Ravenfield News

Hey, I'm back with another news post about EA26, let's get right into it!

The EA26 update is now mostly done, and is playable on Ravenfield's beta branch. I originally wanted to release EA26 before leaving on my winter break, but there are still a few issues that I want to tackle before making it available to everyone. I expect EA26 to launch in February.

Also, as I mentioned in my previous post there are unfortunately many compatibility issues with older mods in EA26, most of which are outside my control. To aid with the transition to EA26, I have created a guide for modders on how to update mods to be compatible with EA26, which you can find here!

I have also added an EA26 Compatible tag on the workshop, where mods that are compatible with EA26 can be found. It is up to the modders themselves to verify and mark their mods as compatible with EA26, and you can find a guide on how to do this in the guide posted above. In most cases, it's as easy as downloading the latest mod tools, changing a few asset options and re-uploading the mod.

Other than the mod compatibility issues, EA26 plays pretty well so if you're interested in trying out the improvements to AI and performance, you should definitely switch to the beta branch! Unsure how to switch to the beta branch? Here's how!

By popular demand, I have added a Maps - Mod Tools tag to the workshop. All maps created using the mod tools (IE ones not made using the ingame editor) are available under both the Maps and the Maps - Mod Tools tags. This makes it possible to filter maps based on which tool they were created with. Please make sure you have the latest mod tools installed when uploading a map for it to be tagged correctly!

Finally, I want to wish you all Happy Holidays, I'll see you next year!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Hey!

It's been a while since the game last recieved an Early Access update, I just wanted to let everyone know what I'm working on and why it has taken a while!

Game engine update
Since its Steam release in 2017, Ravenfield has run on a now-outdated version of Unity (Unity 5.6). While this engine version has worked fairly well throughout the years, it is no longer officially supported by Unity which leads to compatibility issues with more modern hardware. Also, Unity 5.6 has not been receieving bugfixes since early 2019 which isn't ideal.

In June this year, I experimented with updating the game engine to the latest stable release of Unity, 2020.3. The initial experiments seemed promising and apart from some bugs the game even ran faster than before. That's why I decided to update the game to the 2020.3 engine version for EA26. After I released EA25 I took a few weeks off, and then started working on EA26 in september.

So that's what I've been working on since september, but unfortunately the task of updating from 5.6 to 2020.3 has taken a lot longer than expected due to hundreds of compatibility-related bugs. For the last two weeks or so the game has run pretty well on the new engine version, with the following improvements over EA25:

• Significantly increased frame rates (Many users have reported an increase of 20-30% or even more!)
  
• Major performance improvements to levels made with the ingame map editor.
  
• Reduction of frame jitter, making the frame rate more stable.
  
• Proper V-sync implementation.
  
• This Unity engine version should now fully support the latest graphics card drivers and vice-versa.
  
• You can optionally run the game using Vulkan on Windows and Linux.
  
• Support for new engine features such as terrain holes, etc.
  

On top of the benefits from the updated engine version, I've also implemented the following things in the upcoming EA26 update:

• Multi-threaded mod loading, reducing mod load times.
  
• Optimization work for framerates and reduced frame jittering.
  
• Improvements to bot movement code, making their movement smoother.
  
• Benchmark mode to easily measure game performance.
  
• Full Steam Input support
  

However, there are some inevitable downsides to the engine update in EA26, such as:

• Dropped compatibility for some old GPU hardware and OS versions. I have updated the minimum requirements on the game's store page accordingly so please check them out if you're concerned about this.
  
• Animation compatibility issues affecting some weapon/vehicle mods made in the Unity 5.6 mod tools. This is an issue with the internal game engine which I have no control over :(
  

When EA26 is officially released, I will set up a compatibility branch for the game running EA25 (and the old engine version). If you're experiencing any issues related to EA26, you will be able to run this compatibility branch instead. Please note that this branch will not be receiving future updates to the game.

Testing the EA26 beta
I'm still working close with the modding community to iron out the last bugs related to the engine upgrade, so I'm not sure exactly when EA26 will be ready, but you can try it out right now by opting into Ravenfield's beta branch by following these steps:

1. Go to your Steam Library page
   
2. Right click Ravenfield -> Properties
   
3. Click the Betas tab and select the Beta branch in the dropdown (No need to enter an access code as the beta is publicly available)
   

Story Campaign status
Unfortunately I haven't had time to implement a working campaign story mission yet. I originally intended to release a story mission from the campaign in EA26, but there just hasn't been enough time to update game engine version and design the story mission for this update, so I'm pushing the mission back to EA27.

It's not all bad news though, I have recently completed the first draft of the Ravenfield campaign story. This means that the overall story is in place and gives me a good overview of what still needs to be added to the game for the story to play out. I plan on working together with a 3d artist and a level designer to speed up the campaign development.


Even though it's taking a while, I hope you're looking forward to the release of EA26 and what's to come after!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

I've released two patches to the EA25 update. If you're having trouble surviving in the new helicopter, I'd recommend trying the restricted anti-air mutator that is now bundled with the game. The mutator restricts AI ground vehicles and boats from firing at aircraft.

July 19th patch:
- Fixed vehicle first-person head bob weight value not being applied correctly.
- Reduced default vehicle first-person head bob.
- Improvements to follower bot movement which significantly reduces movement jitter, particularly at lower frame rates
- Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes get stuck in place.
- Bots will now follow paths more closely.
- Exposed weapon effectiveness values to Ravenscript
- Added enclosed muffle sound mix option, which will become available in the tools pack later.
- Added target tracker lock on to empty vehicle option, which will become available in the tools pack later.
- Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes get stuck when trying to re-enter a transport vehicle.

July 20th patch:
- Added Restrict Anti-Air mutator which restricts AI from using car/boat weapons against aircraft.
- Exposed seat.weapons and seat.activeWeapon to Ravenscript
- Exposed GameEvents.onVehicleSpawn to Ravenscript
- Exposed GameEvents.onTurretActivated to Ravenscript

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Heyyy, it's time for another Ravenfield EA build update!



EA25 overhauls the attack helicopter with a new look and new weapons. On top of a 24-round rocket pod the helicopter now packs 4 long-range laser-guided missiles that are ready to take out those enemy tanks! The missiles will automatically track laser target crosshair at the center of your screen, even while in-flight. Additionally, by holding right click and looking around you can move the laser target to track any point you look at. While this system will not automatically track vehicles for you, you can still use it to manually track and take out targets which is particularly effective at long ranges. Also, countermeasures will not cause the missile to loose track so fire away!



Bot movement has received some major improvements, in particular in CQC areas. Bots will now slow down when turning corners and, in close quarters, lean and clear corners. This results in slower but more tactical gameplay on small maps.



EA25 also has some code optimization which targets frame stutters in particular. Hopefully this should result in the game running more smoothly with less frame hiccups.

Full change log:
¨
Helicopter changes:
- Updated attack helicopter model
- The attack helicopter rocket pods now hold 24 rockets, but has a slightly reduced fire rate and direct-hit damage. The rockets still have quite strong splash damage, making them very useful against infantry or low-armor vehicles.
- Added laser-guided missiles, which have high direct-hit damage but low splash damage. These missiles are very effective against armored targets such as tanks and APCs. It's also possible to hit aircraft with a bit of practice!
- Added laser-guided target tracking system. When using a laser-guided missile, the missile will automatically target the center of your crosshair. By holding right click you can look around as the pilot, which allows you to move the laser target crosshair. Laser-guided weapons will not lock on directly to enemy vehicles, but you can still track them by moving the laser target while the missile is in-flight. By tapping right click, you can reset the laser target crosshair to the center of your screen.
- The laser-guided missiles can only be fired when the laser target is within a target circle. This prevents you from firing at targets to the side of or behind the helicopter.
- Added auto-hover feature that is available on all helicopters. When auto-hover is enabled (default key E) the helicopter will automatically level out and keep altitude. This is very useful when setting the laser target for your missiles.
- Updated the helicopter HUD to be slimmer and more readable and added more information.

Improved helicopter flight model:
- Added ground effect, which gives some extra thrust when close to the ground. This makes it easier to recover when you're about to crash into the ground.
- The official helicopters now have directional drag forces. This allows the helicopters to travel significantly faster when pointing into the relative air-flow.

Bot improvements:
- Bots will now handle corners better by slowing down and aiming towards their next destination.
- In CQC zones, bots will slow down a lot and lean when turning a corner.
- Improvements to where bots look when they aren't targeting an enemy.
- Bots no longer play the mantling animation when walking up slopes. They still play the animation when climbing over low walls, however.

Gameplay changes:
- Added muzzle flash light effect on non-suppressed weapons.
- Muzzle flash light effect intensity can be decreased or disabled entirely in the options menu.
- Explosions now also trigger a light effect.
- Added smoothing system to bot movement, making them less jittery when walking over uneven terrain.
- All explosion effects now use the new smoke particles.
- Optimized several explosion effects, reducing the overall particle count about 70-80%
- It's no longer possible to enter a vehicle if there are passengers of the enemy team already inside.
- Fixed an issue where the ragdoll stand up animation would sometimes play when in water.
- Added a terrain fallback material that is used when the terrain material fails to load (which would result in a pink error material).
- Added occlusion map to new attack helicopter and bomber.
- Vehicle first person and third person cameras now have slight acceleration-based head bob.
- Fixed a bug where plane rocket thruster effect would not be disabled on explosion.
- All vehicle weapons will now auto-reload when empty.
- The official airplane and attack helicopter HUDs will now be automatically dimmed on night levels.
- The official airplane and attack helicopter HUDs now use a monospace font with additive blending on HUD elements.
- Slightly reduced attack plane machine gun damage.
- Slightly reduced attack plane and bomber health
- Slightly reduced AA damage
- Wrench is now automatic (Spamming the fire button really made my fingers hurt after repairing the helicopter for the 100th time lol)
- Fixed a bug where joystick binds would not save correctly.
- Improved audio mixing when inside enclosed vehicles.
- When using third person in enclosed vehicles, the audio mix will now update accordingly.

Optimization:
- Refactored the capture point take-over system so it should run faster by using RAM more efficiently.
- Each frame, the capture status of one capture point is evaluated. This makes the evaluation happen more often, but evenly spreads out the work over each frame. This should result in reduced frame stutter.
- Added an AI tick scheduling system which automatically spreads out AI work across frames. This should result in reduced frame stutter. The AI scheduling system targets 5 updates per second for each bot.
- The AI tick scheduling system will automatically throttle the AI workload when the game runs at low framerates. This makes AI react slightly slower but should prevent massive framerate drops. When running at normal framerates (>60 fps) with a normal bot count, the AI workload is never throttled, so bots will remain alert.
- Optimized car wheel physics by precomputing transformation data.
- Optimized projectile hitreg code by removing some unnecessary calculations.

Modding changes:
- Fixed an issue where custom turrets would not load in test content mode.
- Navmesh generation scene camera now renders skybox and has an attached audio listener.
- Made Weapon.OnFire() consumable, which cancels the shot.
- Exposed Seat.cameraType to RS
- Exposed ActorWalkable layer mask to RS


Story campaign progress

Last month I announced my plans for Ravenfield's story campaign. While I don't have anything playable in this update, I want to share some of the progress I've made so far. Please note that these features are still in development and are not yet available to modders!

- Added actor triggers with configurable shape



These triggers are intended to be used in story missions to trigger events such as attack orders, dialog, sound effects and more! It's possible to configure the trigger volulme shape, which is useful for creating triggers in complex areas. As a bonus, it's now possible to use these triggers as the capture volume for flags! This is currently only used in the east bunker capture point on the citadel map, seen in the image above.

The volume triggers will also be exposed to Ravenscript, allowing modders to easily check which actors are inside, etc.

- Added waypoint system



The waypoint system allows modders to set up premade waypoints for their missions, which gives full control over the movement of squads of bots while the game is being played. Bots will follow a predefined path, and the system allows bots to synchronize movement with each other while also being able to trigger animations and stance changes.

I think this system could be very useful not only for controlling bot movement in missions, but also for creating custom cinematics in an easy-to-use way. It will definitely be exciting to see what modders will come up with once this system is ready!


Finally, I've been investigating the possibility of updating Ravenfield to run on a newer version of the Unity engine, 2020.3. While I'm still working on getting the game to run stably on the new engine version, the results so far look very promising with improved performance and stability. Transitioning to a new engine version will inevitably break some mods, but I plan on working closely with the modding community to mitigate this as much as possible. I'll have more information about this at a later date.

I hope you'll enjoy this update!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Hi everyone and thank you for the awesome response to the last EA24 update!

As some of you may already know, Ravenfield is now on it's 4th year in Early Access. Originally I intended to finish the game within 1-2 years, but since then the game has grown quite a bit in scope with additional features like new maps, more vehicle types and improved modding support using scripting. Your overwhelming support and the creativity of the modding community has well exceeded my expectations as the game is played by thousands of people every day. It is genuinely a fun project to work on, even after 5 years in development.

We're now at a point in development where the base gameplay works nicely, even if there still are a bunch of bugs and issues I still need to iron out. That is, I feel like the instant action part of the game works well. The part that still needs major improvement is Conquest mode, and I have spent some time thinking about how to improve it and integrate it better with Ravenfield's core design of approachability and customizability.


Problems with Conquest Mode

The Conquest mode was originally designed to combine a strategical world-map layer with story/dialog elements to provide a background and stakes to the Eagle/Raven war. At the moment, almost none of the story elements are available in Conquest as this turned out to be really difficult to get working in a fun way without being too intrusive on the strategy elements.

Another issue with Conquest is that the same central maps are being fought over repeatedly, with others being ignored almost entirely. This was resolved by adding an Auto-Complete battle feature, but skipping a battle simply isn't very fun and feels like wasted opportunity. Also, the current version of Conquest would be very difficult to mod, and require very complicated external tools to edit or extend. This also seems like wasted opportunity and goes against Ravenfield's core of easily being able to configure your experience like you can in Instant Action mode.

To solve these problems, I've decided that the best direction to take is to split the current conquest into two separate modes, a Story Campaign and a new, streamlined Conquest Mode.


Story Campaign

The Story Campaign centers on the war as seen from the eyes of the Advisor and the special forces group TALON she commands. You have already gotten a glimpse of this group through the updated Spec Ops game mode, but there is still much to discover about TALON and the characters around the group who aid and manage its operation.



I'm working together with long-time community member Starstrafe to bring these wacky characters to life through illustrations which will appear in dialog sequences throughout the campaign. The Story Campaign will be split into 3 acts where each act features one or two story missions along with spiced-up battles and story elements.

I have set a goal to create a story that should take around 2-3 hours to complete on your first playthrough. Going for a short length should prevent the campaign updates being released over an endless number of updates (I actually want to get this done), and help ensure quality over quantity. I also want to keep the Campaign progress highly transparent and available to you all, so on top of the Act 1/2/3 updates I also plan on pushing intermediate updates featuring standalone campaign missions. These missions will eventually be integrated into the campaign story.

I have already started work on the story campaign, and I want to release the first story mission in the EA26 update for you to try out (which will be out after my summer break). If I get enough progress done in time for this summer's EA25 update, I will include an early sneak-peek version of the mission.


Conquest Mode version 2.0

While I'm still figuring out the details of this mode, I want to make a streamlined version of the current conquest mode. This mode will not feature any story details (for example, the war room scene of the current conquest mode and the tech tree will be removed). Instead the new mode focuses 100% on an "arcady" approach to playing Conquest where you purchase upgrades to your army and try to conquer all enemy-controlled levels. The plan is to let the player decide what weapons/vehicles/levels they want to appear on the strategy map and generate a conquest scenario from that. This would also support custom content such as weapons, vehicles and maps. The main goal for the new conquest mode is being able to set up custom conquest scenarios from within the game itself (no need for modding tools!).

I'm still figuring out the design this mode, and it will not be available for some time as I want to focus my efforts on the story campaign for now.


Modding: Scripted Missions and Custom Game Modes

While scripted story missions are an integral part of the story campaign, I also want to make scripted missions available to modders. Scripted missions could either be a story mission that plays on a specific map, or even a custom game mode selectable in Instant Action that can be played on any map.

As I create the story missions for the official campaign, I want to design a simple-to-use system that is reusable for modders. This system would be used with or without Ravenscript (Ravenfield's lua-based scripting framework), depending on the complexity of what you want to achieve. I intend to make it possible to set up simpler story missions without having to write a single line of Ravenscript code.

Finally, modders will be able to create custom scripted campaigns which can, for example, include a sequence of story missions. Custom campaigns will be driven by Ravenscript to make them highly customizable. It will not be possible to create custom campaigns without the use of Ravenscript.

For more information how these changes will influence modding, please see this modding document.

End of Early Access

When the Story Campaign, new Conquest mode and scripted campaigns/missions are available in the game I intend to finish the early access period of Ravenfield and release the 1.0 version. I want to keep supporting the game after the 1.0 release with bugfixes, general improvements and localization.

I hope this new direction for the game makes as much sense for both players and modders as it does for me. I really want to start taking major strides towards finishing the game and nailing down exactly what constitutes Ravenfield 1.0.


In Summary

Feel free to let me know what you think about this in the comments to this post or on the Ravenfield Discord server at https://discord.gg/ravenfield. Please note that I won't be able to answer any comments directly, but I will certainly read them and take them into account!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Please Note: All details in this post are work-in-progress and are still subject to change. I tried to make this post as comprehensive as possible, but game development is difficult and things might need some tweaking! :)