EA25

Note: This page is copied directly of the Ravenfield patch notes.

## Patch Notes

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:

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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)