Nov 17, 2022

Steam Workshop Available + Big Game Update!

The Riftbreaker - voidreaver

Hello Riftbreakers!

We’re super happy to present you with the latest update for The Riftbreaker, and it’s a big one! This version of the game comes with a brand-new integrated Modding Management screen, which allows you to browse and download new mods for the game with just a couple of clicks. The update also comes with new technical features, including the highly-requested AMD FidelityFX FSR 2.1 update, as well as lots of balancing changes and bug fixes. Let’s dive into the contents of the update!

The first and most significant change is the addition of an integrated modding manager into the game. It allows you to browse the contents of the Steam Workshop (with support for more modding platforms coming later) and download mods with just a couple of clicks. You can also enable or disable any of the installed mods through an in-game menu, which means no more copy-pasting zip files into The Riftbreaker’s install folder. The release of this version of the game is accompanied by an update to our Riftbreaker World Editor Suite. The upgraded editing tools allow you to easily upload mods to the Workshop and make them discoverable in the game. You can read how to prepare your mods for distribution in this article. We hope this addition will make modding more accessible and encourage you to experiment with the game. With that being said, let’s check another item off of our roadmap!

The next milestone on our roadmap is World Expansion II, which should be ready at the beginning of the next year. You can wishlist it right now over here:

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

Another bunch of upgrades goes towards the technical front. We have added support for the much-requested AMD Fidelity FX Super Resolution 2.1. The upgraded AMD FSR 2.1 algorithms produce much sharper image compared to version 1.0, allowing you to enjoy a high level of visual fidelity without sacrificing performance. We are really impressed with the results and hope you are going to enjoy it as well. AMD FSR 2.1 is available on all systems, regardless of the GPU vendor.

The next new feature is also a member of the AMD FidelityFX family. Stochastic Screen Space Reflections (SSSR for short) allow suitable surfaces to show reflections of their immediate surroundings. They show up best on metallic surfaces, as well as on the surfaces of liquids. SSSR is a very subtle effect that adds an extra layer of realism to the graphics of the game. We made a video comparing the visuals with SSSR on and SSSR off. You can watch it here:

This feature is available on all DirectX 12 systems - no raytracing needed.

The update also features a large number of quality-of-life upgrades, as well as balance changes. Most of them have been introduced thanks to your feedback on the Steam Forum, our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios, and the suggestion board at https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. While some of them, like rebalancing the damage output of certain weapons, might be a little controversial, we believe that introducing them is the best thing for the game overall. We are continuing our efforts to make the Campaign mode a better experience overall by offering more challenge and open-endedness. Try the game out after these changes - we believe they lead to a much more enjoyable and balanced experience.

Without much further ado, here’s the full changelog!

NEW FEATURES

Added an integrated modding manager. The new manager is a comprehensive built-in browser that allows users to download mods for The Riftbreaker with just a couple of clicks. The manager screen will currently allow you to browse the mods available on Steam Workshop, but we're also working on supporting Mod.io and Curse Forge. Installing a mod is a matter of just a couple of clicks. It will also inform you of any dependencies - if a mod requires another mod to be present to work properly, we will tell you exactly what you need to download. As for the mod creation pipeline, we have updated The Riftbreaker Workspace Editor to allow direct upload and authoring of mods, all in one place.
Added support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1. The latest version of FSR allows you to enjoy high framerates at a greatly improved level of visual fidelity compared to FSR 1.0. The advanced algorithms used in this version of FSR greatly reduces the visual glitches and improves the sharpness of the image without that artificial 'sharpen +100' look.
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.
Optimized CPU Performance - new memory allocator that results in more efficient memory use and improved CPU performance - especially during high-intensity battles and late-game scenarios with large bases.
FramePrepareMeshRenderable contention decreased. It's quite a big optimization step, as on a 12-core CPU, the cost per frame decreases from 15% to 5% of the overall rendering time. Your mileage may vary depending on the number of CPU cores available to you, but it's a step in the right direction.
Added radius displays to all defensive towers, repair towers, and shield generators. Selecting one of them in the Build Mode will display the radius of that one specific building. In the case of Shockwave and Flamer Towers, the radiuses of all towers of that type will be displayed to allow you to cover the desired area effectively.
Picker tool added. You can use it to quickly build copies of existing 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!
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 be a conscious and well-thought-out decision!
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.
(Modding) Teleport: created teleport machine for working with all entities. Required parameters in the database are: target (as int or vector3), optional parameters: (float) disappear_time, wait_time, appear_time, and (int) portal_entity (for getting a notification on appearance)
Added a Reflective floor variant so that you can enjoy the glorious Screen Space Reflections in your base.
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.

CHANGES

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 the Communications Hub has been built. 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 the 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 be crafted.
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 were removed from several weapon types.
Player drones damage type changed from acid to physical.
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 crystals 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 by 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.
Pressing 'Escape' in any level of the options menu will immediately take you back to the previous one.
The game will 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's 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.
In order to reduce the length of some localization strings, we replaced the words 'mech' and 'tower' with dedicated icons in ammunition-related information boxes. Thanks to that, the descriptions are much shorter, especially in languages known for long, compound words.
Portals and liquid pumps should now display their operating radiuses after selecting them in build mode.
Changed the radius decal for Magnetic Stabilizer.
Changed some old loading screen tips that were no longer relevant due to gameplay changes. We also added a couple of new ones - for now, they are displayed in English only.
The 'P' key can now be bound to any action in the Controls Customization screen. The only hardbound key that is left in our control scheme is 'Esc.'
We reduced the bloom effect occurring during the thunderstorm event. Light flashes should be much less severe now. Let us know what you think.
Grenades have been added to the player loadout in the Prologue.
Reworked and added many sounds for working buildings.
Changed how ears are positioned in the 3D scene and smoothed out the 3D sound positioning parameters (surround sound channel mixing).
The Canoptrix Nest model has been entirely changed to fit the 21st century better.
The Shield Generator should now finally display its operating radius.
Added magma powerplant research item unlock to magma survival. Players don't have to research an 'empty' node anymore.
Changed spear damage collision timing. The spear should not deal damage when retracting.
Building time for compressors and decompressors has been reduced.
Solar damage after researching Environmental shielding - sun has been reduced from 0.2 to 0.
Missing third base statistic added to Fusion Core's and Magnetic Pistons' upgrades.
Tweaked the defensive drone lighting effects.
AMD FSR 1.0 has been replaced by AMD FSR 2.1.

FIXES

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 it 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 windowed 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.
Buildings rebuilt from ruins (hidden, optional feature for the time being) no longer double your resource storage.
Pipes should no longer connect to buildings that do not use liquids.
Sentry turrets should now properly sink in quicksand.
Fixed the effects of the Offensive Drone for the mech to match the damage type.
Fixed issues with key binding options disappearing in certain conditions.
Shield Generators now display their operating radiuses.
Added missing icons for Energy Storage building levels and Ironium Factory building levels.
Long in-game dialogs should now scroll properly.
Gamepad building tool shortcuts now work properly in build mode, which allows for double-binding some keys on the pad.
Loading tips should now properly display button symbols.
Pipes built in the older versions of the game should now properly connect to the new ones and vice versa.
Fixed a crash that occurred when loading a save file made during the construction process of a building.
Fixed a crash that occurred when entering the research screen with no Communications Hub present.
Added the Acidic yeast phrase mentioned in the dialogues to the bestiary sample name
Multiple miscellaneous fixes and improvements that were lost within murky or missing source control commit comments. Press "F" to pay respect...

If you've read this article this far - congratulations, you are awesome! If you want to read even more things, join us on our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. We are waiting there for all your feedback and suggestions. You can also use the Steam Forum, comments and our suggestion board - https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. We check all of those daily.

Have fun with the new update!
EXOR Studios

Nov 17, 2022

How To Publish Mods

The Riftbreaker - voidreaver

Hello Riftbreaker Tinkerers!

The latest Riftbreaker update includes something we promised you quite some time ago - an integrated modding manager. Thanks to this new functionality, players will be able to browse your creations in-game and download them with just a couple of clicks. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like in the game:

But what good would it be if you didn’t have any way of getting your mods to show up in the manager? Well - you don’t have to worry about that at all. We have updated The Riftbreaker World Editor Suite with all the tools you need to share your mods with the world (plus a lot of new features and bug fixes)! This article will tell you how to prepare your mods to conquer the world step-by-step. Enjoy!

The first thing you need to get is the World Editor Suite. You can do so either by going to your Steam Library and downloading the package from there (you need to enable tools viewing first, see gif) or by going to our GitHub at https://github.com/exorstudios/riftbreaker-tools. If you are new to the Riftbreaker Modding scene, this article should cover the very basics: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780310/view/3109170041988719336. If you’ve got that covered, let’s move on to the next part - getting your mod to show up in the Manager.

The first thing you need to do is open up the Workspace Editor and set up a new workspace.
You can name it anything you like - this name is only for your internal use. Immediately after setting up the workspace, a brand-new window will pop up - Update Manifest. This is where you can fill in all the information about your mod: your author name (visible to others), your website if you have one, your mod’s name, its description, and tags. The tags are pre-configured by us and will be consistent across all mod hosting websites we aim to support (Steam Workshop for now, Mod.io, and Curse Forge to be added later). You can also set up a thumbnail for your mod by clicking the image on the right of the window. The preview image is a PNG with the size of 512x288, a 16:9 aspect ratio, and up to 2MB.

If you’ve got an older mod you want to adapt to the new flow, you can also do so. Open your old Workspace and click Export - this option will display the Update Manifest window, where you can fill in all the info. You can also access the Update Manifest option at any time by choosing the option in the Workspace menu.

After that, it is business as usual. On the left side of the Workspace Editor window, you will see the internal file structure of The Riftbreaker. You can copy the files you want to edit to the right side (or just simple drag and drop a file from the left window to the right) - your little modding sandbox. Edit all the files you want, add new ones - go nuts! When you’re ready to release your mod to the public, it is time to make it public.

Click the green ‘Export Workspace’ button at the bottom of your workspace. The Editor will give you a chance to update your Manifest once more before you make the mod public. If you are happy with all the metadata, simply click ‘OK’. That will open a new window called ‘Export Workspace’. In that window, you can add more information about your mod. The first piece of info is the version number of your mod. The convention we’ve gone for is X.Y.Z, where X denotes the major release number, Y is the minor version, and Z is a patch. Try to stick to that, don’t go to version 6.6.6 on day one. The next important piece of info to fill out are the change notes.

After you’ve provided all the information, you’re good to go! Press publish, and your mod will make its way to the Steam Workshop! Whenever you would like to publish an update to your mod, simply click the Export Workspace button again, increment your version number, and fill in the patch notes.

In the coming weeks, we will also expand this option with the ability to publish mods to Mod.io and Curse Forge to enable non-Steam users to access mods as well. In the meantime, we are waiting for your feedback and suggestions on how we can improve the process for you. We’re waiting for you over at www.discord.gg/exorstudios.com and in the comment section below! We can't wait to hear from you!

EXOR Studios

Nov 4, 2022

Experimental Update, November 4th, 2022.

The Riftbreaker - voidreaver

Hello Riftbreakers!

Another week, another experimental patch! Thanks to your feedback, we have managed to investigate and fix a bunch of problems with the previous build. We have also moved on to our new, custom-made memory allocator, which hopefully will bring some performance gains, especially in large bases with a large number of entities. Please keep reporting the outstanding issues on our Discord: www.discord.gg/exorstudios.

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:

create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)
disable Steam Cloud save backup
go to your Steam Library
right-click on The Riftbreaker
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.

The Riftbreaker Experimental Update, November 4th, 2022. Package #279, Binaries #532. Changelog:

CHANGES

FramePrepareMeshRenderable contention decreased. It's quite a big optimization step, as on a 12-core CPU, the cost per frame decreases from 15% to 5% of the overall rendering time. Your mileage may vary depending on the number of CPU cores available to you, but it's a step in the right direction.
We made the switch to a new memory allocator. It might come across as a strange move since we only switched to mimalloc last week. However, mimalloc was not our target allocator, just a stepping stone to our own custom solution. Our proprietary memory allocator is more efficient and reduces the overall memory usage compared to both mimalloc and our old allocator.
In order to reduce the length of some localization strings, we replaced the words 'mech' and 'tower' with dedicated icons in ammunition-related information boxes. Thanks to that, the descriptions are much shorter, especially in languages known for long, compound words.
Portals and liquid pumps should now display their operating radiuses after selecting them in build mode.
Changed the radius decal for Magnetic Stabilizer.
Changed some old loading screen tips that were no longer relevant due to gameplay changes. We also added a couple of new ones - for now, they are displayed in English only.
The 'P' key can now be bound to any action in the Controls Customization screen. The only hardbound key that is left in our control scheme is 'Esc'.

FIXES

Buildings rebuilt from ruins (optional feature for the time being) no longer double your resource storage.
Benchmark timings and behavior have been fixed to match the previous settings.
Pipes should no longer connect to buildings that do not use liquids.
Sentry turrets should now properly sink in quicksand.
Fixed the effects of the Offensive Drone for the mech to match the damage type.
Fixed issues with key binding options disappearing in certain conditions.
Sentry turrets and other consumable objects can no longer be selected using the picker tool.
Fixed errors resulting from pakbuilding mistakes.
Shield Generators now display their operating radiuses.
Fixed Morirot nest behavior.
Fixed potential Metal Terror DLC initialization problems.
Fixed multiple crash bugs.

Oct 28, 2022

The Most Experimental Update Ever

The Riftbreaker - voidreaver

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:

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

The Riftbreaker Experimental Update, October 28th, 2022. Binaries #522, Package #270, Changelog:

ENGINE CHANGES

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.

NEW FEATURES

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)

CHANGES

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.

FIXES

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

Oct 21, 2022

Coming Soon: Economy Management Screen

The Riftbreaker - voidreaver

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

Oct 14, 2022

Year One In Review: Plans For The Future

The Riftbreaker - voidreaver

Hello Riftbreakers!

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!

CO-OP MULTIPLAYER

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.

EXTENDED STORY CAMPAIGN

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.

ECONOMY MANAGEMENT SCREEN

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.

BIOME BOSSES

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.

BIGGER DEFENSIVE TOWERS

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.

NEW BIOMES

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/

ALIEN STRONGHOLD

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.

ABILITY TO RENAME OUTPOSTS AT WILL

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.

NEW BUILDINGS AND RESEARCH

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.

SUPERWEAPON BUILDINGS

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.

CONCLUSION

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