The Riftbreaker News

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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:

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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