2022 is almost behind us. It’s been a very busy year for us, and we are looking forward to taking a short break from the office and clearing our heads a little bit to put our future plans in motion. The support that we’ve been receiving from you has been simply incredible. Thousands of players visit Galatea 37 daily. Our inboxes are filled with messages of support, feedback, and questions about co-op (wink, wink). Today we’re taking a look back at what we’ve managed to get done in 2022, the lessons we learned from those events, and what we aim to make happen in 2023. Read on!

Let’s start with a short summary of the major milestones, as well as some statistics that characterized the course of The Riftbreaker’s development in the year 2022.


An artistic depiction of void crunching the numbers and mashing all these stats together. 2022, colorized.

• We released 7 major updates for the game in the past 12 months:
  
  
  • The Lunar New Year Update, which introduced Temporal Anti-Aliasing, added the statistics screen, and a lot of bug fixes. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/4977042432578909854
    
  • The Riftbreaker World Editor Suite Update - gave you access to all the internal tools that we used to create the game, plus a couple of additional ones that made modding a bit easier and accessible. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3100170362348856752
    
  • World Expansion I and Metal Terror DLC - a huge free update and a brand new part of the Story Campaign taking place in a new biome. The update included a new survival map and dozens of technologies, weapons, and enemy species never seen before. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3367020691428249994
    
  • A major optimization update aimed at better use of your system’s RAM and improving The Riftbreaker’s working relationship with very high-core-count CPUs. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3308478967661599934
    
  • Introduction of Intel XeSS: https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3293844715131761794
    
  • Steam Workshop implementation, integrated modding support, and addition of AMD FidelityFX FSR 2.1 and SSSR. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3441341498983126653
    
  • Expanding the modding support to Mod.io and reworking the late-game survival waves on high difficulties. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3638375952811679288
• We released 46 updates on Steam. 7 of them were major updates, 21 were experimental updates, and 18 were either smaller patches or hotfixes. A major update for The Riftbreaker sees 3 preceding experimental updates on average.
  
• We released a total of 136 updates for the game across all versions on all platforms. That’s one patch for some version of the game every 2.68 days!
  
• For every update, we need to perform several manual and automated save tests: loading, saving, and reloading 132 save samples. The automated process takes 3:09 hours on average. We ran save tests a total of 295 times this year. They took 55,755 minutes to complete. You can watch The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Director’s Cut 77 times during that time.
  
• On the 1st of January 2022, The Riftbreaker repository revision number was 26911. We end the year on revision 34397. That’s 7.486 changes we’ve made to the game over the course of the year. That’s 20.5 changes a day. An average member of EXOR contributed 499 times.
  
• We had to expand our server storage by over 24 TB this year alone.
  
• Void streamed 68 times for you while you watched him for 6610 hours, or 275 days. That’s about how long it takes for a baby to come into this world!
  
• We published 81 news articles on Steam, amassing 26.489.858 impressions (times they showed up when you were browsing Steam). That’s 327.035 views per news article. Naturally, a very small percentage of that converts to reads, but let’s imagine that every time we publish a news item, the entire population of Orlando, Florida, looks at the thumbnail. Weird. They have so many nicer things to look at over there.
  
• The population of Riftbreakers has grown by another 350.000, bringing up the total to slightly over 1.000.000 players across all platforms, with more than 90.000 braving the Metal Terror.

That’s quite a lot, isn’t it? Naturally, with loads of tasks to complete, there are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. Miscommunications, lapses of concentration, or pre-existing biases will inevitably lead to mistakes. However, it is important to learn from those and take steps not to repeat those errors in the future. Here is a short summary of some of the things that we learned while working on The Riftbreaker through 2022.



Lesson 1: Clearly communicate your intentions to the players, especially in case of changing existing mechanics. Being assertive and confident about your decisions is one thing. Making sure that others understand there is no ill will behind your actions is another.

We spent the early months of 2022 patching the game up and introducing various tweaks and balancing changes. Some changes were overwhelmingly popular and appreciated, for example, making the acid rain/hailstorm events local instead of global. Unfortunately, others were not - look no further than changing the yields from cultivators. In the early days, it was entirely possible to just ignore the economy aspect of the game as long as you had an array of cultivators and collectors working 24/7. While we still stand by our decision to reduce their output, we could have communicated our intentions behind this change much better, which we did a week later. Still, we should have given you the full picture up-front and will do so in case of major changes in the future..



Lesson 2: It’s okay to give yourself a bit more time. Plans work great on paper, but as life evolves from day to day, plans need to evolve as well. We underestimated the time needed to playtest and polish the Metal Terror World Expansion. We learned that extracting the ‘fun factor’ can take a lot of time.

At the beginning of the year, as we moved from one patch to another, the production of Metal Terror was going full-steam ahead behind the scenes. We originally planned to release the expansion on May 30th. We had everything lined up: the trailer, press release, we arranged for some content creators to play the game and make videos… We encountered a problem though - we needed more time. The expansion was almost ready. All the assets were there, the voiceovers and videos were already recorded, and all the missions worked as they should.

Unfortunately, it was lacking a couple of finishing touches and details that would bring Metal Terror to the standard that we aim towards. We didn’t want to disappoint you with something half-baked, so we made the difficult decision to postpone the release until July. Your response was amazing - we received hundreds of messages telling us that you were happy to wait a little longer if it meant the game would be more fun. It was heartwarming and motivating for the entire team. The extra time you’ve given us allowed us to reach the goal and deliver a sizeable expansion that ties in nicely into the entire story of The Riftbreaker.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1945600/The_Riftbreaker_Metal_Terror/



Lesson 3: Don’t be afraid to share your work with the world ahead of release. Sure, keeping a game’s story a secret is a no-brainer, but everything else should be fair game. It allows you to get feedback early, introduce changes, and get everyone excited for what’s coming.

Staying on the topic of Metal Terror, our approach to sharing information about it was much different than during the development of the main game itself. We purposefully decided not to release any articles about the upcoming creatures, technologies, and storyline because we didn’t want to spoil things for you. In our fear of not letting you know too much, we missed an important opportunity to gather feedback and make improvements on what we’ve done. Holding everything in secret hampered our ability to gather feedback early. This resulted in a too optimistic approach to announcing release dates and a lot of resulting stress. This is why we will be sharing a lot more info with you leading up to the release of the second world expansion and its story-based part - Into the Dark.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker_Into_The_Dark/
Wishlist now!



Lesson 4: Minimize the effort that you require from players when giving you feedback.

This leads us nicely to another thing that happened last year: the introduction of our feedback board at riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. For a very long time, we have been collecting feedback and suggestions from across all our media channels. We knew that some issues came up more often than others and made a point to include them in our development schedule. However, what we didn’t take into account was the fact that we only collected feedback from those players who devoted time and energy to actually type out a message to us.

Only after setting up the suggestion board did we realize what your opinions on the requested features are. We learned that single-player content is just as important as multiplayer. We also realized that not that many of you would like us to prioritize PVP modes. That gave us a lot of information to work with. Feature Upvote doesn’t require setting up any accounts, logging in, or writing essays on things you would like to see changed. Any user can just come to the board, click ‘upvote’ on things they like and move on. The ease of use and accessibility have given us great, actionable feedback we could start implementing right away.



Lesson 5: Don’t be afraid to share information, even about the most difficult of topics. Our ‘Co-Op when?’ article was one of the most popular blog entries in EXOR history. Almost 60.000 of you gave it a read. Hundreds have left comments appreciating the explanation and asking for more.

The overarching theme of 2022 and the number one most requested feature has always been clear - CO-OP WHEN?! We’ve known since the beginning that implementing multiplayer mode for the game was going to be very tough, and it was going to take at least a year. It turned out to be longer than that, and with the Q4 2022 release becoming more and more unlikely with each day, we decided to tell you everything about it in a lengthy, detailed article. It explained the network architecture we chose for the multiplayer module, listed the things that we had already reworked, and pointed out the plans for future reworks and optimizations. That leads to a very important conclusion - take the time to share what’s going on behind the scenes. People will appreciate it!

Enough about the past. Let’s talk about the future of The Riftbreaker.

A lot of good things are coming in 2023, starting with the second world expansion and its story-based campaign part - Into the Dark. The story will follow Ashley and Mr. Riggs into a network of caverns and tunnels beneath the surface of Galatea 37. The new expansion will open up a new biome, along with its unique fauna and flora, and give you access to tons of new technologies and gameplay mechanics. And as we promised - we’re not going to be secretive about it. Be on the lookout for articles featuring the new content!


We absolutely love how this piece of artwork turned out. Full res version this way.

We won’t slow down with regular updates, either. Our plans to expand the endgame of the Campaign Mode are big and won’t happen overnight. You can expect plenty of updates featuring new mechanics, reworks of existing ones (looking at you, mods!), as well as updates to the game’s balance. We can’t wait to see the final results!

We are also continuing our efforts on the multiplayer front. As soon as we have a working version that would allow two players to have a go at one of the survival maps together, we want to make it available as a closed beta. We will use that as a base for further development of the co-op mode that will allow you to enjoy all the content available in The Riftbreaker together with your friends. Those are, naturally, not the only things we have in store for you in the coming year. We plan to add even more content and technical innovations. We also want to involve you in the process of development in more ways.


Mr. Riggs wants to get involved, too!

Speaking of involving our community - a huge thank you for your positive response to the brutal survival challenge we issued a couple of days ago! We received many entries, and the first three people who successfully completed the challenge were:

• mic - Acid Brutal
  
• eandersson - Magma Brutal
  
• Zazou38 - Desert Brutal

Mr. Riggs plushies go your way! We also have an honorary mention - Harkonnen28, who was actually the first one to send in the video. Still, he was going to receive a plushie, either way, thanks to his contributions to the community.


Cracking presents means something different on Galatea 37.

We leave you with the Winter Holiday seasonal event active. The jungle biome of Galatea 37 is covered in snow, landmines turned into gift boxes, sentinel towers became snowmen, and the lamps in your base resemble gas lights. If you don’t see that in your game just yet, make sure to enable the ‘seasonal events’ option in the gameplay section of the options menu. If you prefer the classic look of The Riftbreaker, you can turn that option off, too. We don’t mind. You can even switch between the two modes on the fly. Go wild. We’re not going to tell you how to live your life.



Most of the EXOR Studios team will be back in the office in the second week of January. At that point you can expect the return of regular streams at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios, new articles about the upcoming content, as well as game updates. For now, though, we would like to wish you a great winter holiday. Spend some time with your loved ones, eat some good food and have a break from everything. You earned it.

Happy holidays!
EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We've just published a small update for the experimental version of the game. It fixes several crash bugs in various areas of the game. If you have not experienced any crashes on this list, there is no reason to switch to the experimental branch. If you have had crashes, try out this version as it might fix your issues.

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.

• Fixed several crashes connected with the crafting system.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when jumping to different maps in Campaign Mode (it looks like the same thing that we did last time, but this is a different crash!)
  
• Fixed a crash in Blueprint Component Manager.
  
• Fixed a crash in State Machine Transistion System that occurred after loading the game.
  
• Fixed skybox blending at night.
  
• Fixed an error with skybox mipmap generation.

There are no gameplay or content changes in this build.

EXOR Studios

We have just released a small patch addressing some of the issues that you have reported with the latest update. Thank you for pointing out the issues and providing us with valuable feedback. The changelog today is not that long, so let’s get right to it.

• Gamepad icons should now change properly according to the hardware you have plugged into your PC.
  
• Fixed the look of some debris particles that appeared black on one side.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred if the MinimapSystem failed to initialize on time
  
• Fixed a crash that could prevent players from loading into other maps they visited before in Campaign Mode.
  
• Fixed a crash in PipesSystem.

EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

After a period of intense testing on the experimental branch, the latest update for the Riftbreaker is now live!

This update is very important for modders, as it adds support for Mod.io - a 3rd party mod hosting service. Mod.io is integrated in the same way as Steam Workshop - you can access it in-game through the Mods menu. Once Mod.io is populated with user-generated content you will start seeing mods from that site on the available mods list. The Riftbreaker World Editor Suite is getting an update that will allow mod creators to upload their mods to both Steam and Mod.io.

Adding mod.io support is an important step, as it will allow non-Steam users to participate in the modding scene. We strongly encourage you to experiment with this platform and upload your mods there. All feedback when it comes to this integration is crucial to us.

The changes that are likely to have the most significant impact on your gameplay experience are the additional hard and brutal difficulty waves that were added to the Desert, Acid, and Magma biomes in Survival Mode. The two higher difficulty modes for these biomes were not quite on par with Jungle and Metallic Valley regarding the power level. With the addition of the new waves, all biomes should now be challenging on the hard difficulty and really demanding on brutal.

This patch also fixes several crash bugs and other errors that you pointed us toward in your reports. Thank you for that.

• Mod.io modding integration added. This service allows you to upload and install mods using the mod.io website and through the in-game interface in the Mods menu. This service is implemented in a similar way as Steam Workshop. This will enable users from platforms other than Steam to access mods.
  
• HBAO improvements incoming! Our old SSAO was running at 720p res, which didn't yield great results. The new HBAO utilizes adaptive resolution (and a few tweaks), resulting in a much greater quality-to-performance ratio. If you don't use raytracing, you should see a noticeable difference in the ambient occlusion quality after this patch.
  
• New Hard and Brutal difficulty balancing in Survival Mode on the Acidic Plains, Radioactive Desert, and Volcanic Area biomes. They are much more difficult now. You have been warned! (Feedback will be much appreciated)
  
• Added Acidic Plains biome alpha and ultra attack waves for survival mode.
  
• Added Radioactive Desert biome alpha and ultra attack waves for survival mode.
  
• Added Volcanic Area survival mode alpha and ultra waves.
  
• Enabled difficulty-specific final attack waves in the survival game mode in the Acid, Magma, and Desert biomes.
  
• Enabled difficulty-specific regular attack waves in the survival game mode in the Acid, Magma, and Desert biomes.
  
• Added wave spawn markers in multiple desert biome attack waves, which were previously missing.
  
• Added some acid biome attack wave spawn markers, which were previously missing.
  
• Added additional safe mode localization strings.
  
• Reduced sound volume for some buildings in 'working' state.
  
• Added a popup informing players about the modding feature's Terms of Service.
  
• Enabled wave spawn markers in all jungle biome attack waves.
  
• Added IsHardcoreModeEnabled() for modding purposes.
  
• Text search in the mods menu is will now work with partial inputs, e.g. typing in 'rocks' will make the 'Destructible Rocks' mod show up. The end results still depend on the Steam Workshop/Mod.io backend, so your mileage may vary.

• Fixed a crash that occurred when performing a Power Jump skill.
  
• Removed unnecessary button from the Tower Ammo Factory action menu.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when building the Planetary Scanner before researching it (through cheats).
  
• Mini Miners no longer keep working indefinitely after leaving them behind on an Outpost.
  
• Fixed a missing header on the Sentry Turret entity.
  
• Prevent building overlap by making sure that the grid culler nodes are populated after building spawn.
  
• Research Screen: fixed a research tooltip when the subspecies field is empty.
  
• Buildings should now connect to pipes in a proper way.
  
• Safe Mode now ignores any startup commands and launches the game in an intended way, with the safest values possible.
  
• Fixed random crashes that occurred during loading
  
• Increased the limit of world entities from 300.000 to 1.000.000.
  
• Fixed a crash in the InventorySystem.
  
• Fixed Day Only/Night Only time of day modes in Custom Difficulties.
  
• Fixed the appearance of the seasonal event popup.
  
• Fixed a crash when stereo files were used for spatial sound on multichannel (e.g., 5.1/7.1) systems.
  
• Fixed FSR 2.1 ghosting effect on DirectX 11.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused players not to get AI cores back after selling a damaged defensive tower.
  
• Fixed building selector size bug that occurred after jumping to another biome through the Orbital Scanner action menu.
  
• Fixed a crash in DiscoverableSystem.
  
• Fixed unsynchronized access to audio sources that caused crashes.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused players not to get AI cores back after selling a damaged defensive tower.
  
• Fixed multiple issues with multiple mod providers support.
  
• Fixed errors and glitches in the Mods menu related to disabling and enabling mods.
  
• Fixes multiple crash bugs and other minor errors.

EXOR Studios

Earlier this week, we published an experimental update for The Riftbreaker that added support for Mod.io alongside Steam Workshop. Additionally, that update featured balancing changes for Hard and Brutal difficulty levels of the survival mode in the form of improved Alpha and Ultra creature attack waves in the later stages of the game on the Desert, Acid, and Volcanic biomes.

The latter change has significantly increased the expected power level of the waves that you are going to encounter in those biomes. Previously, the difficulty level only affected timers, damage, and resource multipliers. It didn’t really change the quality of the creatures that you had to face. With the addition of the improved waves, we are about to witness a new chapter in the survival metagame.

While the number of creatures in each wave did not change, you are much less likely to encounter regular strains of enemies, while Alpha and Ultra variants are going to be a common occurrence. Those aliens do not only pack a punch but can take one on the chin as well. You are going to need significantly more firepower to deal with the new attack waves. That means you will need more ammo and power, which means you will need a better economy. You can see what kind of trouble is waiting for you at the end of a Brutal survival run in this video, taken from our stream (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3 PM CET, https://www.twitch.tv/exorstudios):


What a chump, right?

Before we decide whether to push the reworked Hard and Brutal survival structure to the default branch, we would like to issue a challenge to all of you.

Get on the experimental branch (be careful though, back up your saves), and record your successful playthrough of a Brutal survival run on Acid, Desert or Volcanic biome. Post it anywhere you like and send the video to voidreaver (via DM) on our Discord - https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios.



Phone, hands and wall not included.

We will announce it on Discord when we receive 3 qualifying, winning entries. One entry per person. We ship worldwide! NO MODS, PLEASE.

Try it if you dare!
EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just published a patch to the experimental branch of the game that addresses some of the most common issues reported by the community. Thank you for the reports and apologies for all the issues you have experienced. If you have run into any of the following problems, you can try downloading the experimental version and seeing if the issue has been fixed.

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.

• Enabled wave spawn markers in all jungle biome attack waves.
  
• Fixed building selector size bug that occurred after jumping to another biome through the Orbital Scanner action menu.
  
• Fixed a crash in DiscoverableSystem.
  
• Fixed unsynchronized access to audio sources that caused crashes.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused players not to get AI cores back after selling a damaged defensive tower.
  
• Fixed multiple obscure crash bugs and minor glitches.

EXOR Studios

We have just released a new experimental build of the game, featuring many changes that we would like to try out before they go out to the public.

This update is very important for modders, as it adds support for Mod.io - a 3rd party mod hosting service. Mod.io is integrated in the same way as Steam Workshop - you can access it in-game through the Mods menu. Once Mod.io is populated with user-generated content you will start seeing mods from that site on the available mods list. The Riftbreaker World Editor Suite is getting an update that will allow mod creators to upload their mods to both Steam and Mod.io.

Adding mod.io support is an important step, as it will allow non-Steam users to participate in the modding scene. We strongly encourage you to experiment with this platform and upload your mods there. All feedback when it comes to this integration is crucial to us.

The changes that are likely to have the most significant impact on your gameplay experience are the additional hard and brutal difficulty waves that were added to the Desert, Acid, and Magma biomes in Survival Mode. The two higher difficulty modes for these biomes were not quite on par with Jungle and Metallic Valley regarding the power level. With the addition of the new waves, all biomes should now be challenging on the hard difficulty and really demanding on brutal.

This patch also fixes several crash bugs and other errors that you pointed us toward in your reports. Thank you for that. To test these changes thoroughly, we have included some additional debugging logs and tools in this build. It means that the experimental build is very likely to run slower than the default version of the game. Once we gather enough information and deem these changes to be safe, we will remove the extra logs, and the performance is going to go back to normal.

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.

• Mod.io modding integration added. This service allows you to upload and install mods using the mod.io website and through the in-game interface in the Mods menu. This service is implemented in a similar way as Steam Workshop. This will enable users from platforms other than Steam to access mods.
  
• HBAO improvements incoming! Our old SSAO was running at 720p res, which didn't yield great results. The new HBAO utilizes adaptive resolution (and a few tweaks), resulting in a much greater quality-to-performance ratio. If you don't use raytracing, you should see a noticeable difference in the ambient occlusion quality after this patch.
  
• New Hard and Brutal difficulty balancing in Survival Mode on the Acidic Plains, Radioactive Desert, and Volcanic Area biomes. They are much more difficult now. You have been warned! (Feedback will be much appreciated)
  
• Added Acidic Plains biome alpha and ultra attack waves for survival mode.
  
• Added Radioactive Desert biome alpha and ultra attack waves for survival mode.
  
• Added Volcanic Area survival mode alpha and ultra waves.
  
• Enabled difficulty-specific final attack waves in the survival game mode in the Acid, Magma, and Desert biomes.
  
• Enabled difficulty-specific regular attack waves in the survival game mode in the Acid, Magma, and Desert biomes.
  
• Added wave spawn markers in multiple desert biome attack waves, which were previously missing.
  
• Added some acid biome attack wave spawn markers, which were previously missing.
  
• Added additional safe mode localization strings.
  
• Reduced sound volume for some buildings in 'working' state.
  
• Added a popup that informs players about the Terms of Service of the modding feature.

• Fixed a crash that occurred when performing a Power Jump skill.
  
• Removed unnecessary button from the Tower Ammo Factory action menu.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when building the Planetary Scanner before researching it (through cheats).
  
• Mini Miners no longer keep working indefinitely after leaving them behind on an Outpost.
  
• Fixed a missing header on the Sentry Turret entity.
  
• Prevent building overlap by making sure that the grid culler nodes are populated after building spawn.
  
• Research Screen: fixed a research tooltip when the subspecies field is empty.
  
• Buildings should now connect to pipes in a proper way.
  
• Safe Mode now ignores any startup commands and launches the game in an intended way, with the safest values possible.
  
• Fixed random crashes that occurred during loading.
  
• Increased the limit of world entities from 300.000 to 1.000.000.
  
• Fixed a crash in the inventory system.
  
• Fixed Day Only/Night Only time of day modes in Custom Difficulties.
  
• Fixed the appearance of the seasonal event popup.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when stereo files were used for spacial sound on multichannel (e.g., 5.1/7.1) systems.
  
• Fixed FSR 2.1 ghosting effect on DirectX 11.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused players not to get AI cores back after selling a damaged defensive tower.

EXOR Studios

We have just published a small hotfix that solves the following issues:

The Riftbreaker Hotfix, December 5th, 2022, EXE: 635 DATA: 255:

• Fixed a SwapBuffer error issue that happened because of a mouse cursor rendering error.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused double buffering of the graphics scene that could lead to crashes and slowdowns.
  
• Fixed an issue with the ConcurrentQueue function that caused crashes during loading.
  
• World entity limit increased from 300.000 to 1.000.000 entities.
  
• Fixed an error during pipe removal.
  
• Fixed a deadlock that occurred due to an error when a seasonal event is active.

There are no other changes in this build.

Hello Riftbreakers!

Humans have always had the tendency to look at the stars in search of the unknown. While stargazing, it is pretty easy to forget that space is not the only place that holds secrets. Hundreds of unresolved mysteries could be waiting closer than you’d think. Sometimes all it takes is to know where to look. The Riftbreaker: Into the Dark is the second World Expansion for our game, this time taking Ashley and Mr. Riggs on a journey beneath the surface of Galatea 37.

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

Into the Dark begins with Ashley and Mr. Riggs encountering groups of native Galatean creatures affected by what seems to be a parasitic, crystalline growth, similar to what Ashley encountered before on Orion. This unknown pathogen affects the creatures’ physical abilities, as well as their behavior, as they viciously attack Mr. Riggs and Ashely’s base. An investigation into the source of the attacks leads Ashley to discover a giant, maze-like structure of underground caverns that seem to emit strange signals. There is only one thing our heroes can do - venture into the dark and seek the source of this newfound threat.


Some concept art for the new types of crystals you're going to find in the Crystal Caverns.

The second World Expansion will allow you to enjoy a new portion of the Story Campaign that takes place in a previously unexplored, underground caverns biome. Given that it is wildly different from every other area of Galatea 37 that we have previously seen, you will be able to employ various new tactics and mechanics in order to stay alive. One truly groundbreaking addition to The Riftbreaker arsenal will be the ability to dig out your own tunnels and caverns.


An early preview of the excavation mechanic. We're going to tweak it so that it feels satisfying and quick.

Using Mr. Riggs’ upgraded drilling arm, you will be able to excavate portions of the softer rocks that make up the majority of the structures you find underground. By doing so, you will find large deposits of valuable resources, as well as give yourself an opportunity to set up an outpost in the cavern system itself. You will need one in order to conduct research and analysis of your underground findings. However, defending it will prove to be challenging in itself. The inhabitants of these caverns will not make your life easy.


Thousands of brand-new mushrooms (and more!) await the meeting with your Bioscanner!

The Crystal Caverns biome comes complete with its own little wildlife kingdom. Apart from the crystallized forms of other Galatean creatures you might have encountered earlier, you will also discover some entirely new species capable of traversing the caves and corridors much more efficiently than you, even utilizing the walls and ceilings. There are even giant behemoths that dig their own tunnels! Be wary of your surroundings when exploring the area. The potential rewards are great, as exploration will grant you new abilities and technologies that will help you survive in the unknown.


Some of you were asking for this art, so here it is in hi-res - https://imgur.com/a/H1j19GZ

Since we want to take a much more open approach during the development of Into the Dark, we are going to regularly (as much as the production’s schedule permits) release updates on how the development is going and what additions you can expect when it comes to items, enemies, technology and much more. Just as with the first World Expansion, the new Crystal Caverns Biome is going to be available as a free update to be played in Survival mode. We would also like to run some beta tests ahead of the release. This new biome introduces many completely new game mechanics that we want to iterate on together with the community. If you want to be the first to get information on that process, join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. We will let you know once we have more details on that!

See you next time!
EXOR Studios

• Added Safe Mode launch option. If the game detects that it wasn't closed properly the last time, it will prompt the user whether they would like to launch the game in Safe Mode. This mode disables all downloaded mods and resets the graphics options to safe default values - DirectX 11, windowed mode, 1280x720. Here are some cases when this option might be useful:
  - You have some mods installed and a game update has caused one ore more of them to become incompatible, resulting in a game crash at startup. Launching the game in Safe Mode will allow you to disable the mods that cause problems and wait for a fix.
  - You installed a couple of new mods and they are incompatible with each other - just like in the previous case, Safe Mode will allow you to try and determine which mods are causing trouble.
  - You changed your PC hardware or a monitor - Safe Mode will give you the option to restore your settings to safe defaults and then allow you to reconfigure the game the way you like.
  You will be prompted about launching the game in Safe Mode every time when the game detects an unsafe shutdown. This option is also available from our Launcher menu.

• Metallic Valley Survival final wave tweaked - shorter delay before the ending waves, added flurian boss(es.)
  
• Operational radius display added to magnetic stabilizers.
  
• Added many new building 'working' state sounds and bioanomaly idle sounds. Feedback welcome!
  
• Mini-Miner and Sentry guns item category changed from 'defensive' to 'consumable'.
  
• Added effets for buildings being turned on and off.
  
• Mod Management Screen - added `Toggle All Mods' button.
  
• More performance options are displayed in the benchmark summary screen.

• Fixed the collision size in Nuclear Power Plant.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused single wall pieces to always rotate one way when not connected to any other wall pieces.
  
• Fixed a crash on loading that occurred if the save was created during a building upgrade process.
  
• Fixed a crash in BurstWeaponSystem.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused pipes to connect to walls.
  
• Fixed a crash in DestructionLevelSystem.
  
• Debug: fixed debug_recreate_buildings command to give back proper resources, not duplicate saplings, set back mods, saplings and resources in decompressors.
  
• Fixed a crash in Crafting Screen if resource doesn't exist in basket.
  
• Fixed a crash on loading if an item blueprint doesn't exist.
  
• Display a different controler shortcut if the current controller shortcuts don't exist.
  
• Fixed unlocking research on additional trees when loading old saves.
  
• Typing in the developer console now takes priority over game controls.
  
• Hardened the game logic safety around a potential campaign flow bug that could prevent the game from progressing past building the alien research laboratory. Thanks, Typhon!
  
• Fixed a crash if a save name was corrupted.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred if a player tried to launch a new version of the game and had deprecated FidelityFX CAS or VRS options enabled.
  
• Fixed a crash in the camera system when getting back to maps where you died previously.