Hello Riftbreakers!

It is time for us to open the floodgates and release a big chunk of changes that we have been working on for the past couple of months. We present to you the most experimental build of all the experimental builds that we have ever published. Comprised of over 1100 individual changes, this build is the groundwork for the two large items from our roadmap - Extended Modding Support and Co-Op Multiplayer.

This build of the game is highly experimental - even more than usual. We have already spent over a week testing the package, but literally anything might break. Please proceed with caution. Seriously. We strongly recommend you to back up your save files before moving onto the experimental branch.

How to join the experimental branch:

1. create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)
   
2. disable Steam Cloud save backup
   
3. go to your Steam Library
   
4. right-click on The Riftbreaker
   
5. select 'Properties,’ then 'Betas,’ and use the following password: IknowWhatImDoing

After that, you will be able to choose 'experimental' from the drop-down menu. Download the update, play the game and let us know if you encounter any issues. We also have a channel on our Discord: https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios #rb-experimental-feedback - we highly encourage you to join in and share your feedback.

• This update comes with a lot of game engine changes, both big and small, that we have been working on for the past couple of months. These changes have been introduced in order to lay the foundations for the introduction of the multiplayer mode in the future. None of these changes should be noticeable to you, but they are really important from a technical standpoint. Given the fundamental nature of these changes, you can encounter many unexpected bugs, crashes, and glitches. Please pay attention to them and report every bug that you find.

• Added AMD FidelityFX Stochastic Screen Space Reflections, or SSSR for short. This feature adds dynamic screen space reflections that add an additional layer of graphical fidelity to the game. You will now be able to observe reflections of buildings and map props on reflective surfaces, such as various metals and liquids. This feature is available for all DirectX 12 compatible systems.
  
• 4 additional map tiles for the Acidic Plains biome and 2 additional tiles for the Volcanic Area biome have been added to improve the randomized map generation variety.
  
• Attack waves triggered by interacting with bioanomalies have been reworked. They are now much more demanding and scale, along with the bioanomaly rarity level and game difficulty level. Opening one of these should ba a conscious and well thought-out decision!
  
• Picker tool added. You can use it to quickly build copies of exisitng buildings. Press the hotkey ('B' by default) or select the Picker tool from the Build Menu, select the building you want to build more of and you're set!
  
• New memory allocator that results in more efficient memory use and improved CPU performance - especially in late game scenarios with large bases.
  
• Added radius displays to all defensive towers, magnetic stabilizers, repair towers and shield generators. Selecting one of them in the Build Mode will display the radius of that one specific building. In case of Shockwave and Flamer Towers, the radiuses of all towers of that type will be displayed to allow you to effectively cover the desired area.
  
• (Modding) Teleport: created teleport machine for working with all entities. Required parameters in database are: target (as int or vector3), optional parameters: (float) disappear_time, wait_time, appear_time and (int) portal_entity (for getting notification on appearence)

• Energy Walls and regular Walls now share the same menu tile. We made this change to allow you to use the same keyboard shortcut for both variants.
  
• Mods in Campaign Mode will start dropping only after building the Communications Hub. Previously building the Armory was the trigger for these drops, which caused players to end up with several mods and no real use for them for a long time.
  
• Changed the effect for Rift Station startup sequence interruption - now with more camera shake and louder sounds!
  
• Added sound emitters to liquid resource deposits.
  
• Reduced the chance for mod drops from 'smaller' boss creatures - Nerilians, Stregaroses and Magmoths.
  
• Orbital Laser and Orbital Bombardment now require advanced resources to craft.
  
• You can now reconstruct after being destroyed on a mission that has already been completed.
  
• You can now lose weapons if your mech is destroyed after finishing a planetary mission if you choose to return to HQ and abandon that mission location.
  
• Skills of higher quality now replace their lower-quality counterparts after being crafted.
  
• Orbital Bombardment and Orbital Laser now display a large glowing decal in the targeted area.
  
• Research Completed' popup will now be displayed for 10 seconds instead of 5.
  
• Morphium Towers now need to be built in a 4-grid radius from one another - they were too powerful if stacked tightly close to each other.
  
• Significantly decreased research costs for magma powerplants in the campaign mode.
  
• Reduced the fire rate of the Sentry Gun.
  
• Reduced the damage and piercing values for the Lightning Tower.
  
• Increased the ammo consumption for Laser and Heavy Plasma.
  
• Production times of (almost) all consumables have been changed. Higher-quality consumables take longer to recharge.
  
• Sentries and Mini Miners can now be deployed quickly, one after another, but the player's inventory capacity for them has been reduced.
  
• Reduced Bioscanner Turret crafting time.
  
• Storage space for Gravity Grenades reduced to 5.
  
• Lowered the fire rate of more advanced versions of the Mini Nuke Launcher.
  
• Explosive ammunition for the mech has been tweaked - the storage space has been reduced and the recharge time has been increased. This prevents the players from 'going infinite' with basic explosive weapons and 6 ammo storages.
  
• Changed the effects for Heavy Plasma - the sounds, explosions, and projectile trails are much beefier, making the weapon more satisfying to use.
  
• Heavy plasma charges much faster(shield), but the charged shot has reduced damage.
  
• Reduced the Railgun charged shot charging time.
  
• Reduced the High Caliber Rifle charging time.
  
• All varieties of liquid-based weapons consume more ammo now.
  
• Higher levels of the Armory building are now more expensive.
  
• Obsolete or non-functional modding options removed from several weapon types.
  
• Player drones damage type changed from physical to acid.
  
• Tweaked Brabit scannable chance and added Alpha and Ultra species to the discoverables
  
• Increased the Bioscanner scanning chance from 0.1 to 0.15 for some crystal species.
  
• Doubled the chance of large props being able to provide a sample for the Bioscanner.
  
• Added destructible metal sounds to metallic biome destructible objects
  
• Wall Gates can no longer be overridden with other buildings, such as wall segments or floors.
  
• Changed building upgrade sound to have more variety and to be more robust
  
• Heightened floor can now override basic floors but won't affect your walls and gates.
  
• Added level 2 and 3 Heightened Wall Floors.
  
• Mech radar can now be upgraded, and it will, in fact, affect the fog of war reveal range!
  
• Radar Pulse received Advanced, Superior, and Extreme versions with upgraded range.
  
• Added the missing level 2 and level 3 of Biocomposter to the research tree.
  
• Pressing 'Escape' in any level of the options menu will now immediately take you back to the previous one.
  
• The game will now automatically save after typing in the save name and pressing 'enter'.
  
• Radioactive Desert Scouting mission tweaked - only Standard bioanomalies can appear during this mission.
  
• Changed the muzzle flash effect for Floating Mines.
  
• Shockwave Tower's shockwave effect is now more visible.
  
• Added more loot possibilities to the Flurian Boss.
  
• Idle sounds for spawners are louder and audible from a greater distance.
  
• Increased Magmoth Boss' HP.
  
• Different types of player drones can now be distinguished more easily.
  
• Increased the Stregaros Boss HP.
  
• Removed an unnecessary dialogue line about crafting the Bioscanner in the armory
  
• Sentry Guns and Landmines are now destroyed if placed on quicksand.
  
• Changed the timing of the announcement in the Ash Cloud event.
  
• Increased the creature difficulty boost after finishing any campaign outpost.
  
• Creature Eggs now have a new, fully 3D model.

• Fixed an error that caused building cubes to stay behind after completing construction or repair.
  
• Fixed the Rift Station not shutting down properly in case of disruption of the resource delivery chain.
  
• Removed the collisions of corpses with buildings. It might cause some bodies to land in your base, but saves us a lot of technical issues, including levitating corpses!
  
• Fixed an issue that resulted in some tooltips displaying doubled resource values while selling and upgrading buildings.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused drones to get stuck in certain situations.
  
• Fixed the positioning and scaling of objects in the Cultivator Sapling menu and the Tower Mod selection menu.
  
• Added the missing localization string for 'Minimap Zoom In' keybinding option.
  
• Fixed the appearance of quicksand.
  
• Fixed cache counts and instance limits for many types of particle effects in order to increase the game's performance.
  
• Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when disassembling an item with mods installed.
  
• The HUD will no longer deform when resizing the window in window mode.
  
• The initial build menu selector position when playing on the gamepad has been moved from the corner to the middle of the screen.
  
• All types of resources are now displayed properly after entering the building menu.
  
• Keyboard and gamepad shortcuts are now displayed properly on the crafting screen.
  
• Removing items from the research queue or changing their priorities will no longer automatically scroll the queue list to the top.
  
• Fixed a possible campaign mission flow block that could happen if a player attained stregaros familiarity lvl1 before unlocking the find stregaros objective.
  
• Fixed the displayed range for the Railgun. It now properly states that the base range of the weapon is 33 meters instead of 50.
  
• Fixed the positioning of certain weather events to cover the entire screen without wasting performance on rendering particles out of bounds.
  
• Multiple miscellaneous fixes and improvements that were lost within murky or missing source control commit comments. Press "F" to pay respect...

You're welcome to join us on our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios to discuss any of these changes and report your findings. You will also likely find the answers to most questions you have over there. We are there almost every day and we're waiting for you! Also remember to visit our suggestion board over at https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. You can vote on user-submitted proposals and suggest your own ideas on how to make The Riftbreaker a better game. Your feedback matters to us!

Happy hunting!
EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

The Riftbreaker has always been viewed by us as a project that we are going to keep developing and improving for a long time. All the insights you have been sharing with us are a large part of the improvement process. A large number of our players have been letting us know that they would love to have a more significant degree of control over the economy of their bases and outposts. We’re happy to let you know that we’ve heard your feedback, and we are working on an entirely new economy management screen that will, hopefully, help you optimize your builds even further. This article will also tell you about the current economy management system and what issues we want to fix with our brand-new screen.


Simple enough... If you have only one base to take care of.

Let’s start by talking about the current display of incoming and outgoing resources. Things are quite easy when you are playing the Survival Mode or if you’re just starting in the Campaign Mode and only have your Headquarters set up. The resource balance display in the top right corner of the screen shows you the current values for resource production and usage for all structures in your base. Color-coded numbers let you know if you are running at a profit or at a loss and warn you about the possibility of running into resource shortages.


Our system allows you to utilize your resources in any place on the planet.

Keeping track of resources gets more complex when we add more bases into the mix. Over the course of The Riftbreaker Campaign, you will likely end up with several outposts in distant biomes. Each of those outposts will probably have its own production chain running, supplying you with advanced and rare resources necessary to complete your mission objectives. In order to simplify the logistics of running multiple bases at once, we made the decision to pool the resources from all outposts into global storage. This solution allows you to mine uranium in the Desert and then use that uranium to power a Nuclear Power Plant in the Volcanic region, for example.


After completing all local objectives, the Orbital Scanner screen gives you the basic stats for the outpost. However, that leaves a lot to be desired.

After setting up a couple of such outposts, it might become unclear where the majority of resources actually come from, especially if you’re getting most of your resources from cultivating various plants and crystals. Currently, you can check the status of each of your outposts on the Orbital Scanner menu screen. If you have no outstanding local objectives, the game will display the number of buildings for the selected outpost and the resource consumption/production balance. In most cases, this is enough to get by. However, if you want to run a very optimized supply and production chain, you might run into problems.

To give you more information about the ongoing production within your bases, we will introduce a new economy management screen. It will feature a couple of key functionalities that will give you a higher degree of control and simplify the management aspect, especially for large and complex production systems. Please bear in mind that the functionalities described here are not finalized yet. It is possible that we will find ways to improve the user experience and make relevant changes before this feature makes it into the live version of The Riftbreaker. This is all work in progress!


Behold the glory of indie game preproduction! Before we start implementing any sort of functionality, we create a simple mockup to see if it makes sense. This is obviously just an example that we're going to build upon, not the finished product!

The economy management screen will display a list of all the individual types of buildings present in your base. You will get information on how many buildings of a given type you have and what resources those buildings consume and produce. This will enable you to figure out quickly which facilities are eating up your resources and if that is a cause for concern in the long run. You will be able to identify potential problems and address them much more efficiently.


Thanks to the new screen, you will be able to turn off any type of facility with just a simple click.

The second major feature of the economy management screen is the ability to control large parts of your economy with just a single click, thanks to the quick switch on/off button. For example - you are running low on power and there is an attack wave incoming. From the management screen you can choose to turn off all the non-essential buildings, freeing up the resources necessary to run your defensive towers and armories. It’s the sci-fi cliche “I’m rerouting all power to weapons systems” personified! Well, not exactly personified - it’s still just a button.


Upgrading multiple buildings of the same kind will also get a lot easier.

Another selling point for this new screen is the ability to make changes and improvements to your base without the micromanagement aspect. The new menu screen will let you upgrade, sell and repair buildings with a single click. This will give you the ability to improve all your solar panels from level 1 to level 2 with just a click, provided you have the necessary technology and resources, of course. The screen will also inform you about the changes to your economy such a change would bring and allow you to make an informed decision about whether you want to do it or not. You won’t have to find and upgrade all the individual buildings yourself anymore.



The Economy Management screen will feature individual tabs for all outposts that make up your production chain around Galatea 37. Together with an additional planned feature that will allow you to assign custom names to your outposts, you will never lose track of your resource production again. We will also have a summary screen to consolidate all that information for you.

This is just one of the quality-of-life improvements that we are planning to add to the game leading up to the release of the second World Expansion - which you should totally wishlist:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker__World_Expansion_II/

Huge thanks to everyone who voted for this suggestion on the Feature Upvote suggestion board - https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. Your feedback helps us decide the course of action for future updates and patches. We hope that you will enjoy this new feature as well as many others that are coming your way - we can’t wait to tell you what else we’ve got in store for you!

Have a nice weekend!
EXOR Studios

14th of October 2021 was a special day for us. On that day, we released the 1.0 version of The Riftbreaker. It was a huge milestone for us and the biggest launch of any EXOR Studios' titles. Over the course of the year, the game changed a lot - in a large part thanks to your thoughtful feedback. We managed to publish more than 20 updates, including the first World Expansion - Metal Terror. The Riftbreaker has sold over 500.000 copies across all platforms, with Game Pass users boosting the total number of players to over 1.000.000!

The success of The Riftbreaker allowed us to continue improving the game and motivated us to formulate plans for the future. We have presented them to you in the form of our roadmap. However, a roadmap doesn't leave a lot of room for an open dialog. This is why we have recently opened a suggestion board over at https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. In the first couple of weeks, you have made over 250 suggestions already, and there are some clear favorites among them. In this article, we will highlight and discuss the top 10 threads on the Feature Upvote board and tell you what we are planning to do about them!

If you see a suggestion that you like in this article, click the title - the link will take you directly to that topic on the board!



A clear winner. No questions asked. It’s in development, and we’ve said a lot about it already. It will most likely be one of the major updates of 2023, which is going to be preceded by many beta tests, both closed and public. For a more in-depth take on this subject, we highly recommend reading this article.



We are already developing a meaningful extension to the original Story Campaign. It will allow you to continue playing even after finishing the main storyline, keeping all your buildings and tech in place. We want to give you the ability to generate additional missions on all biomes in the game. We’re also thinking of adding some more long-term objectives always to give you something to strive for. We aim to deliver on this in 2023.



The first surprise arrives at the number 3 spot! We honestly had no idea that this feature was so badly needed by so many of you. We knew that you were asking for it, and we had this on our internal roadmap for months, but always thought of it as a low-priority ‘nice-to-have’ rather than a ‘must-have.’ Needless to say, we have bumped up the priority of this feature. We're aiming to release this feature by the end of 2022, but it is not certain yet.



Another eye-opening suggestion. Even though we do have a couple of rare and powerful variants of creatures from each of the biomes, many of you do not consider them ‘real’ bosses. We can see why - despite the high power level, they do not require you to switch up your combat style and tactics. They also do not pose any kinds of unique challenges, as you are most likely to stumble upon them during random encounters or final mission waves. We have plans for true arena bosses, but currently, there is no ETA for them. They need to come in at the right moments in the game.



This is a real shocker as we had no idea there was any demand for bigger guns among our community members. Currently, the only defensive towers that differ in their form factor from regular sentinel towers are the Heavy Artillery and Drone Towers (both variants of the latter). We assumed that 1x1 size is generally accepted as the standard and did not want to reinvent the wheel. However, this suggestion gives us encouragement to experiment some more and offer you some bigger, more powerful, and more expensive pieces of gear moving forward. The most probable ETA for the first batch is the World Expansion II update.



This point needs no real explanation - new biomes are definitely going to happen. Our current plan is to introduce a new biome with each of the World Expansions we release for the game. All biomes are going to get their own sets of flora, fauna, and unique features and events, just like in the case of the Metallic Valley in the Metal Terror expansion. We are also going to follow the same release model for all such updates - all mechanical content (buildings, technologies, weapons, creatures) is going to be available for free for everyone in the Survival Mode. Stories that take place in those new biomes are going to be treated as paid expansions. Creating an entirely new biome and its own campaign takes us about half a year. You can expect World Expansion II to arrive in early 2023.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker__World_Expansion_II/



This is an idea that we tried out already in the last mission of the Metal Terror Story Campaign. The idea is very simple - Mr. Riggs enters an enclosed space inhabited by hostile species. Battling against various types of defensive structures and enemy units, Riggs eventually reaches the final arena for a spectacular showdown. The rewards for completing such a run can be varied, from piles of resources to entirely new technology blueprints. The popularity of this suggestion clearly shows us that this is something we should definitely think about.



A very straightforward request and one that we should have implemented from the start. Some explanation first. When you discover a new area of the planet through the Orbital Scanner interface, at first, it is named after the main mission objective connected to that place, for example, ‘Scan the area for Uranium Ore samples.’ After the mission is completed, if you set up a permanent outpost in such a place, it changes its name to “Outpost X”. We implemented this to make sure that you know you have completed all objectives on any given map and that they were no longer relevant to the story. However, what we achieved, was a confusing system with up to 10 outposts only distinguishable by their location on the planet. This is not good enough, and we will implement this change as a part of the Extended Story Campaign update.



These will, of course, successively be making their way into the game as we add more biomes and World Expansion content. We are monitoring Feature Upvote boards, looking for the ones that you would like to see the most in addition to the ones we are planning ourselves. Again, this is a process and not a one-time upgrade, so it is difficult to give you an exact ETA on this.



This suggestion might look quite similar to the bigger defensive towers. However, this idea is not about just bigger towers but unique buildings that serve as rewards for completing the entire technology tree. SenorRagequit included examples such as a massive nuke silo or an earthquake generator. This idea is really interesting and would offer a reward for putting the effort into discovering all the branches of the research tree, but also poses some challenges. What do we do if the technology tree changes? What happens if nodes get added or removed? What if we want to rework it entirely? Those questions aside, it’s a brilliant idea.

Our first couple of weeks spent on Feature Upvote was an exciting experience. We feel that thanks to structuring your ideas and suggestions this way, we can better tailor our solutions to fit your actual needs and expectations. If you have an idea on how to make The Riftbreaker a better game, go to https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com and create a post. And if you’d like to have an influence on which suggestions make it into the game, upvote the ideas that suit you. We also wait for your feedback at www.discord.gg/exorstudios and here on the forum.

Here’s to even more great years together!
EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just published a hotfix for the crash that occurred in various spots in the "BuildingService: operate building status" method.

The Riftbreaker Hotfix, October 13th 2022, Binaries #603, Package #225:

• BuildingService: prevent crash in operate building status

There are no other changes in this build.

EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just published an experimental hotfix for the crash that occurred in various spots in the "BuildingService: operate building status" method. If this hotfix clears the issue up for affected users, we will publish it to the main branch tomorrow.

Since we haven’t fully finished testing this update yet. We strongly recommend you to back up your save files before moving onto the experimental branch.

How to join the experimental branch:

1. create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)
   
2. disable Steam Cloud save backup
   
3. go to your Steam Library
   
4. right-click on The Riftbreaker
   
5. select 'Properties,’ then 'Betas,’ and use the following password: IknowWhatImDoing

After that, you will be able to choose 'experimental' from the drop-down menu. Download the update, play the game and let us know if you encounter any issues. We also have a channel on our Discord: #rb-experimental-feedback - we highly encourage you to join in and share your feedback.

The Riftbreaker Experimental Hotfix, October 12th 2022, Binaries #603, Package #225:

• BuildingService: prevent crash in operate building status

There are no other changes in this build.

EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just published a patch that fixes the problems caused by yesterday's update. Thank you for turning our attention to those problems. If you find anything abnormal (besides the known issues listed below), please let us know!

Sorry for all the inconvenience!
EXOR Studios

• Fixed an issue that prevented users from replacing Walls with Energy Walls.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused resources not to render on the minimap.
  
• Fixed an issue that resulted in enemies not spawning in the last mission of the Metal Terror DLC Campaign.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused sentry turrets of all varieties to not work at all.

The tooltip that shows you the cost of building upgrades currently displays the wrong value and says that all upgrades are 2x as expensive. This is only visual. All upgrade costs are the same as they were before. This bug will be fixed in a patch next week

First of all, apologies for being so quiet lately. Unfortunately, the flu season has sidelined some of our developers for quite some time. However, we are back in full force now, and we have something special coming your way!

This update introduces hot new tech in the form of Intel Xe Super Sampling - Intel XeSS for short. This technique allows you to get a massive performance boost while maintaining high visual fidelity. Thanks to XeSS, the game can run at a lower internal resolution and then reconstruct the image in full with the use of an AI-based upscaling algorithm. What does this mean in human-readable form? Well, the game can run and look better, especially if your GPU couldn't quite get to those sweet 60FPS beforehand.



Intel XeSS technique is very similar to the AMD FSR that has been available in the game for quite some time. It’s based on the same premise - render a cheaper, lower resolution image and use a bunch of clever tricks to achieve a high-quality upscaled image. Now you can compare the results of the two and choose the one that looks better for you or gives you more performance. Please note that XeSS and FSR are mutually exclusive - you can’t run both at once! The world would implode if you did.

Additionally, we have introduced a bunch of fixes and changes to existing features based on your suggestions and recommendations. We highly encourage you to leave suggestions at https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com - we check all suggestions daily and monitor their progress all the time. We’re also going to publish an article with our first insights very soon!

Have fun with the update. If you need any help, we’re available at www.discord.gg/exorstudios

• Added support for Intel XeSS. XeSS (Xe Super Sampling) enables you to enjoy gaming with great visuals thanks to AI-enhanced upscaling, enabling more performance with high image fidelity. Powered by hardware acceleration and an AI-based algorithm, Intel XeSS delivers high image quality and more FPS even in the most demanding conditions. XeSS is optimized for Intel graphics hardware, but it is designed with all gamers in mind, unlocked to work on widely available hardware from all GPU vendors.

• We have implemented a new, intuitive navigation system for the building menu. You can now use keyboard shortcuts to turn pages within building categories - Q and E by default. When there is no page to turn, the system switches to the next category.
  
• Added a new cheat command: cheat_unlimited_ammo. Use it instead of cheat_unlimited_money if you want to keep your economy intact, but have the urge to shoot stuff. Infinitely.
  
• Speaking of cheats - cheat_unlimited_money now works in the Crafting Screen.
  
• Bioanomaly drop names are now color-coded to reflect the rarity of the item that you found.
  
• Regular walls can now be replaced with Energy Walls and vice versa. Thanks to this, you no longer need to sell your old walls to upgrade.
  
• Buildings that do not consume resources (Solid Material Storage, for example) can no longer be switched off.
  
• Support for AMD FidelityFX Variable Rate Shading and Contrast-Adaptive Sharpening has been dropped. With the introduction of new rendering technologies, such as AMD FSR and Intel XeSS, the performance gain provided by these two options was marginal. Moreover, enabling those options could cause potential problems with FSR and XeSS.

• Fixed an error that caused the mod list in the inventory to appear empty.
  
• The minimap will no longer break after changing the graphics settings.
  
• All buildings should now properly display the 'disabled' icon after manually turning them off.
  
• Minor fixes for rendering the terrain around liquid pools.
  
• Fixed a visual glitch that caused pipelines to connect to buildings on all sides instead of just the input/output port.
  
• All resource icons should now be displayed properly on the Rift Station building.
  
• A lot of small optimizations and additional fixes for obscure crashes.

Hello Riftbreakers!

Today we would like to introduce you to a new tool that should make the communications between EXOR Studios and the community much faster and clearer. It’s called Feature Upvote. It’s a very simple suggestion board that you can use without creating any accounts or other artificial barriers. We believe that thanks to this website, we can simplify the process of giving feedback on the current state of The Riftbreaker and make tracking outstanding issues much easier.


It's a bit empty here, add your own ideas and suggestions!

Visit and bookmark https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. The idea behind this service is really simple - the first thing you will see is a board with outstanding suggestions from the community. If you read something that you like a lot and you think it would improve the game, simply click ‘upvote’! This way, the best ideas and the most pressing matters will naturally ‘float’ to the top and let us know that we should pay attention to them. The board also has a built-in comment section where you can discuss the ideas in much more detail with the rest of the community.


First, click the idea that you like...


...then, click 'upvote!' Simple as that - no login, no hassle.

You can also add your own suggestions. Please make sure to use English! We want this board to be accessible to the broadest spectrum of users possible while maintaining relative order and quality, and this is the only way it can happen. Also, make sure that your idea is not a duplicate of another post - use the ‘search’ function. If you’ve met both of these conditions, just click the ‘Add Suggestion’ button. Give your thread a title, create a short description, and you’re good to go! As soon as we go through your post, we will assign it proper tags, and other users will be able to upvote your idea.


You only need to provide your email if you post a new suggestion or add a comment to an existing one. This way, you can get notified about replies.

You can filter the messages on the board by date, the number of upvotes, and a couple of tags that we will manually assign to each suggestion. As the number of topics on the forum grows, we will add new tags to make searching easier for you. You can also create topics with suggestions on how to improve the Feature Upvote board itself! We are doing this to minimize the communication boundaries between you and us. Let us help each other!

We have pre-populated the board with items from our roadmap. Feel free to upvote and comment on those - we would like to know which of our milestones and ideas are the most important to you. You can think of the Feature Upvote board as an interactive roadmap that you and other users can shape. Give it a try at https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com.

If you prefer a more direct communications approach, you can also always catch us on www.discord.gg/exorstudios - all feedback is welcome!

Have a great weekend!
EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

In the roadmap that we published last week, we highlighted extended modding support as one of the major milestones that we want to achieve with The Riftbreaker in the nearest future. Today we are taking the first step towards reaching that goal. This article will teach you how to prepare 3D models to be imported into the game. We’ll show you the basic requirements a model needs to comply with and how to use our tailor-made EXOR Mesh Exporter plugin for Blender.

Please bear in mind that this article is not a modeling tutorial. You won’t learn how to create, sculpt and texture 3D models today. If you want to learn how to do those things, we encourage you to try out some free tutorials on YouTube or other video-sharing sites. It’s not as difficult as it might first seem, and it can be a great pastime activity. Plus, there is no entry barrier - Blender is free for home and commercial use. There are also plenty of ready-made models on the web that you can try importing into The Riftbreaker using this tutorial if you’re not into preparing models yourselves.

Another thing worth mentioning is that despite its name, the EXOR Mesh Exporter is not a tool used to extract 3D models from within the game. It is used to export models from blender in a format that contains only the information required by the game. Thanks to this software, we can reduce the disk space necessary for the game and the amount of data the engine has to read.

With this short introduction out of the way, let’s dive into it!

One of the tools that we use for creating 3D models for The Riftbreaker is Blender. It’s a great, open-source, and highly expandable tool. Almost all hard-surface models for the game (buildings and weapons, for example) are made using this software. As mighty as the program is, its functionality can be further expanded, making it an excellent platform for developers. Blender can export models to many different formats, but none are quite right for our game. That’s where the program’s open nature truly shines. We have created a custom plugin to export the models in a format optimal for the Schmetterling engine.

You can find the tool right here, on our GitHub.

We can confirm that the plugin works in Blender versions 2.93 and 3.1.2. It might also work with newer versions of the program, but it is not guaranteed. Follow the instructions in the included readme file to install and enable the plugin in Blender. Then, use the instructions in this article as a reference to avoid some of the most common problems.

Let’s kick things off with the simplest model you can encounter in the game - a static, indestructible prop, a rock, for example. You can download a blender file with one of our boulders to follow along right here.

1. Create or open your ready-made 3D model.
   
2. Set the scale of your model. By default, the size of the Blender grid is 1x1 meter. However, one building grid in The Riftbreaker has a size of 2x2 meters. This means that if you want your prop to fit within one in-game grid, it needs to be the size of 2x2 meters in Blender.
   
   
   The bases of these towers are 1x1 grids, which equals to 2x2 meters.
   
   A 2x2 model in Blender is a perfect match for our 1x1 grid.
   
   
3. Triangulate your meshes. Follow these steps:
   
   
   
   
   
4. Normalize all transforms. The scale needs to be set to 1 : 1 : 1, and the rotation to 0 : 0 : 0. The model also needs to be centered on the scene. Set the pivot point to 0.0.0. Then select your mesh, press ctrl + a, and click ‘All Transforms’.
   
5. Prepare collisions for your model. Collision models in the Schmetterling Engine are usually convex shapes to simplify physics and make collision calculations easier.
   
   
   This video explains the difference between the two https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlHqdwTtcCY
   
   Collision models are prepared in Blender, just like visual models. To create a convex hull in Blender, select your mesh, go to edit mode (tab), select all your faces, and then open your search bar (F3 or space, depending on your settings), then use the search option to find Convex Hull and click it. It doesn’t have to be very precise - some clipping is perfectly fine, and the simpler the shape of your collision, the better.
   
   
   The model in our example blend file has a concave shape, so it has to be split into two convex collision shapes. Try to limit the number of collisions and their poly counts - the more convex hulls you include, the more performance-heavy your model will be.
   
   
   The exporter will use the names you applied to your models in Blender. Set a name for your model, for example - test_rock_01. The collisions for that model need to be named in a specific manner so that the game knows which collision belongs to any given model. You do that by adding a _cX suffix to the name like this: test_rock_01_cX, where X is the number of the collision convex. The first collision for that object gets the _c1 suffix, the second - _c2, and so on. What is essential - collision naming for each model starts from c1 and goes up!
   
   
6. Prepare a UV map for your model. Here’s an excellent tutorial to get you started on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeBUfMKKZDo
   
7. Texture your model in any texturing software. We mainly use Substance Painter. We have a custom texture exporter plugin for this software as well - you can download it here. This plugin is confirmed to work with Substance Painter version 2019.3.3.
   
   
   Here are the Substance Painter export settings.
   
   If you would like to use any other program, here’s how to manually prepare textures to work in The Riftbreaker:
   
   • You can download the example set we prepared for you - the steps will be easier to follow.
     
   • Prepare a set of these textures: albedo, DirectX normal map, roughness, ambient occlusion, metallic, and - optionally - emissive and opacity. (folder 1_SeparateTextures in our example).
     
   • Combine the textures in graphics editing software that supports channel use, for example, Photoshop, Krita, or Gimp. Here’s the naming convention and the required channels:
     
     
     • texturename_albedo : Albedo on RGB channels, Opacity on the alpha channel
       
     • texturename_packed : AmbientOcclusion on R, Roughness on G, and Metallic on B.
       
     • You do not need to combine other textures.
   • At this point we should have 3 or 4 texture files for our model:: texturename_albedo, texturename_packed, texturename_normal, texturename_emissive (optional). You can find the example in the 2_ReadyForDDS folder in our example.
     
   • Open the combined textures using the NVIDIA Texture Tools Exporter.
     
   • Change the texture formats using the list at the top of the left panel. Follow these instructions for each texture type (screenshot FormatDDS.png).
     
     
     • albedo - BC3
       
     • normal - BC5u
       
     • packed - BC1
       
     • emissive - BC1
   • Click Save As. Choose the directory and the name for your texture. Remember the naming convention. Click save. Repeat for each of your textures.
8. The finished product should look like our example in the 3_FinishedDDS folder.
   
9. Export the model using the File > Export > EXOR Mesh Exporter option in Blender.
   Create the corresponding .ent file to see your model in the game. It’s best to use an existing .ent file from the game to make sure you have all the necessary components in there. If you want to add a new rock - just copy an existing one and change the parameters.

Naturally, this checklist only covers the necessary steps for static and indestructible props, but those are not the only models used in the game. We have uploaded examples of several other types to our Dropbox - destructible crystals, trees, cacti, a fully animated creature, as well as a tower set. We will cover how to prepare those models for export in due time. However, if you want to do some tinkering and reverse engineering - feel free to use those files as examples of adapting your models for use in The Riftbreaker mods.

If you have any additional questions or suggestions, feel free to let us know here in the comments or on our Discord - www.discord.gg/exorstudios. You can also create requests on our GitHub page. The Riftbreaker World Editor suite and the accompanying tools are going to be expanded over time, which is why your feedback is really valuable to us!

EXOR Studios

We hope that you’ve enjoyed what the Metal Terror World Expansion has brought to The Riftbreaker so far. This release doesn’t mean we’re going to slow down, though. Far from it! Here’s an update to our development roadmap and a short presentation of our plans for the future.

A lot has happened already since the launch of The Riftbreaker. We have released a total of 18 updates, both big and small, leading us to where we are today. With the first two major items on our old list checked off, we can talk about the next one - which is online co-op. This is THE hot topic regarding The Riftbreaker. We have already published a detailed article about it, but we can reiterate some basics for a quick tl;dr. The multiplayer mode has been in development since the beginning of this year. While a part of our programming team has been helping with developing the first World Expansion, others started reworking underlying game systems to accommodate multiple players. As of right now, we can tell you the following:

• We have the game running on multiple PCs connected over a network. There are still a lot of systems we have to port and lots of optimizations to be done.
  
• The project is far from over, but the most important things are already in place.
  
• The current implementation of co-op is really bare-bones and not ready for public scrutiny.
  
• We have shifted more programmers to the multiplayer project.
  
• We still don’t have any dates that we could announce in terms of when it’s going to be available for testing.

You can find the in-depth article about the development progress of the co-op mode right here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780310/view/3381659291157676103

…but hey, that only takes up the work time of the programmers, so what are the rest of you going to do?

We are continuously working on improving the overall game experience and expanding the world of The Riftbreaker. You can still expect regular updates and patches from us. When it comes to the bigger picture, we have mapped out a few of the most important developmental milestones that we are working on in the general order that we expect them to be finished.




Allowing our players to freely mod The Riftbreaker has always been very important for us. Many of you have already tried the possibilities that the Schmetterling Engine and our World Editor Suite give you with amazing results. However, we agree that mod distribution through Discord and multiple external websites is not the optimal solution. Not only does it limit mod discoverability, but also leads to a multitude of problems after a game update makes a mod incompatible with the game.

We are working on integrating an in-game mod browser that will benefit both mod users and mod creators. Users will be able to discover the latest mods and download them with just a couple of clicks. The built-in mod manager will let them choose which mods they want to run and inform them about any incompatibilities or potential issues. Creators, on the other hand, will no longer have to wonder where to upload their mods. They will also be able to easily update their mods as the development of the game progresses.

We are also planning to make modding even easier for you. The Riftbreaker World Editor Suite is a set of tools that we used to create the game. It is already available for download either through the Steam Tools section or directly through our GitHub - https://github.com/exorstudios/riftbreaker-tools. Thanks to all the feedback we’ve got from you on these tools, we have been able to make major improvements to our editors, introducing a multitude of new functions, as well as stability and performance improvements. The Editor Suite will keep receiving updates, extending its capabilities even further. We are also planning to release our Blender plugins for exporting/importing custom 3D meshes into the game. And for those of you in need of some guidance - more tutorial videos are coming to our YouTube channel. Subscribe not to miss them!




The Riftbreaker is the kind of game where you can spend hundreds of hours optimizing your bases, fighting alien hordes, and searching for the last possible resource deposit to mine out. Some players are happy to do just that, but there are also those who have signaled to us that there is not much to do after the main storyline is finished. We agree - there is a lot of room for improvement and expansion when it comes to the Story Campaign mode.

We are planning to introduce new, far-reaching campaign goals and a new system for generating additional randomized missions through the Orbital Scanner interface. We have received a lot of feedback stating that the Metal Terror campaign branch is much more varied and interesting than the base campaign. We’d love to bring the campaign missions to this level of quality or beyond.

Naturally, such missions would not be much fun if they didn’t pose any kind of challenge, and, let’s be honest, in the endgame, not many things could stand in the way of a fully powered Mr. Riggs. We are planning to continue rebalancing Campaign Mode difficulty, including a major difficulty management system rework. This does not mean we are going to make the game harder for everyone - you will still be able to enjoy the relaxed pace of the Campaign on lower difficulty levels, while long-time veterans should be able to enjoy a real challenge on the higher settings.

Such major changes to the Campaign structure are also a great opportunity to add more world-building elements to the storyline. We heard your feedback - we know it’s been lacking at some points. We would like to tell you more about the world of Galatea 37 as well as Ashley’s motivations for going there. What are the strange bioanomalies that are encountered around the planet? Why are there so many moons around the planet? What’s causing the strange magnetic field anomalies?...




Finally, we are also working on a new World Expansion update. This time we will take you on a trip underneath Galatea’s surface in search of the source of an anomalous crystalline growth that keeps infecting the Galatean wildlife and posing a threat to your presence on the planet. The mission will be long and dangerous, but the plentiful rewards will more than make up for your efforts.

The World Expansion II will be released in the same formula as Metal Terror. Once the expansion is launched, all users will receive a free update, adding all the new technologies, weapons, buildings, and creatures into the game. You will be free to use them in Survival Mode, as well as in your own mods. The story part of the World Expansion will be available as an optional paid DLC.

This time we would like to take a less secretive approach to the development of the next World Expansion. We are working on new gameplay mechanics that we’d like to expand with our community through early playtesting on the experimental branch. We don’t have a release date for the new World Expansion at this time, but since the first one took about 6 months to develop, we expect this one to take a similar amount of time to finish. At this point, we can only share some early concept screenshots of the underground biome to give you a general feel of where we’re going:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker__World_Expansion_II/

You can expect regular updates on our progress and all the new features that we’re planning to add. Be on the lookout for those in the future!



That wraps it up for today. Thank you for the continued support of The Riftbreaker! None of these things would be possible without your input and willingness to work with us to make the game better. We are very grateful for all your suggestions and feedback. Join us at www.discord.gg/exorstudios to always be on top of all things Riftbreaker.

Cheers,
EXOR Studios