Hey everyone! I want to share some news about my plans for finally finishing Ravenfield 1.0. This is a bit of a wall of text but it hopefully shines some light on what you can expect from the game's development moving forward. But let's start at the beginning:

The Ravenfield Prototype

The development of Ravenfield started back in 2015, originally as a prototype game to try out active ragdoll physics as inspired by games like Overgrowth and A New Zero. After adding bots and other gameplay elements to the prototype I decided to release a free version in the summer of 2016, which became quite popular. The Steam version of Ravenfield was released in May 18 2017, meaning the game is closing in on its 8th anniversary on Steam - holy crap! If you're one of the players who tried out the game back in 2017: I'm so sorry about the all the bugs back then, it was wayyy worse than even the buggiest of beta branch updates nowadays :D. But seriously, thank you so much for sticking with the game for so long! It's been quite a journey from the humble beginnings on Island and Dustbowl to where we are today, both for the game and for me as a developer.
MFW the terrain textures on island haven't changed since 2015

The Release Plan

Here's the deal: In 2025 Ravenfield will pass 10 years of development and I think it's high time to figure out how to wrap the game up for a 1.0 release. Updates EA26 to EA30 fixed a ton of old issues, many of which have been in the game from day 1. Even though the game plays quite nicely at the moment, there is still plenty of room to continue ironing out issues with Ravenfield's gameplay and its modding support for a final release. I also need to overhaul some of the really old vanilla content that's still in the game. In the end, I want to ensure that I'm spending my development time directly on improving Ravenfield's biggest strength, the customizable sandbox shooter at the heart of the game. Unfortunately, this has become harder for me to do as Ravenfield has grown over the years, which I think has been evident in EA updates being released further apart in the last couple of years. Much of my time has been spent ensuring all of Ravenfield's systems play nicely with each other AND supports the hundreds of corner cases that pop up due to almost every aspect of the game being moddable. This was especially frustrating in the EA26 update where I updated the game engine version, resulting in almost a years worth of constant bugfixing. While fixing bugs can definitely be a slow and frustrating and process (especially when dealing with fundamental issues in the game engine itself), in retrospect I think this was time well spent as I feel like the game both runs and plays really well at the moment. Now that the game's systems are in a relatively stable place, I want to focus my efforts on maximizing the fun of the game. This means I want to fully commit to continue improving the core gameplay and updating some quite outdated official content (looking at you, 76 eagle :D). It is also time to add those missing reload audio clips I've been negelecting for a couple of years at this point! Naturally I want to keep pushing the game's mod support even further to include custom game modes and custom campaigns. However, in order to fully commit to this plan and be able to release Ravenfield 1.0 in the forseeable future, I have realized that I need to cut parts of the game. For that reason, I have decided to cancel any further development of the official story campaign. I'll explain this decision in detail below. I'm hoping that focusing directly on the core sandbox experience will help me iron out the remaining pain points with Ravenfield's gameplay, and ultimately leads to the best possible game once the 1.0 version is out. I also think that this shift allows me to better plan for upcoming features and manage my time, which I hope results in a more stable flow of EA updates. With this approach, I intend to get Ravenfield out of early access in 2026.

Why Cancel the Story Campaign

Inspired by early modded maps with intro cutscenes and setpieces, the original idea behind the story campaign was to extend Ravenfield's gameplay into an optional story-driven direction. Of course, Ravenfield originally had no mod support for cutscenes or the like, so mappers had to get creative and use various hacks to get around the game's limitations. While this worked, most of these maps would eventually break due to game updates. Producing the story campaign's citadel mission allowed me to create the tools needed for the game to properly support a story-driven experience. These tools have now become an integral part of the game in the form of the Trigger system, which can be used to create entirely new missions using the RF modding tools. Other game features that stem from the story mission development include better squad ordering, scripted paths, sound mixing improvements, proper ingame cinematics, video support and more. However, producing content for the story campaign is a huge timesink, way more so than I initially expected. From the very beginning of the story campaign pre-production until now I have been working together with multiple talented artists who have helped produce character/scenario concepts, models and level design for the story campaign. While this has helped immensly with the production, as a solo developer I am ultimately responsible for putting all the production assets together into an actual playable campaign, and I vastly underestimated the time it takes to produce even a single working story mission. To only scratch the surface, creating story mission involves designing and integrating story beats, mission logic, level design, cutscenes, tons of QA testing as well as maintenance of the underlying technical systems that make it all tick. I have found that producing the story campaign just about doubles my workload relative to the base game. It is essentially like producing two games at once, Ravenfield the sandbox shooter and Ravenfield the story campaign. Unfortunately, this just not feasible in the long run as I am forced to split my development effort between the two, negatively affecting the original game experience. That is why I have decided to cancel the story campaign. In practice, this means that while the game will not ship with the official story campaign, modded content such as custom story campaigns will still be able to be made and played in Ravenfield. The modding systems developed for the story campaign such as the trigger system and custom game modes will also continue to be supported and improved. I also intend on finishing up the existing Citadel mission as a one-off story mission available when the game leaves early access, although this will probably be one of the last things I add before the 1.0 release. I know many of you were excited to play more of the story. To make up for the cancellation, I'm planning on releasing the story campaign production assets to the modding community after Ravenfield leaves early access. I am also planning on releasing a brand new instant action map that was originally designed as a mission in the story campaign. This map will feature a new setting not previously seen in the official maps with lots of new props available for the ingame level editor.
Fun fact: The Citadel mission logic is made 100% using Trigger system components, meaning the entire mission can be recreated in the modding tools using without any coding whatsoever!

Future EA Update Schedule

Going forward I want to release EA updates more often, with the goal being a new EA update releasing every 4-6 weeks just like the original EA update schedule. These EA updates will typically contain polished-up vanilla content such as adding missing weapons sounds, tweaks to levels, vehicles and AI behaviour etc. You can expect these EA updates to be smaller, but also come out more frequently. On top of the improvements to the base game, there are a couple of large game features planned such as support for custom game modes, custom campaigns, and a recreation of the conquest mode with built in mod support. These features will be developed and tested exclusively on the beta branch, and will make it into the stable branch only once they are deemed final. In the past some half-finished new features have snuck into EA updates, which has caused confusion in regards to mods breaking from not running on the expected game version, this is something I want to avoid in the future. I will be announcing when new features are available for testing on the beta branch in the EA update posts.

Ravenfield 1.0 Roadmap

To summarize, here are the major feature plans for finishing up the 1.0 version of the game:

• Overhaul the official content Some of the official content is ancient at this point and in desperate need of a facelift. I also want to add missing sound effects, fix weird particle effects, balance weapons etc so that the official content is ready for a 1.0 release.
• Custom Game Modes This gives modders the ability to to create their own game modes that are selectable from the instant action menu.
• Custom Campaigns Want to create a series of story missions? You can do that! Want to implement your own version of conquest? Totally doable! Do you want to create your own game inside of Ravenfield? Yep even that is possible!
• Recreate Conquest as a custom campaign Conquest will be recreated from scratch as a modded campaign and the Scenes/Triggers/Ravenscript made available to the modding community. This gives modders a platform for creating their own conquest variations. The recreated Conquest mode will also be compatible with modded weapons and vehicles.
• Release a new official map This map has been in the work for some time already! Oh and there will be plenty of new prefabs inside the ingame editor to play around with...
• Finish up Citadel mission While the originally planned official story missions won't make it into the 1.0 release, I still intend on finishing up the citadel mission cutscenes and doing some general gameplay improvements to spice up the mission.

I'm sure I don't need to point out that designing a game is notoriously time consuming and difficult to plan, but I may need to change parts of this roadmap as the development progresses. I'll try my best to be transparent about the progress and communicate any changes to the 1.0 release plans outlined in this post! Finally, I want to extend a massive thank you to the Steam/Discord moderators and the modding community - without you Ravenfield as we know it simply would not exist. It is always so much fun to try out cool new mods, especially the ones that are breaking new ground of what should be possible within the game. It is incredibly rewarding to see the modding tools being put into use. I am very excited to see what the modding community has in store next, be it vehicle/weapon mods, story missions or game modes I'm hoping many of you also venture into the world of designing your own games - it's one hell of a learning experience for sure! /Johan (SteelRaven7)

[ 2024-12-11 17:28:20 CET ] [ Original post ]