Hey! It's been a while since the game last recieved an Early Access update, I just wanted to let everyone know what I'm working on and why it has taken a while! Game engine update Since its Steam release in 2017, Ravenfield has run on a now-outdated version of Unity (Unity 5.6). While this engine version has worked fairly well throughout the years, it is no longer officially supported by Unity which leads to compatibility issues with more modern hardware. Also, Unity 5.6 has not been receieving bugfixes since early 2019 which isn't ideal. In June this year, I experimented with updating the game engine to the latest stable release of Unity, 2020.3. The initial experiments seemed promising and apart from some bugs the game even ran faster than before. That's why I decided to update the game to the 2020.3 engine version for EA26. After I released EA25 I took a few weeks off, and then started working on EA26 in september. So that's what I've been working on since september, but unfortunately the task of updating from 5.6 to 2020.3 has taken a lot longer than expected due to hundreds of compatibility-related bugs. For the last two weeks or so the game has run pretty well on the new engine version, with the following improvements over EA25:

• Significantly increased frame rates (Many users have reported an increase of 20-30% or even more!)
• Major performance improvements to levels made with the ingame map editor.
• Reduction of frame jitter, making the frame rate more stable.
• Proper V-sync implementation.
• This Unity engine version should now fully support the latest graphics card drivers and vice-versa.
• You can optionally run the game using Vulkan on Windows and Linux.
• Support for new engine features such as terrain holes, etc.

On top of the benefits from the updated engine version, I've also implemented the following things in the upcoming EA26 update:

• Multi-threaded mod loading, reducing mod load times.
• Optimization work for framerates and reduced frame jittering.
• Improvements to bot movement code, making their movement smoother.
• Benchmark mode to easily measure game performance.
• Full Steam Input support

However, there are some inevitable downsides to the engine update in EA26, such as:

• Dropped compatibility for some old GPU hardware and OS versions. I have updated the minimum requirements on the game's store page accordingly so please check them out if you're concerned about this.
• Animation compatibility issues affecting some weapon/vehicle mods made in the Unity 5.6 mod tools. This is an issue with the internal game engine which I have no control over :(

When EA26 is officially released, I will set up a compatibility branch for the game running EA25 (and the old engine version). If you're experiencing any issues related to EA26, you will be able to run this compatibility branch instead. Please note that this branch will not be receiving future updates to the game. Testing the EA26 beta I'm still working close with the modding community to iron out the last bugs related to the engine upgrade, so I'm not sure exactly when EA26 will be ready, but you can try it out right now by opting into Ravenfield's beta branch by following these steps: [olist]

Go to your Steam Library page

Right click Ravenfield -> Properties

Click the Betas tab and select the Beta branch in the dropdown (No need to enter an access code as the beta is publicly available) [/olist] Story Campaign status Unfortunately I haven't had time to implement a working campaign story mission yet. I originally intended to release a story mission from the campaign in EA26, but there just hasn't been enough time to update game engine version and design the story mission for this update, so I'm pushing the mission back to EA27. It's not all bad news though, I have recently completed the first draft of the Ravenfield campaign story. This means that the overall story is in place and gives me a good overview of what still needs to be added to the game for the story to play out. I plan on working together with a 3d artist and a level designer to speed up the campaign development. Even though it's taking a while, I hope you're looking forward to the release of EA26 and what's to come after! /Johan (SteelRaven7)

[ 2021-11-22 13:42:09 CET ] [ Original post ]