Pixel Smoke Fx

Low-poly 3D smoke for bullet hits in Ravenfield (EA29+). Zero particles, zero assets, zero external files - the smoke mesh is generated at runtime inside the plugin.

Built for BepInEx 5.x on Ravenfield EA29 and newer (Unity 2020.3-era builds; verified on EA35).

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What it does

Every bullet hit (non-explosive weapons) leaves a burst of three round low-poly smoke puffs that expand fast, shrink exponentially, and fade to nothing - pure code, no particle systems, no texture files. Since v1.1.0 the puffs are damage-sized (sniper hits billow big, shotgun pellets stay tiny) and styled as a black anime/soot cloud: smooth round profile (subdivision-3 icosphere, gentle displacement), per-face vertex colors baked in three discrete brightness bands (bright top / mid / dark bottom - classic cel shading), no flat black silhouette.

hit -> SpawnDecal hook -> pool slot (no Instantiate/Destroy churn)
    -> icosphere mesh (generated once, shared by all slots)
    -> damage -> size factor (clamped) -> expand (0.04 -> 1.0 in 0.15s)
    -> exp shrink -> alpha fade -> back to pool

Key behaviors

Behavior	Default	cfg key
Master switch	on	[General] Enabled
Player shots render ALWAYS (no distance/frustum culling for your own fire)	on	[General] AlwaysRenderPlayer
Other shots render only when on screen	-	frustum culling
Other shots render only when closer than 200 m	200 m	[Performance] HalfDist
Full size under 60 m, half size beyond	60 m	[Performance] FullDist
Pool slots (concurrent smoke cap)	120	[Performance] PoolSize
Same-gun burst window (all shotgun pellets render)	0.08 s	[Performance] BurstWindow
Min gap between bursts (global / per gun)	0.005 / 0.02 s	[Performance] GlobalCooldown / GunCooldown
Blob lifetime	1.5 s	[Performance] Lifetime
Expand window / shrink rate / master size	0.15 / 2.2 / 0.7	[Fx] ExpandTime / DecayRate / BaseScale
Damage that maps to size factor 1.0	40	[Fx] DamageRef
Min / max damage size factor	0.5 / 1.5	[Fx] MinSizeFactor / MaxSizeFactor
Low-damage pellet floor (shotguns)	0.25	[Fx] ShotgunFactor

Why it's fast

• No particles: one static mesh per puff (1280 triangles, flat-shaded), shared across all slots.
• Pooled: objects are reused, nothing is Instantiate/Destroyed per hit.
• Culled early: off-screen non-player shots skip before any work; renderers outside the frustum skip per-frame pushes.
• Zero garbage: cached components, cached reflection, zero allocation hot path.
• 360 renderers absolute worst case (120 slots x 3 puffs) - trivial for this engine.

Requirements

• Ravenfield EA29+ (any Unity 2020.3-era build; verified on EA35, Steam or standalone)
• BepInEx 5.x (install to <game>/BepInEx/)

Installation

1. Install BepInEx 5.x into the Ravenfield folder if you have not already (run the game once so BepInEx creates its folders).
2. Copy PixelSmokeFx.dll into <game>/BepInEx/plugins/.
3. Launch the game. The plugin logs Pixel Smoke Fx: harmony hook CONFIRMED on first boot.

(Folder structure: see INSTALL.txt in the same zip.)

Configuration

All settings live in BepInEx/config/com.local.pixelsmokefx.cfg (auto-created on first boot).

Section	Option	Meaning
General	Enabled	master switch
General	TargetWeapon	only weapons whose name contains this substring; empty = all non-explosive guns
General	AlwaysRenderPlayer	shots fired by YOU always render, regardless of distance inside viewport
Performance	PoolSize	concurrent-smoke cap (down for old PCs, up for long battles)
Performance	GlobalCooldown	min seconds between any two bursts (same-burst hits bypass)
Performance	GunCooldown	min seconds between bursts of the same weapon
Performance	BurstWindow	hits from one weapon within this window count as ONE shot and all render (shotgun-friendly)
Performance	FullDist / HalfDist	size LOD + far cutoff for non-player shots
Performance	Lifetime	seconds each smoke lasts
Fx	ExpandTime / DecayRate / BaseScale	animation feel + master size
Fx	DamageRef	projectile damage that maps to size factor 1.0 (= the old rifle baseline)
Fx	MinSizeFactor / MaxSizeFactor	smallest/largest damage size factor
Fx	ShotgunFactor	floor for low-damage pellets (shotgun bursts stay subtle)
Testing	AutoTest	boot-time visual self-test (writes screenshots to BepInEx/PixelSmokeFxTest/)

Out-of-range values are silently clamped; corrupted values automatically fall back to defaults (the plugin never crashes the game).

Uninstall

Delete BepInEx/plugins/PixelSmokeFx.dll (+ optionally the cfg). No files outside BepInEx are ever touched.

Compatibility / notes

• No code conflicts: single Harmony prefix on Projectile::SpawnDecal; everything else is static reflection, pooled, and fail-safe (any mismatch logs a warning and degrades gracefully).
• No config conflicts: plugin GUID com.local.pixelsmokefx.
• No 3rd-party dependencies beyond BepInEx + Harmony (both bundled with BepInEx).
• Explosion-type projectiles are skipped on purpose - their own FX remains untouched.

Build from source (optional)

build.ps1 compiles PixelSmokeFx.cs with the system csc (C# 5). Requires the game's BepInEx/core + Ravenfield_Data/Managed references (script resolves them automatically).

License

Free to use, modify, redistribute. No warranty. Not affiliated with SteelRaven7.