Hi-res: https://gfycat.com/pl/heftyobedientguineafowl

Hi!

Welcome to another installment of the series about defensive towers in The Riftbreaker. Last time we covered the basics of their behavior which are common for every turret type. However, there are unique, individual characteristics for each type that make them into what you will see in the game.




First, let’s take a look at the Sentinel Tower. It is the most basic defensive tool that you are going to use in the game. You can build them without researching anything, as they are available right from the start. They are relatively cheap and do not require any special kind of ammunition, as they simply fire energy projectiles which consume the same energy as any other building. If you build too many of them, however, your power grid might have trouble keeping up with the spikes in electricity consumption, so bear that in mind.


The energy bolts fired by the turret are treated by the game as projectiles. They are only one of the possible types of ammunition in the game. The way projectiles work in The Riftbreaker is based on raytracing. As the tower tries to acquire a target, it projects a single ray at it and checks whether there are any terrain obstacles along the way. If there are, it will not fire in order not to waste energy.


Lack of ammo doesn't stop these from helping you in battle.

If the target is valid and the ray trace is not obstructed by anything, the tower will start shooting, one energy bolt at a time. That’s easy enough if the enemy is standing still, but if they are moving, we need to employ some other techniques. An algorithm takes care of it. Taking into account the speed of the enemy unit and the speed of the projectile it calculates the projected place where the two paths will cross. The tower will aim at that spot, trying to intercept the enemy with its bullets.


With all these systems in place, we have a tower that can move its turret, acquire targets and shoot at them. To make the weapon complete we have to add some extra effects. First of all - the recoil mechanism. In order to add the kickback to the shot, we specify which element of the model is going to get pushed back. Then, we specify how far back and in what time the barrel of the gun should travel. Getting it right requires a lot of tweaking, but it is vital to the feeling the player is going to get while seeing the tower in action.


The last thing that we need are some cool lighting effects, you know we love those! As the tower shoots, it triggers what we call an emissive affector. The emissive material is, broadly speaking, a special kind of texture that emits its own light, regardless of other light sources that are present on the scene. The trick here is that we want the towers to light up only while shooting, and the affector takes care of that. It tells the game which parts it should illuminate and how quickly it should do it. It is controlled by the parameters you can see above. Finally, we can call this tower complete and ready for action!

Thanks for reading this piece. If you enjoy stuff like this, make sure to join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. We love connecting with our players, so come and chat! It’s also the place where you will be able to sign up for the closed beta when the time comes. See you next time!

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Hi-res: https://gfycat.com/scientificlightamericansaddlebred

Hey there!

We’re back from E3 and continuing our work on The Riftbreaker with full force. Every day the game looks and plays better. We can’t wait to show off what we’re working on.



If you’re aware of our previous project, X-Morph: Defense, you already know that we love tower defense games. A little bit of that love found its way into The Riftbreaker. We decided to give you the chance to choose from several types of defensive towers in order to protect your base. There are some well-known designs like artillery or flame towers as well as railgun towers or shock towers. There are many systems and solutions behind these seemingly simple structures. Over the course of the next few articles, we will try to show you exactly how they work.

Resource requirements

Each tower type has its own setup cost and the more advanced towers may even require rare elements like uranium or thorium to be built. In order for the defensive towers to operate, the player needs to supply them with resources. All the towers require a connection to the power grid and use up a little electricity as an upkeep cost. Some turrets use the energy to shoot, generating massive spikes in power consumption, while others use other kinds of ammunition. You will talk more about ammunition in future articles.


A well-developed base with a large number of defensive towers and multiple AI hubs (that's the building with green lights).

One thing that all towers have in common is the requirement for AI processing power. The decisions and operations of automated buildings in The Riftbreaker are controlled by AI hubs. These buildings are essentially supercomputers carrying out all the necessary calculations and dispatching instructions to other structures around the base. Just as any highly efficient computer these buildings require a lot of energy to operate. Fortunately, a single AI hub can house multiple AI cores, and you can build them at a safe location away from the battlefield. Nevertheless, the more towers you want to build, the more AI hubs you will need to set up, and provide them with sufficient energy.

Visual design

Every basic defense tower in The Riftbreaker consists of two parts - the base and the turret. While turret shapes are unique, the base is exactly the same for each tower. That is a decision we made in order to allow players to fit any type of tower they would like to use into the wall structure, regardless of their placement. Since the basic building wall segment takes a 1x1 grid segment, basic defense towers also use a 1x1 grid segment. A consistent visual style makes it intuitive for players to pick up new tools and know exactly what to do with them right from the get-go. There will also be more advanced towers that occupy a larger space e.g. 2x2 or maybe even 3x3, however, we are still in the process of designing their functionality so we will get back to them at a later time.



We have a special system in place to control the turret movement and behavior. The model’s designer creates a skeleton for each tower and specifies which elements of the weapon will be responsible for changing its orientation. We call those elements pitch, yaw and recoil bones. The pitch bone controls how much the turret can tilt up and down, while the yaw bone controls the side-to-side movement. The recoil bone, as the name implies, is responsible for controlling a guns blowback when it fires. With those in place, we can employ inverse kinematics (to put it simply, we tell the robot where to go, while it calculates how to do it by itself) to point the barrel in the right direction.


The highlighted parts start glowing while shooting.

The artist that is creating a tower’s design can also define its visual behavior while it is shooting. We do this by employing a custom light emission map that tells the engine which parts of the tower should be highlighted when the tower shoots. We can also individually control the color, “glow factor” and the time of the light emission.

Behavior design

The last thing we will touch on today is how the towers behave when they’re plugged in and operational. They can be either in the “searching” or in the “aiming” state. While searching, the turret will relentlessly sway from side to side trying to acquire a target. Once a target enters the tower’s sensor range the tower switches to the “aiming” state. Once activated, the tower’s barrel will follow the target until it enters it’s shooting range.



What is important to note here is that the sensors have a bigger range than the shooting range of the tower itself. It means that the tower will pick up the target even when it is impossible to shoot at it. It happens in order to waste no time for rotating the tower towards the target. Thanks to this mechanism the tower can start shooting as soon as a target enters its shooting range.

These are some of the basic principles of how defense towers operate in The Riftbreaker. If you’d like to give us feedback on these, or if you have some cool ideas, join our Discord and let us know! www.discord.gg/exorstudios

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Welcome to the second part of the story of the AI system in The Riftbreaker. Without much ado, we will pick up right where we left off, and if you haven’t read the previous part, you can do so here.

Everything we showed you up to this point was quite small in scale. That does not satisfy us. We want you to get that Starship Troopers feeling when you play The Riftbreaker - thousands of enemies attacking at a time. We set up this scenario to check how the creatures of various types will behave when they are spawned in their own spots all over the map. Red cubes represent flow fields that are pushing them away, which is very quick way to solve collision problems. They all have a common goal - destroy the human base. The groups will inevitably meet each other along the way - let’s see what happens.



Hi-res: https://gfycat.com/mildgrimykingfisher

Even though the units are limited by the terrain obstacles in the forms of cliffs and pits, the groups manage to blend together and do not block each other’s way to the objective. When they reach a severe bottleneck, they still wiggle around, trying to position themselves to the best of their abilities. That is what will eventually make alien hordes become both terrifying an beautiful - simulating a group of living organisms, rather than robots, each waiting for their turn to cross the passage.

Parallel to the development of the AI, other things happen in the studio. The first models of buildings take shape, the design of the world starts to take shape, more and more advanced elements are added. We can finally conduct tests on some real-life (real-game?) examples. We have set up a basic outpost with a couple of buildings (most of them do not even have textures yet). We also programmed the behavior and attacks for each of the enemies, and basic particle effects were added to symbolize their attacks. Bye, bye, colorful debug cubes! We let a couple of units of each type wreak havoc on the base. Can you guess which enemy types from The Riftbreaker each of them symbolizes?



Hi-res: https://gfycat.com/farflungslightarabianhorse

Even so that everything was working pretty well. There was one thing missing. How to get to the fancy level of Starcraft-like unit movement? Everything moves so smooth and fast in that game, with no movement delay. Well, we tried many things. Praying, watching TV, reading comic books. And guess what, that didn't help us a lot :( But one day our programmer found a solution when he was playing with his young son. They put small balls in a bucket and shook them. Every time, the balls were filling all the empty gaps in the bucket. What magic force was doing that? The answer was - THE GRAVITY. By combining a unique force of gravity for each creature with its very simple soft body simulation, we finally received something similar to Starcraft. With proper looks and animations added, this resembles a game all of a sudden!



Hi-res: https://gfycat.com/maleuncommonaegeancat

We mentioned earlier that it is important for us to make the creatures behave in a believable manner. The last thing we would want our players to see is a bunch of rabid space dogs standing in the field and doing nothing, simply because they currently cannot find a way to reach their target. That is not rabid enough for us. Instead, the creatures group around the target, filling the gaps and behaving like they are controlled by a hive mind. There is only one target, you must reach it by any means necessary. This looks like a living cell, to be honest!



Hi-res: https://gfycat.com/vigilantfoolishkiskadee

Finally, it is time to roll out the heavy artillery. The year of developing complex systems and algorithms, thousands of lines of code, countless cups of coffee later, we let thousands of units loose. No more words, let the images speak for themselves.



Hi-res: https://gfycat.com/occasionalsofthedgehog

Did we manage to capture that Starship Troopers feeling? What other aspects of game development would you like to read about? Let us know in the comments and on our Discord server! www.discord.gg/exorstudios We have a lot of new and exciting things coming your way and we can’t wait to show them off!

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The Riftbreaker is an action-packed game. You are never truly safe while exploring the alien planet you found yourself on. Even when you’re hiding behind the walls of your base, trying to wait out the night there are thousands of enemies hungry for your skin. Spawning hordes of alien creatures is not a problem, but making them behave in a convincing way is. We would like to show you what steps the developer must take in order to make their game world feel alive.

Even if your goal is to have thousands of enemies attack the player at once, the road begins with just a couple of them. Presented above is one of the first prototypes for The Riftbreaker. There is basically nothing there and even the scale of objects is wrong, but it is enough to conduct the first experiments. Placeholder cubes symbolize the enemies and you can see they are trying to locate and reach the player. In that time we were trying to use our old creature collision detection system which we used in Zombie Driver. Each enemy had 3 ray traces in front of their collision body to avoid other entities and world parts.



HI-res: https://gfycat.com/spiritedlimpgrouper

Well, even if it seemed to work quite well, the algorithm was a bit outdated. It was simply not good enough. We wanted our creatures to be fast and furious and not clumsy. We removed all the ray traces and started using separation and cohesion forces. That gave us nicer movement, which was the first step to our future work. In that time we were playing with math and physics and were testing all our ideas. In this example, a couple of dozens of enemies are chasing the player around, while they slalom among the walls. The enemies funnel through the narrow passages and spread out again once they reach open space. Neat, everything seems to be working fine, but that is just the beginning.





HI-res: https://gfycat.com/grayvelvetybernesemountaindog

Any game would get boring pretty quickly if there was only one type of enemy unit in it. Even in Pac-Man each of the ghosts behaved in a unique way. (Seriously! https://dev.to/code2bits/pac-man-patterns--ghost-movement-strategy-pattern-1k1a) Galatea 37 is home to multiple species, and all of them are different from each other.

There is one important rule. If a system works with one thing, it must work with many things as well. We needed to test how our math equations will manage with creatures differing in size and speed. Will they stick to each other? Will they able to avoid all the world objects? So many questions needed to be answered at that time. And the only way to that is to put every idea and solution into life. Behold! We present you the ultimate Canoptrix, Arachnoid and Kafferroceros rush!





HI-res: https://gfycat.com/fabulousmediocrefoxterrier

Now is the time for the first test of combat abilities. At this point, we got a little tired of watching colorful cubes running around grey space, so we replaced orange ones with Zombie Driver Dog model. In this clip, you can see the dogs trying to attack the player, however, there are some defensive towers in the way. The attacks carried out by the monsters and the towers are symbolized by the red and green cubes you can see flying around. This is not only a test of pathfinding, but also attack priorities. We can order the enemies to attack either the player, the energy structures, the defenses or other buildings first. The player is the priority here, but if there is something in the way, it will get destroyed as well.





HI-res: https://gfycat.com/flawlesscreamygibbon

Tune in on Saturday for the next part of this story. You will learn how we found the solution to our problems and what we did to achieve the effect we aimed for. Until then, you’re all welcome to speculate on it on our Discord - www.discord.gg/exorstudios

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Hi-Res: https://gfycat.com/pl/presentrepentantdove

Since X-Morph: Defense we have done a lot of work to add multiple new features to our game engine, The Schmetterling. In fact, the toolset has changed so much we decided to dub it The Schmetterling 2.0. New rendering, shading and lighting systems allow us to make the world of The Riftbreaker feel much more alive than anything you’ve seen us do in the past.

You can see a fine example of this in the video above. A plants look can change based on multiple outside factors - the time of day, being touched by something or based on weather conditions. We control these features using small script components called “affectors”. As the name implies they affect a certain parameter based on the input that they receive. In the instance of a fluorescent plant we affect the plant’s shader’s glow parameter based on player proximity. We can set that condition to be essentially anything, so sky is the limit in this case.

What that means is we can make plants react to Mr. Riggs and the animals by hiding underground, illuminating, extending spikes, or exploding altogether. The best part is that we can accomplish this with high efficiency, so we can modify entire fields of grass not just a single object on the scene, and we can do that with relatively little effort.

What other interesting features of Galatea’s plant life would you like us to modify? Or maybe we should try this trick on some animals? Why don’t you join our Discord server! We discuss the ins and outs of the game all the time and love your input! Simply follow this link: www.discord.gg/exorstudios

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Hi-Res: https://gfycat.com/pl/CircularDimGuernseycow

In The Riftbreaker, your task is to explore an alien planet in the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy. That means you will most likely not encounter life forms commonly found on Earth. Even though there are many similarities between Galatea 37 and our homeworld (which is why this planet has been chosen as a suitable place to colonize), evolution has taken a different path there.

That goes not only for animals, but the plants as well. They come in many shapes and sizes that you wouldn’t expect them to. Ranging from enormous trees with crystalline structures glowing on top of them, to weird, bubbly growths appearing on rocks and cliffs. Each biome you explore will reveal new kinds of plants, and while some of them might look familiar, they are nothing close to what you find on Earth.

Ashley will be able to collect samples of vegetation along the way. Doing research on those can provide a lot of knowledge about this new world. Who knows, perhaps there will be some useful substances to be found there as well? Your technology can benefit immensely from observing the nature and copying it, so only time will tell.

The flora of Galatea 37 also changes based on the time of day and environmental conditions. At night some plants start glowing bright with beautiful colours, others change shape. We’re pretty sure we saw some of them following Ashley’s’ movement. We hope they’re not aggressive...

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Hi-res: https://gfycat.com/pl/poorbleakbilby

The players operate Mr. Riggs’ movement in classic twin-stick fashion. If you use a gamepad, the left and right stick will control walking in a given direction and turning the body, respectively. If you don’t use a gamepad, keyboard moves the character and the mouse aims. There are no artificial constraints to your movements, and you can run around pretty much anywhere you like. Moving in combat, however, is quite tricky. That is why we give you a tool to help get around more quickly and to further increase your freedom.

The Mecha-Suit is able to dash in any direction almost instantly. It is considered as a reusable skill, meaning the number of uses is unlimited, but there is a short cooldown for this ability. The dash can either help you get to a group of enemies quickly so that you can dispose of them with your melee weapons, or jump away to safety. Additionally, you can utilize your melee attacks in conjunction with the dash. Some of the smaller creatures will not be able to withstand such a devastating attack.

Some players do not like it when the controls are being taken away from them, even if it’s for the duration of a special move. In order to meet their expectations, you are still able to control Mr. Riggs to a slightly limited extent during the dash. If you carry out a melee attack during flight, you can not only slice and dice through your enemies, but also change your direction. This way you can still find your way around the battlefield, even in the toughest scenarios.

The main mode of getting around the map and your base quickly are the rift jumps, but sometimes the danger will come from an unexpected side. A quick set of dashes will help you get there and get the situation under control. It is another tool in Mr. Riggs’ arsenal that we expect should come in handy more often than you think. We can’t wait to let you try it out. Oh, and you can also see an early version of our loot system in action on the video. It’s still work in progress, so let’s just pretend it’s not there ;)

Until the next time,
EXOR Studios

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Hi-res: https://gfycat.com/pl/classicsaneilladopsis

The Riftbreaker takes inspiration from many video game genres. Adventure, economy, and strategy are all glued together in the game by hack’n’slash action-RPG elements. There’s going to be thousands of monsters to slay and items to collect, but in order to survive that, Ashley will need to make sure that Mr. Riggs is equipped with the right tools to survive the dangers of Galatea 37. One of such tools is the Energy Shield.

The Energy Shield is an item you can equip to either of Riggs’ hands. Upon activation, a force field will be projected, blocking matter from passing through and protecting the front side of the Mecha-Suit from taking damage. The shield is slightly curved, but does not entirely cover the sides, and the rear is not protected at all. Therefore, the Energy Shield does not guarantee perfect safety at all times and using it effectively in melee combat is a bit of a challenge.

Ranged combat is where the Shield truly shines. It is not a problem for Mr. Riggs to hold the shield up and shoot the weapons mounted on his other hand, so you can stay protected while skirmishing with some acid-spitting or rock-throwing baddies. Just remember not to get surrounded.

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High resolution GIF: https://gfycat.com/pl/lawfulsilkydalmatian

The gameplay of The Riftbreaker will put you under all kinds of pressure. Whether it is the need for collecting resources, the threat of an enemy attack, or an unexpected weather event Ashley and Mr. Riggs are going to be in danger. Fighting for survival all the time would be unbearable, of course, so we are going to give you ways to alleviate some of that stress and prepare yourself for what’s coming.

In the last entry we told you about the towers and fences. They are effective, but setting them up requires a lot of time and resources. There won’t be enough time to build a new set of walls every time you are notified about an attack coming from a new direction. Luckily, there are a few toys in Mr. Riggs’ arsenal that can help you, and landmines are one of them.



The mines come in the form of consumable, one-use items, just like a repair kit. You can carry a limited number of them at a time and there is a cooldown after each use. The mines also have a limited lifetime, so you can’t just spam them around the base and not worry about anything ever again. They will require you to engage the enemy and lure them into a trap. The risk is great, but so is the reward. The amount of explosives in the mines is enough to wipe out a whole pack of monsters at once.

Mines are not going to be the only consumable item that you can use as a trap for the monsters of Galatea 37. We are going to unveil more of them as the time and development progresses. You can stay up-to-date (and sometimes even ahead of schedule ;) ) by joining our Discord server! You can find it at www.discord.gg/exorstudios

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Higher res GIF: https://gfycat.com/pl/medicalskinnydugong (It's a bit long, so the quality took a hit)

The gameplay of The Riftbreaker will require you to create a network of factories, mines and refineries, all connected to a power grid. The individual pieces of your base function as if they were a part of an organism and keeping them functional is going to be one of the most important aspects of the game. That is why we are giving the players a multitude of defensive options to choose from. Let’s dive deeper and take a look at the most basic ones - walls and towers.



Raising a wall around the base is a relatively cheap and simple solution to keep the base safe and sound. While the structures themselves do not deal with the dangers of Galatea 37, they can delay the monsters for long enough for you to react. You will be notified if your buildings are in danger, giving you the chance to teleport home and eliminate the threat. Later on, a single wall might not be enough to keep the animals out of your base - you might want to think about building two layers instead. Our intelligent system will automatically change the shape of walls to make them look the part - there are straight pieces, corner pieces, t- and x- shaped ones, everything you need to surround yourself with a hefty amount of protection.



Still, even the thickest of walls will not stop a horde of Canoptrix from turning your colony into a scrapheap when you are not around. You will need some automated weapons to do that. The Riftbreaker will offer a choice of defensive towers, the first of which you could see on our livestream - if you have not had the chance to see it, here’s the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZH0GhDAdNQ

We call it the Sentinel Tower. While it is not very powerful it can certainly fend off a number of smaller enemies. In greater numbers, the Sentinels can even handle a couple of bigger monsters. They consume two resources in order to operate - energy and AI cores. What are AI cores, you might ask? They are required to operate most advanced automated systems like towers and drones. AI centers will calculate all the operations that the automated systems are going to carry out. More automation = more computing power necessary. We will talk more about this in the future.



Some of you might be wondering if there is a practical use for the floor that we build behind the fences. There is one, and it is very important. The top of the walls are higher than Mr. Riggs' weapons are mounted, rendering them ineffective. By building the heightened floors you can reach over the wall and fire away. Besides, the floors make the base look neat!

Recently we have also added a feature that has been a standard for most base-building games out there, but we’re happy about it nonetheless. You can replace any wall segment with a defensive tower or a gate. No more tedious selling what you’ve already built just in order to replace it with something else! After we aired the gameplay video, we received feedback that it is not always clear which building is currently selected. We fixed that by adding custom building highlights. Thanks for the suggestion!

We will inform you about the new kinds of towers as they become functional. We do have many ideas, but could always welcome a few new ones. Would you like to take part in developing The Riftbreaker? Join our Discord server at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. We hang out there every day, not only talking about games, but other things as well. It’s great fun and we would love to have you there!

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