Hi everyone and thank you for the awesome response to the last EA24 update! As some of you may already know, Ravenfield is now on it's 4th year in Early Access. Originally I intended to finish the game within 1-2 years, but since then the game has grown quite a bit in scope with additional features like new maps, more vehicle types and improved modding support using scripting. Your overwhelming support and the creativity of the modding community has well exceeded my expectations as the game is played by thousands of people every day. It is genuinely a fun project to work on, even after 5 years in development. We're now at a point in development where the base gameplay works nicely, even if there still are a bunch of bugs and issues I still need to iron out. That is, I feel like the instant action part of the game works well. The part that still needs major improvement is Conquest mode, and I have spent some time thinking about how to improve it and integrate it better with Ravenfield's core design of approachability and customizability. Problems with Conquest Mode The Conquest mode was originally designed to combine a strategical world-map layer with story/dialog elements to provide a background and stakes to the Eagle/Raven war. At the moment, almost none of the story elements are available in Conquest as this turned out to be really difficult to get working in a fun way without being too intrusive on the strategy elements. Another issue with Conquest is that the same central maps are being fought over repeatedly, with others being ignored almost entirely. This was resolved by adding an Auto-Complete battle feature, but skipping a battle simply isn't very fun and feels like wasted opportunity. Also, the current version of Conquest would be very difficult to mod, and require very complicated external tools to edit or extend. This also seems like wasted opportunity and goes against Ravenfield's core of easily being able to configure your experience like you can in Instant Action mode. To solve these problems, I've decided that the best direction to take is to split the current conquest into two separate modes, a Story Campaign and a new, streamlined Conquest Mode. Story Campaign The Story Campaign centers on the war as seen from the eyes of the Advisor and the special forces group TALON she commands. You have already gotten a glimpse of this group through the updated Spec Ops game mode, but there is still much to discover about TALON and the characters around the group who aid and manage its operation.
I'm working together with long-time community member Starstrafe to bring these wacky characters to life through illustrations which will appear in dialog sequences throughout the campaign. The Story Campaign will be split into 3 acts where each act features one or two story missions along with spiced-up battles and story elements. I have set a goal to create a story that should take around 2-3 hours to complete on your first playthrough. Going for a short length should prevent the campaign updates being released over an endless number of updates (I actually want to get this done), and help ensure quality over quantity. I also want to keep the Campaign progress highly transparent and available to you all, so on top of the Act 1/2/3 updates I also plan on pushing intermediate updates featuring standalone campaign missions. These missions will eventually be integrated into the campaign story. I have already started work on the story campaign, and I want to release the first story mission in the EA26 update for you to try out (which will be out after my summer break). If I get enough progress done in time for this summer's EA25 update, I will include an early sneak-peek version of the mission. Conquest Mode version 2.0 While I'm still figuring out the details of this mode, I want to make a streamlined version of the current conquest mode. This mode will not feature any story details (for example, the war room scene of the current conquest mode and the tech tree will be removed). Instead the new mode focuses 100% on an "arcady" approach to playing Conquest where you purchase upgrades to your army and try to conquer all enemy-controlled levels. The plan is to let the player decide what weapons/vehicles/levels they want to appear on the strategy map and generate a conquest scenario from that. This would also support custom content such as weapons, vehicles and maps. The main goal for the new conquest mode is being able to set up custom conquest scenarios from within the game itself (no need for modding tools!). I'm still figuring out the design this mode, and it will not be available for some time as I want to focus my efforts on the story campaign for now. Modding: Scripted Missions and Custom Game Modes While scripted story missions are an integral part of the story campaign, I also want to make scripted missions available to modders. Scripted missions could either be a story mission that plays on a specific map, or even a custom game mode selectable in Instant Action that can be played on any map. As I create the story missions for the official campaign, I want to design a simple-to-use system that is reusable for modders. This system would be used with or without Ravenscript (Ravenfield's lua-based scripting framework), depending on the complexity of what you want to achieve. I intend to make it possible to set up simpler story missions without having to write a single line of Ravenscript code. Finally, modders will be able to create custom scripted campaigns which can, for example, include a sequence of story missions. Custom campaigns will be driven by Ravenscript to make them highly customizable. It will not be possible to create custom campaigns without the use of Ravenscript. For more information how these changes will influence modding, please see this modding document. End of Early Access When the Story Campaign, new Conquest mode and scripted campaigns/missions are available in the game I intend to finish the early access period of Ravenfield and release the 1.0 version. I want to keep supporting the game after the 1.0 release with bugfixes, general improvements and localization. I hope this new direction for the game makes as much sense for both players and modders as it does for me. I really want to start taking major strides towards finishing the game and nailing down exactly what constitutes Ravenfield 1.0. In Summary
Feel free to let me know what you think about this in the comments to this post or on the Ravenfield Discord server at https://discord.gg/ravenfield. Please note that I won't be able to answer any comments directly, but I will certainly read them and take them into account! /Johan (SteelRaven7) Please Note: All details in this post are work-in-progress and are still subject to change. I tried to make this post as comprehensive as possible, but game development is difficult and things might need some tweaking! :)