Hello Riftbreakers!
We would like to invite you all to participate in the closed beta test of Survival Mode in the new Crystal Caverns biome from the upcoming World Expansion! If you have missed the last week’s announcement of the release date,
follow this link. It contains all the information about what’s coming to you on May 29th. Now, let’s talk about the contents of this experimental update.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker_Into_The_Dark/
The Experimental Beta update allows you to play survival in the Crystal Caverns biome on all difficulty levels. This means full, unrestricted access to all the new monsters, technologies, weapons, and game mechanics, including wall excavation. We would love to hear all your thoughts about the new biome and what you think we should improve ahead of release. This update also allows you to try out the new technologies in other biomes of Galatea 37 - the research trees have all been updated to accommodate the 70+ new tech items.
All of this content will come to you as a free update on May 29th.
This Beta
does not contain any new Story Campaign content. That will be a part of the paid Into the Dark DLC, and we want to keep it secret until release. There’s some pretty sweet stuff waiting for you in this expansion!
Please note that this is a beta test. Many things are still unfinished, unbalanced, or use placeholder assets. Errors are expected. The game might crash or break - please report all such instances to us either on the Steam Forum or our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. We have already fixed a lot of issues during the closed beta period, so you should be fine, but it’s always good to keep that in mind.
This update is (most likely) incompatible with any current mods. Please remove all mods before playing.
MAKE SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR SAVE FILES! Make a copy of 'The Riftbreaker' folder from your documents and keep it safe.
[h3]With all these warnings out of the way, here’s how to access the experimental branch:[/h3]
- create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)
- disable Steam Cloud save backup for The Riftbreaker
- go to your Steam Library
- right-click on The Riftbreaker
- select 'Properties,’ then 'Betas,’ and use the following password: IknowWhatImDoing
After that, you will be able to choose 'experimental' from the drop-down menu. Download the update, play the game, and let us know if you encounter any issues. We also have a channel on our Discord: #rb-experimental-feedback - we highly encourage you to join in and share your feedback.
Since we have already conducted some closed beta tests with our Discord members, we have two changelog versions for you. The first is a full changelog with the full contents of the update. This is meant for everyone who has not played Crystal Caverns yet. The second changelog contains fixes and changes we have introduced since the last beta. This one is meant for those of you who have already played the update. We hope that dividing the changelog into these two versions will make it easier for you to find the information that you want.
[h2]
The Riftbreaker World Expansion II Experimental Beta, May 16th, 2023. Click 'Show Details' for Changelog:[/h2]
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New Features and Content
- New Survival Mode Biome: Crystal Caverns - a new survival mode map taking place in an entirely new underground biome. It introduces a completely new rock excavation mechanic - you will have to make room for your base and you will be able to shape the terrain to your advantage. Resources are plentiful, but traditional ways of generating electricity work only to a limited degree. You will have to develop an entirely new set of skills to survive in the cavern system beneath the surface of Galatea 37. The new biome comes with a complete set of new species of flora, fauna, as well as new technologies - all described below
- New Creature: Crawlog. A fast, relentless melee attacker that may rise up from the dead if you leave its body intact.
- New Creature: Gulgor. A slower, more bulky creature that prefers to attack from a safe distance. Shoots volleys of cryo-damage projectiles.
- New Creature: Necrodon. A mysterious, menacing support creature that lurks the caves of Galatea 37, summoning crystallized versions of Galatean creatures, as well as resurrecting fallen ones. You might have seen it in some places around Galatea 37 before - it has received a significant reward.
- New Creature: Drillgor. It's a very large creature that rushes for the player's headquarters at the beginning of each attack wave, drilling a tunnel for the other creatures to follow. It will generally ignore the player and tries to dig in a straight line.
- New Creature Variant: Cave Gnerot. It's a Gnerot strain that adapted to living in the new biome and taken on a new form of camouflage.
- New Creature Variant: Crystaros. It's a species that is quite similar to Stregaros, but dropped its chitinous carapace in favor of utilizing crystalline growth as its armor.
- New Creature Variant: Canomortus. Its origins are unknown, but the creature resembles a reanimated corpse of a canoptrix and shares most of its behavior and properties.
- New Creature Variant: Arachnomortus. Similarily to Canomortus, this creature seems to be a reanimated husk of a regular Arachnoid. However, instead of secreting acid from its tail gland, the creature can form crystal shards to shoot at enemies instead.
- New ambient creatures of the Crystal Caverns biome - Crysders and Crystugs - have been added to the Crystal Caverns biome. Crystugs are distant relatives of the Moltug species. They carry beautiful, crystalline 'shells' on their backs.
- Added a new type of resource deposit - Wind Tunnel. It's a spot of increased wind speed that allows the player to take advantage of wind power in the Crystal Caverns biome.
- The ruins system is now complete and enabled by default. Destroyed buildings will leave ruins behind that can be reconstructed into the original building for their full resource cost and build time using the repair tool. Ruins stay behind indefinitely, so you don't have to worry about them disappearing on you. Ruins can be removed using the deconstruction tool.
- Expanded research tree with 75 new research items. [WORK IN PROGRESS - items are missing their icons and some research is not functional yet]
- Added a new building category - Traps. Traps are completely flat structures that trigger when an enemy steps on them. Traps have a veriety of different effects that will help you defend your structures from incoming attacks. They do not require ammunition or energy to operate. There are 6 distinct trap types available, some of them can be researched while some are available as bioanomaly reward unlocks. [WORK IN PROGRESS - placeholder icons, not balanced]
- Added a new tower - Loot Collector Drone Tower that spawns drones that collect loot for the player within the operating radius of the tower.
- Added a new tower - Acid Spitter Tower. This liquid-based tower shoots acid projectiles that do not deal any direct damage. Instead, they leave trails of acid on the ground that deal acid damage to enemies walking through them.
- Added a new building - Automated Resource Excavator that spawns drones which collect resources of all types withing the building's area of operation. This is a universal resource collector building, that can operate on multiple resource deposits, but with lower efficiency than specialized buildings.
- Added a new building - Energy Pylon. This building is used to connect separated energy grids to the main energy grid in a given location. It has a long construction time and is relatively expensive, but it enables easy maintanance of remote bases without the need of creating very long power lines. [WORK IN PROGRESS - temporary mesh]
- Added a new projectile weapon: Bouncing Blades - The weapon shoots a spinning blade disc that pierces through enemies and bounces after colliding with walls. [WORK IN PROGRESS - not balanced]
- Added a new projectile weapon: Crystal Gun. This weapons shoots crystal projectiles that deal physical damage and shatter into another projectile upon hitting the target. The 'splinter' projectiles deal 100% of the damage of the original. [WORK IN PROGRESS - not balanced]
- Added a new projectile weapon: Lava Gun. Shoots a fireball that explodes on impact, dealing area damage, as well as setting enemies on fire. [WORK IN PROGRESS - not balanced]
- Added a new weapon: Fire Spitter. This weapon shoots projectiles that deal no impact damage, but set the impact area on fire. That location burns for a while,delaing fire damage to enemies and setting them on fire as well. [WORK IN PROGRESS - not balanced]
- Added a new weapon: Acid Spitter. This weapon works very similarily to the Fire Spitter, bud deals acid damage instead. [WORK IN PROGRESS - not balanced]
- Added a new weapon: Cryo Spitter. Same case as the two weapons above, but with cryo damage and a slow down effect this time. [WORK IN PROGRESS - not balanced]
- Added a new melee weapon: Sonic Fist. They are slower compared to the regular power fists and deal physical damage instead of energy damage. However, they have a longer effective range, as each hit propels a small shockwave in the direction of the attack, dealing damage to enemies further back from Mr. Riggs. [WORK IN PROGRESS - not balanced]
- Added a new melee weapon: Seismic Pickaxe. It's a weapon that is similar to the Hammer, but deals area damage in a different manner. Instead of dealing damage in a large radius, the impact force is focused forward, creating a narrow, but long shockwave. [WORK IN PROGRESS - not balanced]
- Added a new Mech Upgrade: Gathering Tools - Installing this upgrade module gives Mr. Riggs a loot collecting drone, increases the mech radar range, and movement speed. Higher quality modules also upgrade other, randomized stats.
- Added a new Mech Upgrade: Discovery Tools - Installing this upgrade module gives Mr. Riggs a loot collecting drone, increases the resource drop rate, and mod drop rate. Higher quality modules also upgrade other, randomized stats.
- Added a new consumbale - Sonic Grenades. They are much weaker than regular, explosive grenades, but have a higher area of effect. [WORK IN PROGRESS - not balanced]
- Added a new consumable: Holo Decoy. Once set, enemies will target the decoy instead of Mr. Riggs. The decoy has a large amount of HP, giving you a chance to escape from a tough fight or to target a specific enemy.
- Added a new consumable: Cryo Sentry. It's a cryo damage counterpart of the regular sentry tower consumable.
- Added a new consumable: Flare. It's a throwable item that shines a bright light on the surrounding objects. It can be useful during exploration of dark places, where you can't set up permanent lighting.
- New Skill: Flame Wave. It will send a travelling wall of flames in the direction that Mr. Riggs is facing, dealing massive fire damage to enemies.
- New Skill: Antimatter Ball. It sends a ball of antimatter (duh) that explodes on contact with an obstacle and deals energy damage to all enemies in its vicinity as it is travelling through air.
- New Skill: Generator Overcharge. It sends an energy shockwave to stun and damage enemies and boosts the Force Shield recharge speed.
- Completing Campaign Outposts for the Volcanic Area, Radioactive Desert and Acidic Plains will grant the player a reward in a form of unlocking a unique blueprint. The unlock will persist across game saves.
- Crafting costs have been added for new weapons, items and consumables.
- Added three new skins for Mr. Riggs as rewards for; completing the Into the Dark Story Campaign, completing Survival Mode in the Crystal Caverns biome, as well as one that is unlockable via bioanomaly drop.
- Added new cosmetics: Crystal Floor. Obtainable from opening bioanomalies.
- Added new cosmetics: Crystal Lamps. Obtainable from opening bioanomalies.
- Added a new bioanomaly variant for the Crystal Caverns biome.
- Added a new random encounter event - Crystal Growth. For a limited period of time crystals grow rapidly in one location on the map, allowing you to quickly gather a large amount of rare resources.
- Added a new random encounter event: Falling Stalactites. Similar to meteor shower - stalactites start falling from the cave ceiling and deal damage to all objects in the affected area.
- All new species have been added to the bestiary. There are no descriptions yet, but all the functional info and images are there.
- Added multiple new map tiles for the Jungle, Acid, Magma and Desert biomes to improve map variety.
Changes
- Resources, bioanomalies and other points of interest that are detected using radar will show up as 'unknown' on the minimap. They will change to their regular minimap icons once they are observed directly. This change affects all biomes, so we would love to hear your feedback on this.
- Introduced higher difficulty attack waves for Hard and Brutal difficulties for the Acidic Plains, Radioactive Desert and Volcanic Area biomes in campaign mode. The campaign mode should provide a better challenge now.
- Added Metallic Valley biome attack waves to the HQ attack pool after completing the Metal Terror Campaign.
- Added difficulty level scaling for the Shegret attack event. It happens more oftern in the Crystal Caverns biome and is more significant than it used to.
- Flammable objects will now catch fire from incidental sources, such as burning debris spawned from explosions. Even more wildfires!
- Stone and Metal-based lifeforms are no longer flammable.
- Changed the Carbonium Power Plant energy output from 50/100/150 to 60/120/180.
- Increased the Arachnoid Sentinel 'agressive' state trigger distance to match other species.
- Introduced a large number of improvements and fixes to our GUI . With these changes, implementing navigation and interaction functionalities should be a lot easier for us, and less buggy.
- Volcanic Rock Rain in Magma Survival has been shortened (30-90 seconds changed to 30-60).
- Large Cryoplant collisions are now slightly smaller, making it easier to navigate the biome.
- Wild Phirians will no longer attack other units on the map.
- Bouncing Blades can now cut vegetation.
Graphics
- Added a per-object, camera-based object culling system that allows the player to see through tall objects. Rocks will no longer obstruct your view when passing underneath rock arches. All game tiles have been adapted to take advantage of this technique. You can read more about it here.
- Rendering upgrade: Tiled Deferred Shading. This rendering technique handles scenes with large numbers of dynamic lights more efficiently. It provides a 10-15% GPU performance boost on average. You can read all about it in our article from a couple of weeks ago.
- Improved non-raytraced soft shadows. The shadows now look much more natural and feature a variable penumbra. In human terms - shadows will be sharper and more defined at noon and more subtle in the morning, when the sun is softer.
- Added two new loading screen artworks for the Crystal Caverns biome.
- Added a custom Rift Station icon for the minimap to make locating it easier, especially in large bases.
- Added an 'unknown' marker icon for the minimap. This icon appears when the player has discovered something important with their radar, but has not yet revealed what it is from within the fog of war.
- Added a custom minimap icon for bioanomalies.
- Changed the icon of railgun towers in the Alien Research tab of the Research screen.
Sound
- Added a new music playlist - anticipation. A new set of "anticipation" music, played in a loop to prepare the player for an incoming significant attack wave. At present, it triggers when you upgrade the Headquarters, before each significant attack in the Story Campaign and during the final sequence of the Survival Run.
Fixes
- Introduced a huge number of fixes and optimizations to nearly all game systems. Most of the changes we made have been aimed at the multiplayer portion of the game, but they should still positively affect the game's stability and performance.
- Made changes to the random volume selection algorithm to prevent objectives from spawning in one area all the time.
- Fixed numerous crashes and errors - way too many to list.
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[h3]If you've played the beta before, this are the changes introduced since the last build.[/h3][expand]
Changes
- Manual drilling (using Mr. Riggs' drilling arm) is now much faster thanks to a series of tweaks. It also has an animation!
- Destructible wall 'trail' effect fades out faster to increase visibility during digging.
- Crystal Gun has been updated with a new model and new projectiles.
- Crystal Gun has been moved to the Low Caliber Ammo category.
- Crafting costs have been added for new weapons, items and consumables.
- Pickaxe now deals area damage instead of physical to enable digging through rocks.
- Damage Trail skills of all variants now deal damage more often.
- Added an icon for 'Charges Left' stat for traps.
- Acid Spitter Towers level 2 and 3 deal more damage.
- Loot added to the crystal creeper prototype.
- Added plenty of new descriptions and localizations - English and Polish for now.
- Spitter projectiles have been updated with physical, deforming meshes.
- Spitter weapons now have a new target marker.
- All Traps are now fully functional - they have preper damage types, effects, costs. Models are still missing from some of them.
Fixes
- Added many materials to precache, which should reduce stuttering during gameplay.
- Fixed bugs with mismatching destructible cavern walls.
- Fixed a problem that could cause the game log to grow uncontrollably because of a certain character.
- Fixed problems that caused the GPU benchmark not to launch properly in previous beta versions.
- Fixed the offset of the 'Restart' button on the mission end screen.
- Fixed a problem in GUI that caused the last line of the research description to be cut off.
- Fixed Flare consumable collisions.
- Fixed errors in descriptions and names of certain items.
- Fixed the screenshot aspect ratio and alignemnt on the Load Game screen.
- Fixed the 'missing' icon size and alignemnt on the Mod Management screen.
- Spitter weapons should now display their weapon stats correctly.
- Slight change in research tree width to prevent scrollbar appearing after adding new research items.
- Fixed animation time statistics for melee weapons.
- Fixed effects attachments placement in Acid Spitter Towers.
- Hundreds of other small fixes, big fixes and optimizations.
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[h3]We're looking forward to hearing what you think about the new biome![/h3]EXOR Studios
Mr. Riggs likes making an explosive entrance.
We expand the tile pool to give you more nice places to line with the bodies of your enemies.
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.