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Third attempt at testing the developer build of The Riftbreaker before our new experimental release planned for the end of this week/beginning of the next one. Come on and join us! www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
The Riftbreaker News
Coming Soon: Economy Management Screen
Hello Riftbreakers!
The Riftbreaker has always been viewed by us as a project that we are going to keep developing and improving for a long time. All the insights you have been sharing with us are a large part of the improvement process. A large number of our players have been letting us know that they would love to have a more significant degree of control over the economy of their bases and outposts. We’re happy to let you know that we’ve heard your feedback, and we are working on an entirely new economy management screen that will, hopefully, help you optimize your builds even further. This article will also tell you about the current economy management system and what issues we want to fix with our brand-new screen.
Simple enough... If you have only one base to take care of.
Let’s start by talking about the current display of incoming and outgoing resources. Things are quite easy when you are playing the Survival Mode or if you’re just starting in the Campaign Mode and only have your Headquarters set up. The resource balance display in the top right corner of the screen shows you the current values for resource production and usage for all structures in your base. Color-coded numbers let you know if you are running at a profit or at a loss and warn you about the possibility of running into resource shortages.
Our system allows you to utilize your resources in any place on the planet.
Keeping track of resources gets more complex when we add more bases into the mix. Over the course of The Riftbreaker Campaign, you will likely end up with several outposts in distant biomes. Each of those outposts will probably have its own production chain running, supplying you with advanced and rare resources necessary to complete your mission objectives. In order to simplify the logistics of running multiple bases at once, we made the decision to pool the resources from all outposts into global storage. This solution allows you to mine uranium in the Desert and then use that uranium to power a Nuclear Power Plant in the Volcanic region, for example.
After completing all local objectives, the Orbital Scanner screen gives you the basic stats for the outpost. However, that leaves a lot to be desired.
After setting up a couple of such outposts, it might become unclear where the majority of resources actually come from, especially if you’re getting most of your resources from cultivating various plants and crystals. Currently, you can check the status of each of your outposts on the Orbital Scanner menu screen. If you have no outstanding local objectives, the game will display the number of buildings for the selected outpost and the resource consumption/production balance. In most cases, this is enough to get by. However, if you want to run a very optimized supply and production chain, you might run into problems.
To give you more information about the ongoing production within your bases, we will introduce a new economy management screen. It will feature a couple of key functionalities that will give you a higher degree of control and simplify the management aspect, especially for large and complex production systems. Please bear in mind that the functionalities described here are not finalized yet. It is possible that we will find ways to improve the user experience and make relevant changes before this feature makes it into the live version of The Riftbreaker. This is all work in progress!
Behold the glory of indie game preproduction! Before we start implementing any sort of functionality, we create a simple mockup to see if it makes sense. This is obviously just an example that we're going to build upon, not the finished product!
The economy management screen will display a list of all the individual types of buildings present in your base. You will get information on how many buildings of a given type you have and what resources those buildings consume and produce. This will enable you to figure out quickly which facilities are eating up your resources and if that is a cause for concern in the long run. You will be able to identify potential problems and address them much more efficiently.
Thanks to the new screen, you will be able to turn off any type of facility with just a simple click.
The second major feature of the economy management screen is the ability to control large parts of your economy with just a single click, thanks to the quick switch on/off button. For example - you are running low on power and there is an attack wave incoming. From the management screen you can choose to turn off all the non-essential buildings, freeing up the resources necessary to run your defensive towers and armories. It’s the sci-fi cliche “I’m rerouting all power to weapons systems” personified! Well, not exactly personified - it’s still just a button.
Upgrading multiple buildings of the same kind will also get a lot easier.
Another selling point for this new screen is the ability to make changes and improvements to your base without the micromanagement aspect. The new menu screen will let you upgrade, sell and repair buildings with a single click. This will give you the ability to improve all your solar panels from level 1 to level 2 with just a click, provided you have the necessary technology and resources, of course. The screen will also inform you about the changes to your economy such a change would bring and allow you to make an informed decision about whether you want to do it or not. You won’t have to find and upgrade all the individual buildings yourself anymore.
The Economy Management screen will feature individual tabs for all outposts that make up your production chain around Galatea 37. Together with an additional planned feature that will allow you to assign custom names to your outposts, you will never lose track of your resource production again. We will also have a summary screen to consolidate all that information for you.
This is just one of the quality-of-life improvements that we are planning to add to the game leading up to the release of the second World Expansion - which you should totally wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker__World_Expansion_II/
Huge thanks to everyone who voted for this suggestion on the Feature Upvote suggestion board - https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. Your feedback helps us decide the course of action for future updates and patches. We hope that you will enjoy this new feature as well as many others that are coming your way - we can’t wait to tell you what else we’ve got in store for you!
Have a nice weekend!
EXOR Studios
The Riftbreaker has always been viewed by us as a project that we are going to keep developing and improving for a long time. All the insights you have been sharing with us are a large part of the improvement process. A large number of our players have been letting us know that they would love to have a more significant degree of control over the economy of their bases and outposts. We’re happy to let you know that we’ve heard your feedback, and we are working on an entirely new economy management screen that will, hopefully, help you optimize your builds even further. This article will also tell you about the current economy management system and what issues we want to fix with our brand-new screen.
Simple enough... If you have only one base to take care of.Let’s start by talking about the current display of incoming and outgoing resources. Things are quite easy when you are playing the Survival Mode or if you’re just starting in the Campaign Mode and only have your Headquarters set up. The resource balance display in the top right corner of the screen shows you the current values for resource production and usage for all structures in your base. Color-coded numbers let you know if you are running at a profit or at a loss and warn you about the possibility of running into resource shortages.
Our system allows you to utilize your resources in any place on the planet.Keeping track of resources gets more complex when we add more bases into the mix. Over the course of The Riftbreaker Campaign, you will likely end up with several outposts in distant biomes. Each of those outposts will probably have its own production chain running, supplying you with advanced and rare resources necessary to complete your mission objectives. In order to simplify the logistics of running multiple bases at once, we made the decision to pool the resources from all outposts into global storage. This solution allows you to mine uranium in the Desert and then use that uranium to power a Nuclear Power Plant in the Volcanic region, for example.
After completing all local objectives, the Orbital Scanner screen gives you the basic stats for the outpost. However, that leaves a lot to be desired.After setting up a couple of such outposts, it might become unclear where the majority of resources actually come from, especially if you’re getting most of your resources from cultivating various plants and crystals. Currently, you can check the status of each of your outposts on the Orbital Scanner menu screen. If you have no outstanding local objectives, the game will display the number of buildings for the selected outpost and the resource consumption/production balance. In most cases, this is enough to get by. However, if you want to run a very optimized supply and production chain, you might run into problems.
To give you more information about the ongoing production within your bases, we will introduce a new economy management screen. It will feature a couple of key functionalities that will give you a higher degree of control and simplify the management aspect, especially for large and complex production systems. Please bear in mind that the functionalities described here are not finalized yet. It is possible that we will find ways to improve the user experience and make relevant changes before this feature makes it into the live version of The Riftbreaker. This is all work in progress!
Behold the glory of indie game preproduction! Before we start implementing any sort of functionality, we create a simple mockup to see if it makes sense. This is obviously just an example that we're going to build upon, not the finished product!The economy management screen will display a list of all the individual types of buildings present in your base. You will get information on how many buildings of a given type you have and what resources those buildings consume and produce. This will enable you to figure out quickly which facilities are eating up your resources and if that is a cause for concern in the long run. You will be able to identify potential problems and address them much more efficiently.
Thanks to the new screen, you will be able to turn off any type of facility with just a simple click.The second major feature of the economy management screen is the ability to control large parts of your economy with just a single click, thanks to the quick switch on/off button. For example - you are running low on power and there is an attack wave incoming. From the management screen you can choose to turn off all the non-essential buildings, freeing up the resources necessary to run your defensive towers and armories. It’s the sci-fi cliche “I’m rerouting all power to weapons systems” personified! Well, not exactly personified - it’s still just a button.
Upgrading multiple buildings of the same kind will also get a lot easier.Another selling point for this new screen is the ability to make changes and improvements to your base without the micromanagement aspect. The new menu screen will let you upgrade, sell and repair buildings with a single click. This will give you the ability to improve all your solar panels from level 1 to level 2 with just a click, provided you have the necessary technology and resources, of course. The screen will also inform you about the changes to your economy such a change would bring and allow you to make an informed decision about whether you want to do it or not. You won’t have to find and upgrade all the individual buildings yourself anymore.
The Economy Management screen will feature individual tabs for all outposts that make up your production chain around Galatea 37. Together with an additional planned feature that will allow you to assign custom names to your outposts, you will never lose track of your resource production again. We will also have a summary screen to consolidate all that information for you.
This is just one of the quality-of-life improvements that we are planning to add to the game leading up to the release of the second World Expansion - which you should totally wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker__World_Expansion_II/
Huge thanks to everyone who voted for this suggestion on the Feature Upvote suggestion board - https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. Your feedback helps us decide the course of action for future updates and patches. We hope that you will enjoy this new feature as well as many others that are coming your way - we can’t wait to tell you what else we’ve got in store for you!
Have a nice weekend!
EXOR Studios
Live on Twitch
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
Year One In Review: Plans For The Future
Hello Riftbreakers!
14th of October 2021 was a special day for us. On that day, we released the 1.0 version of The Riftbreaker. It was a huge milestone for us and the biggest launch of any EXOR Studios' titles. Over the course of the year, the game changed a lot - in a large part thanks to your thoughtful feedback. We managed to publish more than 20 updates, including the first World Expansion - Metal Terror. The Riftbreaker has sold over 500.000 copies across all platforms, with Game Pass users boosting the total number of players to over 1.000.000!
The success of The Riftbreaker allowed us to continue improving the game and motivated us to formulate plans for the future. We have presented them to you in the form of our roadmap. However, a roadmap doesn't leave a lot of room for an open dialog. This is why we have recently opened a suggestion board over at https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. In the first couple of weeks, you have made over 250 suggestions already, and there are some clear favorites among them. In this article, we will highlight and discuss the top 10 threads on the Feature Upvote board and tell you what we are planning to do about them!
If you see a suggestion that you like in this article, click the title - the link will take you directly to that topic on the board!
[h3]CO-OP MULTIPLAYER[/h3]
A clear winner. No questions asked. It’s in development, and we’ve said a lot about it already. It will most likely be one of the major updates of 2023, which is going to be preceded by many beta tests, both closed and public. For a more in-depth take on this subject, we highly recommend reading this article.
[h3]EXTENDED STORY CAMPAIGN[/h3]
We are already developing a meaningful extension to the original Story Campaign. It will allow you to continue playing even after finishing the main storyline, keeping all your buildings and tech in place. We want to give you the ability to generate additional missions on all biomes in the game. We’re also thinking of adding some more long-term objectives always to give you something to strive for. We aim to deliver on this in 2023.
[h3]ECONOMY MANAGEMENT SCREEN[/h3]
The first surprise arrives at the number 3 spot! We honestly had no idea that this feature was so badly needed by so many of you. We knew that you were asking for it, and we had this on our internal roadmap for months, but always thought of it as a low-priority ‘nice-to-have’ rather than a ‘must-have.’ Needless to say, we have bumped up the priority of this feature. We're aiming to release this feature by the end of 2022, but it is not certain yet.
[h3]BIOME BOSSES[/h3]
Another eye-opening suggestion. Even though we do have a couple of rare and powerful variants of creatures from each of the biomes, many of you do not consider them ‘real’ bosses. We can see why - despite the high power level, they do not require you to switch up your combat style and tactics. They also do not pose any kinds of unique challenges, as you are most likely to stumble upon them during random encounters or final mission waves. We have plans for true arena bosses, but currently, there is no ETA for them. They need to come in at the right moments in the game.
[h3]BIGGER DEFENSIVE TOWERS[/h3]
This is a real shocker as we had no idea there was any demand for bigger guns among our community members. Currently, the only defensive towers that differ in their form factor from regular sentinel towers are the Heavy Artillery and Drone Towers (both variants of the latter). We assumed that 1x1 size is generally accepted as the standard and did not want to reinvent the wheel. However, this suggestion gives us encouragement to experiment some more and offer you some bigger, more powerful, and more expensive pieces of gear moving forward. The most probable ETA for the first batch is the World Expansion II update.
[h3]NEW BIOMES[/h3]
This point needs no real explanation - new biomes are definitely going to happen. Our current plan is to introduce a new biome with each of the World Expansions we release for the game. All biomes are going to get their own sets of flora, fauna, and unique features and events, just like in the case of the Metallic Valley in the Metal Terror expansion. We are also going to follow the same release model for all such updates - all mechanical content (buildings, technologies, weapons, creatures) is going to be available for free for everyone in the Survival Mode. Stories that take place in those new biomes are going to be treated as paid expansions. Creating an entirely new biome and its own campaign takes us about half a year. You can expect World Expansion II to arrive in early 2023.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker__World_Expansion_II/
[h3]ALIEN STRONGHOLD[/h3]
This is an idea that we tried out already in the last mission of the Metal Terror Story Campaign. The idea is very simple - Mr. Riggs enters an enclosed space inhabited by hostile species. Battling against various types of defensive structures and enemy units, Riggs eventually reaches the final arena for a spectacular showdown. The rewards for completing such a run can be varied, from piles of resources to entirely new technology blueprints. The popularity of this suggestion clearly shows us that this is something we should definitely think about.
[h3]ABILITY TO RENAME OUTPOSTS AT WILL[/h3]
A very straightforward request and one that we should have implemented from the start. Some explanation first. When you discover a new area of the planet through the Orbital Scanner interface, at first, it is named after the main mission objective connected to that place, for example, ‘Scan the area for Uranium Ore samples.’ After the mission is completed, if you set up a permanent outpost in such a place, it changes its name to “Outpost X”. We implemented this to make sure that you know you have completed all objectives on any given map and that they were no longer relevant to the story. However, what we achieved, was a confusing system with up to 10 outposts only distinguishable by their location on the planet. This is not good enough, and we will implement this change as a part of the Extended Story Campaign update.
[h3]NEW BUILDINGS AND RESEARCH[/h3]
These will, of course, successively be making their way into the game as we add more biomes and World Expansion content. We are monitoring Feature Upvote boards, looking for the ones that you would like to see the most in addition to the ones we are planning ourselves. Again, this is a process and not a one-time upgrade, so it is difficult to give you an exact ETA on this.
[h3]SUPERWEAPON BUILDINGS[/h3]
This suggestion might look quite similar to the bigger defensive towers. However, this idea is not about just bigger towers but unique buildings that serve as rewards for completing the entire technology tree. SenorRagequit included examples such as a massive nuke silo or an earthquake generator. This idea is really interesting and would offer a reward for putting the effort into discovering all the branches of the research tree, but also poses some challenges. What do we do if the technology tree changes? What happens if nodes get added or removed? What if we want to rework it entirely? Those questions aside, it’s a brilliant idea.
[h3]CONCLUSION[/h3]
Our first couple of weeks spent on Feature Upvote was an exciting experience. We feel that thanks to structuring your ideas and suggestions this way, we can better tailor our solutions to fit your actual needs and expectations. If you have an idea on how to make The Riftbreaker a better game, go to https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com and create a post. And if you’d like to have an influence on which suggestions make it into the game, upvote the ideas that suit you. We also wait for your feedback at www.discord.gg/exorstudios and here on the forum.
Here’s to even more great years together!
EXOR Studios
Live on Twitch
The Riftbreaker is going to be one-year-old tomorrow! It's development is far from over, though, as we have a lot of surprises waiting for you. Come and join us live at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios