Smart Sorter
Smart Sorter is a powerful quality-of-life plugin for Rust that transforms inventory and base management. It automates the tedious task of sorting loot through an intuitive UI and a powerful set of features, including drop boxes, multi-layered item filtering, overflow chains, and automated defense reloading.
Stop wasting time dragging items and start playing the game.
Why Smart Sorter?
Every Rust player knows the drill: you return from a successful run, your inventory is overflowing, and you face the chore of manually sorting every item into a dozen different boxes. Smart Sorter was built to eliminate this chore and give you back your most valuable resource: TIME.
True "Set-It-and-Forget-It" Automation: The core of Smart Sorter is the Drop Box. Simply dump everything into a single designated box, and let the plugin handle the rest, intelligently routing every item to its designated home.
Unparalleled Control: Go beyond basic sorting with a powerful two-layer filtering system. Assign broad categories (like "Resources") or dive deeper to hand-pick specific items for each container.
Scales With Your Base: Our Sorting Chains feature allows your storage system to grow with you. Easily link boxes together to create overflow paths, ensuring your drop box never gets clogged.
More Than Just Sorting: The integrated Defense Management system turns the tedious task of re-arming your base into a one-click affair, automatically topping up every turret and trap to your preset levels.
Features
Automatic Sorting with Drop Boxes: Designate any container as a "Drop Box" to automatically sort its contents into nearby filtered containers.
Powerful Filtering System:
- Category Filtering: Assign broad categories like "Resources", "Weapons", "Ammunition", etc.
- Item-Specific Filtering: Fine-tune your filters by selecting or deselecting individual items within each category.
Intelligent Sorting Chains:
- Link containers together to create an overflow system for when a box is full.
- Visually inspect your chains with a simple command that draws lines between linked containers.
Automated Defense Management:
- Automatically fill your Auto Turrets, SAM Sites, Flame Turrets, and Shotgun Traps.
- Use the dedicated Defense menu to set your preferred fill amount for each defense type.
Comprehensive & Contextual UI:
- A dynamic menu appears when you open a container, providing all relevant sorting options.
- In-game help pages with images guide you through every feature.
- An in-game admin menu allows for real-time configuration.
Manual Item Management Tools:
- Send Near: Distribute items from your inventory to all nearby filtered containers.
- Send to Box: Send items that match the filters of the specific container you are looting.
- Dump All / Loot All: One-click buttons to rapidly move entire inventories.
- In-Container Sort: Organize a container's contents by item name or category.
Unmatched Customization: Make Smart Sorter Your Own
Smart Sorter is built from the ground up to be deeply configurable, allowing server owners to tailor every aspect of the experience to fit their community's needs perfectly. The extensive configuration file puts you in complete control.
Here are just a few highlights of what you can customize:
Modular By Design: Enable Only What You Need
Run a vanilla-style server? Or a heavily modified one? You can enable or disable entire feature sets to create the perfect experience.
- Toggle Core Features: Don't need defense management or sorting chains? Simply turn them off.
"EnableSorting": true, "EnableChains": true, "EnableDefenseFeatures": true
Complete Visual & Layout Control
Every visual element is at your command. Match the UI to your server's branding or create a unique theme.
- Custom Button Layouts: You have complete control over the main UI grid. Rearrange buttons, remove ones you don't need, and even create different layouts that appear contextually (e.g., a different UI for a normal box vs. a Drop Box).
"Layouts": { "Default": [ "AssignBox", "Filters", "ChainAction", "SeeChains" ], "DropBox": [ "Unassign", "Null", "Null", "Null" ] }
- Full Theming: Change the color of every panel, button (selected/unselected), and piece of text across the entire UI.
"FiltersUI": { "PanelColor": "0.1 0.1 0.1 0.975", "SelectedColor": "0.325 0.396 0.208 1.0", "UnselectedColor": "0.447 0.439 0.443 0.7" }
- Custom Help Guides: Replace the default help images with your own! You can add your server's logo, provide custom instructions, or translate the guides visually for your community.
"HelpUI": { "PageImages": { "QuickStart": "https://your-server.com/images/help_quickstart.png", "Filters": "https://your-server.com/images/help_filters.png" } }
Fine-Tune Gameplay and Balance
Adjust the plugin's core logic to match your server's rules and prevent exploits.
- Prevent Looting Through Walls: A crucial feature for balance. Enable this to stop players from accessing containers through walls, with multiple detection methods available.
"PreventLootThroughWalls": true, "LootCheckMethod": "Raycast"
- Whitelist/Blacklist Items: Exclude specific items from being sorted (like C4 or raid materials), perfect for server balance. You can even switch to a full whitelist mode.
"UseWhitelist": false, "ShortnameBlacklist": [ "explosive.timed", "supply.signal" ]
- Define What Works: You have the final say on which entities are part of the sorting system. Add support for custom containers from other plugins or remove vanilla ones you don't want included.
"AllowedContainers": [ "box.wooden.large", "vendingmachine.deployed", "fridge.deployed" ]
Advanced Logic for Modded Servers
Integrate Smart Sorter seamlessly with a modded environment.
- Custom Item Definitions: Does your server have custom resources or fuels? Add their shortnames to the appropriate lists to make them compatible with furnaces and refineries.
"SmeltableItems": [ "metal.ore", "sulfur.ore", "my.custom.ore" ], "FurnaceFuelItems": [ "wood", "my.custom.coke" ]
- Ultimate Control with Category Overrides: Force any item, vanilla or modded, into a specific category. Want a custom shotgun from another plugin to be sorted with Weapons? Simply add an override.
"CategoryOverrides": { "ItemOverrides": { "shortname.of.custom.item": "Weapon" } }
This level of detail ensures that Smart Sorter can integrate perfectly into any server, from vanilla to heavily modded, giving you the power to create the ideal experience for your players.
