Ravenfield News

Upgrade your army with the new Tech Trees introduced in EA18. Keep an eye on the weapons and vehicles your enemy deploys and make sure you're not caught up in a nasty tank battle without an effective counter! Please note that the tech tree UI is a very early work-in-progress. It will be improved over time!



You should definitely take a test drive in the new and improved RHIB. This update adds completely new watercraft mechanics and handling to spice up those cool beach landing scenarios. Try speeding across the ocean at max speed and you will feel, see and hear the new RHIB skipping across the waves!



Finally, the improvements to the night vision goggles should really brighten up your day (or night). Nighttime friendly fire rates have plummeted after the introduction of IR flares that blink on your teammates.



Full change log (A few things were added early in the halloween mini-update):

Conquest:
- Added tech trees to conquest mode (Access them via the computer terminal on the right side of the command room)
- AI also uses tech trees to unlock new stuff in conquest mode.
- A bunch of changes to the save system. I have most likely broken any existing saves, so please start a new conquest game!
- Improvements to conquest UI, it's now not possible to move around in the command room while having the battle UI or tech tree UI open.

New Rhib + Water Improvements:
- Added upgraded RHIB model.
- Redid the sound, handling and particles for the RHIB.
- Added water planing physics model. This means that the RHIB now rises out of the water at high speeds. Planing also makes high speed watercraft more stable. (This feature will not affect previously created custom boats, and needs to be added by modders through a component)
- Added new water splash effects.
- Added a small wave simulation which makes watercraft bob around a little in water.

Gameplay Improvements:
- Reworked the Greaser and Signal DMR with improvements to animations and stats. They also have reload sounds now!
- Improved night vision look, everything will now light up properly regardless of color.
- Added IR flares that blink on your teammates and friendly vehicles, making it easier to identify targets.
- Respawn tickets now drain faster in Battalions mode, rounds now play quicker.
- Respawn waves take a little longer to appear in Skirmish Mode.
- If the enemy has no remaining respawn wave in skirmish mode, a friendly respawn wave will only occur when at a disadvantage.
- Most vehicles now have cool new names!
- Improved the loadout screen to handle unavailable weapons better (Weapons can be unavailable by not being unlocked in the tech tree in the campaign, or disabled in instant action).
- Fixed a bug where weapons would sometimes end up in the wrong loadout slot.
- Blocked off a weird infantry path down a steep hill on the Temple map.
- Multiple improvements to AI target aquisition, making it easier to hide when prone.
- Fixed a bug where AI would target enemies beyond their field of view.
- Fixed a bug where fog was not taken into account for AI targeting.
- Fixed a bug where the patriot grenade launcher sight did not work properly.
- Night mode option now persists between ingame level editor and test play mode
- Improvements to the player hitbox while prone. It is now harder to get hit while prone behind cover.
- Improved the third person sidearm holding animation.
- Improved the third person hold position for the Automatico.
- Updated to Unity engine version 5.6.7f1.

Enjoy this update!

/SteelRaven7

We are running a Halloween themed mapping contest on the Ravenfield Discord server! The contest runs from today until Saturday October 26. The goal is to make a spooky but fun level using either the Ravenfield Tools for Unity or the ingame map editor.

Two contest winners will be awarded 25€ Steam Digital Gift Card - So get over to the Ravenfield Discord server and boot up the mapping tools today!

Join the Ravenfield Discord here: http://discord.gg/ravenfield
Contest rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mZDsiNsz37HYbvuaaBHL9vF7Hix_7NuFn_WE5RoEvMw/edit?usp=sharing


I hope to see your submission soon!

/SteelRaven7

The meat of EA17 is in the brand new Engagement Levels. They are all about fast paced battles, often focused on infantry combat. There are 4 new levels introduced in this update taking place on a wide variety of scenery. 3 of them are still works-in-progress, but Glacier is for the most part finished!



You'll notice that some maps have recieved a face lift in the form of baked lightmaps! This is an approach I'll use for some levels which benefit from having more lights than just the sun. Especially Interiors get a visual pop, just check out this before and after:



Baked lightmaps are available on Temple, Glacier and Tunnel for now.



This Early Access build comes with a first look at the Conquest Mode. You can play around in it and move your soldiers around the battlefield, attacking and defending maps. While things are still very much in their early stages, I wanted to keep the open development style of Ravenfield and show this new mode off from its' humble beginnings. Expect more things to come in future EA updates!


Full change log:

Conquest:
- Basic world map gameplay is in place, you can move your troops around and attack/defend levels.
- You can gain resources, but right now only the battalion resource does something (spawns new troops each turn)
- Conquest disables some "cheaty" features like slow motion.
- Conquest is still super early, so expect tons of improvements over time!

Added 4 Engagement Levels: (These are smaller, typically infantry focused levels)
- Glacier
- Tunnel
- Twin Islands
- Desert Hill

Game tweaks:
- Added support for high quality baked lighting
- Baked lightmaps are available on Temple, Glacier and Tunnel
- Added support for loading a different night version scene for night maps.
- Improvements to ambient lighting, Skybox ambient lights are now fully supported!
- Added special footstep sound when walking on terrain
- Bots now make footstep sounds
- Redid the victory/defeat animation from scratch.
- Added music sting volume slider, controlling the volume of the victory/defeat stings.
- Added Endless Instant Action option in the options menu. This option can be disabled if you want the game to end on victory/defeat in instant action.
- Skirmish mode domination victory unlocks later, but fills up faster.
- Made AI tracking missiles less likely to kill teammates
- Reduced APC health from 2500 to 1900
- Added support for maps to have different flag layouts depending on the game mode
- Added ghost type spawn points. These can be spawned on as usual, but they do not count towards your team's score in skirmish or point match mode. The AI will not attempt to capture these points, but they can be captured.
- You can no longer mark a spawn point in skirmish mode after your initial spawn, since it made no difference anyway.
- AI helicopter pilots will now prioritize ground targets over other helicopters targets in the default helicopter.
- Taking over a bot in skirmish mode will now ensure all weapons are reloaded.
- You can now sprint while reloading.
- Fixed a bug where "loaded ammo" and "no ammo" animation parameters would not be set correctly when spawning and when getting up from ragdoll.

Known bugs:
- Night vision doesn't light up the environment in some levels
- Tunnel and Citadel maps only have daytime versions.


October 11 Patch:

- Fixed bug where starting Glacier in Skirmish mode at night would not start the match properly
- Fixed the ingame pause menu appearing over the options menu
- Fixed not being able to fire through custom weapons with colliders (such as shields)
- Fixed custom weapons with colliders colliding with vehicles, making them spaz out
- Fixed AI not being able to drive animated vehicles such as walkers
- Minor tweaks to AI car driving


I hope you'll enjoy both this update and all the *interesting level descriptions*!

/SteelRaven7

Hey everyone!

As you may know, I've been away on a summer break since releasing EA16. I'm back now and wanted to update everyone on exactly what I'll be working on.

The Conquest Mode has always been the end goal for Ravenfield, and it has been teased in the main menu ever since the first Steam version. Originally I had planned to ship the Conquest Mode within one year of the first Early Access release, but that obviously didn't happen :). Instead, I spent most of my time working on modding support for the game, and general game improvements.

Even though the original release target for 1.0 was missed I think it was worth it thanks to the incredible modding community creating tons of really cool mods for Ravenfield! A huge shoutout to everyone involved with creating/playing/making videos of mods!




I'm now shifting my dev time towards finishing up the Conquest Mode. This means that the upcoming EA updates will have playable versions of Conquest Mode, where more features will be added incrementally in each update. Eventually, the final conquest mode will feature army upgrading, weapons/vehicle research, and story elements.

This is what the Conquest Mode looks like right now (you may recognize this scene from the game's greenlight trailer):



Each game level is represented by a tile on the world map, and each tile can be held by up to 3 battalions at the same time (represented by the blue/red soldier miniatures). Conquest is played in turns, when it's your turn you may move your battalions to any adjacent tiles. If there are any enemy battalions already occupying that tile a battle will start, loading the game level that tile takes place on. It is important to consider how many battalions to attack with, having larger numbers than the enemy is a big advantage.

The objective of Conquest Mode is to take over the enemy HQ tile, but each owned tile will also provide you with valuable resource production. Resources include battalion production, money to buy new equipment, and research points to discover new weapons and vehicles.

After some playtesting it was obvious that having only 10 tiles on the world map wasn't ideal, it would be interesting to provide more paths and possible tactics to the player. From the desire to add more tiles, I also played with the idea of adding new tiles where battles would play out quicker. These tiles would represent less crowded battlefields such as hills, roads, fields etc. When battling on these tiles, the game would load a level with a different style to the others:




Engagement Levels are open and straightforward levels that are designed around fast, agressive engagements between the two teams. These levels typically take place on smaller, symmetric terrains and victory requires effective use of vehicles. Here's an example of an Engagement Level concept:



Because most points lack proper defenses, the Engagement Levels work very well with the Skirmish game mode where an all-out assault is highly effective. These levels play a lot faster than the "normal" levels which is a huge plus: when playing the campaign you will experience more battle variety.

Another strength of Engagement Levels is that they can be designed a lot faster than a normal level, meaning that there can be a greater number and variety of them. In fact, I have already designed a few concept levels to try out the ideas behind Engagement Levels in instant action mode. During this week I'll be adding one level each day on the beta branch for people to try out. On friday I'll make all concept levels playable at once.




Because my focus is on Conquest Mode, another programmer (who made the ingame map editor) will be working on adding more features to the modding side of Ravenfield. For example, the Conquest Mode will be fully moddable, allowing you to create your own war scenarios. We also have some other exciting plans that we aren't quite ready to show/talk about yet!




Here's what to expect of the upcoming updates:

This week (on the beta branch): One Engagement Level concept per day from monday to thursday. All levels available on friday and forward.

EA17: A very work in progress but playable version of Conquest Mode.

EA18,19,20+: Improvements to Conquest Mode and game polish.

Ravenfield 1.0: Final Conquest Mode with story elements.


I hope this clears up where the Ravenfield development is heading and that everyone is as excited for Conquest Mode as I am!

/SteelRaven7

We're really happy to introduce the new ingame map-editor in Ravenfield. The ingame map-editor is designed to be an easy-to-use but powerful alternative to the Ravenfield mod tools for Unity.



The map in the screenshot above is made by Maffnwy, you can find it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1765196638

There's no need to download any extra software or tool, so making a custom map in Ravenfield has never been easier! The editor comes loaded with all official Ravenfield props, so you can start designing right away. When you have a nice map, use the built-in uploader to publish your map on Steam Workshop.

If you have any questions or need help getting started with Ravenfield mapping, reach other mappers and/or the Ravenfield devs on the official Ravenfield discord chat here: http://discord.gg/ravenfield

If map making just isn't your thing, you will want to check out the new Jeep overhaul. The new jeep even has a windshield that will protect you from small-arms fire, at least until it breaks.




Full change log:

- Added ingame map-editor
- Reworked the jeep.

- Added optional depth-of-field effect to photo mode, available by pressing i when in photo mode.
- Spectator/photo mode now shows a list of available controls.
- Fixed an AI issue that caused bots to sometimes instantly exit a player driven vehicle after entering it.
- Improvements to ragdolls such as joint constraints and lower angular drag (allowing them to rotate faster)
- Ragdolls now have some slight drag so they eventually come to rest which frees up work on the physics engine (so potentially higher framerates with lots of ragdolls/bodies)
- Ragdolls will now get tossed when ragdolled by explosions and splash damage, making them spin in the air.
- Fixed a bug where sound bank audio sources would sometimes not be affected by slowmotion effects and the in-game volume slider.
- Added support for vehicle hitboxes with varying damage (so modders can create critical hit spots, heavy armor spots etc)
- Added support for vehicle destructible objects, such as the windshield on the new jeep.
- Added support for destructible objects in maps.
- Added camera recoil to the jeep's machine gun.
- Removed splash damage from the jeep's machine gun.
- Improved projectile hit scan, you can no longer shoot through walls when standing very close to them.
- Reordered the map list so old favorites like Archipelago are at the top and WIP maps are at the bottom.


July 3 patch:

- Added Flat terrain biome that creates a completely flat terrain and an ocean water plane.
- Renamed Flat Island biome to Round Island.
- Gizmos (the move, rotate, scale clickables) are now larger and easier to click.
- Increased the normal and fast camera speeds (Hold shift to go fast).
- Added a slow camera speed when holding left control.
- Fixed a bug where asset preview textures would sometimes not show up for all assets in the picker menu.
- Fixed a bug where the terrain brush indicator would not scale with the brush scale setting.
- Fixed a bug where the terrain tools would not work when clicking far-away points on the terrain.

I'm going to take a summer break after some potential bugfixing on EA16, but I have some exciting updates on Conquest mode coming up when I'm back. For now, enjoy this update!

/SteelRaven7