower is UNKNOWN.

So read a slope, a step or a ledge that is close to one of these as “maybe”, and check it on a server. Away from the limits the answer is dependable: a slope walk mode walks up easily is one a player walks up, and a cliff it refuses is one a player cannot climb. Speed and acceleration differ in one way too: walk mode is at its speed at once, where a player takes a moment to get there.

Water

You wade at full speed until the water is deep enough that a player would swim. Whether Rust slows a wading player is UNKNOWN (its server does not), so walk mode does not.

Where a player would swim, you float: you are held at the surface, you move at walking speed, sprint and jump do nothing, and the readout says “Deep water: a player swims here (swimming is not modelled)”. That lets you cross a river to judge the far bank while being told plainly that the crossing is a swim.

What is solid

The terrain is always solid: you walk on the ground and into its cave mouths and tunnel openings.

Prefabs are solid only when you turn that on. Out of the box you pass straight through rocks, monuments and buildings, and the readout says so: “Prefabs are not solid: turn on Solid prefabs while walking in Preferences, then restart Creator”.

1. Open Preferences > GENERAL and turn on Solid prefabs while walking.
2. Restart Creator.

It is a switch because of what it costs. Creator normally throws away Rust’s collision shapes when it loads the game’s content, since an editor does not need them. With the switch on it keeps them, which takes some extra load time and memory on every map whether you walk it or not. How much is UNKNOWN until it is measured, which is why it starts off.

With it on, the collision shapes Rust itself uses for a player come back around you as you walk: floors, walls, stairs, rocks, cliffs, and the bridges Creator builds. They exist only near you and only while you are walking, so nothing about selecting, placing or painting changes. The first time you enter near a monument the readout says “Preparing the ground” for a moment while its floors are made solid, so you never fall through one.

The invisible walls a map maker places (the prevent_movement volumes) stop you too, with the switch on or off.

If you fall where there is no ground at all, you are put back where you last stood, and a line says so.

What walk mode does and does not do

It does	It does not
Walk, sprint, crouch and jump at Rust’s numbers	Open doors: a closed door is a wall. Leave walk mode, fly through, and enter again
Stop at the terrain, at its holes, and (with the switch on) at every solid prefab near you	Climb ladders, or ride ziplines, lifts or vehicles
Wade, and float where a player would have to swim	Swim: there is no stroke, no diving and no breath
Refuse a slope or a step past its limits	Take fall damage, or model stamina, clothing, weight or weapons
Show speed, slope, height and water depth while you walk	Show anything a server adds when it runs: trees and ore from its spawn populations, barrels, animals, scientists
Work on the map	Run in the prefab workspace

Two things about solid prefabs are approximate. A prefab that looks different in each biome is solid in every one of its looks at once, so you may bump into a shape you cannot see. And a part that Rust turns on or off when the server starts is solid as it was authored.