The Riftbreaker News

Hello!

Last time we jumped into the world of designing buildings and their animations. We told you what principles we follow in order to achieve a clear and consistent visual style. Today we would like to follow up by talking about the creatures of Galatea 37 and Mr. Riggs himself. While creatures and buildings are completely different categories of game objects, you will see that there is a lot of overlap when it comes to designing them. We will also tell you a little bit about how we animate our creatures and make them behave in an organic, believable way.

Most Canoptrix simply mind their own business if you don't provoke them. They even try to move away from Mr. Riggs.

Let’s start with the creature design. In The Riftbreaker you visit a distant planet, so naturally, we want the creatures to feel strange and alien. The ones that you can currently see in the game (during our streams, for example, Tue & Thu, 3 PM CET) are ‘sci-fi classics’. Their size and features are meant to give you a general idea of what they’re capable of. The Canoptrix are small, wolf-like creatures that travel, hunt and attack in packs. Their strength lies in numbers. Arachnoids live in large colonies and are quite aggressive. Hammeroceroses are tough and usually calm. The creature’s appearance can tell you a lot about the general characteristics, but what about their behaviors?

Out in the wild, even the nasty Arachnoids seem pretty relaxed. Some dig in the ground looking for food, others just lie down in the sun.

That’s when animations and states come into play. The creatures you meet during your adventure can appear in different states. They can be idle, which means that they will simply go about their day, looking for food, scratching their heads or mingling with other members of the pack. If you annoy or threaten the innocent beasts, they will either start chasing you or try to intimidate you. Finally, when they are in ‘attack mode’ the monsters will do whatever it takes to destroy you. That means they will chase and attack you whenever possible. All creatures have custom animations designed for all states and interaction possibilities.

Poor beast, it didn't even see what was coming. Notice all the different animations and how they blend into each other.

We mentioned Mr. Riggs at the beginning, so how does he fit into the discussion about monsters? The thing that is common for all ‘living’ things in The Riftbreaker is animation blending. This cryptic term simply means that the game doesn’t have to wait until one animation is over to apply another one to the in-game unit. Instead, The Schmetterling Engine will find the points where the two animations can be connected and mixed into one fluent set of moves. This way we achieve a realistic moveset without the need to record hundreds of ‘between’ states.

Here we can see Mr. Riggs quickly switching between various moves almost seamlessly. This also allows us to combine moves, such as slash and dash.

Would you like to learn more about how we approach animating and designing creatures in The Riftbreaker? Let us know in the comments! Don’t forget to join our Discord server at www.discord.gg/exorstudios - if you have any burning questions you can get the answers there the quickest.

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Hello!

It’s time for another look behind the curtains of the design of The Riftbreaker. The action of the game is set hundreds of years into the future, which means that human technology has advanced exponentially. Rift travel, quantum computing and quick 3D printing of buildings are just the tip of an iceberg of technologies Ashley will make use of on her mission on Galatea 37. Anyone thrown into the world of the future would feel out of place, so it is our job to make the tech look somewhat familiar using the tools we have. Today we’ll show you how we do it using modeling and animations.

Solar Panels procect themselves when the conditions aren't right for them.

First of all, as long as it is possible, we try to design our buildings to clearly show their purpose at first glance. The best examples of this practice are Wind Turbines and Solar Panels. While designing these buildings we took the common concepts for how they look like in our times and added some futuristic twists. In the world of the Rifbreaker, the turbines are vertical fans that turn as much of the airflow as they can into electrical energy, thanks to their lightweight, nanofiber mesh that the fan blade is made of. The same philosophy applies to our Solar Panels. They resemble the actual panels you might see around in the real world. What makes them stand out is their ability to follow the Sun’s movement and fold down when the conditions aren’t right for energy collection.

We try to design buildings in such a way that their purpose is known at a glance, either through the design itself or through additional effects.

Things are a little bit different when it comes to buildings like Carbonium and Steel Factories. Normally, we imagine steel and coal production as a multi-person, large-scale operation. In our case, both buildings are automatically operated and considerably smaller than what we are used to. In order to make sure that the players know that they’re looking at we turned to custom animations. Even small elements, such as a drill smashing carbonium chunks into pieces, or blobs of liquid metal flowing along the sides of the factory go a long way when it comes to representing that the building actually does

Even if you don't know exactly what a building does, the effects and animations should let you at least make an educated guess.

We follow the same philosophy even when it comes to more futuristic, advanced buildings that you don’t see every day. The Gas Filtering Plant takes much of its design from water treatment facilities. Communications Hub refracts the light around it while operational to symbolize downloading data. All the little details give The Riftbreaker its characteristic visual style, that’s both pleasant to the eye and easy to follow. If you want to check it out in action, join our live streams!

Tuesdays - 3 PM CET - www.mixer.com/exor_studios
Thursday - 3 PM CET - www.twitch.tv/exorstudios

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In The Riftbreaker the players will have the chance to complete side missions chosen randomly from a pool of events created by us. One such example was the Canoptrix Nest encounter we spoke about earlier this week. This time we will show you the other event we implemented already. It is the first mini-boss fight we have. Be mindful that it is quite primitive in its current state and will definitely change before we release the game.

Some time into a Survival run Mr. Riggs will inform Ashley that an unknown large alien creature has appeared nearby. This is accompanied by much higher activity from Arachnoid Sentinels, large, acid-spitting arthropods (click here to learn more). These creatures can be quite devastating to the base because of their long-range attack that allows them to stay outside the range of Sentinel Towers.

A scaled-up Arachnoid Sentinel model currently holds place for the boss, which is currently in the making.

In order to save the base and resources, Ashley must find the large creature and eliminate it. The creature itself is an enormous Arachnoid, but it is unclear whether that is an effect of mutation or if it serves the role of a brood mother. It’s exceptionally aggressive behavior does not make research any easier. The only real possibility of ever learning more about this creature is to take it down and research the samples later.

The entire concept art for the boss.

Fighting the creature itself is not very difficult, nor should it be. It is obviously tougher and packs a bigger punch than its smaller counterparts, but if you keep your distance you should be fine. The real source of pressure are the swarms of smaller Arachnoids that will keep coming at your base until you defeat the boss. If it happens to spawn during the attack wave, you might find yourself in a lot of trouble. Once defeated. the unusually large Arachnoid will drop a ton of valuable loot and the attacks on your base will cease. That will give you time to repair the damage done to your base and craft some new shiny toys with the collected materials.

Fighting this thing is tough on its own. Add some extra creatures to the mix and you’re in a world of trouble.

The Riftbreaker will feature a varied pool of side events to randomly trigger during your Survival missions. We hope this will keep you on your toes over the course of gameplay and encourage you to go out and explore the rich world of Galatea 37.

A face only a mother could love.

Thoughts? Ideas? Feedback? - www.discord.gg/exorstudios

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Hey everyone!

This is just a reminder that we are live right now on www.twitch.tv/exorstudios and we're testing the latest development build of The Riftbreaker. Join us and make use of the interactive stream events using our chatbot.

See you there!

Hi!

For the past couple of months, we have been streaming The Riftbreaker in Survival Mode. The goal of each Survival Mode session is to survive a set amount of time on a randomized map. You have to search for basic resources, scavenge rare minerals and build up your base from scratch while defeating wave after wave of hostile creatures. There is always plenty of things to do around the base but in order to make things even more interesting, we have started experimenting with random encounters. Let’s talk about the first of them - Canoptrix Nest.

The Nest is not something that you want to see on your path...

First of all - what is a Canoptrix? Well, it is the smallest and by far the most common Galatean creature you can currently see in The Riftbreaker. We have shown it to you before, but here’s a TL;DR for those who might have missed it: it is a relatively small omnivore. Canoptrix live in packs and aren’t usually aggressive until attacked. When provoked, they attack using their sharp claws and teeth. You can see them scattered across the whole planet and emerge from massive nests.



The nests seem to appear out of nowhere once in a while. Every time it happens, the Canoptrix population skyrockets and the animals become very aggressive. Drawn to energy emissions, they will try to destroy the Riftbreaker’s base at all costs. Not much is known about the nest itself - Ashley will have to do a lot of research to discover its true nature. For now, it seems that the nest is a living organism. Canoptrix seem to be either the spawn of this strange thing or to live in symbiosis with it.

Swarms like these will come at you all the time if the nest is on the map. Make sure you have enough fuel for the flamer.

The Canoptrix Nest has a chance to appear at a random time during the Survival Mode run in The Rifbreaker. When it happens, the base will get swarmed with Canoptrix time and again. The only way to stop the constant stream of attacks is to go out into the wild and destroy the Nest itself. The player is rewarded for doing that with a lot of rare minerals and research samples.

Chop it down ASAP!

This side mission is just one of the ideas we have to get the player to leave the safety of the base and to explore the randomized map. The events and their impact on gameplay will vary, and we will tell you about one more such encounter later this week. Do you have any ideas for Survival side missions? Let us know here and on our Discord - www.discord.gg/exorstudios. We are always on the lookout for new sources of inspiration.

See you on the stream! (Tue & Thu, 3 PM CET)

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