The Riftbreaker News

We have just published an update to the experimental branch of The Riftbreaker. Thanks to your feedback we have managed to fix a lot of issues with the new content. This update also features more fleshed-out iterations of the Chainsaw and the Laser Sword - we highly encourage you to take a look and see what the new versions are like!

[h2]The Riftbreaker Experimental Update, June 30th, 2022. Package #219, Binaries #476 Changelog:[/h2]

[h3]Features:[/h3]

• The first iteration of player drones has been added. After equipping certain upgrade modules, like Offensive Gear or Maintenance Tools, an accompanying drone will spawn and follow Mr. Riggs around. Drones can (based on their type) repair structures, collect loot, attack enemies, or destroy incoming projectiles. All upgrades come with only one drone, meaning you can have up to four robotic buddies following you at any given time.
  
  GO! GO FORTH AND DO MY BIDDING, LITTLE ONES!
  
  
• Added new Kermon species for the Metallic Valley biome.
  
• Added new Hedroner species for the Metallic Valley biome.
  
• Research tree changes - moved energy walls to alien tree, added dummy energy weapons ammo for heavy plasma to fix a bug with missing ammo.
  

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• Changes were made to the Chainsaw to make it actually usable. Mr. Riggs now has a new animation state for when he is using the chainsaw. Chainsaw sounds play back correctly. Collision boxes have been fixed. Moddable parameters have been set up. Stat ranges were added for all quality levels.
  
  Nobody will be able to stop your lawnmowing sessions.
  
  
• Changes to the sword and laser sword collision mask and laser sword melee collision (now they will not hit the ground and the laser sword will not miss objects that easily)
  
• Changes made to the Laser Sword: higher damage, smaller weapon scale for higher quality levels, moddable parameters set up.
  
  Even the murder hornets melt because of the awesome power of the Laser Sword.
  
  
• Orbital Bombardment and Orbital Laser tweaked. They are now more powerful but have a longer cooldown. Their visual effects have also been changed to make them seem more impactful. Further changes will be coming to these skills.
  
  
  
  
• Weapon sounds added for: laser sword, orbital laser, orbital bombardment, heavy plasma fire and corrosive gun.
  
• Changed the Standard Chainsaw model.
  
• The last building rotation direction is now stored individually for each building in Build Mode.
  
• Added more ground textures for the Metallic Valley.
  
• Changed the footstep effect in liquids.
  
• Added a shield hit effect to various projectiles.
  
• Flurian Plasma Grenades now collide with the shield.
  
• Removed energy damage resistance from Wingmites.
  
• Changed minimap icon sizes for all enemies, projectiles and buildings.
  
• Added effects for Liquid Compressors and Decompressors.
  
• Bioscanner Sentry updated: new model, animations and effects.
  
• Reduced the delay between Wingmite spawns in early Metallic Valley biome survival waves.
  
• The light on the Standard quality Metallic Bioanomaly is now less bright.
  

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed Survival Mode Final Wave preparation time to be 300s instead of 0s :D
  
• Fixed Survival Mode attack waves coming from all directions at once.
  
• Fixed Survival Mode no victory screen bug.
  
• Fixed removing units when no path can be found - prevents units from getting stuck.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when rotating buildings in Build Mode after loading a saved game.
  
• Arachnoid Boss will no longer spawn eggs when it's on the screen.
  
• Fixed Mini Miner sound volume - it was too high.
  
• Fixed light flickering on the Orbital Scanner screen.
  
• It is no longer possible to select multiple buildings in the Build Menu.
  
• Fixed error in a sound script causing asserts for a missing sample
  
• Fixed max damage value in Magmoth projectiles.
  
• Multiple misc bugfixes.
  

We have been spending our time lately putting the finishing touches on the first World Expansion for The Riftbreaker - Metal Terror. We are extremely grateful for your patience and feedback on the Experimental version of the update. This World Expansion is not just an additional Campaign branch. It is going to be the most extensive update the game has received thus far, addressing many issues that you have been reporting to us in addition to introducing new content.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1945600/The_Riftbreaker_Metal_Terror/
Coming next month!

Today, we would like to show you a little bit of what goes on behind the curtain while working on the new game content. We’re going to focus on something that doesn’t often receive a lot of attention (and it definitely should!) - the audio design. More specifically, we’ll take a look at voice acting and the process of creating voiceovers from scratch. You’re also going to learn how we gave Mr. Riggs his signature voice and how you can replicate that on your own. Read on, maybe you will get inspired and try audio design on your own?

What would Mr. Riggs say in this situation?

Everything starts with an empty spreadsheet. We come up with a rudimentary list of dialog lines that our heroes are going to deliver during a specific point during gameplay. The list is just a collection of writing prompts and is not that complex. It can really boil down to something like this:



To let the game understand which part of the dialog it should play, we assign a string name to each line. String names are important for two reasons: once the game gets the instruction to play one such line it will:
1) play the associated voiceover audio file,
2) show the text for that line on the screen, taking the language settings of the game into account.

After adding the string names to the table, it looks like this:



From this point onwards we will refer to the voiceover lines by their string names, as it makes it easier for us to locate the corresponding files and texts.

We have reached arguably the toughest point in the voiceover creation process. It is now time to write the actual voice lines. In true indie fashion, we do this ourselves, influenced by all the science fiction we have consumed in our lifetimes. The process involves copious amounts of tea, several sleepless nights, and a healthy dose of self-doubt sprinkled with bouts of anxiety. Sometime later, the first iteration of the script is born.

We will have you visit some weird sceneries in the Metal Terror World Expansion. Be ready!

It is one thing to read the text from a spreadsheet. Hearing it in the game is a different kettle of fish. It might turn out that some lines come out completely wrong within the context of the gameplay. This is why we record prototype versions of dialogs ourselves. Well, ‘we’ is a slight exaggeration. One person does all the voices, which is not ideal. Listening to monologues imitating a real conversation is not the best way to test things. That’s where the magic of Digital Audio Workstation comes in.

Obviously, it would be easier to record Mr. Riggs himself, but he gets a bit shy in front of the mic. Also the mic is unplugged, which makes recording difficult.

To make it easier to differentiate between the ‘actors’ we apply some effects to the lines spoken by Mr. Riggs. We do that in Cockos Reaper. Their built-in library of VST effects is just enough to get the job done.

First, let’s listen to the raw audio. [CLICK ME]

To achieve the robotic sound of Mr. Riggs, we copy the original track two more times and play them all at the same time. Without any effects, this would just result in the sound being louder. We apply different effects to each track.

Track 1 is pitch-shifted by -2 semitones. It makes the voice slightly deeper and unnatural.

Track 2 is delayed by 11 milliseconds, giving the shaky, ‘metallic’ feeling of multiple voices speaking at the same time.

Track 3 is where we have most of the effects running: It is pitch-shifted by -4 semitones, delayed by 25 milliseconds, and has a bit of distortion on top. This adds the ‘grit’ and imitates an imperfect speech synthesizer (which shouldn’t be a thing in the distant future but hey, robots sounding not robotic are creepy).

Played together, they sound like this.

Much better than listening to one guy having a conversation with himself, isn’t it? We play through the entire game with the placeholder voiceovers and make necessary changes. After the script is finalized, we send it to voice actors playing the roles of our characters:

Francesca Meaux as Ashley
Ryan Laughton as Mr. Riggs
Tori Kamal as Colonel Norstrom

(They are available for hire, too, so if you need voice actors, we can totally recommend these fine people!)

The new World Expansion content will allow you to make your bases more flashy than ever.

The same effects that we used during our in-house recording sessions are applied to their voices, with just a couple of small tweaks.

Once that is done, we replace our glorious homemade audio with the real deal.

By the way, have you ever wondered what Ashley would sound like in the role of Mr. Riggs?

As you can see, it’s not really that difficult to play around with sound. There are plenty of free tools to get you started - Audacity, for example. It has all the basic effects you would need to make your first steps into the world of sound design. Who knows - maybe this is the thing that you will do for a living one day?

We’re going back to work on the World Expansion and Co-Op (we’ve had some sneak peeks during our streams this week). We hope you enjoyed this article. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out either here or through our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios.

See you next time!
EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We know that you’re waiting for news regarding the Metal Terror World Expansion. It’s coming next month. We are going to reveal the date once we are 100% sure that we are ready with everything to give you the best possible experience. In the meantime, let’s take a look at some of the new tech that you helped us design during two competitions that we held a couple of months ago.

You know we love explosions and destruction on a massive scale. When the Orbital Bombardment won the first design competition, we were very happy, because it meant that we could create another devastating weapon that you can use to smash your enemies to pieces. In fact, we even made two variants for you to choose from - an Orbital Laser, as well as an actual, explosive bombardment. Let’s start with the former.

It's quite rare to find a stationary target in The Riftbreaker, but when you do, this item will slay.

The principle behind the Orbital Laser is very simple. You point at a location of your choice, press the button, and a powerful laser beam will strike that spot with surgical accuracy. However, in the dynamic world of Galatea 37, there are hardly any immobile targets. Usually, it is either Mr. Riggs chasing the enemies or the other way around. That is why we decided to make the Laser move in a very predictable way - once the Laser strikes, it will move away from Mr. Riggs, opposite the direction he was facing while ordering the strike. This way, you can easily take down enemy artillery, or pave your way through the middle of an alien horde.

This is what the old Orbital Bombardment looked like. Luckily, you prompted us to make changes to it.

The Orbital Bombardment is quite different. You still only have to choose a single spot as a target, but instead of focusing on that point, the Bombardment obliterates everything in a large radius. The affected area, the strength of the projectiles, as well as the number of shells fired go up with each level.

The new and improved bombardment will get rid of most of your problems. And if it doesn't the Laser will.

The Orbital Bombardment benefitted a lot from being accessible to testers on our optional Experimental branch. When we initially shipped the update, the two skills did not differ much from each other - they were essentially the same weapon, just with a different damage type. After a lot of discussions with the community, we came to the conclusion that this skill should be something more powerful. Something that you could compare to an ultimate skill in MOBA games. That is why we increased the damage, explosion radius, number of shells, and the affected area. All of that is offset by a long cooldown, but it will destroy anything in its path.

The Bioscanner Turret does its job quickly and efficiently, leaving you to reap the rewards.

The last community-designed item that made its way into the game with the World Expansion update is the Bioscanner Sentry. This consumable takes care of scanning the world for you. Some players do not enjoy manually scanning all the Galatean species in search of samples for the database. With the Sentry, you can just set it up and forget it ever existed, while more knowledge drips into your database. It is well worth it, as gaining familiarity levels gives Mr. Riggs permanent bonuses!

This is not the final form of all these items. They are likely to undergo further changes as more feedback rolls in. If you’d like to check these items out, along with other changes, then join our experimental branch. You can find the instructions in the previous article.

We also would like to know what kind of other things you would like us to introduce. We have already held a vote on a 'random encounter'. What else would you like to have an immediate influence on? More weapons? More items? New creatures? Side missions? Or something else entirely? Let us know! Slowly, but surely we will introduce your ideas into the game.

EXOR Studios

- Fixed false-positive error that blocked loading Save Game files from the previous experimental branch update. Save game data was unaffected by this error. We apologize for the resulting problems and frustration!

Thank you for all the feedback on the new features introduced in our latest Experimenta Update. We’re glad you’re enjoying the exploration of the new biome and discovering new strategies to fight hordes of the Metal Terror creatures. Today, we are releasing an update to solve some of the most prevalent problems and add a bit more polish to the game.

Additionally, we would like you to know that we heard all the feedback regarding the balance aspects of the new biome. We know that Wigmites (AKA deathsquitoes) are a bit strong. We know that Octabits are the most effective battering rams in the galaxy. It’s also quite clear that the final wave on all difficulties might have been overwhelming. We will address these issues as well.



[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Hedroner Morphium: Hitpoints reduced to 750 from 1000.
  
• Gamepad Controls: Build Mode selector speed reduced for easier control and fine-tuning.
  
• Morphium Tower: Added attack animation.
  
• Metallic Survival: increased the amount of carbonium in resource veins by ~50%, increased the number and density of cobalt veins by ~50%.
  
• Bioanomalies reworked: You now have a much higher chance of getting something useful out of the Bionanomalies - a craftable item blueprint or a skin. They have priority over decorative buildings. Item quality will progress the way it should - you will not get an Extreme Power Jump variant before getting all the lower quality ones. A lot of new items added to the drop list. After researching Resource Handling you are guaranteed to get some of that resource from the first Bioanomaly you open. Additionally, you will get more useful resources (ironium and carbonium).
  
• Metallic sound added to influence area spread.
  
• Metallic Survival: final wave strength decreased on all difficulty levels.
  
• Biofactories and creature nests are now accompanied by alpha and ultra strains of creatures on Hard and Brutal difficulties respectively.
  
• Alpha and ultra variants of creature eggs added.
  
• Biofactories have been given proper destruction levels.
  
• Better support for vegetation packing and unpacking under buildings, influence area and floors.
  
• Energy Walls now display the amount of damage they deal to enemies in retaliation for melee attacks.
  
• The marker for the Power Switch tool has an orange color now.
  
• Updated Lightning Tower models.
  
• Updated Orbital Bombardment and Orbital Laser effects and damage patterns to give these items more OOOOOMPH. Thanks for all the suggestions!
  

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed losing unique game unlockables (items, survival biome access) on application restart.
  
• The game will no longer crash after choosing map size other than default in the Custom Game mode.
  
• The game will no longer display the incorrect information about modified content on a clean game install.
  
• Power Jump: the game will no longer crash if a save taken mid-jump is loaded.
  
• Orbital Bombardment explosion shockwave effects will no longer spawn sideways.
  
• Lightning Gun: Fixed equip sound.
  
• Settings: the Max Framerate option slider will no longer display the value as a percentage.
  
• The game will no longer crash when turning buildings off.
  
• Fixed an obscure crash in the Research screen.
  
• Fixed a crash on time conversion in the Load Game screen.
  
• Consumable turrets and Mini Miner no longer use the building action menu.
  
• The debug_recreate_buildings command will no longer destroy ghost buildings.
  
• Fixed Z-fighting on bioscannable objects that resulted in graphical glitches.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the weather parameters not to return to proper values after weather events.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when highlighting units.
  
• Removed unnecessary forcefield stat from some items.
  
• Decompressor no longer displays previous icons after changing liquid type.
  
• Fixed a case when an entity was not removed after its destruction.
  
• Minimap: fix minimap edge markers after loading game save
  
• Fixed a crash caused by an error in localization.
  
• Fixed an obscure GUI realted crash. (_NotifyListenerOnDestroyEnd() message)
  
• Fixed energy damage effects. (lightnings not appearing)
  
• Heavy Plasma Cannon shield will no longer show up immediately after pulling the trigger.
  
• Fixed grenade aiming marker on liquid pools.
  
• Orbital Laser and Orbital Bombardment now have correct icons and display on the hotkey toolbar.
  
• Fixed Liquid Compressors Research item. It should now be available in the Campaign Mode, as well as Survival.
  

If reading all this has awoken a sudden need in your soul to play the Experimental Branch, here are the instructions:

- create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)
- disable Steam Cloud save backup
- 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.

EXOR Studios