Acidic Plains Biome Gets a Revamp

As you know, along with the release of Into the Dark, the second Story Expansion for The Riftbreaker, we are also releasing our second World Expansion. The World Expansion is free for everyone and brings a lot of changes and improvements for the game. Apart from giving you access to the Crystal Caverns biome in Survival mode with all of its features, new tech and equipment, you will also be able to enjoy a lot of changes and improvements for the base game. One such feature is the “Building Ruins” feature we talked about last week. Today we will tell you about another addition we are implementing to improve your gameplay experience - new map tiles we prepared for the Acidic Plains biome.

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First, let’s do a little recap of what map tiles are and what role they play in The Riftbreaker. Maps in The Riftbreaker are randomized to give you a slightly different experience every time you launch the game. Our procedural generation algorithm stitches a full map together from a set of pre-designed tiles handcrafted by level designers. This ensures a natural look and feel of the world and also guarantees that maps will contain all the elements necessary to play the game - resources, spawn points, and many more. A typical survival map is a square composed of 36 such tiles. You can read more about this process in this article.

Mr. Riggs likes making an explosive entrance.

In the current version of the game, the Acidic Plains biome maps are generated from a set of just nine different base tiles. The number might seem small, but thanks to rotation, randomization of props within the tiles themselves, and specific mission generation rules, you can still get decent results and guarantee that each map feels different. However, the more you play, the more patterns you start to notice. We were not really satisfied with that, so we decided to expand the tile pool.

We expand the tile pool to give you more nice places to line with the bodies of your enemies.

The World Expansion update will give you access to ten new tiles, bringing the total up to nineteen (more than double the original number - yay!). If we do a little bit of math (a little simplified math, to be exact - we have parameters to control the generation process to get the results we want), that gives us almost three thousand possible 6x6 base map layout variants. The new tiles also feature elements that we previously had to avoid. One such example is tall rock structures that obstruct the camera view. Now, with the introduction of the camera object culler, tall structures are no longer an issue, so we can use them more freely.

We could spend a long time describing each tile, but we will let the images speak for themselves:

Holes and canyons are a big part of our new tile design approach. You can say the caves influenced us. Objects beneath the main surface of the tile are often covered by the distance fog, making the caverns feel more mysterious. It's spring, so here's a nice flower. Naturally, our first thought was to throw a grenade in there to see what happens. Some tiles are more classic. This example still offers interesting natural protection options. Not all map tiles have to be square. By making a tile like this we can, for example, create large rock structures several hundred meters in length. New tiles are not any less dangerous than the old ones, so be careful while exploring. Who made these circles? Probably aliens. Tall objects will be a much more common occurrence with the camera culler system. Here's how the culler works during building.

The Acidic Plains biome is not the only biome that’s getting special treatment with the World Expansion 2 update. We are also preparing more tiles for the other biomes - we’re just not quite ready to show them off just yet. We can tell you, though, that some of them have a special purpose… If you would like to find out what it is, be on the lookout for future news and join our discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios, where you always get access to the news first!

Have a great weekend!
EXOR Studios