Ravenfield

EA38 Patch 1 (July 23) changelog

• Exposed VehicleInf.FromName() to RS
• Fixed APC model not showing up in ingame map editor
• Fixed a bug where launching maps and content mods in test mode from the mod tools would leave the game on the main menu screen instead of launching a match
• Fixed a couple of colliders on new Island map
• Added a fun little summer vibe secret on Island

Hey everyone! Today I'm exicted to finally release the update I've been working towards for the past 2 or so years: Modders can now create their own Custom Campaigns for Ravenfield!

With this update, modders have all the tools needed to create their own story campaigns, create their own spin of the official arcade mode, or even recreate the original conquest mode! We can't wait to see what you all create with these new tools!

To get the ball rolling for campaign devleopment, we have developed a simple retro-inspired example campaign where you walk around a 2d map and get challenged by other soldier to matches. All the source code and the assets are included in the latest version of the mod tools which you can find on the official site: https://ravenfieldgame.com/modding.html

If you want to try out the example campaign for yourself, just download the latest tools, open the ExampleCampaignLobby scene and press Ctrl+T to test out the campaign - that's it! Now you're ready to start tweaking the campaign or building your own!

....psst, if you don't want to build the example campaign through the tools you can also try it out thru the steam workshop:

In addition to the example campaign, we have also ported Arcade Mode to the mod tools and made it available as a separate package. This port contains pretty much everything from the official campaign. We even added some fun improvements such as making the helicopter that drops the crate in the weapon unlock sequence dynamically change based on your team's game configuration!

Getting a weapons delivery from EaglePancake's Tankcopter

You can find the arcade mode package on the official discord server https://discord.gg/ravenfield in the campaign-making channel where you can also ask questions related to campaign creation!

We've also updated the Island map, adding a new night environment and optimizing the map and its assets. Here's a view from the pond area during the night:

Full change log

Game changes

• Added support for modded campaigns!

• Reorganized ingame map editor prop folders to make things easier to find

• Fixed a muzzle/animation sync issue on bundle o buss weapon

• Fixed a bug where squad member bots would randomly look upwards into the sky while following their squad leader

• Improvements to minimap blip rendering, colors should be a lot easier to see now.

• Added support for spawning vehicles inside .rfs scenes (no gameplay scenes EG campaign lobbies)

• .rfs scenes can now play ingame dialogs and use the cinematic UI overlay.

• Added campaign debug menu (available when testing a campaign mod from the mod tools). Use the debug menu to force a victory or defeat.

Ravenscript changes

• Added ActorSkin.FromName()

• GameInfo.CreateEmpty will now auto-populate some fields such as team name, skin and colors based on the default Eagle/Raven scheme.

• Replaced some functions in SaveData so they use the same API as ConfigurationData (eg SetInt instead of StoreInteger). The old functions are deprecated meaning they will continue to work, but shouldn't be used for new projects.

• Added Campaign.isFirstTimeStart flag, its value is true the first time the campaign lobby scene is loaded. This value can be used to run initialization of a campaign only once.

• Added GameResult.hasResult flag, its value is true when returning to the lobby from a game. Use this flag to know when to update the state of a campaign based on the result of a match.

Island changes

• New night mode look

• Added Occlusion Culling

• Added lods to some models

• Optimized vertex count on some models

• Flattened area around helicopter spawns to account for bigger helicopters spawning

• Placed manual spawnpoints for all flags

• Added some missing colliders

• Fixed some missplaced colliders

• Updated materials on some props

• Added some missing island props to the ingame map editor

• Fixed a particle system issue that would cause lots of errors to be logged

Mod Tool changes

• Updated to the latest trigger system components

• Added systems for custom campaign

• Press Ctrl+T while inside a custom campaign lobby scene to try your campaign

• Added example campaign bundled with the rftools

• Ported Arcade Mode to the mod tools which is available as an external package on the Ravenfield discord server.

• Added fast export mode which is used when testing your mod/map (by pressing ctrl+t). Fast mode will export your mod as an uncompressed package which makes it faster to build and load but uses more space on the hard drive. This mode can be thru the Ravenfield Tools -> Fast Export menu.

We hope you'll enjoy this update and create some really cool stuff with these new tools!

/Johan and the Ravenfield team

We just pushed EA37 patch 1 (June 22) with improvements to New Island:

• New Island is now integrated as a built in scene inside the game, which fixes the issue on mac and linux where some materials would appear pink
• Pathfinding improvements
• Added missing colliders on a number of props
• Fixed some floating props
• Fixed helicopter sliding into the water
• Added car spawn to backside
• Fixed night mode materials and added some night-only detail objects in the pond area
• Fixed a bug on beach where you could get stuck
• Removed props under the terrain
• Fixed spelling error on fort capture point
• Old island has been renamed to Island 2023 and is still available ingame.

Hey everyone!

For the past few months the team has been working on refining the game’s artstyle. You might have noticed this in our release art, new weapons and reworks of UI elements in the menu and for arcade mode. Today we are happy to show off how a map looks in this new style with a new-and-improved take on Island in EA37!

Fun Fact :D : This post is written by Aina, game dev student and the artist behind this redesign of Island, soon to be a fulltime member of the Ravenfield team! You can see me hard at work directing grunts in the update art :D

Together with the team, I have recreated the artstyle from the ground up (no pun intended ;D) with new terrain materials, reworked game assets and redefined layouts with new paths and areas. My goal has been to create a more intentional environment with a more defined and cohesive feel. I think that this new style also enhances the gameplay experience by providing a clear path to objectives.

The Island map has been my main focus for the last few months and we have decided to release a preview in time for my graduation. While we’re still at work refining this version of Island, we wanted to share an early version in today’s update.

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We hope you are as excited as we are and that you’ll enjoy this fresh new look for Island!

/Aina and the Ravenfield team

EA36 Patch 1 (June 1st)

• Fixed a bug that caused a code exception when the player gets kills while inside a vehicle. This issue caused several other bugs such as floating weapons and game mode soft locks.

• When losing an arcade mode match, you will now always lose 5 reinforcements

• Fixed timing issue in arcade mode when printing round number and time of day indicator change

Patch 2 (June 1st again lol)

• Fixed a bug that caused the game to give out 5 free reinforcement waves whenever you won a game in Arcade Mode

Patch 3 (June 2nd)

• Fixed a bug where vehicle spawned from mutators could not be destroyed

• Fixed vehicles destroyed being counted twice per vehicle

• Fixed arcade campaign results not showing any text

Hello hello!

We're back with the Arcade Mode pt2 update, which features several improvements to Arcade Mode in order to reduce RNG and make the mode more engaging! To start things off, we've added a Combat Log screen that shows up after each match, showing how you performed. To encourage you to try your best even in a losing battle, you gain coins based on your performance.

After picking your Weapons/Vehicles/Reinforcement unlock, you are now presented with a shop screen. On this page, you can spend your coins to unlock specific weapons or vehicles that you might need. We hope this change makes it easier to plan your loadout throughout the Arcade campaign. You can also get bonus points in the vehicle minigame, but you're gonna have to figure out how yourself.

We have also updated the map selection screen to be more stylish :)

Finally, the game now has a "Vehicle Reinforcement" mutator that is active during arcade matches. This mutator will periodically spawn aereal vehicles even on maps without runways. For example, even when picking River Delta above which does not have air vehicle spawns, bots will still spawn in with any air vehicles you've unlocked throughout the campaign. This mutator is also available for use in Instant Action mode.

On top of the Arcade Mode improvements, we have also made changes to the game's audio mixing, including options to output surround sound and increase the maximum voice count, meaning more sounds can play at once. We have also updated the ambience audio on several maps to be more immersive.

Arcade Mode changes

• Added a shop that can be used to buy new weapons and vehicles for coins.

• Coins are earned through the combat log which shows up at the end of each match. The combat log rewards you bonus coins based on your performance, you get extra coins from killstreaks, controling as many flags as possible, destroying vehicles and more.

• You can earn bonus gold by getting a sparkly license plate in the vehicle unlock minigame.

• Updated map selection page, it's very cool now hehe

• Added Vehicle Reinforcement mutator which periodically spawns in aircraft, this is used whenever you start a map without built in air vehicles or runways. This mutator is also available in Instant Action mode.

• Added new arcade victory animations (including a flawless victory one that shows up if you beat arcade mode without losing a single round!)

• Added campaign results screen that keeps track of silly statistics throughout your arcade run.

• Added a couple of new sound effects to arcade mode.

• Last round is now always daytime (to make the new arcade victory sequences look nice)

• Added "No Night" and "Match Length" configuration to Arcade mode. At the moment, match length only controls the length of battle rounds.

Audio improvements

• Added new ambient sounds to Canyon, Citadel, Coastline, Glacier, Mountain Range and Rafts

• Added audio output mix dropdown to options menu, you can select between stereo and various surround output modes here.

• Added audio source count dropdown to options menu. Default value allows 64 sounds to play at the same time, this can be increased to 128 by selecting the "Increased" option

• Reduced audio mix ducking so the world audio volume isn't reduced as much when the first person weapon is fired

• Removed a hardcoded volume reduction for ingame audio and adjusted the mix group volumes to make up for lost gain. This change makes it possible to have better control over the game's audio volume.

RS / Trigger system improvements

• Fixed Vehicle .isEmpty returning the wrong value

• Added text assets to data containers

• Whitelisted CallLuaMethod event callbacks, meaning you can call RS methods from animation events or other Unity events.

• Added match gameplay statistics tracking to GameResult.GetResultDetails(), this is what we use to drive the combat log results screen in arcade mode. Keys will be added to the RS API in the next EA update, but you can find them today in the beta-branch-update channel on the Ravenfield discord server.

• Added Renderer Material target for TriggerSetActorSkin

• Exposed Sprite.Create() and Texture.CreateTexture2D() to RS

Game improvements and Bugfixes

• When taking over a bot in skirmish mode, you are now guaranteed to spawn with a little bit of ammo.

• Fixed a rare issue where the game would not start correctly if mods contained duplicate level files with the same name.

• Fixed a bug where loadouts were not initialized correctly in scripted missions set to use official loadouts.

We hope you'll enjoy this update!

/Johan and the Ravenfield team

We added nothing so no need to investigate anything. If a grunt tries to hand you an item DO NOT accept it!

April 3 Patch:

• The Detective Badge is no longer given out by a random grunt, instead you'll need to find it on the Rafts map to start the quest!

Patch notes:

• Removed p prefix from actor pose names for the dialog system. It's now valid to write both with or without the p prefix, so legacy mods will continue to work correctly.

• Added support for smart actor pose tags, valid tags include {gruntf} (resolves to friendly grunt portrait), {grunte frown} (resolves to enemy grunt portrait with frowning expression), {gruntr grin} (resolves to red grunt portrait with grin expression). It's also possible to resolve partial names, for example {teamf} resolves to blue or red depending on the player team. When a team uses a non-standard skin, {grunt} tags will resolve to a realtime rendered portrait of that team's skin.

• The Lua engine can now resolve source scripts while inside coroutines, meaning script or mod specific requests such as mod save data is now available inside coroutines.

• Fixed an issue where bots would look in weird directions when starting a new path, typically happens just after spawning. Now they will look in the direction they are running.

• Lots of new functionality added to existing Trigger components EG new filters, conditions and more.

Added several new trigger components

• TriggerLeaveSquad (Used to get single bots to leave their current squad)

• TriggerChangeActorSkin (Change actor skins thru triggers)

• TriggerReplacefirstPersonItem (Temporarily replace the player's carried weapons with something else, useful for cutscenes, etc.)

• TriggerOnHover (sends trigger signals when hovering a UI graphics element)

• TriggerChangeSelectableState (Make UI elements interactable or non-interactable)

• TriggerOnWin (send trigger signals when a game ends)

• TriggerUpdate (send trigger signal every frame)

• TriggerFadePostProcessing (Crossfade between post processing states)

• TriggerPlayAudioSource (Play audio sources or sound banks from triggers)

• TriggerSelect (Sends a trigger signal only to the first valid receiver, like a select node in behaviour trees)

• TriggerUpdateSunlight (Used to control sunlight from triggers)

The new trigger functionality will be added in an update to the Ravenfield mod tools for Unity next week!

Enjoy! (AGAIN with that said don't pick up random items you find on the field)

/Johan and the Ravenfield team

Hey everyone, we may have release EA33 only a week ago, but we're already back with a new EA update! As we close in on the game's 1.0 release we want to expand on the official content with new weapons. We have several weapon packs planned for release throughout this year, and this first one has 3 new weapons:

JOLT-20-S

The Jolt-20 is all about getting as many bullets as possible down range as fast as possible. Hitting your targets comes secondary, so this sub-machine gun is designed to be super fast to reload. Perfect for those times where you every shot awkwardly misses your target! Just mind your ammo count...

SUPERNOVA

This assault rifle is one fine piece of engineering designed for long-range engagements. Featuring a no-fuss scope with high magnification there's nothing stopping you from taking out your enemies from afar. A shame it's only available in limited quantities on the battlefield.

RIPCORD

It's a box - until you need it. This weapon must first be unfolded before it's combat ready, and even then... it's a bit unwieldy. The Eagle weapon's experts are still figuring out how to use this weapon effectively so expect its' usage to change in the future. If nothing else, it can double as a coat hanger!

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We are super happy about the response to Arcade mode last week - we're currently polishing the design and hope to have it ready at the end of March! In the meantime, enjoy these new weapons!

/Johan and the Ravenfield Team

March 3 patch:

• Battle mode is now the default game mode in Instant Action mode
• Added confirmation popup when clicking surrender in the pause menu
• Updated last round icon in Arcade mode to be a trophy to indicate that this match must be won

We're super excited about the positive reception of Arcade mode so far. We're already hard at work on Pt 2 which you can expect to drop later this month in EA35!

Hey everyone! We have been super busy over the winter months working away on the game's first official campaign mode (we're not counting that old conquest mode). We are now happy to finally release ARCADE MODE!

ARCADE MODE

Arcade mode plays like a rougelike, where you need to get through 9 rounds of matches without losing all your reinforcements. In-between each match, you get to choose wether to unlock more weapons, a new vehicle or call for extra reinforcements.

Each unlock category consists of a mini-game:

**Equipment Drop **- Roll weapon and tool cards from a box. If you don't like what you get, you can choose to keep one card that you really like and reroll the rest!

New Vehicle - Try to time your desired license plate by cliking. Each license plate corresponds to a vehicle category (ground/naval/air) and a rarity level. The rarest vehicles have intricate license plate designs inspired by animals.

**Reinforcements **- Use the radio to call in more reinforcements to help out in the upcoming battles. A better signal means more reinforcements will hear your call.

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Arcade mode is built upon our new Custom Campaign system, which we are designing to allow modders to create their own campaigns. We still have some ideas on how to expand Arcade Mode, so we will be releasing an Arcade Part 2 update that adds a couple of more features and polish that we didn't have time to add for this update.

In the Part 2 update we will also be adding support for modders to create their own Custom Campaigns. As Arcade mode is created entirely using Ravenscript and the Trigger System, we will be bundling the completed arcade mode with the mod tools for modders to inspect or expand upon once Custom Campaign modding is fully ready! We hope you're looking forward to that :)

Because we have completely redesigned how campaigns work in Ravenfield, we had to remove the old conquest mode as it no longer works with the game. To make up for it, we are in the process of recreating conquest mode using the new systems, which will allow for modded content and maps to be used! Things are still early, but we hope to share some more information and screenshots of the new conquest mode soon!

NEW SIDEARM

We are also happy to finally be adding a new weapon to the game, the INGRESS 700

Inspired by the weapon of a certain special agent, the Ingress 700 packs a punch thanks to it's special ability. The last shot fired in the magazine deals higher damage and knockback, which is also indicated by it's retro-movie inspired sound design. Hopefully you're able to use this special shot to turn around critical situations. You can also press X to play a cool gun spinning animation for extra style points.

The Ingress 700 also has a secondary special function, when testing a custom map from the Ravenfield mod tools or the ingame map editor and playing the gun spinning animation, your character gains the ability to bunny jump by spamming the jump button, which builds a ton of speed. This can be used to quickly get around your level without having to walk or use vehicles! This feature is not available in the base game for balancing reason, we still want you to try out the fresh new look for the S-Ind 7 after all! Ohhh, about that:

We (read: the graphics artists now working on Ravenfield) decided that the 2016-era low poly weapons of Ravenfield need a bit of a face-lift for the 1.0 release. Therefore we're redoing a lot of models, animations and sounds on existing weapons. We started with a model and animation overhaul for the S-Ind 7 and Quicksilver weapons. A couple of other weapons also received some new sounds for unholstering, reloading and firing. Expect more weapons to get this treatment in the following months!

FULL CHANGE LOG

Game changes

• ADDED ARCADE MODE! This mode is is implemented as a custom campaign and will be made available to the modding community in a future update.

• Added Ingress 700 pistol

• Press X when using the Ingress 700 to do a cool gun spin!!

• The last round in the Ingress magazine deals more damage and has a retro style sound

• When starting the game from the mod tools, the Ingress has a special ability: While spinning the gun, you can bunny jump to build a lot of speed. This allows you to quickly traverse the map you're testing if you want to check our a specific area. This ability is completely disabled in normal gameplay.

• Added audio cues for when you're about to run out of ammo in your magazine.

• Added systems for custom campaigns along with RS api changes to allow scripting of custom campaigns from RS.

• Major changes to how the game handles scene loading to support full map/game mode/team configuration from RS

• Removed old conquest mode as it is not compatible with the new custom campaigns system. We are in the process of recreating conquest mode from the ground up, so expect updates on this soon!

• Added game mode art to the instant action menu

• Fixed an issue where configuration data would not be deserialized correctly

• Fixed a bug where vehicle filters were not working correctly in instant action team configuration page

• Added support for hidden mutators (IE mutators that don't show up in the menu but can still be loaded thru RS)

• Added new triggers for playing particles/audio, these will be added to the mod tools later.

• TriggerGlobalSignalReceiver component now registers in OnEnable(), so it will be able to receive signals immediately.

• TriggerGlobalSignalReceiver component now deactivates in OnDisable(), which fixes a bug related to vehicle impostor spawning.

• Fixed missing checkpoints on citadel mission

• Refactored game mode configuration to prepare for custom game mode support. Game modes now store their configuration inside ConfigurationData types which are accessible to RS. Some built in game modes have different UIs because of this change.

• Spec Ops dialog now reflects the current team name.

• Fixed minimap centering in the ingame map editor sometimes failing when no capture points had been placed

• Created a new way for weapons to play Fire sounds that allows them to play random Audio Clips.

• Added a simple way to add a separate Fire sound that can only be heard when the player fires that weapon.

• Added weapon "rattle" values that can be configured to make a weapon shake/rattle when fired. This can also be triggered from Ravenscript and through animation events.

• Added an option for Proximity Fuse Projectiles to ignore team targets.

• Updated the models and animations for the S-IND 7 and Quicksilver.

• Updated the model for the Frag Grenade.

• Added various new sounds to the Greaser, Quicksilver, S-IND 7, Patriots, Automatico, Recon LRR, and Dagger.

• Buffed the S-IND 7 and Quicksilver to bring them more in line with other weapons.

• Added an option for Proximity Fuse Projectiles to ignore team targets.

• Made it possible for melee weapons to play random on hit sounds.

Ravenscript/Trigger updates

• Exposed various API systems related to starting matches from custom campaigns

• Exposed GameInfo class used to configure which teams and mutators are used when starting a match from RS

• Exposed TeamInfo class used to query and configure a team's weapon/vehicle/skin/name configuration from RS. It is possible to both read and write configurations from RS, which is used to set up matches based on unlocked weapons/vehicles in arcade mode.

• Exposed VehicleSpawner.SpawnVehicleImposter() that is used to spawn vehicles without attached scripts and rigidbodies, this is used for background vehicles in the Arcade mode vehicle unlock scene.

• Added support for saving weapon, vehicle and map references in SaveData.

• Added ConfigurationData type for storing and getting game mode configurations in RS.

• TriggerNamedSignalReceiver component now respects once/repeating modes when receiving named signals.

• The lua engine can now resolve source script components when invoking RS coroutines, which solves a couple of rare issues with the RS API.

• Exposed Weapon maxAmmoPerReload and useMaxAmmoPerReload to RS

• Added BezierPath/BezierCurve types that can be used to set up and evaluate 3D bezier curves. WE MAY CHANGE THE NAMES OF THESE TYPES IN THE NEXT UPDATE SO USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

• Added BezierPath along with scene view editor to DataContainer

• Added weapon "rattle" values that can be configured to make a weapon shake/rattle when fired. This can also be triggered from Ravenscript and through animation events.

• Created a new way for weapons to play Fire sounds that allows them to play random Audio Clips.

• Added support for player only weapon firing sounds.

• Made it possible for melee weapons to play random on hit sounds.

We hope you'll enjoy this update and are looking forward to the new possibilities that custom campaigns will bring to the table once it rolls out it the Arcade pt 2 update!

/Johan and the Ravenfield team

Earlier today, a security patch to the Unity engine was released by Unity, which patches a security vulnerability in games built with the Unity engine. Today's patch updates the game engine to the latest version, 2020.3.49f1 in which this vulnerability has been patched.

For security reasons, I have disabled the builds of the game that were previously available on the legacy branches. I intend to rebuild these versions of the game next week with the patched engine version, but until then those versions of the game will be unavailable. Please note that the legacy-EA25 version is still available as this versions of the game runs on Unity 5.6 which is unaffected by the vulnerability.

For more information about the security vulnerability, please see Unity's message here: https://discussions.unity.com/t/unity-platform-protection-take-immediate-action-to-protect-your-games-and-apps/1688031

EDIT: All legacy branches have now been rebuilt in the 2020.3.49f1 engine version and are safe to use!

/Johan

Here's another patch for EA32 mainly focused on optimizing the new instant action menu to prevent freezes and lag:

• Optimized vehicle and weapon pickers in the instant action menu which should prevent the game from freezing for a few seconds when loads of weapons/vehicles are being loaded in.
• When testing a content mod from the mod tools, any non-modded vehicles vehicles will now be filled with the official vehicles.
• Fixed spec ops teammate count. Up to 9 teammates can be assigned to the player team by setting the player team actor count. If more than 9 teammates are assigned, the game will default to 3 teammates.
• Spec ops helicopter exfil crew will use the same skin as the player team UNLESS playing as the Talon team.
• Made instant action dropdown styles consistent across all menu pages.

September 25 hotfix:

• Fixed some dropdown values in the instant action menu not showing up properly

We just pushed out a patch for EA32 that fixes some common issues:

• Changed how game configuration saving works to prevent accidental lost team weapon/vehicle setups. When saving a game configuration without linking to saved teams, the current team setups will be saved inside the game configuration file. This means the game configuration save system works like it did before, making team saves optional. It is however still recommended to save actual team config files and to link them to your game configuration as this allows things like loading teams to any team slot, updating multiple game configs by changing just one team save and more.

• Updated game config team linking description text

• Fixed vehicles not showing up in conquest mode

• Fixed aspect ratio issues with the new instant action menu on 4:3 and ultrawide monitors

• Added really good game mode icons

We'll keep on the look out for any more issues that needs fixing for EA32! If you're experiencing any issues, the best way to reach us is through the Ravenfield discord. Enjoy!

September 11 fixes:

• Fixed a bug where the options menu could not be applied while ingame

• Fixed a bug where the loaded team would sometimes not update when loading a game configuration with linked teams

• Fixed a bug where a game config would sometimes link both team slots to the same team.

PHEW!! It's been quite a few months of non-stop work over here, but we're finally ready to get EA32 out to everyone. A huge thank you to all the testers over in the Ravenfield Discord for your patience and feedback, we have had to rework plenty of systems to get something we were happy with!

This update is all about configuring Ravenfield to exactly how you want it to play. We're introducing rarity tiers on both weapons and vehicles, which decides how often that weapon or vehicle will spawn ingame. This means it's finally possible to control spawn rates of weapons! This can be used to balance out gameplay, for example allowing only a few bots to equip lock-on weapons. No more having to deal with a constant barrage of missiles heading your way every time you take off in your helicopter!

For vehicles, it is now possible to pick multiple vehicles that can spawn for each vehicle type. You could for example set up 10 different tanks, which the game will randomly pick between everytime a new tank spawns. Or why not add a rare boat to your enemy's helicopter slot for giggles?

There are 3 rarity tiers available, Common (white), Uncommon (green) and Rare (blue). Using the weapon picker rarity painter, you can control how often a bot is able to spawn with that particular weapon. Just pick a rarity color and start painting over the weapons! At the moment, Common weapons are picked 70% of the time, Uncommon 25% and Rare 5%. For vehicles, Common vehicles spawn 60% of the time, Uncommon 30% and Rare 10%. While the rates are currently hardcoded, we are planning on making the rarity spawn rates configurable in a future update.

With the configuration update, we have also overhauled how game configurations are saved. Previously, a saved configuration would contain the loadout and vehicles of both teams, but by popular request we have now added support for saving and load individual teams in EA32.

When setting up a team, you can now save that team's configuration to a team configuration file. This makes it possible to load that team to either team slot for future games. After saving (or loading) both teams, you can save a game configuration with your mutator setup which can optionally link to your two active teams. Loading this game configuration will also load your two linked teams.

Full Change Log

Instant Action + game config changes

• Added support for multiple vehicles per vehicle type slot. When a vehicle spawns, one of the available vehicles for that slot will be picked.

• Added vehicle rarity levels. This affects how often a vehicle of a specific tier will spawn. The pick percentages are currently hardcoded to 60% (Common), 30% (Uncommon), 10% (Rare). These values iwll be moddable in the future.

• Added weapon rarity levels. This affects how often a bot will spawn with a specific weapon. The pick percentages are currently hardcoded to 70% (Common), 25% (Uncommon), 5% (Rare). These values will be moddable in the future.

• Complete rework of Instant Action UI.

• Added support for team name and color selection thru the Instant Action UI.

• Redesigned Weapon/Vehicle/Skin/Map/Game mode picking UI to be more unified. It is now possible to filter out specific items, for example only displaying items from a specific mod.

• Overhauled game configuration save, each team can now be saved in separate files, and game configuration saves can link to the saved teams. This means that the game now supports loading of individual teams which is a heavily requested feature. Loading a game configuration with linked teams will still load the teams just like the previous save/load system.

• Legacy configuration saves can still be loaded.

• Game and Team configuration files can now be deleted via the configratuib saving UI.

• Official weapons now have varying rarity levels for balancing purposes (EG making Scalpel rare prevents constant lock ons on massive, flat levels)

• Config flags mode now has a reverse flags button.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where bots would sometimes should thru walls

• Moved flag capture UI element down slightly to prevent it from overlapping with some game mode UIs

• Updated default quality settings to Good (previously booting the game for the first time would put you in the worst quality option... oops!)

Ravenscript changes

• Added PlayerCamera.isUsingFPCamera

• Added PlayerCamera.GetCameraRay(camera) and PlayerCamera.GetActiveCameraRay()

• Added Physics.RaycastActor()

• Added ActorManager.CreateExplosionEffect()

• Added ActorManager.SetBloodParticleParameters()

• Added GameEvent.onBloodParticleLand event

• Replaced Vehicle.team with Vehicle.ownerTeam which uses the correct Team type rather than an integer. The old value is still available but hidden in the RS documentation, so mods still relying on this value will continue to work.

• Exposed MeleeWeapon type

• Seat.isEnclosed is now writable

• Exposed Weapon.aimSensitivityMultiplier

• Writing a weapon's heat value through RS will now trigger an overheat if the value assigned is 1 or higher

• Exposed Weapon.currentMuzzleIndex

Trigger System changes

• Fixed TriggerCondition ActorIsRagdolled not having an actor field

• Added usePickedLoadout field on TriggerSpawnPlayer, which allows the player to spawn with their picked loadout.

• Added TriggerOnLoadoutAccept which fires a signal when the player accepts a loadout.

Modding improvements

• Added Projector to component whitelist

• Added UnityEngine.Animation and UnityEngine.Animation.Rigging components to whitelist

• Added defaultRarity fields to WeaponEntry and Vehicles

Ingame Map Editor improvements

• Added support for controlling vehicle spawner rarity options.

To close out this update post, I'm happy to announce that Ravenfield is no longer a solo project, we are now 8(!) people working on the game! While most of us has just gotten started, we already have cool things in the works, and I'm very excited about the upcoming updates to the game. We have already gotten quite a bit of work done for the EA33 update which will introduce the new custom campaign system, allowing modders to create anything from story campaigns to their own conquest mode to entirely new games running inside Ravenfield. Expect to see more about this soon on the Ravenfield Discord!

We hope you'll enjoy this update. See you soon!

/Johan and the Ravenfield dev team

Today's update completely revamps one of the oldest weapons of the game, the old trusty 76 Eagle! For a while now, this shotgun has been a the black sheep among the other weapons in Ravenfield: not quite looking like the rest of them with its desert camo and not always being a reliable option for battles beyond an arms (or a kick's) reach. With update EA31, all aspects of the shotgun has been completely revamped, from its animations and sounds to its statistics.

The shotgun should now feel way more reliable in close to mid range combat, with its reduced spread and higher firing rate. At the same time, the shotgun pellets will do reduced damage on ranges over 50 meters, reducing the chance of random lucky headshot kills at long ranges. The shotgun also features improved animations, and the possibility of canceling a reload by holding down the right mouse button (or your aim down sights binding)

Full change log

Gameplay changes:

• Completely remade the 76 Eagle shotgun from scratch with animations and rebalancing changes

• Remade Bundle o' Buss sprint animations

• Remade Automatico Akimbo sprint animations

• Garret reload animation can be canceled by holding RMB.

• Players will now automatically holster their weapon while climbing ladders

• Added cloth foley sounds to various player actions such as walking/kicking/jumping/entering vehicles/reloading etc.

• Added 'wants to aim' bool parameter to weapon animators, this is used to cancel reload animations early by holding RMB.

• Added 'walk cycle' float parameter to weapon animators, this can be used to synchronize sprint or walk animations with the player character weapon bob/footstep sounds.

• Fixed actor onTakeDamage event firing when the actor took splash damage while inside an enclosed vehicle seat that protects it.

• Fixed actor onTakeDamage firing while the actor is dead

• Misc changes to audio mixing of the player audio. Should result in more noticable player footstep/jump/land sounds.

Trigger System:

• Added TriggerOnPlayerLineOfSight, sends a signal when a transform point enters or leaves the player's line of sight

• Added TriggerSetVelocity, used to set a vehicle or rigidbody velocity or to apply an acceleration.

• Fixed TriggerOnVehicleDestroyed firing the onDestroyed send instead of the onDisabled send when a vehicle is disabled.

Ravenfield Mod tools:

• Added missing IsVehicle filter type for OnVehicleDestroyed and related vehicle filtering components. This allows you to send signals when a specific vehicle has been destroyed

I'm also happy to announce that we are now multiple people working on Ravenfield in order to speed up the game development process. While this update is quite small as we're still getting things rolling, you can expect more content soon as we're working away on support for a weapon and vehicle rarity system. This system will make it possible to set which weapons and vehicles will appear more frequently, and will also allow multiple vehicles of the same slot to be used in the same game. Expect this to drop as EA32 soon!

I hope you'll enjoy this update!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Here's a patch for EA30 with bugfixes and a couple of fun extra additions to the game:

Game improvements:

• Tank and APC towers will now pop off when destroyed
• Tank tracks are deactivated when destroyed
• Improved stuck detection for AI cars and boats, this should make them react quicker to getting stuck, and be able to resolve the situation more reliably
• The player can now walk slowly while getting up from ragdoll
• Minor improvements to third person camera while ragdolling
• Generated new high quality lightmaps on all scenes with lightmaps
• Improvements to bot boat piloting, especially how they handle a top speed value. Boat patrols on spec ops should no longer be going full speed everywhere and crashing into everything
• Reduced saturation of particle systems with ambient color component, this makes particles such as the smoke grenade appear in more realistic colors in scenes with highly saturated ambient lighting conditions.
• Added best guess shader functionality to shader reloading on mac and linux. If a shader isn't able to be resolved due to the modder using custom shaders that are not included by the game, the game now attempts a best guess at replacing that shader with a built in one. This is based on very limited information so don't expect this to look great, but it should replace all pink materials with something halfway decent.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes get stuck in a ragdolled state
• Fixed a visual bug where actors would sometimes hover slightly above the ground when getting up from a ragdolled state.
• Fixed a bug where a phantom player with a parachute would appear in spectator mode
• Fixed a bug with projector component whitelisting, it should now be whitelisted and load correctly
• Fixed a bug where destructible splash damage would show a hitmarker even though the damage dealt was 0
• Fixed a bug where turrets that had been destroyed and repaired would not be valid target for missile lock on
• Fixed a bug where the player character controller would be enabled when dying inside a vehicle
• Fixed a bug with squad order point resolving which would generate errors in spec ops mode

Ravenscript/Trigger updates:

• Fixed misspelling in Player.nightVisionEnabled - the misspelled verison will continue to work so no need to edit old scripts.
• Made Player.nightVisionEnabled writable
• Added keybinds support to TriggerOnKey component

Patch 2 - December 6

• Fixed an issue where shaders would sometimes incorrectly be replaced on windows machines. This would sometimes break modded dual render scopes and similar effects.

EA30 is a general game improvement update that solves some of the oldest issues with AI vehicle usage in the game, and getting the AI closer to being ready for the game's 1.0 release. The main focus of this update has been to fix two problematic AI behaviours:

• AI drivers crashing their cars into other vehicles
• AI transport helicopter pilots just hovering over an objective while it is being captured

One of the recurring issues with Ravenfield's gameplay has been the AI's inability to see other vehicles while driving, which would usually result in vehicle pileups at level chokepoints. EA30 adds local avoidance for AI drivers, allowing them to detect and swerve around nearby vehicles. This new system detects potential collisions, and finds the closest path to drive past the vehicle. While this doesn't solve all the pileup issues, it is a massive improvement from before.

The other issue is more straightforward: Having AI helicopter pilots just hover above a flag while it is being captured makes them sitting ducks for anti air weapons, and is just not a very fun behaviour. To solve this, bots will now land by other squads that are travelling on foot and pick them up, ferrying them to their destination. This new behaviour makes for some interesting new tactics on Dustbowl and Archipelago!

Along with these two system improvements, there are plenty of new systems for modders to play around with, including controlling changing team names/colors, more control over AI movement and the ability to disable built in game features such as hit impacts/blood droplets in order to replace them with modded systems!

Full change log

Game improvements:

• AI drivers will now swerve to avoid hitting other cars/boats/landed aircraft, this should result in vehicles being stuck way less.
• Transport helicopter AI can now ferry multiple squads to their destination. After dropping off passengers, transport helicopters may pick up other squads on the battlefield and drop them at their current attack target.
• Added official killfeed mutator
• Added official team color mutator
• Added new helicopter landing zone system which generates possible landing zones across the entire map
• Added ImpactOnly option to blood particle settings in options menu. This option will only show the actor hit particle effect without spawning blood droplets. Setting this option to off will now turn off both particle effects and blood droplets.
• All built in game mode UIs are now color coded based on current team colors.
• Fixed a bug where skins would not be applied correctly to player FP models
• Fixed a bug where car downforce would apply an upwards force while reversing (Oops!)
• Tweaked AI helicopter approach while landing so the helicopter approach slightly off to one side. This makes for a more natural looking landing.
• While landing/landed on a helicopter landing zone, the landing zone is claimed by the squad, preventing other helicopters from also attempting landing at the same spot.
• Fixed a bug where explosion ranges were miscategorized by the game. This resulted in the AI erroneously not using explosive weapons as they thought they would damage nearby teammates.

Modding improvements:

• Added TextMeshPro components to whitelist
• Added VehicleAvoidanceObject component. AI will swerve around this object while it is active, which can be useful for dynamically spawned objects with colliders.
• Added "Helicopter Land At Attack Target" prefab to RFTools/Prefabs/Ravenscript - place this prefab as a child object to your transport helicopter to make it land when dropping of passengers (instead of them dropping by parachute).
• Moved HMG weapon to a new Support weapon tag, so this is the new go-to tag for putting custom machine-gun style weapons.

Ravenscript:

• Exposed LayoutRebuilder that can be used to force rebuild UI layout group.
• Exposed Actor.ForceChangeStance()
• Exposed GameManager.isNightMode
• Exposed HelicopterLandingZone querying, claiming and landing systems
• Exposed Weapon.GetProjectilePrefab()
• Exposed change team colors through ColorScheme.SetTeamColor()
• Exposed change team names through GameManager.SetTeamName()
• Exposed ExplodingProjectile explosion configuration
• Added Player.movementInputEnabled flag
• Added onPointerEnter/Exit/Click events to UI elements
• Added onTakeDamage and onDeath events to destructibles
• Added onIssueOrderMovement event to squads
• Added BuiltInFeatures class that can be used to toggle features such as blood droplets, etc.
• Added Extensions.Get() which can be used to query for game extensions EG RavenM or other DLL mods
• Added ColorScheme.GetInterfaceColor() which can be used to get UI element colors based on team colors. This replaces a few previously available functions in the ColorScheme class. Any previous functions will continue to work, but I'd recommend switching over to GetInterfaceColor() for better control over colors.
• When requesting an interface color, you can specify Default, Bright or Dark variants. Bright colors should work nicely on dark backgrounds and vice versa. Use default if you want to use a color close to 50% brightness.

Trigger System:

• Added trigger component for UI button clicks
• Added TriggerChangeStance component
• Added IsNight condition to TriggerCondition compopnent
• Added TriggerOnKey component that sends a signal whenever a key is pressed

Coming Up For EA31, I'm planning on introducing full support for custom game modes. If you're a modder who wants to try out making your own game mode, please keep an eye at the game's beta branch where I regularly post updates, sometimes even multiple times a week. Do however keep in mind that the beta branch tends to be quite buggy at times :)

As always, you can always see what I'm working on as soon as it happens on the official Discord server

I hope you'll enjoy this update!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Here are the patch notes for this first EA29 patch:

• Fixed a bug where vehicles would sometimes crash into the player collider, resulting in issues like aircrafts colliding with an invisible collider while taking off.
• The game now uses '.' as the decimal point character across all regions/languages. This change solves multiple bugs related to configuration of mutators and ingame map editor values not being interpreted the same on different player computers.
• Fixed a bug where mutators saved using ',' decimal point would not load properly. Now these values will load correctly and when saved, will be converted to a '.'

EA29 is finally here! While a lot of my time since the last update has been spent working on campaign assets (which are not quite ready to be shown yet), I have been polishing up the base game with quality-of-life fixes and improving Ravenscript and the Trigger System. This should get the two scripting systems ready for the planned addition of custom game modes which I hope to get working very soon.

IMPORTANT: If you're running into any weird main menu or ingame bugs that prevents you from playing the game after updating to EA29, make sure you remove any mods that modify the original game files such as RavenM.

One of the new features in EA29 is an enhanced instant action preview screen, where the background will change based on the metadata tags of the map that is currently selected. Map metadata could previously only be changed via the RF modding tools for Unity, but is now also available through the ingame map editor (via Level Details -> Metadata). In addition to tagging levels, metadata also allows map makers to control other map information such as display name and recommended bot count.

The dynamic instant action preview screen may seem like a superfluous feature at first, but the data that drives the preview screen will be exposed to Ravenscript in a future update. This will allow modders to find maps with specific tags (City, Desert, Airport, Coastline, etc) and load them - essentially allowing modders to create custom campaigns spanning all maps that are currently subscribed (moddable conquest mode on custom maps, anyone?). For this reason, I highly recommend that you tag your custom maps using the new metadata features.

I would also like to highlight one of the new Ravenscript/Trigger features, the addition of named trigger signals. Named signals are sent from a sender component to a receiver component just like regular Trigger System signals, but the modder does not need to directly connect the sender to the receiver inside the map tools. Instead, the modder assigns a name to the sent signal, and any receivers that are listening to signals of the same name will receive the signal. Named signals can be sent between maps/game modes/vehicles/weapons loaded from different files, including different mods, allowing for easy inter-mod logic. Before this addition, this type of communication was difficult to do inside Ravenfield.

Finally, you can check out a few improvements to the citadel story mission such as a more detailed destroyed hangar area. This in an example of the power of the trigger system, where you can dynamically change areas of a map based on story events. Unfortunately I have not been able to implement the remaining cutscenes for the citadel mission yet, which is something I was planning on doing for EA29. Expect these to come in the next one or two updates, finishing up the first story mission in the official campaign.

-- Full change log --

Game improvements:

• Added camera smoothing to player movement while on foot. This should prevent jittering when running close to bots or when playing the game at high refresh rate displays
• Various updates to level geometry in the citadel mission.
• Data container component preprocessing, will now only run once per data container asset at load time instead of once for every instance in Awake().
• Non-actor-collision layer will now produce impact decals correctly
• Objective indicator now fades in/out based on what you're currently aiming at.
• Target seeking missiles now have a grace period of one second after thruster ignition, during this time period the missile can never lose tracking of the target. This allows target seeking missiles to track targets that are behind them on some custom vehicles.
• Vehicles can now be assigned a driver halt strategy, which allows the driver to stop when a passenger is engaging a target according to the passenger weapon's halt strategy configuration.
• Squad leaders can now halt when engaging preferred targets.
• Razorback MG will now halt when engaging preferred targets with the turret
• Prowler quadbike will now halt when the passenger is engaging a preferred target
• Some slight terrain updates to dustbowl near Raven controlled airport to make it easier to get up onto the tarmac for bots.
• Updated occlusion culling data on dustbowl to fix some props turning invisible when standing inside certain areas
• In spec ops mode, the bot count will set the number of teammates directly when the balance slider is set fully to the player team.
• When leaning to the right while standing, the camera will now move slightly less to better align the camera to the third person animation.
• Sped up third person stance changing animations slightly
• Added spawn point offset values to vehicles. This value can be used for large vehicle to offset the spawn position to prevent the vehicle from clipping into the ground.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug where changing a missile target via RS would not cause the targeted vehicle to register the new missile (and thus not warning the pilot)
• Fixed bug with custom skins selected from the instant action menu would sometimes not be applied to the first person arms
• Fixed a bug where TriggerVolumes would sometimes not initialize correctly, and not be able to detect actors.
• Fixed game mode "no flag config" value not having any effect.
• Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes get stuck when following scripted path groups. This bug typically happened on the citadel mission where teammates would sometimes get stuck near the gate.
• Fixed a bug where spec ops mode would not end when the exfiltration helicopter could not fit all teammates as passengers.
• It is no longer possible to lean while dead
• Fixed a bug where bots would get stuck when trying to go to a ScriptedPathGroup. This would sometimes make the bots get stuck outside the citadel gate in the citadel story mission.
• Various misc AI improvements and fixes

Map metadata updates:

• Added biome/terrain/decorator values to map metadata. These values are used to display a custom configuration background in instant action mode. Additionally, these values will be available for modders to query inside custom campaigns in the future.
• Map metadata now contains information about the precense of ground/naval/air vehicles in maps, this will be made available to custom campaign modding in the future.
• It is now recommended to always generate map metadata and set up map type and theme so the exported map can be categorized correctly. Therefore, the mod tool will warn you if you export a map that doesn't have metadata and instruct you how to create metadata for your map.
• Map biome/terrain/decorator metadata values can be automatically fetched from steam workshop tags for maps that do not have them assigned.
• Added metadata editor to ingame map editor.

Ravenscript:

• Exposed LandHelicopterAtPosition(), CancelLanding(), TakeOff() and related landing status bools to the Squad class. This makes bot helicopter landing controllable from RS
• Exposed Player.allowAutoWaveRespawn, set to false to stop player from being able to spawn in the automatic wave respawn system used by most game modes.
• Exposed GameManager.sceneName and GameManager.mapDisplayName that can be used to get names of the current scene/map.
• Exposed Time.systemTime fields
• Exposed ConfigurableJoint
• Exposed ReflectionProbe
• Exposed Rigidbody interpolation/collision detection values
• Exposed MountedStabilizedTurretClamp to RS
• Exposed new Actor values to RS: hasHeroArmor, isInvulnerable, canBeTargeted and attackersIgnoreRulesOfEngagement
• Added Random.RangeInteger() to RS to randomize integer values (previously only floats were available)
• Added OnDestroy RS callback to ScriptedComponent
• Exposed global named signal sending from using TriggerScriptedSignal.SendGlobalNamedSignal("my cool signal")
• Cleaned up API for MountedWeapons and MountedStabilizedTurret which previously contained lots of unneccesary functions and properties
• Updated the online Ravenfield documentation categories, the API reference is now split up into Ravenfield and Unity type categories, which should make it easier to navigate
• Updated the online Ravenfield documentation's auto-generated links to the Unity documentation for Unity types so they are no longer 404

Trigger system:

• Added TriggerDamageVehicle component
• Added TriggerShowInputPrompt component
• Added TriggerOnVehicleDestroyed component
• Added TriggerNamedSignalSender and TriggerNamedSignalReceiver components. These allow sending named signals to all child receivers of a gameobject, without having to explicitly set a destination trigger component. Named signals can optionally be sent/received globally.
• Added TriggerDebugMessage component that can be used to display a console message from the trigger system along with an activation counter and the signal context.
• Added CancelLanding to TriggerLandHelicopter component
• Added "pick random squad from team" and team filtering to squad references
• Added optional actor credit to TriggerKillActor
• Added total actor count greater/equal condition to TriggerCondition
• TriggerSpawnVehicle can now use TurretSpawners.
• TurretSpawners can now be set to Scripted spawn mode, which allows them to be controlled from Ravenscript/The trigger system instead of their default behaviour
• TriggerSpawnPrefab signal propagation to the prefab instance can now optionally use a named signal in the same way as TriggerNamedSignalSender.
• Renamed TriggerScriptedSignalSender and TriggerScriptedFunction to TriggerRavenscriptSignalSender and TriggerRavenscriptFunctionCall in order to differentiate them from the named signals. This is just a visual change in the mod tools inspector. The Ravenscript class name is kept the same as before, so no need to update any existing code!
• Added per-signal context documentation to trigger components. This can be used to see what parts of the signal context a trigger component sets.
• Fixed default paramters values for TriggerSpawnSquad/TriggerSpawnPlayer components
• Fixed a bug where the player would sometimes not get the correct weapon arm skin when spawning from triggers.
• Fixed OnActorEnterSeat LeaveSeat signal not being sent
• Fixed an issue where OnActorDeath trigger squad filtering did not work as intended
• Fixed an issue where squad conditions would sometimes return fale positives.

Dialog system improvements:

• Added rich text support for the ingame dialog system. Rich text supports Unity's built in rich text tags such as , , <color=red> and the following custom tags:

- Prints the player's steam username - Prints the map's display name <pose=posename> - Changes the icon actor pose to something else <grain=grainamount> - Changes the grain amount on the dialog portrait <pause=duration> - Pauses for duration seconds <speed=multiplier> - Changes the print speed of the dialog text, default is 1.0 - Stops the actor mouth animation and prevents blip sounds from playing <color=team0> - colors text using the team color <team=team0> - Prints the team name

Valid team parameters are: team0 - Team 0, default Eagle team1 - Team 1, default Raven teamf - Friendly Team (same as player) teame - Enemy Team

I hope you'll enjoy this update!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Here's a patch fixing some issues in EA28:

• Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes ignore all enemies for a while.
• Fixed an issue with data containers weapon entry prefabs not being initialized correctly, which could potentially lead to various related bugs.

IMPORTANT INFO _If you're having trouble with menu buttons not working and mods not loading correctly, this is because you're running the game with the RavenM mod installed. RavenM is currently not supporting EA28. You can either remove RavenM entirely to use EA28, or switch to the RavenM compatible branch, found by going to your steam library -> right click Ravenfield -> Properties -> Betas -> Select ravenm-compatible in the dropdown.

Please keep in mind that DLL mods such as RavenM and other mods that need to be manually installed have no official support inside the game. This means that any updates to the official game will cause these mods to break!_

Hey all,

Here's the latest Ravenfield update, featuring loads of improvements to the modding tools, including the new ability for modders to create their own story missions.

One of the goals with Ravenfield's official campaign is to bring the same tools used to create official missions to the modders, and with this update all of the existing tools are now available for modders to use! The main bulk of this update comes in the form of new Trigger System components. These components can be linked together using the Ravenfield mod tools for Unity to create story driven experiences or even entire new game modes - all without having to code anything. If you're interested in creating your own story missions, now is a great time to jump in! You can find everything you need on the official modding page.

Here are a two halloween-themed custom missions that have been created by Ravenfield's modding community thus far:

(https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3066215406) by Sofa

(https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067823028) by Hans, NefariousDrH, RadioactiveJellyfish, LeDiegue3 and Aspel

There are even more missions to try out under the workshop Scripted Mission tag.

You can also check out the new and improved Island, featuring an all new quarry themed capture point with multiple new paths. While most of the level layout remains intact, there have been minor tweaks here and there to improve sightlines and to create more natural paths between capture points.

Oh and don't worry, you can find the old island map on the workshop.

Full change log

Game changes

• Updated steamworks.net to latest version, which should solve an issue where the steam api could not be initialized on Apple M1 systems, resulting in the menu not appearing correctly.

• Capture points take slightly longer to neutralize due to the respawn logic change.

• Made the distance you can fall before ragdolling consistent between different gravity settings.

• Mouse look is now enabled while dead.

• Added a very fast acceleration when starting moving/changing direction. This makes it easier to get into exact positions by tapping movement keys.

• Fixed an issue where benchmark mode didn't work

• Added healing/resupply sounds to the new ingame ui, and the healthbar/ammo heading bar will now blink when resupplying or healing.

• When restarting a rfc map, the file is no longer unloaded and reloaded first, resulting in much shorter load times on reloads

• Kicking an upside down vehicle that is light will now cause it to flip over, allowing you to recover crashed vehicles more easily.

• You can no longer phase through level geometry when getting on a ladder

• You must now look towards a ladder to be able to get on it

• Fixed an issue where you would sometimes not be able to get off ladders if you were spamming the use button

• Fixed a bug where melee weapons would not hit rigidbodies etc on the default layer

• Fixed a bug where the first person camera would sometimes be zoomed out when aiming down sights. This is now fixed by clamping the ADS FOV value so it's always slightly lower than the current default FOV

• Fixed a bug where the spectator camera was rendering 3d hud objects.

• Fixed player actor Accessory rendering when switching between first person/third person cameras.

Respawn logic redesign

• The game will now cluster contested spawn points and regular spawn points into regions.

• Whenever an attacker is inside any spawn point region, the capture point will be considered under attack.

• Each region is penalized for having an attacker or a defender that is taking fire inside.

• When spawning, the region with the lowest penalty score is picked.

• When a capture point is not under attack (or if no contested spawn point container is assigned), the regular spawn points will be used.

• Due to this change, only non-moving spawn points are allowed when using a contested spawn point container. For modded special cases with moving spawn points such as flags attached to large vehicles etc, you can still use moving regular spawn points by not assigning a contested spawn point container.

Map changes

• Island has received an overhaul, completely redesigning the old fort area into a quarry. This area still retains most of the old layout, but with a new theme and a couple of new paths. The old Island map is no longer available ingame, but you can find it in the workshop as "Island (2016)".

• Other parts of the island has also received slight redesigns, making paths/lanes more clear.

• Minor updates to river delta sawmill area

• Made citadel tree vis colliders slightly bigger so they block AI views a bit more than before

• Added more sawmill modular props for use in the ingame map editor

• Added new island props to the ingame map editor

• Added "Show Objectives" key prompt to the start of the citadel mission

Modding changes

• Added source mod/source bundle tracking to all prefabs, which allows proper shading reloading etc if needed, should solve some rare cases of pinkeye on Mac/Linux.

• Added SpriteActorDatabase and IngameDialogActorDatabaseProvider component that are used to bundle custom sprite actors for the ingame dialog system. To use, just instantiate the IngameDialogActorDatabaseProvider component pointing to your SpriteActorDatabase anywhere in your map/mutator. As long as that object is alive, you can reference your custom actors by name through the TriggerDialog or via the RS ingame dialog API.

• Added the following components to the whitelist (meaning they can now be loaded from custom maps/content mods): Cloth, Legacy water components, Rigidbody joints

• Added full support for RFL metadata, allowing modders to change the display name, loading screen background image/decoration 3d model, visibility on instant action mode etc.

• Added Actor imposters, these are characters that can follow predefined ScriptedPathGroup paths but lack all AI, Colliders, Hitboxes, Ragdolls etc. These imposters can be used for cutscenes or could be placed in the background in inaccessible areas of a map/mission to fill out the battlefield with more action. Because they don't have AI and related features, they are more optimized than regular actors.

• Fixed a bug where boat navmeshes would not generate on water planes.

• Terrains inside RFLs exported with Unity 2020.3 will keep the original materials unless a shader reload is requested due to platform incompabilities. This allows modders to freely change the terrain materials.

• Fixed a bug where modded vehicle weapon names would not be assigned correctly and instead throw an error in the console.

• ActorSkinData assets used in TriggerSpawnSquad/TriggerSpawnPlayer/TriggerSpawnImposters will now be preprocessed and retargeted based on the unity rig version. This means they are now also compatible with skins made for the Unity 5 rig, but you need to set up the correct rig version in the skin's Rig Settings.

• Added mod save data, and exposed to RS (see ScriptedBehaviour.modSaveData). This is used to save and load values between game sessions. Each mod has its own save data, meaning that maps/mutators/etc in the same mod can access the same values.

• Save data is found in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\SteelRaven7\RavenfieldSteam\SaveData\Modsmod_name.save (on windows) in plaintext xml (so it's easier to debug).

• Added Destructible takesMeleeDamage, takesSplashDamage and takesImpactDamage (damage from being rammed by vehicles or other rigidbodies), all default to off.

• Vehicles placed in maps will no longer be removed when the map loads. This means you can now have one-off vehicles placed in your map, which is useful for story missions etc. Vehicles spawned like this can be referenced in the trigger system by using the VehicleInstance reference type.

• Fixed a bug where navmesh would sometimes not generate through terrain holes on custom levels

Added SynchronizeEditorTransform component. This is a component that is only available in test mode (by testing a map via the Unity RF Tools). With this component you can synchronize the gameobject transform and all children with renderers from the game to the editor. Here's how to set it up:

• Place the component on the gameobject you want to synchronize (typically a vehicle). Only once synchronized game object is allowed at a time!

• Run test mode on the map to load it up ingame. Press play mode in the editor so both the editor and the game is running at the same time.

• Press Q ingame to connect to the editor. After a few seconds the two should be connected, any the component's gameobject and children will be synchronized. (The game may freeze for a few seconds while the connection is being set up)

• One use case for this would be to record yourself driving a vehicle ingame. You can use the Unity Recorder package to record the synchronized vehicle movement keyframes as an animation, which can then be used as a cutscene in a scripted mission.

PLEASE NOTE: The SynchronizeEditorTransform component is very naively implemented, only allowing one gameobject and children to be synchronized and using quite a high data rate. However it should work well for recording individual vehicles, which is the use case I had in mind. As this component is very niche, I'm not planning on expanding or optimizing it.

New Trigger components

• TriggerEquipWeapon, used to equip weapons on actors

• TriggerEndMatch, triggers the victory/defeat sequence and optionally returns the game to the main menu.

• TriggerExplosion, simulates and explosion effect, damaging and pushing all nearby actors and vehicles

• TriggerEffect, can play screenshake, fades, audio events directly from triggers

• TriggerChangeScene, can load a new map from the trigger system (by specfying the .rfl or .rfld name), or return to the menu

• TriggerOnSquadRequestsNewOrder, sends a signal whenever an AI squad requests a new order. Having this component in your map prevents the AICommander from automatically issuing orders.

• TriggerFireWeapon, used to force fire a weapon from triggers

• TriggerHelicopterLanding, causes a helicopter to land at a specific landing zone (or take off again)

• TriggerSquadRecalculatePath, forces a squad to recalculate the path to their current order destination. Useful for cases where other triggers modify the map and the navmesh, and squads must now take alternate paths.

• TriggerUpdateVehicleInfo, used to update the vehicle stats

• TriggerExitVehicle, forces actors to leave a vehicle

• TriggerDeployParachute, forces actors to deploy their parachute

• TriggerSpawnImposterActors, used to spawn actor imposters that follow a predefined ScriptedPathGroup.

• TriggerChangeGravity, change the gravity of all objects in the scene

• TriggerChangeSpawnpointContainer, change the spawn points of a capture point from triggers.

• TriggerUpdateFog, change the scene fog

• TriggerUpdateAmbientLighting, change the scene ambient lighting

• TriggerChangeMaterial, changes a renderer material or the skybox material

• TriggerHideUI, hide elements of the built in UI

• TriggerShowInputPrompt, used to display a key prompt

Trigger System improvements

• WeaponState data for TriggerSpawnSquad and TriggerSpawnPlayer can be used to control the ammo/etc of individual weapons when spaning.

• Added lots of new conditions to TriggerCondition

• TriggerDialog now has actor blip sound overrides so you can change the character voice audio clip

• Fixed a bug where triggering the same TriggerDialog component multiple times would sometimes cause the dialog system to stop showing up.

• Fixed a bug where TriggerOnActorDeath would trigger before the game had fully registered that actor's death, potentially leading to misleading results in TriggerCondition and similar systems.

• TriggerIssueSquadOrder can now be used to issue an AI command order (basically letting the game auto-assign a new order that makes sense)

• TriggerDelay can now optionally block signals if one is already being delayed.

• Added WeaponReference to Trigger System, this type is now available as a signal context.

• Added TriggerUsable tooltip interaction values that control how the tooltip is shown/hidden when used.

• Added SpawnBehaviour values to VehicleSpawner, can be set to only spawn vehicles from scripted events (RS/Trigger system). This will prevent the game from automatically spawning/respawning the vehicle.

• Added VehicleInfo values to TriggerSpawnVehicle, used to configure spawning health etc.

• Added canDeployParachute to spawn ActorInfo

• Added FireWeapon modifier to ScriptedPaths, use this to control the firing of weapons on actors or imposters following the path.

• TriggerUpdateActorInfo can set/increment current health value.

• TriggerSpawnPrefab can optionally propagate the signal to the first TriggerReceiver component on the instantiated prefab's root GameObject. This is used to more easily run trigger logic on a spawned prefab, and keeps the original signal's context.

• Fixed a bug where TriggerSquadFormation was not working

• Added player seat change rules for TriggerSpawnVehicle

• Added spawnSource field to TriggerSpawnSquad which can be used to control whether or not dead actors can be used for spawning (which is the default settings), or if a new actor should always be created (this can be useful if you want to spawn an actor for a specific map-related purpose but don't want to interfere with the actors in an existing game mode)

• Added per-signal documention of all trigger system signals. This includes when the signal is sent, and what context it provides to the receiving trigger component.

• Added WeaponEntry hidden flag that can be used to hide a weapon from being pickable in instant action mode (It can still be spawned in via trigger/Ravenscript)

• Added automatic signal canceling if a signal has been propagated through more than 200 components. This also logs an error with the last component the singal passed through. If this happens, you most likely have an infinite signal loop in your map/mod.

• Deprecated TriggerUpdateVehicle as it is functionally the same as TriggerUpdateVehicleInfo. The component will continue to work but will not be distributed with future RFTools packages.

Ravenscript changes

• Exposed Joint to RS

• Exposed Exposed spawnpointContainer/contestedSpawnpointContainer to RS

• Exposed TriggerVolumes to RS

• Exposed ScriptedBehaviour.modSaveData to RS

• Added new TriggerScriptedSignal.Send(name) function call (without signal context argument) that generates a signal with an empty signal context.

• Exposed GameManager.gameDifficulty to RS

RFTools additions

• Added metadata file system. Metadata are .json files next to the mod files that can either be manually edited through a text editor or changed via built in metadata editors.

• Added RFL metadata editor window that can be used to change level display name, loading screen background image, visibility in instant action mode and more. (Access via Ravenfield Tools -> Map -> Metadata Editor in the top menu bar).

• Removed unintended animation that was previously included in RFTools which wasn't used by the project

• Maps using the Trigger System will now automatically be tagged as such on the workshop. This allows players to more easily find maps with extra functionality on top of the built in game rules.

• Updated all trigger component classes to be up to date with the main project, so more documentation should now be available.

• Updated the workshop item upload window, it now shows an error message if it fails to connect to steam

• Updated the workshop item file labeling system, now metadata files such as .json, .png and .obj are visible, and also any files that aren't allowed which prevents the item from uploading.

• Added browse buttons to the workshop item file labeling lists, this opens the corresponding folder in your file explorer so you can more easily see the files

• Added Trigger Prefabs (found in RFTools/Prefabs/Trigger Prefabs. You can drag and drop these into your map to add cool predefined behaviours:

• Area Secure Bark Trigger Group: Triggers a dialog when all enemies inside the supplied trigger volume die IF the player is inside the same volume trigger. This is useful for making your pals go "Area Secure" and say other very tactical one-liners.

• Force Vehicle Pilot Look Direction: Hook this up to a vehicle to force the pilot to look in a certain direction when not engaging targets.

• Spawn Player Squad Reinforcements: When triggered and the player has less than 2 squadmates (the number can be configured), will spawn reinforcements that automatically join the player squad.

• ZOMBIES!: Provides basic zombie behaviour to the enemy team, making them rush towards the player at all times. You can activate/deactivate this object to dynamically turn this behaviour on or off during gameplay.

• Trigger Spawn Vehicle Airdrop prefab: spawns a vehicle in a parachute, and causes the closest AI squad to try to enter the vehicle when it lands

As always, I hope you'll enjoy these new features and look forward to seeing more cool story missions designed by the community!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Hey hey everyone, EA27 is finally here! Holy smokes this took a long time...

So what's new? Basically I have been working on getting story missions to work with the game. On top of creating a story mission I have spent a lot of time refactoring the underlying game tech so that it works with both the original instant action style sandbox gameplay and the new designed style of the story campaign. You can see the results of this in the new story mission available in the instant action menu. This mission is a part of the story campaign I announced a while back, and while it is still a work in progress (this is Ravenfield after all...) it is still playable from start to finish. In this mission, you're tasked with assaulting the Citadel and sabotaging the enemy air capabilities. It even opens with a cutscene featuring shiny new fully-animated characters :O

The idea behind this mission is to bring together parts of both Spec Ops and Battle gameplay, so you will play as both Talon and your standard Eagle grunt in the same mission. All game logic that drives this mission has been designed using the new Trigger System - a set of logic components that can be connected together using signals in the RF Mod Tools for Unity. The point of this system is to make story mission map design much more approachable for modders. One of the primary goals for the Citadel mission was to design the Trigger System itself along with the mission, making sure that similar missions can be created using only Triggers - zero coding required!

This Trigger System is not limited to story missions, however. You can attach Trigger System components to any modded GameObject, meaning it can be used to drive game logic on your modded maps, vehicles, weapons, projectiles, etc. While the Trigger System can be viewed as an alternative to Ravenscript, more complex logic are usually easier to design using Ravenscript, but the choice is left entirely to the modder. The two systems are completely interoperable as you can send and receive Trigger System signals from a Ravenscript ScriptedBehavior component. Along with the Trigger System, there are other mission-related components that can be used to manually set up AI paths, detect player entering triggers, trigger cutscenes and more.

On top of the new game systems, you will probably notice that the AI has been streamlined quite a bit, and that the game plays a lot better than it did in EA26. This is due to the numerous AI changes that had to be made in order to accomodate the new trigger system and custom game mode tech. You should see the AI using their weapons in a more sane way, and utilizing cover better. The game HUD has also received a much-needed makeover, and now has a more modern and clear style. Additionally, the new HUD is modular, so custom HUDs can override specific parts of the official HUD as needed.

Now that this update is out, what's next? Most of the very time-consuming task of redoing the game infrastructure to support story missions and the Trigger System is now done. This means that you can expect much more frequent updates in the future, mainly focused on adding more official story missions and eventually becoming the story campaign. These tools are also being made available to modders right away, so modders will be able to create playable custom game modes or story missions inside level files. Eventually, modders will be able to create fully fledged custom game modes playable on any map, but we are not quite there yet, maybe for EA28 :D!

Full Change Log

Game changes

• Added WIP story mission that takes place on the Citadel map
• New HUD design!
• Added hangar area to the Citadel map
• Navmesh generator now fully support terrain holes
• Forced navmesh generator to use highest detail representation of terrain while generating.
• Optimized the germanic house models used on Citadel map, drastically reducing the drawcalls
• Fixed a bug where alt weapons would not animate correctly after getting up from ragdoll
• Added checks to prevent option menu values like mouse sensitivity and FOV from randomly changing while playing the game.
• Added support for moving platforms such as elevators!
• You can now stand on top of vehicles without being rammed (Basically allowing you to ride on top of tanks and stuff lol). This works up to a speed threshold of 20 m/s
• Added support for custom game modes bundled inside maps
• Fixed a bug where weapons using patched animations (due to them not being EA26+ compatible) would sometimes spam error messages.
• Made soldier animation culling more robust, should fix a rare bug where animations would sometimes be culled when they shouldn't.
• Improvement to player third person lean animation transitions.
• Improvements to soldier animation state machine transitions so animations between different stances flow better and faster.
• The capture state of the flag the player is capturing will now be updated every frame, meaning that the flag capture progress will look smoother.
• The kill cam will now move slightly when the direct path between the player and the killer bot is obscured.
• Fixed a bug where maps with multiple identical flag pairs in the neighbor manager would not start.
• Added slight spread to Rhino MG
• Cassowary missile tracking/lock sounds will now play in bomb sight.
• Fixed a bug where bots could sometimes shoot through walls
• At very short ranges (< 1m) Players cannot deal friendly fire, this mitigates the issue where friendly bots run in front of you just as you fire your weapon.
• Fixed a bug where flag capture volumes sometimes would not initialize correctly at the start of a map
• Added follower invisibility system to the citadel mission (Copying over the functionality from spec-ops where your squadmates will be invisible to enemy detection while following you). This system is now completely modular and is exposed to the trigger system and eventually to RS.
• Added Detection Groups, where multiple AI squads will alert each other whenever one of them spots the enemy. These components can also send trigger signals whenever a group is alerted.
• Doubled suppressed Patriot projectile falloff range so it's more effective at longer ranges.
• Fixed some spawns at the Coastline flag Cliff that were previously under the terrain
• Refactored the vehicle HUD system to be more robust when changing cameras
• Added support to compeltely disable the player's game input, which is useful for cutscenes etc.
• Fixed a bug where the player could sometimes end up on the wrong team in the scoreboard UI
• Improved suspension values on Jeep and Quadbike so they should be a little less bouncy
• Reduced friction on ground vehicle hitbox colliders so they don't get stuck quite as hard when running into stuff
• Refactored the audio system to make it easier to control audio mixing from Ravenscript/Trigger system
• Master AudioMixer is no longer affected by filtering on audio events such as deafening and being inside enclosed vehicles, so you can use this group to play unfiltered audio even when using filters on all other ingame audio.
• Ingame audio will now fade in when starting a match
• Updated lightmaps on Temple and Citadel maps.
• Updated to Unity engine 2020.3.48f1

Custom Game Modes

• Added support for custom game modes, at the moment custom game modes can only be bundled inside maps, but eventually it will be possible to also use custom game modes on any level.
• Added lots of new systems that allow for story missions to be played.
• Added support for freezing the game during cutscenes, etc.
• Added support for loading/saving data between level restarts. This is currently limited to checkpoint data, but will be expanded in future updates. It will also be possible to save this data between game sessions for persistent data loading and saving for mutators and custom campaigns.
• Added WIP Citadel story mission that can be played via the instant action menu. This mission is entirely designed using the new Trigger system!

AI Changes

• Squadmates following their leader will now try to move in a way so they can always have direct line of sight to the squad leader, meaning squads stick closer together in areas with lots of cover.
• Fixed a bug where the AI sometimes would pick really bad cover points while defending a flag
• The AI will now prefer to spread out more when picking a cover point.
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not fire mortar style weapons correctly
• Improved AI weapon switching, so now they should be way more consistent and not switch out their weapon all the time.
• Fixed AI crouching/leaning while using cover points.
• When using slow fire rate weapons like snipers, bots will now wait a little after taking a shot before crouching when behind cover.
• Bots with skill level veteran or higher will now lean while checking corners in close quarters areas.
• Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes walk through geometry when getting a new path while traversing a pathfinding link.
• Fixed multiple bugs where bots would get corrupted paths when walking to capture points after being ragdolled/strafing a target.
• When walking around a corner, bots that lean will now lean more or less depending on their look direction. This should result in smoother looking leans and prevent weird leaning behaviour when aiming backwards, etc.
• Bots will no longer play emote animations while targeting an enemy or reloading.
• Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes look at the ground when approaching the end of their current walking path.
• Bots now go to walkable navmesh nodes inside of the capture range/volume when attacking a flag, this should prevent edge cases where attacking squads think they are attacking a flag when in reality they are standing outside of the capture zone.
• AI can no longer deal friendly fire while using normal projectiles. They can still deal friendly fire by splash damage, however. Previously, AI could deal friendly fire damage when hitting a target 100 meters or futher away
• After firing their weapon, bots will not be able to look around for one second (unless they spot another target to fire at). This fixes an issue where bots would sometimes fire at an enemy, but then look in a completely other direction and continue holding their fire input for a split second, randomly firing projectiles across the level.
• Lots of other small tweaks and improvements to the AI

Ingame Map Editor

• Fixed some map editor props not generating navmesh correctly.
• Fixed skeleton hat missing mesh
• Fixed missing colliders on snowy arch and house stilts

Modding

• Added displayName field for weapons, this is the name that shows up in the new UI.
• Dropped support of the legacy animation component. This component will no longer load from mods. Please use the new animator controller component instead!
• Added component for animated vehicles to drive engine audio from their current speed, this is really useful for cutscenes where the vehicle movement is pre-animated such as the breaching APC in the citadel mission.

Trigger system

• Added ScriptedPathGroups which can be used to manually design paths for bots to follow.
• Added several dozens of logic components that can be used to contorol game flow

Ravenscript

• Added a killCredit property to weapons which is automatically set to whoever equips a weapon, but can be overridden through this value. This value can also be used to set whoever should get the kill from scripted weapons such as automatic turrets, etc.
• Renamed Projectile.source to Projectile.killCredit to match weapon naming convention. Accessing .source will still work, meaning mods using the older name will still work fine.
• Fixed a bug where weapons could not fire projectiles through the Shoot() function unless they were first equipped by an actor. This means that weapons can now be fired via scripts without having to be picked up.
• Exposed functions that can be used to hide individual elements of the new ingame UI. This is great if you're making a custom HUD and only want to replace parts of the vanilla UI.
• Exposed PlayerHud.playerOrderState to RS, which can be used to drive player squad status labels in your custom HUDs
• Added Actor functions to more easily access actor skinned mesh renderers
• Exposed fonts to Ravenscript and DataContainer component
• Various Ravenscript bugfixes

Coming up, I'm goin to finish up the citadel story mission and improve the support for custom game modes for EA28. In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy this update!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Hey, here's a quick mini-update with some fixes and additions to the game. As this isn't large enough to release as it's own major EA update, I figured I'd release a mini-update to EA26.

Change log:

• Updated the engine version to Unity 2020.3.34f1
• Added Big Head mutator (Your head grows as you get a higher kill-streak)
• Exposed bone scaling to RS via Actor.SetHumanoidBoneScale()
• Exposed Actor.SetWeaponParentScale() and Actor.SetWeaponParentApproximateWorldScale()
• Fixed AI sprinting behaviour, squad leaders will now sprint most of the time when moving towards an objective, but will stop sprinting when an enemy is spotted. Squad members will follow the leader and sprint to catch up.
• Rebaked occlusion data on coastline
• Fixed a bug where cover points would not be placed on the terrain on ingame map maker maps. (Navmesh needs to be rebaked for this to take effect on existing levels)
• Disabled collisions between first person layer and Players/Actors. This should prevent weird player movement issues from occuring when using weapons with attached colliders (which is used by some modded weapons such as shields etc.).

Improvements to commanding squadmates:

• When assigning a move order (or attack/defend flag order), bots will no longer stop and get into cover or stop to take down faraway targets until they have arrived at their destination.
• When bots are following, and are >15 meters away, they will no longer stop to get into cover or stop to shoot at faraway targets. They will still use cover as normal when within 15 meters of their desired formation position.
• Tweaked some code to make AI way more likely to target the currently assigned squad target. (The one you assign by aiming down sights and holding the squad order button)

See you again after summer!

/Johan

This was supposed to be a 2 week update. It only took 9 months..........

EA26 is finally out! This update focuses heavily on improving upon the base game experience by heavily improving performance and compatibility with modern systems (thanks to updating to a new Unity Engine version, 2020.3). The update also features lots of quality-of-life improvements and bugfixes.

One of the major improvements in EA26 is the increased framerates and reductions in frame jitter. The framerate should now scale way better with the bot count, allowing you to play with more bots than ever before. You can also run a benchmark to easily compare your performance to others. A default benchmark is available from the launch menu in Steam (launching the game with 60 bots on Island without mods loaded) but you can also use the launch option "-benchmark bot count" to launch a benchmark on any map, with mods enabled.

Another major new feature is full support for Steam Input. This means that you can connect any gamepad or joystick to the game through the Steam Input system, and create controller binds that you can share with other players. The game has full action map support, meaning that you can easily create separate binds for infantry, vehicle, aircraft use, etc. Additionally, the game will display key/mouse/controller input prompts based on your binds while ingame. If you're planning on playing the game with a controller, please bind all inputs through Steam Input instead of the built-in input options menu. That way, you can take advantage of the Steam Input features. I have created an official controller binds for the Dualshock 4 controller, which should automatically work for other controller types as well.

EA26 improves upon the vehicle picking system, allowing mods to easily bundle vehicle variants that appear in the vehicle selection screen. When picking a vehicle, the game will now display a list of vehicles complete with images to make it easy to find exactly the vehicle you're looking for. Additionally, you can select "Show All Vehicles", allowing you to pick a vehicle regardless of type. This means you can for example replace all aircraft with cars, or vice versa.

I want to extend a big thank you to Ravenfield's modding and beta testing community for the patience and help with getting this update out. Due to compatibility issues between older mods/maps and the new Unity engine version, tons of mods have had to be patched or updated to be compatible with EA26. You can find all mods that are verified compatible with EA26 under the EA26 Compatible tag on the workshop. However, thanks to a lot of trial and error and a little bit of hacking, most older mods should now also be playable on EA26, even though there might be some hiccups here and there.

If you want to play a mod that straight up does not work on EA26, you can switch to the Ravenfield legacy branch (Go to your steam library, right click Ravenfield -> Properties -> Betas and select the legacy-ea25 branch). This branch will downgrade your game version to EA25, which should be compatible with all older mods. When you want to return to EA26 to play new mods, just pick the None option in the beta dropdown.

Full change log

Game changes:

• Updated to Unity Engine 2020.3.32f1
• Updated post processing version to 3.1.1
• Changed AO implementation which fixes various shadow artifacts
• Removed AO quality levels from the options menu as the new implementation doesn't have quality levels
• Replaced limit framerate option with VSync
• Loadout screen no longer extends beyond the screen on ultrawide monitors
• Increased max FOV value to 180 degrees
• Added -resetresolution launch option which forces the game into a 1280*720 window
• Added optional Vulkan graphics API to Windows and Linux platforms, use launch option "-force-vulkan" to enable.
• Added OpenGL Core graphics API as fallback on all platforms. Linux uses this graphics API by default.
• Added benchmark mode which can be used to benchmark game performance. You can run a benchmark either from the game's launch menu options, or by using the command line argument "-benchmark optional botcount".
• "-map path" launch option now accepts .rfld or .rfl paths as argument.
• Bots and vehicles now use interpolated rigidbody movement which results in less jittery movement.
• Added blood decal options in the options menu.
• Reworked the Vehicle Switch screen.
• Added Vehicle picker screen that shows vehicle icon and title.
• Toggle "Show All Vehicles" in the vehicle picker to access all vehicles, regardless of type.
• Added cool loading screens!
• Improved spec ops intro, Eyes is now only introduced in the first spec ops game you play each session.
• Removed fog rendering from HUD shaders.
• Increased audio DSP buffer size, which should reduce crackling and other audio issues.
• Improved terrain geometry and house positions on Citadel near west eagle spawn.
• Fixed a bug where weapons with multiple muzzles would not fire when their ammo was set to infinite.
• Refactored Actor damage code to make it easier to integrate with Ravenscript
• Capped the maximum vehicle mass force gain based imparted on infantry when rammed by a vehicle
• Reduced camera jitter when getting up from ragdoll.
• When exiting a vehicle seat, the game will now do raycasts to determine where the exiting actor ends up. This prevents actors from ending up inside geometry or under the terrain after exiting a vehicle.
• Various improvements to UI scaling and visibility, especially noticable 4k resolutions.
• Fixed a bug where LUA errors would sometimes cause the Lua VM to run out of memory and overflow. Also added debug values to the console to help monitor the VM memory state.
• Suppressed warning logs from builds, these weren't useful anyway and would just clog the log file.
• Suppressed stack trace when logging info messages.
• You can no longer swap to the seat you're already in.
• Ragdolls that are moving faster than 20 meters per second will now automatically use continuous collision detection, which should prevent ragdolls tunneling through the terrain or other static geometry.
• Updated physics settings to speed up the game and provide more stable physics simulation (reduced risk of the spaghetti man appearing!)
• Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes tunnel through the level geometry when deploying their parachute very close to ground level.
• Added one progress bar per content mod worker in the mod loading screen. This allows you to monitor the progress of loading each mod. The point of this is to more easily debug the cases where modding unexpectedly hangs, as it's now possible to see what mod is being loaded when everything breaks.
• Added a -strictmodversion launch option. When this launch option is used, the game will only load mods created with the same major unity version. That is, EA26 will only load mods built with 2020.3.XX versions of Unity.
• Fixed car pathfinding on the coastline cliff ruins flag (finally lol)
• Updated navmeshes on Coastline and Archipelago
• Made water deeper around attack boats on Twin Island, and also rotated the attack boat spawns 90 degrees
• Fixed an issue where APC lock on sounds were not affected by sound volume settings
• Added -resetresolution launch option that will force reset the game to run in a 1280*720 window
• Removed box men option, replaced with box men actor skin that's available in the actor skin dropdown menu (it's called Ravenfield 2016).
• Added kick foot model for box man skin
• Major improvements to transport helicopter landing AI, it happens much faster and more reliably now
• Improved spec ops detection system so it's easier to escape detection
• Replaced visibility test randomness with a deterministic system when bots are detecting you in spec ops. This should make the detection system easier to understand.
• Fixed a bug where bots would not detect you if they didn't have a weapon that was effective against you.
• Added helicopter patrol to Spec Ops. A transport helicopter carrying high-level enemies will be called in if you're spotted and the defenders manage to fire a flare.
• Laser sight dots are now scaled based on distance to the player camera
• Filled up a hole in the citadel mesh

Input changes:

• Added support for Steam Input to the game. This control system completely bypasses the options menu keybindings, and allows you to set up pretty much any gamepad/joystick/other controller through the Steam Input UI.
• Added default Steam Input bindings for Dualshock 4 controllers.
• Added sprint toggle option.
• Added bindable seat keys (defaults to F1 -> F7)
• Added keybind visualizer system, which will be exposed to RS later.
• The game keeps track of the active input type (Unity default or Steam Input). This is used when deciding which control glyph to render.
• Added Controller Hint option toggle. Disabling it stops the game from displaying the default control hints. Control prompts such as Press F to plant timed explosive in spec ops are still shown regardless of the setting.

Optimization:

• Forced all terrains to use a default material
• Terrains now use instanced rendering on high terrain quality, reducing CPU rendering overhead on modern systems.
• Replaced Ingame Map Editor level generator code, which runs faster and produces more detailed results.
• Ingame Map Editor levels now use Unity's built in mesh baker, significantly reducing the CPU overhead when rendering the level. On busy levels, this can lead to more than twice the frame rate!
• The game now uses GPU skinning to offload the CPU.
• The game now uses graphics jobs, which should multi-thread parts of the rendering work.
• Added deferred squad spawning, meaning the game will spawn at most one squad every frame by default. This reduces frame spikes when spawning lots of bots at once.
• Reworked the minimap code and rendering, significantly boosting overall game performance.
• Tweaked a physics property to prevent the engine from doing unnecessary synchronization of physics transforms.
• Disabled graphics raycasting on some game UI elements that didn't need them.
• Airplane ailerons now move correctly according to roll input (they were reversed before)
• Actor animator now internally uses precalculated parameter hashes instead of strings
• Optimized name tags mutator, it now uses the new PlayerHud element tracking.
• Deferred lua console updates to happen max once per frame.

Various tweaks to AI weapon usage to reduce rocket spam towards helicopters/airplanes and similar long range shots:

• Added weapon target difficulty value, for example targeting a helicopter with the dagger is considered a Hard shot.
• Added bot skill level value. Bots will only take shots that are within their skill level ability.
• Bots that haven't engaged any targets in a while can attempt harder shots.
• Weapon difficulty values can be set manually using the new mod tools pack, but will be automatically set by matching the weapon to a weapon architype such as machine gun, pistol, rocket launcher etc.

Various improvements to mod content loading:

• Added multi-threading to mod loading, allowing the game to load multiple mods at once.
• Shader reloading is run on all platforms when loading a content mod that was built with an Unity editor version that doesn't match the game's current engine version.
• Auto-upgrading of deprecated Plane component class to Airplane.
• Added fallback shader lookup for legacy shaders resolving.
• Added "-verbose" launch option, which logs shader resolving results. If you're experiencing pink error materials, you can find out which shader failed to resolve using this feature.
• Mod content such as weapon entries, skins, mutators etc are now sorted by source mod.
• Added source mod title grouping in the weapon picker UI.
• Added support for vehicle content variants, allowing modders to package multiple vehicles of the same type in their vehicle content mods.
• Added retargeting system for actor skins, allowing the game to load and retarget skins made in engine version 5.6 and 2020.3 (and any future versions)
• When resolving material shaders, the game will now keep the material's render queue value (previously the game would change it to the shader's default render queue value).
• Attempted to fix 5.6 maps terrain tree instances colliding with player. This is done by assuming that only capsule colliders should be solid (as these the collider types that are typically used for tree trunks, etc). All other collider types are assumed to be Ai Vision blockers.

Modding changes:

• Exposed WeaponEntry.uiSprite to Ravenscript
• Added weapon target difficulty value
• Added AnimationCurves, Color and Gradient to the data container component
• Added a warning when custom weapon CullInThirdPerson values would cull the third person transform. This also prevents the third person transform being culled.
• Removed support for CustomActorSkin in custom maps as it was using an outdated actor skin system that was incompatible with Unity 2020.3
• Added actor skin retargeting to DataContainers, which should make it so actor skins loaded from data containers should be retargeted correctly.
• Added HUD Unlit shader variant
• HUD Light material now uses alpha blending (identical to EA24 and earlier releases). Use HUD Additive for additive blending.
• Exposed variout requested featured to common classes such as SpawnUI, Player, Actor, Weapon, Projectile, Minimap, AiActorController and Vehicle classes.
• Added PlayerHud class that can be used to automatically track world objects on a 2d canvas.
• Exposed player loadout to RS
• Exposed OnAnimatorIK to RS
• Exposed VideoPlayer/VideoClip to RS
• Various improvements to navmesh generation which should improve the generated navmesh shapes.
• The last error logged in the console will now automatically stack. This should prevent the entire console from being clogged when the same error is thrown every frame.
• Added .patch file support. Patch files contain extra data that can be used to recover old, outdated mods to be compatible with new Ravenfield builds. This is currently used to recover animations that appear broken on EA26 due to a compatibility bug inside the Unity engine.
• The game now tries to log the source directory of ScriptedBehaviours. This should help debug issues with RS from log files.
• Fixed Vehicles.GetTrackingMissiles() throwing clr type cast errors.
• Exposed various projectile types to RS. The API of all projectiles are currently identical, but they will be populated with type specific properties in future updates.
• References to destroyed GameObjects/Components will now evaluate to nil in RS, creating parity with the official Unity API.
• Exposed DamageInfo, HitInfo and ExplosionInfo structs to RS, which simplifies the RS API when interacting with damage values and events, etc.
• Added various damage/explosion events using the DamageInfo and ExplosionInfo data structs.
• Exposed ExplosionConfiguration to RS.
• Exposed ActorManager.Explode() that can be used to trigger an explosion from RS.
• Added Weapon.GenerateWeaponRoleFromStats() which generates a weapon role based on the weapon stats. Can be useful for classifying weapons.
• Added OnVehicleDisabled and OnVehicleExtinguish events in RS
• Exposed PlayableDirector to RS
• Made it possible to disable stabilization for each axis on MountedStabilizedTurrets. This will be made available through a future RF mod tools update.
• Debug gizmos triggered from RS (Debug.DrawLine etc) are now visible through geometry
• When running the game in test content mod mode while in the test game mode, the game draws the path of your squadmates.

Known issues with this update

• Many mods made in Unity Editor 5.6 have broken animations in this update. This is a bug in the Unity engine itself and isn't fixable from the game code. I have however generated patch files for some older, unmaintained mods to get around this. It is recommended that mods suffering from this bug is re-exported using Unity 2020.3 and the 2020.3-compatible Ravenfield modding tools. Alternatively, It is sometimes possible to solve this issue in the Unity 5.6 tools by making sure the "Resample Curves" option is checked inside the animation import settings of a model, and then re-exporting the mod.

• Some maps made in Unity Editor 5.6 have broken collisions on trees and other detail objects. The game tries to solve this by assuming that only capsule colliders are solid, and any other colliders should only block bot vision. This runtime patch is only applied on 5.6-made maps, and does not affect fully compatible maps created in Unity Editor 2020.3.xx.

Trouble running the update? If you're having problems running this update, please make sure that your system drivers are up to date, and that your system passes the minimum requirements of the game. You can always access the previous update EA25 by changing to the legacy-ea25 branch by following these instructions:

• Go to your Steam Library page

• Right click Ravenfield, click Properties

• Select the Betas tab and in the dropdown, choose the legacy-ea25 branch. (No need to enter any access code)

• Click OK and wait for the game to update.

I hope this update works well for you and that you are looking forward to the story campaign content that I will be working on next!

/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)

Hey! Early Access build 24 is finally here with updates to the Citadel level, aircraft and tons of quality-of-life improvements to gameplay.

The main focus for EA24 is the overhauled Citadel level. Pretty much everything in the level has been updated, which should give the level a nice flow and several ways of attacking the central citadel. Major changes have been made to the areas outside the citadel, such as adding bunkers for the defending team. The defenders now have access to airplanes via the takeoff platform suspended over the citadel wall. The level is quite different from most official maps as you get quite a different experience playing on the attacking or defending team. I hope you'll enjoy it!

EA24 also updates the two official airplanes, both visually and their flight handling. Both aircraft have received a shiny new model with an updated, more informative HUD. The attack plane now carries more ammo than before, making hit-and-run attacks a little easier to pull off. All airplanes, including modded ones can now land by holding throttle down and flying close to the ground. This will extend the landing gears and activate airbrakes which slows the aircraft down and lands it. There have also been some minor changes to the flight model which should make aircraft feel more nimble than before.

The ingame map editor has also received an update which gives the maker more control over the lighting and feel of their map. I hope this brings out some extra creativity to those custom maps!

Finally, this update contains a ton of fixes and improvements to the game play and AI, please see the change log below for details!

Full change log

Citadel level has been fully overhauled:

• Removed bridge between the two defender outposts outside the citadel walls, creating two separate attacker lanes.
• Split the attacker's first spawn into two separate spawns, one for each side of the river. The bridge connecting the two sides of the attacker spawn is still there so it's possible to cross to the other side easily.
• Added suspended takeoff/landing platform for airplanes at the citadel.
• Added 2 attack planes for defenders.
• Removed helicopter from defenders.
• Added attack helicopter to attacker spawn.
• Attackers now get one APC and one tank.
• Added bunkers and several anti-tank and machine gun turrets for defenders.
• Added one anti-air turret on the east bunker.
• General improvements to village area, giving it more structure.
• Redid the HQ building and tower in citadel.
• Added various stone and supply props to citadel for cover.
• Added rocks and trees to break up sightlines outside the citadel.
• Added vis occluders to Citadel trees

Attack airplane and bomber overhaul:

• Updated HUD with speed/altitude/gear/brake indicators
• Updated the heading indicator HUD elements to make them a little more clear and less obtrusive.
• All airplanes (including modded ones) can now land by holding throttle down while being close to ground. This will automatically extend the landing gear and allow you to land.
• Overhauled the handling of the attack plane.
• Balanced attack plane weapons, giving it more ammo but slightly less damage.
• All airplanes can now airbrake by throttling down when close to the ground.
• Updated bomber turret to use the new stabilized turret, making it way easier to hit targets.
• Both official airplanes now have landing gear suspension.

AI updates:

• Restricted squad clustering (IE when vehicles would slow down to cover nearby infantry) to only occur when close to enemy capture points, or if the cluster is taking fire.
• Fixed a bug where AI would not halt when firing long range shots while in vehicles.
• Updated AI Airplane swerving, so bots are less likely to crash into the target they are currently engaging.
• Added reload assist to bots in airplanes so they reload their weapons while doing U-turns in order to engage a target.
• There is a small chance of infantry bots chasing after a nearby target if it goes out of sight. This never applies to bots in the player squad.
• Made it slightly easier for bots to lock on with target locking weapons.
• Fixed an issue where bots could sometimes lock on to targets behind them.
• AI will now have slightly worse aim directly after taking damage.
• AIs shooting from cover are now slightly less accurate directly after uncrouching
• Aircraft pilots will now only bail out if they are close to a valid infantry navmesh.
• AI will no longer use turrets that aren't facing an enemy capture point. If the defense strategy is set to "always man turrets", all turrets will be manned anyway. Additionally, anti-air turrets will always be manned.
• Improved AI order generation based on neighbors, now bots will never use land vehicles or walk when attacking a neighbor that is set to water only, even if that point is technically reachable by land
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not target enemies correctly with mounted turrets
• Fixed a bug where AI would sometimes shoot through walls/cover while crouching
• Improvements to AI cover usage when defending flags.
• Reduced risk of AI friendly fire through explosions when they are using cover.
• If AI accidentally misfires an explosive projectile, friendly fire damage will be reduced.
• Bots now prefer cover points with ceiling protection (As that protects them better against explosions, mortars, air to ground attacks etc. To take advantage of this change, a new navmesh must be generated.

Bots will now keep track of targets for a few seconds, even if they temporarily go out of sight:

• This always applies to high priority targets (such as a vehicle capturing a flag, or a target assigned by the player).
• Bots on turrets will keep track of targets if they are of their preferred target type.
• Bots in airplanes will always keep track of targets. This makes them more aggressive and use their weapons way more.

Input improvements:

• Improved memory management of the input system for optimized access.
• Joystick inputs will now only bind on change in the input options menu. This makes it way easier to bind your inputs.
• Added deadzone slider that will control the joystick input deadzone.

Rendering Optimization:

• Optimized terrain rendering on the official maps. This will lead to slightly more pop-in but reduced CPU overhead when rendering.
• Baked soldier smirk into the soldier material, reducing the draw call overhead for rendering a character from 2 to 1.
• Soldiers behind the player will have their weapons culled.

Please note that if you're experiencing low frame rates with the game, try running the game without mods and see if that helps. I also recommend reducing or disabling the vegetation rendering in the video options menu. That seems to give me quite a big increase in frames per second on many levels.

Ingame map editor:

• You can now tweak the ambient lights for both day and night versions of a map.
• You can select a post processing preset for your map.
• Added ability to tweak sun/moon positions in the sky.
• Fixed fog not being applied and added daytime fog density parameter.
• Added skybox atmosphere parameters.
• Added water volume, allowing you to create lakes that spots that are higher than the ocean water level.
• Added ability to change the ocean water level.
• Changing these level detail parameters will now update the scene view in realtime, making iteration a little easier :)
• Pressing the night vision button will toggle night vision inside the editor.
• Added new props from the citadel level.
• Night vision can be turned on in-editor by pressing the night vision input key (default N).

Misc game improvements:

• Moved unfinished levels (Tunnel, Twin Islands) to the bottom of the map list.
• Fixed lighting on Tunnel level, although it's still pretty broken :/
• Fixed a rare bug where entering a vehicle seat would sometimes cause the screen to go black or start glowing white.
• When switching seats in a vehicle, if an AI is already occupying that seat, you will switch seat with them.
• You can now easily take over an AI vehicle by pressing use on it, even when it's already occupied. Entering the driver seat will automatically make the passengers join your squad. Entering a passenger seat does not modify your squad, so you can ride as a temporary passenger if you like. If there are no seats left, the bot you replace will be kicked out of the vehicle and create their own squad.
• Spec Ops helicopter exfil now supports custom transport helicopters (So long as it can fit your spec ops squad, otherwise the default helicopter will be used).
• All preplaced audio sources in a level will now be set to use the world mixer group. This makes them react to your sound volume setting or slow motion effect.
• Added UI scaling for resolutions above 1080p for parts of the UI. This makes it way easier to select spawn points, or click the pause menu buttons on 4k screens or similar.
• Minimap resolution is doubled when playing on >1080p screens.
• Spec ops flare now fades in/out smoothly.
• Updated post processing presets on all levels.
• Updated occlusion data on most levels.
• All official mounted turrets now use the new stabilized mounted turret script.
• Added slight recoil to the mounted turret cameras.
• Updated turret cameras and projectile impact effects.
• Fixed a bug where mortars would not hit their indicated target.
• Updated water material so it is influenced by ambient lighting (Previously only direct lighting would affect it).
• Added High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering option in the video options.
• Fixed spec ops not starting when no primary weapon was selected
• Only projectiles fired by bots will now make flyby sounds.
• Fixed a bug where missiles without a target lock would never accelerate to the max travel speed.
• Fixed an issue where the weapon selection UI would sometimes not list weapons.
• Fixed an issue where projectiles would stop in mid air when hitting vehicle debris
• Made it easier to select the correct flag when using the squad ordering map.
• Made attack helicopters slightly faster when travelling forward, and overall a little more agile.
• Fixed a bug where the vehicle HUD would sometimes not render after entering a vehicle.
• LOD objects will no longer be baked together for ingame map maker made levels.
• Various minor bugfixes to projectiles and missiles and the missile tracking indicator
• Spec ops objective markers now have a distance label.
• Added outline to spec ops objective markers so they are easier to see with bright backgrounds.
• Fixed a bug with PlayerRecoilCamera which caused vehicles like the Tank and APC to not have recoil applied properly in first person mode.
• Fixed a bug where AI Vision Occluder colliders would sometimes cause the player to be pushed
• Exfil helicopter crew can no longer be ordered by the player using quick orders.

Ravenscript:

• Exposed parachute functionality.
• Exposed AiActorController.targetFlightAltitude.
• Exposed various airplane flags such as airbrake, altitude, gearsRetracted, isAirborne
• Added Squad.Create() function.
• Exposed various Collider classes to RS (BoxCollider, CapsuleCollider and SphereCollider)
• Exposed missile tracking and lock on status to Vehicle in RS
• AI.canJoinPlayerSquad value exposed to RS

I hope you'll enjoy this update and all the improvements it brings to the game! I will post an news update regarding the Ravenfield 1.0 release soon, so please look forward to that!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

The Spec Ops update Pt 2 adds features such as Flares, Exfiltration and smarter patrols to the Spec Ops mode. When attacking objectives, it is good idea to strike quickly or using stealth to prevent the enemy from firing a signal flare, which attracts nearby patrols. Flares are also very bright, so they may blind on night levels when using Night Vision. The TALON spec ops team now carries C4 explosives, which can be planted on parked vehicles. You can even plant C4 without picking up the item in your loadout by walking up to the destroy target vehicle objective and pressing the use key to plant C4 with a 30 second timer. Alternatively, you can send one of your squadmates to plant an explosive using the squad command button. This should give you lots of options to completing your objective even if you forgot to bring anti-vehicle weapons!

TALON is now supported by a recon operative, EYES, who will call out nearby patrols and mark them on your minimap. This is very useful as suriving enemies on completed objectives may now leave their post and try to hunt you down. EYES is only available when playing as TALON on the Eagle team, so try playing on the Raven team for some extra challenge!

After completing all objectives, you must now make it to an exfiltration transport helicopter, and enter it with your squad to win. Alternatively, if all TALON operatives are alive and you are not being hunted by the enemy, you will exfiltrate on foot and skip the helicopter exfiltration entirely. Perfect for speedrunning :).

Finally, EA23 adds much nicer post processing effects to the game. On top of improved Color Correction and Bloom, Ambient Occlusion is now available along with FXAA and SMAA anti-aliasing. You can find these options in the Video Options menu tab.

Full patch notes:

Spec Ops Improvments:

• Added Neutralize Patrol objective type.
• Improved the spawning location of the attacking team, you should now always spawn around 200 meters away from the closest objective.
• You can plant C4 on the "Destroy Vehicle" target by pressing the use key when close to it. This even works if you didn't bring any C4 or other anti-vehicle weapons.
• You can order your squadmates to plant C4 on the "Destroy Vehicle" target by issuing a squad order using the quick squad order key.
• Added EYES to Spec Ops. EYES is a recon operator who will provide you with intelligence on enemy patrol movement, such as alerting you if a patrol is about to spot you. EYES is only available when playing on the Eagle team.
• Patrolling vehicles now have a maximum of 4 passengers
• The balance slider can now be used to set the number of teammates in spec ops. Each soldier in the game preview image corresponds to one teammate.
• Spec ops now uses the cinematic victory/defeat screens
• Major improvements to defender AI in spec ops mode
• Added flares, which a squad defending a flag will fire if they spot you. There is some delay before they are able to fire the flare, so it's a good idea to take them out quickly or using stealth.
• Flares attract nearby patrols to the location. They are also quite bright so they may make your Night Vision unsuable.
• You can be spotted from further away when standing under an active flare
• Made the spec ops teammates harder to detect when they are close to the player.

There are now 2 possible endings to spec ops, either quick victory (where the game instantly ends when all objectives are completed) or helicopter exfiltration:

• Quick victory will only fire if all attackers are still alive when the game ends. On large levels, you also need to be unseen by enemies when the game ends.
• Helicopter exfil victory will fire otherwise, where you need to get to the exfil location and enter the helicopter.

Game Improvements:

• Added remote detonated C4 weapon.
• Fixed a bug which would cause tracking missiles to sometimes fail to track enemies.
• Removed legacy post processing effects
• Added new and shiny post processing effects using the Unity Post Processing Stack.
• Added Color Correction, Bloom and Ambient Occlusion post processing effects and settings to options menu
• Added support for FXAA, SMAA anti-aliasing.
• Removed forced MSAA anti-aliasign when running the game on the highest graphics setting.
• All levels now use improved post processing, including custom levels.
• Fixed a bug where stabilized mounted turrets would rotate even when no-one is using them.
• Night vision can now be toggled in spectator and photo mode without the screen turning black.
• The version warning dialog box is now red and has larger text to make it stand out more.
• Slightly increased the size of APC hitboxes
• Fixed a pathfinding issue on temple near waterfalls at the center of the map
• Fixed CSG meshes on Coastline not generating properly
• Multiple mods can now be loaded when running the game in content mod test mode by specifying multiple -testcontentmod arguments in the launch options.
• Dialog portraits now use higher quality compression so they look even nicer, particularly at 4k resolutions!
• Made timers a bit more cache-friendly so you might see some slight speedups on computers with low memory speeds
• When exiting a vehicle, it will no longer immediately automatically brake. This makes it way easier to ram enemies (or planting c4 on your vehicles as a moveable IED)
• Fixed seat exit offset for jeep. You will now end up beside the jeep when exiting it.
• When exiting a vehicle, you will now unholster the last equipped weapon.
• Fixed bugs with throwable weapons (such as grenades and the c4). It should no longer be possible to throw an extra phantom grenade by spamming fire when you throw the last ammo. Also improved resupplying/reloading behaviour and fixed soft-lock bugs.
• Minor improvements to helicopter AI. They will now tilt the helicopter less than before, unless they are attacking enemies.
• Fixed bug where SL-defender would shoot slightly off to the right when rapid firing while aiming.
• You can now use your carried weapons when inside the transport helicopter back seat row.
• Improvements to helicopter landing zone generation so the exfil/transport helicopters now choose way better landing spots
• Fixed a bug where the landing zone generation would always fail if multiple connected pathfinding boxes were used.

Improvements to the AI targeting system:

• Bots will now prioritize targets better.
• AI will now prefer to use weapons that are within the effective range, but will use weapons at up to twice their effective range if no other better weapon is available.
• AI will now aim at a target faster if they were aiming at another nearby target before. For example, this makes it easier for a bot to take out a squad that is bunched together.
• Fixed some issues with the attack target quick command.
• Bots using target lock weapons will now lock onto targets much more reliably.
• Bots will now fire as soon as they get a target lock.
• Bots will now only fire one missile at a time if the target vehicle has countermeasures.
• For vehicles without countermeasures, the bots will launch one missile at a time if the vehicle has less than 2000 max health. (In order to not waste ammo by launching 3 missiles towards a jeep).
• AI will now take aim before firing weapons with AOE damage, reducing the risk of friendly fire and making them more deadly against vehicles:
• AI will still fire quickly if the target is very close.

Ravenscript:

• Added Car, Boat, Helicopter, Airplane classes
• Added Value Monitors to ScriptedBehaviours which can be used to automatically notify a script of value changes on a variable or function.
• Added Debug Value Monitors that can be used to easily monitor values when playing in content mod test mode.
• Misc API additions and bugfixes

I will be taking a holiday break from development, but I have some exciting news to share when I get back regarding the Ravenfield 1.0 release. Until then. here is a little teaser image:

I hope you'll enjoy this update and that you're excited for what is yet to come!

/Johan (SteelRaven7)

Hey everyone! Here are the update notes for EA22!

Things didn't go exactly to plan with this update, as it turned into quite a big bug-squash rather than a full on update to new Spec Ops mode. For that reason, The Spec Ops update pt. 2 will be launced next time as EA23. Nontheless, there are still a bunch of new additions to Spec Ops ready for you to try out today, such as patrolling enemies and issuing target orders to your squad!

To issue a target order to your squad, aim down sights and hold the squad order key. Release the key when hovering over your desired target.

EA22 fixes a ton of issues or bugs with the base gameplay of Ravenfield, along with a few new performance optimizations that should help keep your framerates nice and stable! There have also been a number of fixes/improvements to the Ravenfield AI, including new combat movement, and a fix to the old bug where AI would sometimes always fire at the player, even when there were other closer targets. (Oops!)

EA22 also updates the transport helicopter to a shiny new model, along with improvements to minigun aiming. It is now even possible to land the helicopter safely thanks to a new innovation on the Ravenfield: Landing gear suspension!

You may also notice that all vehicle look a bit nicer thanks to the new baked occlusion maps, which make the vehicle models pop more!

Full change log

Spec Ops change log

• Added enemy patrols to Spec Ops mode
• Tweaks to how unalerted AI detects players, slightly speeding up their target acquiring.
• Improved hero armor so it also works on instances where you get hit by a ton of low-damage projectiles at once (shotguns, low-damage, high rate of fire weapons)
• Hero armor now blocks explosion damage more consistently.
• Slightly reduced number of soldiers defending each Spec Ops objective
• Changes to the spawn position of the player squad. On large maps they spawn around 200 meters away from the closest objective, and on tiny maps they spawn on a regular spawn point flag.
• If you pick Patriot TAC in spec ops, all teammates will also pick it so you can enjoy the laser show!
• Added Important audio mix group intended for game mode, UI or story audio clips that really should be heard
• At least one teammate will now always spawn with an anti-tank weapon in spec ops.
• Improvements to where the attackers spawn in spec ops, I tried making it pretty random, but you should always spawn around 200 meters from an objective, and never closer (if possible).
• Added spawn indicator to spec ops minimap that shows you exactly where you will spawn.

Game Improvements

• Added support for Wedge, Vee, Line, File, Echelon and Diamond squad formations. AI Squads will randomly select one of these. You can't select the formation of your own squad yet, but this is a planned addition!
• AI infantry squads will now have 3-5 members, instead of always 3.
• Fixed a bug where AI would sometimes switch between medic/ammo bags and their primary weapon super fast
• Added water footstep sounds and particle effects
• Added DataContainer class to Ravenscript and beta branch mod tools
• Added RequiredGameVersion class to beta branch tool, place it next to your content mod components to notify the user if they are on an unsupported verison of the game.
• Fixed an issue related to one-way-neighbors where AI squads would attack flags their team already owns.
• Added AlwaysManTurrets defense strategy, which allows squads to defend a flag only if there are available turrets.
• Updated infantry pathfinding on Dustbowl to make AI able to reach the AT turret on airbase
• Updated glacier navmesh, which fixed an issue where the bots would never use the stairs at the center of the map.
• Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes prioritize firing at the player over other closer targets.
• Added Attack Target squad quick order. Access it by aiming down sights when holding the squad order button.
• Attack target orders override the current squad rules-of-engagement setting, so you can use it to force attack enemies in spec ops.
• Using the attack target order when not being in a squad will mark that target as a "High Priority Target" for your teammates for 60 seconds. High Priority Targets are prioritized over closer targets by AI.
• You can now cancel squad point orders by pressing the aim down sights button while holding the squad order button.
• You can now cancel squad target orders by releasing the aim down sights button while holding the squad order button.
• Fixed spawn countdown timer!! (It only took 3 years!!!!)
• When taking over a bot in skirmish mode, that bot will temporarily have hero armor to make it very unlikely that they die while they are being taken over.
• Reduced vehicle knockback from projectiles when they are manned by soldiers.
• Fixed the water on rafts level so the fish don't fall out of the water!!!
• Inceased max audio channels from 32 to 64, meaning up to 64 sounds can play at once (if your sound card supports it, but it probably will since it's 2020).
• AI now never halts (stops and takes aim at distant target) while entering a vehicle.
• Added combat movement to Infantry, they will now strafe their target when in close range (less than 50 meters). This makes it so infantry is less likely to just rush a point while taking tons of fire.
• AI can now hear footsteps of nearby actors walking/running while standing. To suppress this effect, you can crouch/prone walk.
• Hehe funny boat
• Fixed a few bugs related to camera management and UI elements such as the UiTargetTracker.
• Fixed some bugs related to turrets and orders initialization at the start of games.
• Fixed an issue where AI would not spawn after manually configuring flags.
• Melee damage will now always deal damage to enemies in range if possible. Team damage will only be dealt if no enemies are hit by the melee range check.
• Bots can no longer deal team damage when using melee weapons.
• Improved bot melee charge so it's less jittery.
• Sabre and Wrench weapons are no longer instakills
• Added third person unholster animations
• If a primary weapon is set to be effective against infantry, the game will now force set that weapon to be preferred - meaning that bots will always prefer it over any secondary weapons so long as ammo is available and the target is in effective range.
• Fixed an issue where the mouse input would sometimes stop working in menus
• Slightly reduced AI sprint speed to better match player
• Added a few more default bot names
• • Misc improvements to the AI

Vehicle change log

• Increased max plane sensitivity by request.
• Updated transport helicopter to new model
• Added suspension to tranport heli landing gear
• Transport heli now has an additional co-pilot seat, so it can carry 8 people in total!
• Updated heli miniguns to stabilized mounted turrets, making them easier to aim + update the camera.
• Added occlusion maps to all updated vehicles.
• Cars now have a bit of downforce applied, which makes the stick to the terrain/road a little better!
• Added transport heli to vehicle testing level
• Proximity fuze projectiles can no longer be triggered by the vehicle they were fired from.
• Added error handling to handle issues with custom vehicles that would sometimes cause projectiles to float/get stuck in mid-air.

Game optimization

• Projectile spawning/despawning has been significantly improved, which should yield higher and more stable frame rates. The effect of this optimization should be most noticable on computer with slower RAM.
• Content mod file data is now unloaded after all content has been initialized, which removes unneccesary RAM usage. You can expect to see a 5-20% reduction in RAM usage when running the game with a lot of mods.
• Code Exceptions caused by mods will no longer be logged in normal gameplay, which should help with performance hits from mods that cause many errors.
• When running the game in test content mod mode, any code errors will be logged to the Ravenscript console. There is also an error count text message that will notify you if new unread errors have been logged whenever the console is closed.

Ravenscript change log

• Added support for OnEnable() and OnDisable() functions on ScriptedComponent behaviours. These are similar to Unity's built in OnEnable and OnDisable functions.
• Added support for disabling number row inputs, allowing modders to use the number row for special inputs.
• Exposed AudioSource output mix.
• Added Debug class for drawing rays/lines ingame. Please note that this feature is only available in test mode for performance reasons.
• Exposed IngameDialog to Ravenscript.
• Exposed audio source audio spectra and sample data fetching
• Exposed portrait generation to RS via PortraitGenerator
• Exposed Player/Game mode hud values in GameManager
• Improvements to function variant selection, making Ravenscript calls prefer functions with float parameters over ints
• Added DataContainer class to Ravenscript and mod tools
• Exposed setting the actor team skin (which automatically affects all actors of a team whose skin has not been overriden):
• Exposed resetting an actor's skin to its' team skin
• Exposed Runtime Animation Controller to RS (Which should make it possible to replace character animations and cool stuff... maybe)
• Spawn Points now have an outgoing and incoming neighbor list, which keeps track of what flags can be attacked by / can attack a particular spawn. Also exposed to RS.
• Spawn countdown is no longer visible when the player actor has been deactivated through RS.

Order

• Create orders through Order.Create()
• Orders can have a Vector3 override target, allowing RS to control exactly where bots go to complete an order.

Squad

• Added support for Wedge, Vee, Line, File, Echelon and Diamond squad formations.
• Added support for custom squad formations, allowing modders to create their own formations via RS through squad.SetCustomFormation()
• Exposed Remove and Split functions to Squads.

Weapon

• Exposed various configuration values
• Exposed Add and Remove subweapon functions to Weapons.
• Exposed weapon.ReloadInstantly

AiActorController

• Exposed Goto() functions, allowing RS to control AI movement.
• Added OverrideDefaultMvoement() which disables all built in game movent, giving RS full control over bot movement.
• Exposed AiActorController.hasPath to RS
• Exposed AiActorController IsInFOV()

Heads up: Ravenfield is 50% off from Tuesday to Thursday!

EA21 is the first half of the two part Spec Ops game mode overhaul - introducing improvements to stealth AI, an objective screen and ingame dialog support!

Spec Ops now generates a scenario with multiple objectives, which you can tackle in any order you'd like. Objectives range from eliminating officers to destroying vehicles and ammo boxes, with more objective types being planned for the next part of this update in EA22.

When playing as Eagles, you will take control of TALON, an elite spec ops branch of the Eagle military. TALON is commanded by the Eagle Advisor, who now appears with her update look, with artwork by long time community member and illustrator Starstrafe.

EA21 also overhauls the night vision and squad order menu. You no longer need to carry the specific item to use these features, just hit their specific keys which can be rebound in the input options menu. Night vision has also been improved, with glowing soldiers, making it easier to see the soldiers on the battlefield.

Finally, EA21 adds a new Patriot Tactical variant, featuring a suppressor and a laser sight, making it a perfect companion for stealth operations!

Full change log:

Spec ops improvements:

• Added 4 objective types, increase the game length value to get more objectives at once!
• Spec ops defender AI now has significantly reduced sight range
• Spec ops attacking AI will now only fire on enemies that have been alerted
• When playing as Eagle using the default soldier models, you will play as a TALON soldier.
• Added dialog chatter between the attacking team and their HQ leader.
• Added detection indicator.
• Added slow detection, where AI will not immediately spot you if you are far away.
• Spec Ops enemies will now be alerted by sounds such as nearby unsuppressed gunfire and vehicles
• Attacking team now keeps a closer formation, should make it easier to navigate levels without one of them running to weird places while following the player.
• Improvements to spec ops defender pathfinding, should solve cases where all defenders are stuck in a single spot on custom levels.

Game improvements:

• Improvements to stealth AI and systems
• Removed night vision item, night vision mode is always available by pressing the night vision (default N)
• Squad order menu is now always available by pressing the squad menu key (default B)
• Improvements to actor animation blending.
• Actors will now glow slightly in night vision mode.
• Cool fade in effect when you start a game (WOW!)
• Added cool new tactical patriot version with suppressor and laser sight!

Ingame map editor:

• Added many new textures to the ingame map maker, including solid color textures.
• Improved the ingame map maker texture search function to scroll up to the top results.

Planned additions for Part 2:

• More objective types.
• Enemies that roam the level and look for you.
• Expose new stealth/story functionality to Ravenscript.

I hope you'll enjoy this update! Please look forward to the additional Spec Ops mode features coming in EA22!

/SteelRaven7