Ravenfield

## Overview

Ravenfield is a single-player First Person Shooter developed by Johan Hassel "SteelRaven7". It was first unveiled to the world on July 17 2016 as a free playable beta on both Gamejolt and Itch.IO, and was later released on Steam under early access on the 16 of May 2017. Development is ongoing to this day.

The game seeks to emulate some of the older Battlefield games by offering large open battles between AI-controlled soldiers, all in a single-player offline environment. Customizability and mod support are ingrained to the experience, resulting in a highly flexible "pseudo-multiplayer" experience with thousands of user-created add-ons enhancing the experience.

## Scope and History

### Early Days

Little information is available regarding the pre-release version of Ravenfield, other than that it started as an experimental hobby project for the Developer SteelRaven7. Extremely early footage shows the rudimentary AI Navigating unfinished environments and robotically shooting at each other.

### Betas 1-5

When the first beta dropped in 2016, the game almost immediately garnered attention, and would slowly continue to amass a player base over the next 10 months of free updates. Having attracted such a large audience with its loose promise of "singleplayer Battlefield", it was quickly picked up by letsplayers, and its name continued to spread.

During its first release, the page description had little more than the following to say:

> *"Walk upon the Ravenfield with your BLUE allies! Take down those pesky REDs using helicopters, cars, guns, and active ragdoll physics. Ravenfield is a singleplayer battlefield style game. It started out as an experiment with ragdolls and AI, and will remain a slightly experimental, for-fun game project."*
>
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Amusing in hindsight, the description itself presents the game as a less-than serious hobby project akin to the developers previous output, though we now know that the game has since evolved far past its humble beginnings.

The Beta Versions of the game were rudimentary in nature, and served to flesh out the basic elements of the game. They represent an early transitional period in the game's development, where Ravenfield would eventually morph from the aforementioned "for-fun" project into the monetized version that was yet to come. Because of this, much of the game's assets and AI traits were placeholders, an example of which can be found in the current game's "Box Men Models" option in the options menu.

During Beta 4, Steelraven opened a Discord server to accommodate the growing playerbase. This server continues to host the general community and mod community to this day.

### Steam "EA" Versions

Eventually, the decision was made to bring the game's development over on to Steam. In the final days of the now-defunct Steam Greenlight service, Ravenfield was submitted onto the platform for voter-approval and, a mere 5 days later on February 6 2017, the game was Greenlit by Valve. The first steam version of Ravenfield Finally launched on April 18 of that year, colloquially referred to as "Beta 6", but officially known as "EA 1".

The EA versions continue to stack on each other, and the full list of changes can be viewed here. However there are a few defining moments in the game's early update history that caracterize the game as it is now.

EA 3 brought with it the very first modding update on the 28th of July 2017, allowing for the initial creation of custom maps. This early version laid the foundation for the game's mapping tools, and opened the Steam Workshop to the uploading and downloading of user-created maps. This update would be followed closely by Beta 5 on October 13 2017 and Beta 7 on February 1 2018, which added weapon and vehicle modding respectively. These tools continue to be updated irregularly, and have served to keep fed with a constant trickle of user-generated content. As was the stated intention from the beginning, Steelraven succeeded in creating a highly mod-compatible platform for people to use, even at this early stage in development.

The initial scope of the EA game versions was notably greater than the betas', but still somewhat restrained in scale. A conquest mode was announced, new maps were promised, and the game continuously received refinements and tweaks, but by all appearances development seemed to stay within the initially presented framework. However, as the years wore on, the game gradually increased in scope, adding a built-in Map Editor, AI refinements, an announced Story campaign and mod support thereof.

The game continues to be updated.

## Credits and Contributors

*This list will be expanded upon once the game's official credits releases the individual's names, if applicable.*

Johan Hassel is the "solo dev" responsible for the bulk of the games content, however there are a number of people who have contributed piecemeal to the game's progress over the years.

* User "Rob Storm": Developer of the game *Intruder*, known contributions include a first draft of Coastline.
* User "Aubrey": Developer, known contributions include first drafts of Citadel and Mountain Range.
* User "Wronex": Created the framework and environment for the Ingame Map Editor, and coded the LUA framework for the game's mod scripting system "Ravenscript".
* User "Algatoad" (unconfirmed spelling): Created the updated Vehicle models.
* Unknown Contributor: Created/Creating 3d character models for new named characters.
* User: "Starstrafe": character design and 2d illustration.

## Gallery

The first bit of promotional imagery for the game.