The Riftbreaker News

Bonus points if you can find Roger!

A couple of weeks ago we asked our Discord community what they would like to read about in our devlog. We were given a lot of great ideas and topics. Some of them, such as balancing the game elements, need to wait until we are finished with the game, but the rest of them we can start covering right away. They will be featured here over the next couple of weeks. If you have any additional ideas for articles, let us know! It turns out, quite a few people are interested in how the studio works, how our responsibilities are divided and what our typical week looks like. Well, in our line of work, no two weeks are ever the same and the nature of the things we do changes on a day-to-day basis, but we will do our best regardless.

Ready to battle!

EXOR Studios currently has 14 in-house employees. We operate from our cozy office in the center of Szczecin in north-west Poland. We have 4 spacious rooms at our disposal, plus a kitchen and two bathrooms. Setting the space up to accommodate such a number of people can be a bit tricky, but we did what we could in order to maximize comfort and productivity. The graphics designers have their own room, and so do the programmers. We also have a conference room, which doubles as a dining room. The last available space houses the design/management staff. Such an arrangement gives each of the rooms a clear purpose and lets the specialists communicate with each other without the need of leaving their workspace.

MVP, Employee of the Month, the Year and the Century

There are 4 graphics designers in our team. Their job consists of preparing all the assets that you see in our games - the character and prop models, the menus, and animations. The nature of their work is varied and changes according to the current needs of the project. The graphics designers can work on 2D concept art sketches, sculpt 3D models, create textures, as well as prepare promotional materials for the game. The lead designer overlooks the team’s progress, giving them feedback and assisting in case of problems. The tools they use are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Zbrush and Blender.

Our conference room, shortly after we moved in.

Next up are the programmers. They are elusive creatures, but you can easily catch one by turning a monitor or a coffee machine on. Especially the coffee machine. They are the wizards that maintain the Schmetterling engine, program gameplay features and make game designers’ wishes come true. All of them are well-versed in multiple programming languages but use mainly C++ and Lua scripting. Programming is a very broad subject that can be quite difficult to understand for a layperson. That’s why we have a lead programmer, who distributes the tasks among people according to their specialty.

Insert programmers here.

The lead programmer himself does open-heart surgery on the game engine. Next, we have the tools specialist, who prepares all the game editors that the designers use later, although he’s great at programming gameplay features as well. Then, we have the navigation/AI expert - the person responsible for the dynamic pathfinding in X-Morph: Defense and the behavior of swarms in The Riftbreaker. Then there are two guys who fix all the bugs we make, program new game features, create shaders and help the designers. The last programmer works on GUI and heavy backend stuff. He gets the tasks that nobody else could do and always starts feature description with ‘it works, but…’.

The command center being set up.

The last room is occupied by designers/managerial staff. The people here are responsible for keeping the studio running on all fronts. They deal with the business side of things, take care of all the paperwork and keep the hardware operational. When they are not busy dealing with all the boring, grown-up stuff they also design the game itself. Before anything makes it to the screen it has to be conceptualized first, and it happens right here. When any other member of the team needs consultation on a task they are working on they can come here and work out the details. I (the community manager) also work in this room. This is where our streams happen (that’s also why it gets quite loud here at times).

No time for hardware upgrades, gotta code!

There you go - our roles and office layout. In the next part of the article, we will describe our workflow and what our typical day of work looks like. As always, you are more than welcome to ask questions on our Discord - www.discord.gg/exorstudios

See you next time!

Other social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios

Hi there!

Last week we described the combat system in The Riftbreaker in its present form. It’s not overly complicated, but still gives the players a significant amount of options to adapt to the situation on the battlefield. Today, we are going to focus on our plans for the expansion of the system and the features that we are currently working on. There are lots of them, so let’s jump right in! The feature we expect to bring a lot of depth into gameplay are damage types. This is a complex topic and there will be a lot of new information here. We will do our best to tell you everything you need to know, but if you have any additional questions, feel free to ask us in the comment section and on our Discord server.

Please note that these are our current development plans which might change as we work through these features.

Melee weapons will deal damage according to their category. The Energy Sword that we used up to this point will deal slicing damage, that will be highly effective against non-armored creatures. Apart from that, you will be able to craft blunt weapons, such as power clubs and energy hammers. Slower and heavier, they will be a great choice against lower numbers of stronger enemies. We also plan to add pikes into the mix, that will be able to pierce through armor plates that some enemies will have.



At the moment you can wield only a single melee weapon. Actively using one also prevents you from utilizing the item in your other hand. We do not want it to be the case, so the melee system will receive a complete overhaul before launch. Currently we are planning to make double-wielding a thing, as well as adding the option to use melee weapons along with other items at the same time. We will provide more information about this once we introduce the changes. Pay attention to our streams - fresh features always appear there first.



Distance weapons will make use of different kinds of ammo. Flamethrowers will use fuel, rifles and machine guns - bullets, you know the drill. As a result, the use case for each weapon will be slightly different and encourage experimentation. Additionally, we want to give you the option to enhance your tools of destruction even further. You will be able to modify the effect of each weapon by changing the damage type, adding elemental effects, altering the fire pattern or simply increasing the firepower. This way you can either create highly specialized weapons designed to deal with a single type of creature, or make up for the disadvantages of your favourite gun.

To sum up, there is a lot of changes coming to the combat system in The Riftbreaker. We are going to periodically release information about them and push them to our closed test version. If you would like to apply for access to the test version of the game, you will find the link to our form on Discord. See you there!

Other social media:
www.discord.gg/exorstudios
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios

Hello everyone!

Combat is a major part of gameplay in The Riftbreaker. Galatea 37 is not safe for Ashley and Mr. Riggs. More often than not, your survival will depend on how well you can handle combat scenarios. Our main characters are not defenseless, as they have an ever-expanding arsenal of weapons at their disposal. We have told about (and shown) some of those tools of destruction already, but never really discussed the system that governs the use of weapons in the game. Let’s make up for it this week.



The enemies in The Riftbreaker come in many forms. Some smaller creatures stay in packs, while larger ones prefer a more solitary life. The dynamic pace of the game requires the player to constantly adapt to new scenarios and situations, and choosing the right weapon for the job is a part of that. We try to give each weapon its own set of characteristics and make it useful in its own way. However, when there are too many options, it can be difficult to choose right every time.



Luckily, the futuristic technology available to Riftbreakers solves some of the problems here. First of all, all the weapons you constructed are available to you all the time thanks to the Rift technology. If you decide you would like to equip something, the item is simply teleported right into your hands. Moreover, it is possible to wield two completely different items at the same time, making it possible to be prepared both for small and large-scale encounters. Last, but not the least important aspect is that there are three quick-access slots available for each of Mr. Riggs’ hands. Cycling between the items in these slots is instantaneous. If you run out of ammo or find yourself struggling against a strong enemy, simply change your weapon.



Some weapons will offer you even more flexibility by having an alternative firing mode. Holding the trigger for a bit longer will charge the weapon up. Shots fired this way will have different characteristics to their regular counterparts. For example, a sniper rifle is usually used to take down single targets, but the alt-fire releases an explosive bullet that can obliterate entire groups of enemies. This way you have access to essentially four weapons at the same time. You can even charge one of your weapons up while providing covering fire with the other, thanks to both hands being operated independently from each other. There is a lot of freedom and possibilities here.



Apart from distance weapons, there are also melee weapons available in the game, as well as items that offer protection and utility. However, we will tell you more about those in the next part of this article that will be published later this week. In part 2 we are also going to tell you a little bit about the features that have yet to be implemented, and those which would be nice to have further down the road.

Until the next time!

Other social media:
www.discord.gg/exorstudios
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios

Hello!

Earlier this week we discussed our logo and main art in detail. We explained all the little things and their importance in discovering the game from the perspective of a new user. However, that is not the only job of the logo and key art. In fact, these two assets set the tone for the visual style of the entire game. Today, we would like to tell you how they influence our creative process of creating models, textures and special effects.

We have discussed our building design a couple of times before. You could also see them in our gameplay videos and streams (every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 PM!). Here’s a recap of what we said up until now: our building design is quite futuristic, but also easily recognizable. By looking at the shape, effects, and animations you should be able to guess the purpose of the structure. We don’t want our design to lead players into making mistakes. Having this ruleset in mind we can get down to business - modeling the buildings themselves.

The first and second design phases for the Animal Biomass Power Plant.

Every asset in our game starts as a blockout. It is a simplified model of the building the artist is working on. We make these in order to make decisions about the general silhouette and the characteristic points of a building. After the discussion, the artist introduces adjustments according to feedback, bearing in mind the overall aesthetic of the game. The building must be based on metal and/or artificial materials. No wood or stone - the Riftbreaker technology is far too advanced for those. We also avoid 90-degree angles, as they leave very little room for our dynamic lighting to do some cool work.

The finished product.

The building has to signal that it’s powered up and working - all the effects and animations come into play here. Every building has a unique way of indicating that it is operational. Some - like the Armory, for example - do it by the means of moving parts. You can see that something is being produced and moved to the storage via conveyor belt. Structures that don’t produce such tangible goods signal the player with lights and particle effects - that is the case for the Communications Hub. Either way, they have to look high-tech and clearly make use of energy that the player is gathering.

Here's a blockout of a building that's not released yet. What do you think it is?

‘How does it all relate to the logo?’, you may ask. Well, if we take another look at it it will become clear. Metallic/energy materials? Check. Futuristic, but familiar design? Check. As few 90-degree angles as possible? We got that as well. The color scheme is also consistent with everything you will see in-game. By sticking to our rules we can make sure that nothing looks out of place, and if we want something to look alien and strange, we have an easy way to do so.

The logo, one more time, for reference purposes.

Here comes the classic question: what came first - the egg (the logo) or the hen (visual design). The answer, in our case, is the hen (fish, amphibians, and reptiles used eggs long before birds). We prototyped the first buildings and kept working on them until they felt right. It was a long process but resulted in an unwritten set of guidelines we tend to stick by to this day. After that, we were able to create the logo and the main art in such a way that it is representative of the overall style of The Riftbreaker.

TL;DR - pay attention to details, because we like to hide things in plain sight ;)

See you next time!

Other social media:
www.discord.gg/exorstudios
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios

The animated version of our official logo.

If you ask gamers about the most important thing for them when looking for a new game, you will get a variety of answers. Graphics, gameplay, similarity to previously played games, length of the game… All these things matter. However, before a player has the chance to determine whether any given title fits their criteria, they have to discover the game first. In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded with information. Game developers have no guarantee that whatever information about their game will ever reach anyone.

Luckily, digital storefronts offer discovery queues, where potential users can find new games. In order to make the most of it, the developers have to make sure that their logo and main art are as eye-catching and convey as much information as possible. This week we are going to tell you about our approach to visual representation - creating logos, key art and making sure that they fall in line with the overall visual style of the game.



Let’s start with the logo. It is one of the most important assets for any product. Thanks to a good logo, users can identify the product at a glance. Apart from containing the name of the game, it should also contain something unique. A symbol, that you will be able to use to create recognizable icons. Our logo has gone through several iterations before we arrived at the final version. Let’s take a look at it and discuss its elements.

Look at the detail hidden within the Rift symbol.

First - the font. It is thick and outlined in order to improve visibility and readability when it’s displayed in small size or visible from a distance (this is relevant when you’re attending game shows). In the middle of the logo you can see our main symbol - the stylized letter A. It symbolizes the Rift portal, one of the main aspects of the gameplay and game lore. The rest of the letters are not filled with a solid color, but a metallic material instead to emphasize the building and tech aspects of the gameplay. The tear marks foreshadow that apart from building and exploration, there will also be a lot of fighting in the game. That’s a lot of information packed in the logo alone.

The full version of the art is much larger for the purposes of cropping the image for different uses.

Now it’s time to analyze the main art. Ashley and Mr. Riggs are the centerpieces of this one. They stand on top of the hill, planning their next move on their mission to prepare Galatea 37 for colonization. While Ashley is looking at her holographic HUD, Mr. Riggs stands right beside her, ready for action. It shows you the dynamic between the two characters. One is the brains of the operation, while the other is the protector. You can easily guess that you will be taking control of them while playing. The background elements also convey important information about the Riftbreaker. You can see two moons in the sky, making it certain that the planet you are looking at is not Earth. In the distance, hidden within the lush, exotic vegetation, you can spot the outpost that Ashley and Mr. Riggs set up before their excursion.

Final version of the key art.

When we combine the logo and the key art, your subconscious gives you an idea what the game might be about, making it much more likely that you will check out more information about it. Did we succeed? Would you like to learn more about our creative process and art direction? Let us know in the comments and on our Discord server! - www.discord.gg/exorstudios

Other social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios