World Expansion II brought many new enemies into the world of the Riftbreaker. The powerful, death-defying Necrodon was one of them. As you might already know, the Necrodon was a creature that we originally planned to include in the base version of the game. However, due to time constraints, we didn’t manage to flesh out the design and program all of its abilities in time. The Necrodon waited on the sidelines, waiting for a good moment to get a new life, which eventually came with the launch of the Into the Dark World Expansion. You will find a lot of parallels to this story while reading about today’s topic - the Drexolian.


Drexolian base model and several of its animations.

Drexolians were initially designed as one of the enemies of the Tropical Zone biome. They are the masters of disguise. Their bodies resemble a certain species of a tree commonly found in forest areas around the planet (huge reveal: Galatea is round, not flat). Their tall bodies are covered with hardened skin, resembling tree bark. It is quite stiff, which limits the creature’s mobility but gives it incredible resistance to many forms of damage. Drexolians also produce false leaves to give their disguise even more credibility. You shouldn’t be surprised if you build your base around one of these creatures only to find out about that fact hours later.


If you want to continue your deforestation practices, you'd better be ready to fight some angry trees.

These strange creatures are usually not hostile towards other species. Most of the time, they can be found simply resting, hidden among real trees. As long as they are not disturbed, you should be able to walk away unscathed. However, if you step too close for their comfort, there will be consequences. There will be no warning signs, and no lengthy ‘wake-up’ period like in the case of Gnerots. Drexolians will attack you immediately, and they have quite an arsenal of defensive techniques to use.


Oh, you wanted to run? It would be a shame if a wall rose up from the ground behind you.

Drexolians might be slow, but they are a deadly threat, both in close-quarters combat as well as from a distance. If you find yourself in the melee range, the creature will try to beat you to a pulp using its long arms disguised as tree branches. Those things might look brittle, but don’t let that fool you - even Mr. Riggs’ armor will have a hard time withstanding a flurry of hits from these. On the other hand - you are considerably faster, so if you notice an incoming attack, you should have no problems dodging it.


This forest looks like a nice source of plant biomass for a power plant... Nevermind, animal biomass will work as well.

If you get away from the angry tree monster, it’s going to try to chase you while simultaneously showering you with a barrage of splinters. Drexolians are able to rip off thin and razor-sharp pieces of their ‘bark,’ which they throw at enemies with great force. Our happy tree friends will also use this technique to wreck your base from afar. Drexolians might be quite passive in the wild, but you can expect literal hordes of them to join the attack waves during your campaign and survival runs in the Fungal Swamp biome.


Learning to spot camouflaged Drexolians will be a crucial skill in the Fungal Swamp.

The cherry on top of Drexolian’s ability set is tied to its slow movement speed. In order to effectively deal with their prey, these creatures can raise up the ground in front of them to form a temporary cage, greatly limiting the target’s movement. Once you’re walled in, you have only two choices - stand your ground and try to destroy the Drexolian before it destroys you, or break through the wall with your sheer firepower. Theoretically, you could wait until the wall sinks into the ground once more, but you’re likely to have experienced an express teleport back to your HQ in that time (i.e., you got wrecked).


Drexolians will gladly join other creatures and come knocking at the gates of your base if you get on their nerve.

The Drexolian had to wait for a while before the time came for its turn in the production pipeline. The Fungal Swamp biome was the perfect opportunity to bring it back. We’re quite happy with how it turned out, and we hope that you will enjoy the unique challenge it’s going to pose. You can see Drexolians in action during our streams on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3 PM CEST at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios. We are also getting ready for an experimental release of the World Expansion III - hop on to www.discord.gg/exorstudios to get notified when that happens.

See you soon!
EXOR Studios

Today, we’d like to talk about the music of The Riftbreaker. Some time ago, we explained what it takes to create convincing sound effects and voiceovers for the game. However, we have not talked much about the music, which is also a huge part of the game’s soundscape. In this article, we will discuss what goes into creating a soundtrack for a game like The Riftbreaker. We will also tell you a little bit about the themes we tried to sneak into the soundtracks of each biome, as well as the Adaptive Music System that rules it all.


We even had a string quartet rendition of The Riftbreaker Main Theme at a side-event to Gamescom 2019. It was probably once in a lifetime opportunities to hear it like that, so we're glad it was caught on tape.

Music for The Riftbreaker is composed by an experienced composer and multi-instrumentalist, Marcin Pukaluk. He has years of experience creating original music scores for movies, games, and other media. Marcin is a one-man army, composing, performing, and arranging all his pieces by himself. However, we couldn’t just come up to him and ask, “Hey mate, could you design a soundtrack for a game you know nothing about”? We needed to provide some context first.

We invited Marcin to have a chat and playtest the game in our office. The project was in its early stages at that point. However, it was already clear that The Riftbreaker combines the themes of heavy industrialization and advanced technology with the exploration of an unknown planet full of wonders of nature. After some discussions, we came to the conclusion that the instruments that emphasized those themes were synths, drums, and strings. This basic set of instruments would be supported with other sounds as necessary.

By analyzing the gameplay from the first playable demos, we came to the conclusion that we can divide each play session into three types of player activities: combat, exploration, and base building. All of these activities are very different from each other. To create a good soundtrack that always fits the mood of the events on the screen, we needed to take that into account. This is why we decided to create separate playlists, each with a slightly different style, for combat, exploration, and base-building. It was a crucial bit of info for Marcin to determine the mood of the tracks to compose.


A typical, calm and steady building piece. Gets you right in the groove of optimizing your supply chain.

The tracks that you can hear during base-building are quite calm and slow-paced but always have a steady rhythm. They are meant to help you focus on the task at hand without jumping into the foreground of the scene. The base instruments are supported by subtle industrial elements, like various ‘computer’ beeps, drones, and machinery clanging. All these elements fit well with what is usually happening within your base.


One of the exploration pieces from the original game. It accompanies the player while exploring the wilderness of Galatea 37.

The exploration playlist creates the feeling of mystery and tension as you explore the Galatean wilderness. Long, steady notes, coupled with additional ambient sounds like wind howling or water dripping, give off a vibe of danger. The rhythm section in these tracks is very limited or even completely absent at times, amplifying the lack of safety.


NO MERCY, DESTROY EVERYONE WHO THREATENS THE PEACE OF THIS PEACEFUL PLANET!

The last ‘main’ playlist in the game is battle music. It is the most dynamic of the three, featuring fast-paced drums and aggressive lead melodies performed on various instruments. We wanted to get your heart racing with these pieces. Listening to them makes you feel like you’re a superhero in a battle against the entire planet.

As the work on the game progressed, we also came up with additional ‘playlists’ that we thought could enhance the experience and make the soundtrack more complete.


The fear playlist can get really spooky at times.

The ‘fear’ playlist is a collection of the most atmospheric pieces in the game. These tracks accompany you when you are out exploring Galatea 37 at night. It is basically the ‘exploration’ type of music, but with the feeling of dread turned up to the maximum. It features an even more creepy ambiance and droning sounds that make you feel uneasy.


The idea behind the adventure playlist was to make you feel like an intrepid explorer. Like a certain copyrighted archeologist uncovering secrets of an ancient city.

Next up, we have the ‘adventure’ playlist. You can hear these pieces whenever you visit a new biome for the first time in the Campaign Mode or when you start a new Survival Mode run. Hopeful and full of joy, it is meant to inspire you on your mission to secure the future home for humanity.


Just wait for the drop. It's nasty.

The last music variant we came up with is the most experimental one - we call it ‘anticipation’ music. We asked Marcin whether he could compose a couple of pieces using the Shepard Tone phenomenon. It’s an auditory illusion that makes the listener believe there is a constant tone in the music piece that is always rising. We use these tracks before the biggest attacks in the game to evoke feelings of danger and uncertainty.


We had to feature some metal-adjacent music in an expansion called Metal Terror.

It is also worth adding that each World Expansion that we released featured new music that fit the theme of the biome added in that expansion. The Metallic Valley music features heavy, distorted guitars and ‘cybernetic’ sounds to match the aesthetic of both the biome and the creatures you can meet there.


It's weird how music can evoke the feeling of space and hollowness of caverns. Special effects work wonders here.

The music of Crystal Caverns is characterized by a huge soundstage. Apart from the main instruments driving the music forward, you can also hear a ton of additional sound effects. Water dripping from the ceiling, wind howling in the distance, rock formations scraping against one another, and echoes of unknown creatures - you can hear all of those elements reverberating across the caverns, building the atmosphere.


While the music from the MEtallic Valley and Crystal Caverns could work in other biomes, the Fungal Swamp is definitely one of a kind.

World Expansion III takes place in a Fungal Swamp, a place teeming with life. We wanted the music to reflect that. However, we also wanted to give the soundtrack of the swamp its own unique character. You can expect to hear a lot of ethnic instruments in this biome - drums, didgeridoos, djembe, and mouth harps. Sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it does, check it out:

The Riftbreaker features more than fifty individual music pieces, totaling up to almost four hours of original music. However, if we just let all of those music pieces play at random, we could end up in the middle of a heated battle with calm and relaxing building music in our ears. Or, quite the opposite - you don’t want the pumping battle soundtrack to keep playing long after you’re done defending your base. This is why we developed the Adaptive Music System.

The system controls the playback of all music in the game. It is an algorithm that analyzes the player's in-game situation and chooses the appropriate music piece to accompany it. It takes into account the current biome, the time of day, the number of enemies on the screen, and the player’s current activities. Based on the information gathered, a random piece from the appropriate playlist is selected. The system performs these checks quite often. It can also change the music on the fly - if you are exploring an unknown region and stumble upon a nest of enemy creatures, it will turn on the battle music for you. Once you’ve eradicated all threats, the music will switch back to the exploration theme.


The full remastered soundtrack for your listening pleasure.

As you can see, creating a soundtrack for a game is quite a complex task that requires a lot of forward-thinking and creativity. If you enjoy the work we put into it together with Marcin Pukaluk, you can listen to it in a remastered version that is available both on Steam and YouTube. Or, you can rip the original versions straight from the game files. Be our guest! (By the way, an updated version of the soundtrack with more remasters is coming. Stay tuned.)

As always, we invite you to check out our streams every Tuesday and Thursday on www.twitch.tv/exorstudios. All our previews, co-op streams, and behind-the-scenes segments happen right there. You can also always catch us on Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios.

See you there!
EXOR Studios

P.S.
Some time ago we published a modding spotlight article about WirawanMYT’s Expanded Arsenal mod. Wirawan has just published a massive update for his creation, featuring dozens of new technologies, challenging enemy variants, and even more complex resource chains. Check out the trailer below and download the mod to give it a try!

As you might have noticed from all the promotional materials we’ve released on the topic of the Fungal Swamp, this new biome is a lot different from the other areas of Galatea 37. Of course, all biomes are unique thanks to their varied fauna and flora, but the Swamp stands out because of something else. The amount of dry land is by far the lowest among the biomes we’ve visited so far. Not only does this present a building challenge to you, but also a visual challenge for us. Liquid pools were never the strongest point of The Riftbreaker’s visual presentation. However, thanks to the improvements in The Schmetterling Engine, this will change with the World Expansion III update.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2506610/The_Riftbreaker_World_Expansion_III/
Wishlist, pretty please?

For a long time, we did not have support for rendering transparent materials in the engine due to the constraints of deferred shading. Last year, we made an effort to switch to a new shading technique called tiled deferred shading, which we described in detail in this article. This change was largely dictated by the fact that an idea for a water-based biome has been brewing in our minds for quite some time. Transparent materials were the first step in order to pull this off properly. After a period of experimentation carried out by the graphics team, we arrived at this result:


Each physical element that comes into contact with water causes waves to appear.

As you can see, the water we created is not perfectly clear. Moreover, the deeper the pool is, the darker the water gets. This way, we can simulate how the light behaves in the liquid without having to carry out the complex math of light refraction. It is done via a shader that controls the color of the liquid material based on the depth of the pool. This way, we can change the appearance of the liquid by adjusting shader properties. It also means that you can potentially create mods with new liquids and custom looks based on what we’ve done.


'Water' in the prologue mission did not look like water at all, however, we did not have the correct tools to make it better.

Naturally, filling a pool with water or any other liquid is not enough to simulate the behavior of a real liquid pool. To make a convincing lake, you need more than water. The bottom of the lake must be filled with various stones and plants, and the formation of the terrain itself must vary as well. Our level designers carefully redesigned every liquid pool on every tile in the game, creating a believable layer of tiny decorations hidden beneath the surface. You might not notice them a lot in-game, but believe us - if they weren’t there, the game simply wouldn’t look right.


After the switch to the new system, the water looks much more convincing. The waves that appear on the surface play a huge role in that. The edges of liquid pools are much more distinct in the new system and easier to notice.

Another aspect of a good looking water simulation is convincingly portraying the waves and ripples on the surface. That’s a job for another custom shader. First, we made sure that each vertex that comes into collision with the surface causes concentric waves to appear. This is visible when Mr. Riggs walks through a lake, for example, but truly shines when you observe a creature with more than two legs. In the case of Stickrids, for example, you can see each of the six legs causing its own ripple effect. In addition, the waves multiply and cancel each other out if they come into contact.


In the previous system we faked waves and ripples by using a 'refract' particle effect, which generally caused chaos on the screen.


The new and improved version. It takes some time for the surface to settle after it's been disturbed.

However, some phenomena can also cause waves to appear on water despite not making direct physical contact with it. Explosions and shockwaves caused by rockets and other projectiles should also have a visible effect and cause a wake to appear. The solution to that required some creativity, but we made that happen. Explosions and large projectiles now have an invisible collision sphere attached to them. The sphere is large enough to come into contact with the liquid surface. Thanks to that, our shader knows that it should cause waves to appear. The effect looks great, especially when you shoot multiple rockets - just check out the new and improved Swarm Missile launcher!


The improved Swarm Missile Launcher is a great tool for testing the 'interactability' of the liquid pools!

Additionally, to give our lakes a more lively and natural look, we decided to sprinkle in some details. Take water lilies as an example. All the vegetation and decorations in lakes are created using our prefab system. The level designer marks the area to be filled with a prefab, and the system spawns various props on the ground. However, we give water lilies a bit of special treatment. The game always spawns them on the surface of the water. This way, you can decorate your lakes, even without the ability to place objects directly on the surface in the editor. We also made sure that whenever a liquid comes into contact with the ground or a prop, you will see delicate foam forming at the point of contact. This allows the ground and liquids to blend in a natural way.


The refraction effect looked quite okay on some liquids, but it wasn't the level we were satisfied with.


Things can always look better. We won't stop improving.

We applied these changes to all the liquids in the game, so all the biomes are going to get a visual boost with the arrival of World Expansion III. Naturally, these changes are not without a performance cost, so if you would rather have a couple of extra frames per second or just do not enjoy these effects, you can simply flick a switch in the options menu to turn the water simulation off. If you’re on the fence - come and see the new liquids live at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios - we’re on at 3 PM CEST on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Drop by Discord to get notified about that: www.discord.gg/exorstudios


See you next time!
EXOR Studios

When designing The Riftbreaker, we wanted each playthrough to be slightly different. Enemy attacks happen at randomized intervals, and you never know what kind of a surprise the Galatean weather is holding for you. This variety is greatly aided by the randomized map generation system that we implemented. In today’s article, we’re going to tell you about the most recent addition to this system, that will expand its capabilities even more - Prop Sets.


The new system allows us to replace decorations in various spots across the level, reducing the rare, but unpleasant repetitions.


You can walk by the same spot many times and not even realize you've seen it before, but slightly different!

We have already written a lengthy article about the map generation system. We encourage you to give it a read, but if you want a quick summary, we have your back, too: maps are constructed from tiles. Each tile is handcrafted by a level designer. They set up the terrain obstacles, place resource deposits, mark spots for player and enemy spawns, and set up all the necessary boundaries. The map is also filled with various props. The bigger props are placed manually, while the large fields of vegetation are handled by our prefab system. This system allows us to mark a flat area to be filled automatically with various grass tufts, shrubs, bushes, palm trees, and many others.


Prefabs work great and save a lot of time, but have their limitations. This is why we decided to introduce prop sets.

The prefab system not only makes designing a level easier but also ensures an even higher degree of variability within a tile. We have many prefabs to choose from, and you never know which one you’re going to see in the game. However, this system also had its limitations - it could only be used on a flat, empty space. This means that if we wanted to place some vegetation on rocks, or create a complex structure by combining several props, it would always be the same and not undergo randomization. For World Expansion III we decided to improve that and developed the Prop Set System.


The prefab system was quite powerful, as it could transform the feeling of an entire tile. But, as always, we wanted more power. MORE POWER!

The idea behind this system is very simple. In order to introduce more variability within the tiles, we decided to group our props into sets that can be exchanged with each other without any hassle. The designer places props on the map as usual. They can set them anywhere they like - on the ground, in canyons, on the rocks - the sky is the limit here. However, some magic happens during the map generation process. The game can exchange the objects that the designer placed on the map with similar ones, using a list that we created. Thanks to this, every time you load a map, you will see quite a different landscape. If this sounds complicated, just check out this GIF, and it will all become clear:


A dozen variations available at a click of a button.

We choose a base set of props for the designers to use during the tile creation process. Then, we create a simple CSV table that lists all the individual props that belong to the base set. After that, we can create as many alternative sets as we want. Let’s use a simple example to portray the process.


In the table above, you can see a simplified version of the base set of props. It contains the tree_01, bush_01, and grass_01 models. The level designer will place these props on the map and the game will use it as a baseline. Then, we can create an alternative set by choosing some other models that are similar to the base props and listing them in the CSV file.


This tells the game that it is safe to replace the tree_01 model from the base set with the tree_02 model from the alternative set. The system will only exchange props from the same table row, so you don’t have to worry about giant trees replacing grass tufts. However, you can specify completely different props. For example:


In this case, if the game decides to choose Alternative Set 02, the original trees, bushes, and rocks will be replaced with mushrooms, rocks, and flowers. You can get really creative here, but you also have to make sure that the lists you create make sense - you don’t want rocks to grow on top of trees, do you?


SURPRISE SPREADSHEET! Working in game development requires more staring at spreadsheets than you imagine. This is a fragment of our Fungal Swamp biome propset. Click to zoom in, if you like spreadsheets.

Additionally, during the map generation process, each tile is divided into four almost equal parts (not all tiles are square or rectangular, hence the almost part). Each part of the tile will use a different prop set if possible, ensuring that you will see as many variants of flora and other decorations as possible.


This feature allows us to have many variations of complex structures without the need for manual re-propping everything each time.

For now, only the map tiles we created for World Expansion III will use this system. Retroactively introducing it to each of our map tiles from other biomes would be a lengthy process. It would require us to create prop sets, remove all existing props from the maps, and replace them with only the base set models. We’re not saying it is never going to happen, but it will need a lot of dedication. Creating a new biome using this system is a breeze, though, so we highly encourage you to use it when creating your custom maps. We will publish an update to The Riftbreaker World Editor suite around the release of the World Expansion itself.


Replacing props in such tightly-packed spaces would be a nightmare. With the new system, it's a breeze.


The right set can completely change the mood of the scene.

We hope that this (relatively) small addition will greatly enhance your experience with the Fungal Swamp biome in the upcoming expansion. Each day we are getting closer to our beta experimental release, so stay tuned for more info on that - www.discord.gg/exorstudios is the best place to stay informed. We’re also quite happy with our progress on the multiplayer front - we even streamed a four-player playthrough of an online co-op run on www.twitch.tv/exorstudios. You can watch it here:



When the time comes, we will for sure have a closed beta release of the co-op version. Sign up for that here:


Have a great weekend, and see you next time!
EXOR Studios

If you see one Canceroth in the wild, there is a good chance that there are more nearby.

Our work on World Expansion III for The Riftbreaker is progressing nicely. We are at the Alpha stage of production—the logic structure for the entire campaign is in place, allowing playtesters to complete the expansion without any tricks or debug options. We have already started conducting early playtests within the company. Tests like these help us identify problems and challenges, as well as the highlights of the campaign. It turns out that we all consider today’s topic to be one of the highlights. Some of you might have seen this creature on our stream already - let’s take a closer look at the Canceroth.


Canceroth testing in a synthetic environment. Take a good look - it's rare to see one in such a calm setting.

The Canceroth is one of the most unique lifeforms you will encounter during your exploration of the Swamp biome. At first, it looks like a colony of some sort. In the center of the colony, there is a large cell that is surrounded by several smaller ones, identical to the one in the middle. The colony moves as one, with the central cell controlling the behavior of the entire group, rolling over the surface of the planet with no regard for anything on its way. Canceroths leave a wake of destruction behind them, annihilating all organisms and structures they encapsulate. If they get inside your base, it is already too late to stop them. You can’t even count on natural protection - Canceroths traverse mountains and canyons with ease.


Canceroth Nests are well protected by other species of creatures and plants. What's their connection? You will have to discover it yourself.

A Canceroth’s body is incredibly resilient, thanks to its unique construction. Each individual cell looks as if it holds some kind of dark energy trapped within it. However, the physical part of the body resembles a ball made of elastic tubes, capable of changing shape according to the organism’s needs. This protects a Canceroth from physical damage, as the body absorbs the energy or changes shape to avoid injury. Acid, energy, and fire also seem to have limited potential against these creatures. What works is cryo damage coupled with area damage. First, you slow the creature down, then bombard it with whatever you have at your disposal for maximum effect.


Canceroths do not only spawn during attack waves. They will also attack you if you touch a Bioanomaly.

Speaking of ways to eliminate the Canceroth, you must do it strategically. The smaller cells can be destroyed to limit the creature’s size and damage output, but this is not very effective in the long run, as the cells can simply regrow. The only way to deal with the colony once and for all is to destroy the central node. Sounds simple at first, but all the surrounding cells are great at soaking up damage and protecting the ‘head.’ Use traps, landmines, and precision-targeting weapons to snipe the central piece.


If you thought battles in The Riftbreaker can get chaotic sometimes, just wait for the Canceroth to appear.

What makes matters even more tricky is that Canceroths usually do not come alone. Sometimes, they will invade your base as a part of an attack wave. However, Canceroths also create their own nests, and when they do, they will simply keep coming after you as long as they stay active. Moreover, Canceroths also come in Alpha and Ultra variants, each even bigger and more powerful than the last. Not a lot can stand in their way, so be on the lookout for those and destroy them before they can reach your base.


Terrain obstacles are nothing for a Canceroth. They can move across the talles peaks and deepest canyons of Galatea 37.

Canceroths are not similar to any creatures in the Swamp biome. However, they do not display aggression towards other species. Still, their destructive nature and ability to destroy and consume everything in their path are not without consequences. Their destructive behavior brings imbalance to the ecosystem and threatens the existence of other creatures. Ashley and Mr. Riggs will have to solve the mystery of the Canceroth’s origin and find out whether its influence threatens the planet. Should they interfere at all? Is Galatea 37 better off without their intervention? What other secrets does the biome hold? You will find everything in the story-driven campaign that’s coming alongside the World Expansion III update for The Riftbreaker.


If you somehow miss a Canceroth rolling through your base, you will definitely notice the telltale trail of destruction.

All our players will be able to face off against the Canceroth and many other new creatures we’ve prepared for you in the free portion of the World Expansion III update. This time it’s going to feature not one, but two additional maps for the Survival Mode, which will give you plenty of opportunities to try out the new weapons and technologies. If you’d like to get your hands on the early, follow us on www.discord.gg/exorstudios not to miss the experimental update, which is going to happen well before the official release. Join our streams on Tuesdays and Thursdays at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios for even more exclusive information and live Q&As!

See you there!
EXOR Studios

This creature/structure/growth/whatever-it-is looks certainly different from all the other nests we've seen so far.

Today, we continue our cycle of articles previewing the new content in The Riftbreaker World Expansion III. We’ve already discussed some of the new technologies that will help you master both the dry land and the waters of the Swamp biome. We have also shown you some creatures that will oppose your expansion into their home turf and destroy their nesting grounds. In fact, you might want to think twice before disturbing any nests - and we’re going to tell you why in today’s article.


You will rarely get this much space to fight the nest. Cherish these moments.

Like the creatures found in other areas of the planet, the inhabitants of the Swamp biome often live in packs. This allows them to hunt together and protect each other from danger. These groups often form large nests, which serve as their makeshift homes and nurseries for the young. However, these nests are different from what we see in other regions of Galatea. In areas such as the Tropical Zone, you will find only one species living in nests - the Canoptrix. The same is true for the Mushbits in the Desert, Morirots in the Volcanic Zone, and Granans in the Acidic Plains. Things are different in the Swamps.


Battling through to the nest itself is a difficult and dangerous process.

Multiple species of nesting creatures inhabit this newly discovered biome, which is not really strange by itself. What makes them unique is the fact that all species in the Swamp biome seem to gather around the same type of nest. It makes it pretty clear that the creatures do not build this structure themselves but find it in the wild and claim it as their home. What makes the Swamp nest even stranger is a giant acid-spitting maw located at the very top of this structure. It will actively seek out threats, aim at them, and bombard them with a barrage of acidic projectiles from a long distance. All these properties make it very likely that the nest is a living organism, forming a symbiotic relationship with the creatures of the Swamp biome.


Luckily most of the natural inhabitants of the Swamp biome absolutely hate fire.

Multiple species of creatures lay eggs both within and around the nests. You will want to clear them out as quickly as you can - otherwise, your base will never get any rest from an endless stream of creatures pouring your way. Fungors, Plutrodons, and Stickrids are not the only creatures that you will face while trying to clear these nests out. The aggressive, carnivorous plants, which we showed you a couple of weeks before, very often grow in the immediate vicinity of the nest. It’s an additional layer of protection for the entire structure and the creatures inside. Combine that with the “turret” on top, and you’ve got a serious siege on your hands.


Energy-based weapons like the Lightning Gun can help you clear out multiple targets at once - which is especially useful when the entire jungle decides to attack you!

Clearing out a Swamp nest is not an easy task. It will require a slow, methodical approach, getting rid of the threats layer by layer. You can, for example, try to lure the creatures out first, then burn the carnivorous plants with fire, and finally blow up your main target with an orbital barrage. However, that’s not the only option, and we’re sure you will find many ways to sweet victory. If you succeed, you will be rewarded with a shower of rare resources and high-quality mods (and perhaps something more!). Most importantly, though, you will enjoy a moment of peace and quiet.


Sometimes you might not even realize how many enemies are around you! Employ hit-and-run tactics to get away from hairy situations like these.

We hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the weird world of the Swamp biome, which is coming to The Riftbreaker in World Expansion III. Remember to add the expansion to your Steam Wishlist and join us on www.discord.gg/exorstudios never to miss any news! We have also started streaming co-op playthroughs of the survival Mode once more, so follow www.twitch.tv/exorstudios and get notified when we go live on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

See you there!
EXOR Studios

While discovering the secrets of the Galatean Swamp, you will have to face several challenges. Apart from the wildlife trying to push you away from their natural habitat, you will have to contend with limited building space. Bases in The Riftbreaker can get pretty huge. All the factories, power plants, and storage buildings take up a lot of space. However, dry land is a luxury in the Swamp, requiring you to change your building habits and make the most of every square meter available to you. You will need to find savings everywhere - and we want to help you with that. Let’s take a look at the floating defensive towers.


All three levels of the Floating Immolator Tower. By the way - they don't get smaller with each level. It's just the perspective and my lack of Photoshop skills.


Perfect protection for your pipelines.


Stumbling upon a row of towers like this one should make your enemies think twice. It should, but it doesn't, which is good, because it means that the twoers will get the chance to get busy.

Resources in the Swamp biome are scattered on small islands with very limited building space. It is quite likely that your new outposts will span across several such islands. Floating towers will help you defend such structures. The first tower you will get access to is the Floating Immolator Tower. It’s a rapid-firing tower that shoots flaming projectiles which explode on impact. Any creature hit by the tower will be set on fire, receiving additional damage over time. The Floating Immolator Tower has three advancement levels, each one more powerful than the last. However, the sheer firepower is not the key feature here.


These towers do not need any additional power sources. Thanks to this, you can set up traps in the middle of nowhere!

What makes the Floating Immolators a prime choice for the Swamp biome is their portability and ease of use. As the name suggests, these towers have to be placed on a liquid pool of any type (yes, even magma will do - though fighting fire with fire is not the best idea). They also need AI cores and a steady supply of liquid ammo, but that is all! No need to provide them with power, no need to build complicated piping networks, or anything else, really. As long as you place them in a liquid pool they are ready to go. This gives you the ability to surround all your islands with a perimeter of powerful defensive towers that are sure to give the creatures of the Swamp a headache.


Always support your Immolators with artillery. Let the fireworks begin!

As great as these towers are, they do not come without drawbacks. The first and the most obvious one is their vulnerability. Their placement on liquid pools, away from walls or any other defenses, makes them a juicy target for enemy artillery and more tanky units, who can take several salvos and actually get up close. Remember to always support your Floating towers with batteries of Artillery back on dry land. It is also advisable to build the Floating Immolators in very large numbers. The sheer number of these towers can make up for their fragility and will keep the damage output steady, even if you lose several towers in an attack. That’s where the second drawback comes in - these towers are quite expensive. Keep your Carbonium and Ironium production up - protecting your base is not going to be cheap.


No one will destroy this pipeline under our watch! By the way, it's a sneaky preview of a new resource - resin. Any guesses what it can do?

The Floating Immolator Tower is not the only one that you will be able to place directly on water. As many of you suggested on our Feature Upvote board, The Riftbreaker needs more heavy-hitting giant towers. We already added a couple on the previous World Expansions. WE III will continue that trend and then some! This expansion will add three truly powerful 3x3 towers. One of them will be a water-based tower, shooting massive, piercing projectiles that deal cryo damage on impact. We don’t have any visuals or a name for that tower yet, but when it arrives, we will definitely preview it on www.twitch.tv/exorstudios during our developer stream. Follow us there so as not to miss it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2506610/The_Riftbreaker_World_Expansion_III/

That’s it for today. Remember to add The Riftbreaker: World Expansion III to your wishlist and join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios to get all the latest news and details from development.

See you there!
EXOR Studios

As you’ve already seen in our numerous previews and live playthroughs on stream (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3 PM CET at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios ), the Swamp biome is full of interesting creatures. Many of them are uniquely adapted to life in semi-aquatic conditions of their environment. Stickrids’ long legs, Fungors’ tentacles and Plutrodons’ tree climbing all provide mobility and survivability in the Swamp. However, none of these creatures are more at home here than the hero of today’s article - the Mudroner.


Mudroner in all of its swampy glory.

The Mudroner is a native species of the Galatean Swamp. These creatures can often be seen in small packs, roaming around the shallow waters. They bear quite a resemblance to Hedroners, which can be found in similar places around the surface of Galatea 37. However, these species are quite different from one another. Various types of Hedroners camouflage their bodies by taking on the appearance of liquids they live in. For example, in the Tropical zone, they look like mud, and in the Metallic Valley they disguise themselves as made of Morphium. However, Mudroners appear to be able to survive only in the Swamp biome and only in one form - ‘wearing’ greenish-brown mud outer layer.


No, Mr. Riggs, that's not how you document wildlife!

At first glance, Mudroners look like a much more dangerous evolution of a Hedroner. Their bodies are taller and more slender. Dozens of sharp teeth stick out of their giant, elongated maws. However, their most striking feature is a pair of eyes right above their mouths. The eyes emit an unnatural purple glow, attracting prey and sending a warning signal to anything that might pose a threat to the creature. That includes you.


Luckily, Mudroners hate fire, so you will find ways to deal with them relatively quickly.

Although they spend most of their time by liquid pools, Mudroners will happily leave the comfort of their homes to attack you and your base. Usually, they will try to keep their distance and throw heavy objects at Mr. Riggs, as their melee attacks are quite slow and easy to avoid. Since Mudroners move slowly, they usually won’t be able to escape once you’ve closed in on them. However, if a Mudroner feels it’s losing the fight, it can sink into the ground and materialize elsewhere. They use this technique to distance themselves from danger and continue fighting from afar.


They can catch you by surprise almost anywhere.

Fancy descriptions aside, Mudroners are a refreshed version of the Hedroners that you already know from the original game and its various biomes. However, while giving the creature a face-lift, we also came up with the idea of a neat visual feature. If you take a closer look at Mudroners, their texture has a slight animation to it, simulating the flow of a liquid. This is done via a custom shader. The shader takes information from a flow map - a texture that stores information about movement. By adjusting the flow map, we can simulate the flow of different types of liquids. We liked the result, so we applied this change to the original Hedroners as well.


A subtle change, but Hedroners look much better now that their 'mud' is not static.

This is not the only visual upgrade we’ve made in preparation for the launch of World Expansion III. Thanks to the introduction of Tiled Deferred Shading which we talked about before, we could finally use transparent objects in The Riftbreaker. That, in turn, allowed us to cook up liquid simulation, including waves and ripples on the surface. We will publish a longer article on that soon, so stay tuned!


Ultra versions look even more at home now in the Volcanic Zone.

Join us on Discord! We publish our internal developer changelogs daily, discuss upcoming changes and preview lots of cool things there. www.discord.gg/exorstudios Also remember to join us on streams, every Tuesday and Thursday, 3 PM CET at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios , where you can see the new content in a live, unedited environment. See you there!

EXOR Studios

Every time we visit a new biome on Galatea 37, we face new challenges regarding power production. The weather variations make our renewable energy sources less (or more) effective. We also might get access to some power generation resources that are not available anywhere else - like magma in the Volcanic Zone or Morphium in the Metallic Valley. The conditions differ from biome to biome, but one thing stays the same. As we access new biomes, our tech tree grows, and new energy technologies become available. The Swamp biome is no different. Today, we will look at the options available to us in World Expansion III.


The stars of today's show: Bio-Condenser and Gas Extractor.

The waters and the soil of the Galatean Swamp are full of organic remains. This gives life perfect conditions to grow and expand. New specimens can feed on the remains, grow, spread, and evolve. The rich fauna and flora of the biome are the best evidence for this - you won’t find a more varied ecosystem anywhere else on this planet. However, the fact that organic remains make up a large portion of the biomass has another advantage for Ashely and Mr. Riggs. As organic matter decomposes, it produces large amounts of flammable gases - an efficient power source.


Bio-Condensers are very easy to set up in the Swamp, despite having to be placed at a distance from one another.

Naturally, Riftbreakers are prepared to take advantage of such scenarios. Through research, Ashley will gain access to several buildings to make the most of the resources available in the Swamp. The first one is the Bio-Condenser. This facility must be placed directly on the surface of a mud pool. The Bio-Condenser filters the scattered organic remains from the mud and places them in a fermentation chamber. During the fermentation process, the biomass from the swamp turns into sludge, which can be further refined into flammable gas. Then, the gas can be transported through a pipeline and used for power generation. After all this, the mud is mixed and released into the ecosystem. It’s an inexpensive and reliable way to supply your base with gas power.


Since mud is virtually unlimited, you can even turn your Swamp outposts into gas-producing mega-factories, sending copious amounts of resources back to your HQ through compressors and decompressors.


A new type of resource deposit: Flammable Gas Vent. Hard to miss, really.

Some of the organic matter has been gathering beneath the surface of the Swamp biome for ages. Over time, natural pockets of Flammable Gas have appeared, with some of them bursting through the surface in a fiery fashion. Thanks to another new building, the Gas Extractor, Ashley and Mr. Riggs can safely use the gas beneath the ground. The Gas Extractor is built directly on top of a Gas Vent. Its airtight construction extinguishes the flames, allowing for controlled gas extraction by pipelines. While extracting the gas, the Extractor building also filters all the impurities, ensuring the fuel is suitable for immediate use. This means you can run a pipeline directly from an Extractor to a Power Plant with no steps in between. Gas Vents are relatively rare, but you should take advantage of them whenever possible.


You can even use the vent offensively!

Generating the electric energy necessary to run all the Riftbreaker facilities is an essential use of Flammable Gas. However, during your stay in the Swamp biome, you will also find out that the gas can be used offensively - as a fuel source for some truly devastating weaponry. (Especially given the fact that most creatures of this biome are very weak to fire damage). We won’t say much now, as the new tower types will get their own article, but you can expect some heavy-caliber machines of destruction, bigger than anything we’ve given you before.

If you would like to see these buildings in use, join our streams every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 PM CET. And if you would want to be the first to try them out once ready, join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios - we will notify you when the first experimental versions of the World Expansion III update go live. You can also chat with us and influence what the biome looks like in the end!

See you there!
EXOR Studios

It is time for another co-op mode development progress update for The Riftbreaker. A lot of good things happened since the last time we shared the news with you, including some major developments and improvements. A lot of those upgrades happened thanks to the data you provided us with during the closed beta. We appreciate your help so far! .We even managed to complete a 3-person playthrough live on stream several times. Here’s a new VOD from one of those streams:



As you can see, the game runs quite well, and even though the performance still leaves a lot to be desired, especially in the later stages of the game, we feel we are on the right track. Plus, we have a new, fancy 3-face cam setup and managed to convince some EXOR members to break their ‘stage’ fright! But you’re here because you want to learn more about our development process, not just to watch a video. Let’s take a look at what our brave programmers have been doing for these past couple of weeks.


At the very beginning of the year, on January 2nd, one of our programmers, Starbugs, sent us a screenshot from his Survival run. It was a single mech, a Headquarters, and a ton of defensive towers - obviously running an infinite resources cheat. The screenshot was taken at the end of the run, and Startbugs told us that he managed to almost complete a run. It was an improvement since the game used to crash within 15 minutes in similar conditions. It was a positive message to start the year, but we were careful to share this enthusiasm.


Yes, we use Skype. Yes, we know about other software. No, we won't switch. Yes, we are stubborn.

This is a screencap from our group chat on the 2nd of January 2024. It goes like this:

Starbugs: Some good news for the start of the year. 5 more minutes till I finish a survival run in multiplayer!
Angin3: But you’re cheating! Doesn’t count!
Starbugs: shut up
Prosatanos: That’s not a real base, still cool tho
Starbugs: Smartasses. I was trying to be positive here. It used to crash after 15 minutes. You ruined everything! I won’t tell you anything anymore!

Most of us were skeptical at this point, as the “base” Starbugs presented wasn’t representative of what you usually see in the game. There were no factories, no power generation setup, or basically anything else. That’s important because every structure you build increases the computational cost for the game. A setup consisting of an HQ and a couple dozen towers using an “unlimited money” cheat is far less resource-intensive. Our snarky comments about Starbugs’ (cheater) tactics did not manage to extinguish his inner flame. Both he and lukaasm braved on, playing through multiplayer run after multiplayer run, fixing numerous bugs on their way.


The benchmark results point out a continuous improvement in data transfer optimization. The reduction of bytes transferred is one of the most important things we can do to increase performance and ensure a comfortable play experience. At present, the transfer rate is acceptable for a fast internet connection. However, we still have much to improve.

Thanks to your active participation in the closed beta of the multiplayer mode and the data you provided, our team could deduce which components they should pay attention to. Some bugs the programmers encountered during gameplay were a direct result of some game systems being unoptimized for online play. Reworking these allowed our team to improve the game's performance significantly and eliminate many bugs in the process. As you can see in the screenshot above, the results are clearly reflected in our benchmark scores - the lower these lines go, the better the performance.



When you play with others, you might actually have the time to build some more walls! Who would have thought?

After a couple of weeks of intense development and rapid improvements, The Run™ happened. We managed to complete a Survival Mode run, playing as a three-person team. We have done this before, but it was the first time the game felt truly stable, and the performance was acceptable (for this stage of development). We were ecstatic. Then, we repeated our feat a couple more times during our development streams at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios, gradually improving our streaming setup. At one point, one of us even connected from outside the office - and the experience was okay as well. Sure, the distance between the office and Paweł, who worked from home at that time, was more or less ten kilometers. Still - it was an outside network, the data was transferred through Steam’s datagram relay network, and we completed a full playthrough of the Survival mode. It was a success - no doubt.



We all have to sacrifice something for the greater good in co-op. Even your own mech upgrades (I choose to completely ignore the fact that maintenance tools would have made buildings cheaper, which would benefit everyone).

The programmers were quite sure that they could pull off even more. They decided to try running an entire campaign in co-op mode. Given that no one has tried that before, it was a huge undertaking. They started by making sure that the save system was functional. It turned out that it needed a little bit of encouragement, but after some bugfixing, we are now able to save the state of the game on the server. It is currently stored on the server itself and can be loaded from the menu as usual. Once the game is running, the clients can join in, and if they participated in the game, they also receive all their equipment back. This is a very basic implementation - we are still unsure what it will look like in the final game. We have a couple of options to consider - keeping saves on the server, giving each player a copy of the save file, etc. However, we will make our final decisions closer to release - now, we are focused on getting the game running in the first place.


If it's ugly, but works, is it really that ugly?

With a functional save system in place, it was time to start the playthrough. Since the guys playing were programmers, they were able to debug the game on the go and fix all the game-blocking issues they encountered. Naturally, there were a lot of crash bugs, things not working as expected, and other minor inconveniences. However, the bugs that are not obvious at first glance are always the hardest to spot and fix - and there were quite a lot of them.



You can take a guess whether the power plant survived or not.

One of the first such bugs was connected to the radar. As you know, the mech in The Riftbreaker has a short-range radar connected to it, revealing points of interest within a certain radius around the mech. That radar also reveals the fog of war, marking the map cells as ‘discovered.’ Those cells are quite small in our game, and a lot of them can fit into the 15-meter radius of the short-range radar. It turns out that the clients synchronized ALL those revealed cells with the server, each and every frame the game was running. The more players there were, the worse it got. Hundreds of kilobytes of precious data, up to 30 times a second. This bug has been fixed, and clients only send new information to the server.


Remeber to always communicate clearly.

Another bug our team discovered was connected to the objective system and the way we handle its updates. Whenever a player was given a new objective, finished their current one, or when an objective failed (it can happen!), we synchronized the state of the objective system between the client and the server. Sounds logical, right? We thought so, too, until we realized that the mission timer ticking down was an objective update, too. That meant the need to synchronize the system every second. Still doesn’t sound too bad. What made matters truly awful was the fact that we forgot about the mission log - the menu page where you can see the entire history of your campaign. All changes in your mission goals are stored there, including timers. Suddenly, we were facing an update with a massive amount of data every second. We made the decision to exclude timers from the synchronization process, which fixed that bug.


Our tests are usually carefully planned and conducted according to our internal rulesets. Usually. Sometimes we just jump in the deep end and see what happens.

In a similar fashion, the research also caused problems with an unnecessarily high number of updates, but for a different reason. When you add any technology item to the research queue, a timer is displayed, showing you how much longer it takes until it’s done. In reality, however, research is not time-based at all. Every tech item in The Riftbreaker costs a certain amount of download points. Communication Hubs produce those download points at the rate of 1 point per Hub per level. The amount of that resource is updated every frame, meaning it has to be synchronized every frame. Considering that download progress couldn’t have been updated without sending over information about the entire research tree, you get way too much data way too often. Decoupling the research progress and download values from the rest of the research system solved the issue.


Show me what you got.

By this point, you should see a pattern emerging - our systems often send more information than necessary. It was no different in the case of the energy graph system. Each building, power plant, and energy connector is a part of the energy grid in the game. They can get truly massive, as there is no limit to how many structures you can place. What if we told you that the first versions of the co-op build wanted a full synchronization every single frame? Sub-optimal is the mildest way to put it. Luckily, compartmentalization, packing, and reduction of the update frequency also fixed those issues.


Words to live by.

In multiplayer mode, The Riftbreaker relies upon constant communication between the server and its clients to keep the game world state in check. Problems occur when the syncing happens too often or too rarely, as you will learn from our next example. If one player started an HQ upgrade process while the other player was somewhere else on the map, it was possible to get an infinite loop. When the player who was away came back to the base during the construction time, their game would notice that fact… and start another HQ upgrade process underneath. Rinse and repeat, infinite level 2 upgrades, infinite level 2 waves. We decided that some events need to be broadcast globally and reach all players, regardless of their position on the map. That fixed the issue.


You can set up some pretty powerful tactics while working with others.

Apart from fixing bugs, Starbugs and lukaasm ran a round of optimizations on every game component that looked suspiciously big or caused spikes in transfer. If you watched any of our co-op attempt streams, you might have noticed that whenever a player wanted to join the game, there was a huge stutter as they connected to the server. Turns out that the culprit was the MechComponent - a set of properties that every mech in our game has, giving the players the ability to move around and take game actions. The component was absolutely huge for multiplayer standards, generating up to 500 kilobytes of traffic per second per mech. After optimizing that data structure, the boys managed to reduce that rate to about 30 kilobytes a second. It's still too much, but it's a lot closer to the target.



This is one of the symptoms of replication bugs. Thay make the game really hard to play sometimes and might have game-breaking consequences.

The biggest problem we are facing right now is replication. Replication is the process of recreating gameplay state changes from client to server and vice versa. In order to save performance, we divided some processes into those that happen on the client side and those that happen on the server side. When combined, we should have the full picture of what events are happening in the game world - ‘should’ being the keyword here. At the moment, it is possible for the server to ‘think’ that it sent all the necessary data to the clients, but some of that information never reaches their PCs. As a result, we see some strange bugs. For example, if you build walls, some of them are not visible to other players. The buildings player A builds can’t be sold or upgraded by player B. Creatures that died during combat on one player’s screen show up as standing corpses for the other.


After a while you get used to it, but you shouldn't have to get used to something like that. It's our focus at the moment.

There are many possible reasons for this behavior, and we are currently working through them to prevent this phenomenon from being a problem. The server is convinced that the data packets have been uploaded and sent to the client. However, they either never reach their destination or never get sent at all. It is also possible that the packets arrive out of order, and the data in them can no longer be applied to the game state. Either way - we have easy ways to reproduce these issues since they happen all the time. Data packet loss is something that can’t be prevented entirely. All that is left is to experiment, find all the problems that it’s causing, and work around them. It is definitely a complicated task, but we’re sure that we will have it fixed. As soon as we are able to finish a full campaign playthrough, we will begin the next round of the iteration process.



We hope to let you gang up like this with your friends as soon as possible.

For the time being, unfortunately, not as much as you would expect. Despite the huge progress we’ve made, we’re still not ready to release the co-op mode to the beta testers. We have our hands full trying to fix the issues we have discovered ourselves. The list of known problems would probably grow by an order of magnitude once other people joined in. Their feedback would be lost or become irrelevant over time. Once again, we need to ask you for your patience. We will update the beta once we have a stable build and decide that we are ready for public scrutiny.


I mean, how long can you play with yourself before you get bored?

Still, there is good news. The previous round of beta testing, which was focused solely on PVP and networking aspects of the game, was a major success for us. The data you gave us has led to major breakthroughs, and we are sure that it is going to repeat once we add co-op into the mix. No effort from a team of 15 people (not all of whom work on the multiplayer mode) can beat the collective power of the internet. For this reason, you can be sure that we will give you the chance to try out the co-op in closed beta conditions as soon as we are physically (and mentally) ready to take on the challenge.



A perfect summary of our progress. We are going in the right direction, but sometimes things go sideways!

The past few weeks of work have been very fruitful, leading the co-op mode for The Riftbreaker to reach the most promising state yet. It finally feels like a real game and a fun one to boot. While we’re not ready to release a coop beta build yet, we encourage you to sign up for the waiting list, as public testing is very important to us. We plan to start it as soon as we have all the elements in the right places. For the time being, join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios, where we publish our daily changelogs and share even more information about what’s going on in the studios. Join our streams on Tuesdays and Thursdays at https://www.twitch.tv/exorstudios to have a chance to see our live playthroughs and chat with us. Things are good. Just let us cook a “bit” more.

We reserve the right to contact only select participants.


EXOR Studios