EA30 is a general game improvement update that solves some of the oldest issues with AI vehicle usage in the game, and getting the AI closer to being ready for the game's 1.0 release. The main focus of this update has been to fix two problematic AI behaviours:
- AI drivers crashing their cars into other vehicles
- AI transport helicopter pilots just hovering over an objective while it is being captured
One of the recurring issues with Ravenfield's gameplay has been the AI's inability to see other vehicles while driving, which would usually result in vehicle pileups at level chokepoints. EA30 adds local avoidance for AI drivers, allowing them to detect and swerve around nearby vehicles. This new system detects potential collisions, and finds the closest path to drive past the vehicle. While this doesn't solve all the pileup issues, it is a massive improvement from before.
The other issue is more straightforward: Having AI helicopter pilots just hover above a flag while it is being captured makes them sitting ducks for anti air weapons, and is just not a very fun behaviour. To solve this, bots will now land by other squads that are travelling on foot and pick them up, ferrying them to their destination. This new behaviour makes for some interesting new tactics on Dustbowl and Archipelago!
Along with these two system improvements, there are plenty of new systems for modders to play around with, including controlling changing team names/colors, more control over AI movement and the ability to disable built in game features such as hit impacts/blood droplets in order to replace them with modded systems!
Full change log
Game improvements:
- AI drivers will now swerve to avoid hitting other cars/boats/landed aircraft, this should result in vehicles being stuck way less.
- Transport helicopter AI can now ferry multiple squads to their destination. After dropping off passengers, transport helicopters may pick up other squads on the battlefield and drop them at their current attack target.
- Added official killfeed mutator
- Added official team color mutator
- Added new helicopter landing zone system which generates possible landing zones across the entire map
- Added ImpactOnly option to blood particle settings in options menu. This option will only show the actor hit particle effect without spawning blood droplets. Setting this option to off will now turn off both particle effects and blood droplets.
- All built in game mode UIs are now color coded based on current team colors.
- Fixed a bug where skins would not be applied correctly to player FP models
- Fixed a bug where car downforce would apply an upwards force while reversing (Oops!)
- Tweaked AI helicopter approach while landing so the helicopter approach slightly off to one side. This makes for a more natural looking landing.
- While landing/landed on a helicopter landing zone, the landing zone is claimed by the squad, preventing other helicopters from also attempting landing at the same spot.
- Fixed a bug where explosion ranges were miscategorized by the game. This resulted in the AI erroneously not using explosive weapons as they thought they would damage nearby teammates.
Modding improvements:
- Added TextMeshPro components to whitelist
- Added VehicleAvoidanceObject component. AI will swerve around this object while it is active, which can be useful for dynamically spawned objects with colliders.
- Added "Helicopter Land At Attack Target" prefab to RFTools/Prefabs/Ravenscript - place this prefab as a child object to your transport helicopter to make it land when dropping of passengers (instead of them dropping by parachute).
- Moved HMG weapon to a new Support weapon tag, so this is the new go-to tag for putting custom machine-gun style weapons.
Ravenscript:
- Exposed LayoutRebuilder that can be used to force rebuild UI layout group.
- Exposed Actor.ForceChangeStance()
- Exposed GameManager.isNightMode
- Exposed HelicopterLandingZone querying, claiming and landing systems
- Exposed Weapon.GetProjectilePrefab()
- Exposed change team colors through ColorScheme.SetTeamColor()
- Exposed change team names through GameManager.SetTeamName()
- Exposed ExplodingProjectile explosion configuration
- Added Player.movementInputEnabled flag
- Added onPointerEnter/Exit/Click events to UI elements
- Added onTakeDamage and onDeath events to destructibles
- Added onIssueOrderMovement event to squads
- Added BuiltInFeatures class that can be used to toggle features such as blood droplets, etc.
- Added Extensions.Get() which can be used to query for game extensions EG RavenM or other DLL mods
- Added ColorScheme.GetInterfaceColor() which can be used to get UI element colors based on team colors. This replaces a few previously available functions in the ColorScheme class. Any previous functions will continue to work, but I'd recommend switching over to GetInterfaceColor() for better control over colors.
- When requesting an interface color, you can specify Default, Bright or Dark variants. Bright colors should work nicely on dark backgrounds and vice versa. Use default if you want to use a color close to 50% brightness.
Trigger System:
- Added trigger component for UI button clicks
- Added TriggerChangeStance component
- Added IsNight condition to TriggerCondition compopnent
- Added TriggerOnKey component that sends a signal whenever a key is pressed
Coming Up
For EA31, I'm planning on introducing full support for custom game modes. If you're a modder who wants to try out making your own game mode, please keep an eye at the game's beta branch where I regularly post updates, sometimes even multiple times a week. Do however keep in mind that the beta branch tends to be quite buggy at times :)
As always, you can always see what I'm working on as soon as it happens on the official Discord server
I hope you'll enjoy this update!
/Johan (SteelRaven7)