The Riftbreaker News

A lot has changed in The Riftbreaker since its October release. Ever since that moment, you have been sharing your insights with us non-stop, showing your care and dedication. Thanks to them, we have improved on plenty of aspects of the game. However, our work is far from over. Today, we would like to share a bit of a perspective view on The Riftbreaker, how your voices shaped the game and what changes we are planning to implement over the course of the following months. It’s time for our first ever State Of The Game!



[h3]THE CAMPAIGN MODE AND GENERAL GAMEPLAY[/h3]

The Campaign Mode has been receiving improvements with almost every patch we release. You have informed us about many potential roadblocks and given hints on improving the flow. The difficulty spectrum has been greatly improved. The Easy difficulty was made more accessible, while the Hard and Brutal modes became slightly more challenging. This change allows more players to enjoy The Riftbreaker Campaign at a more suitable level. Additionally, we added the option to use Custom Difficulty settings to play the entirety of The Riftbreaker Campaign. This way, if you don’t find a setting that’s quite right for you, you can fine-tune almost all parameters that define how difficult the game is going to be.



At the same time, we have been doing internal playthroughs of the game. Each member of our team has completed the Campaign and then shared their feedback with the rest of us. What came out of all this is a medium-sized book of ‘to-dos’. Covering all of them would be impossible. Instead, we’re going to reveal the most significant upgrades that you can expect to arrive in the short-to-medium term.



The first one is an all-new economy management screen. With this feature, we aim to give you a new degree of control over what comes in and what goes out of your base at any given moment. The economy screen will show you what kind of resources your facilities are using, where your power comes from, and what consumes the majority of it. Best of all - we are working on giving you control over your buildings through that screen. For example, when an attack wave threatens your base, you will be able to disable all your Synthesizers or Comms Hubs with just a couple of clicks instead of frantically running around the base.



We are also working on expanding the endgame content. Without going into spoilers - we want to introduce new endgame goals and new ways of enjoying the campaign mode for a much longer time. That will include the ability to visit more planetary locations, discover all the flora and fauna species, and cultivate resources to form a self-sustaining base. The first step to that was the Agricultural Revolution from a couple of days ago. That point deserves its own paragraph (or even a couple).



The Cultivators have proved to be very powerful. With that technology, some players were able to even fast-track their way to opening the Rift Portal - which is excellent. Giving players more options, especially the less obvious ones, is a net positive for everyone. Unfortunately, their efficiency and versatility were so high compared to the cost that they could make all other resource production obsolete. Cultivators are intended to be a late or endgame mechanic. If they are available en masse too early, they become problematic. At launch, their costs were not reflective of the power behind them. We decided to tweak their upkeep costs, yields from particular saplings, and the number of drones that operate simultaneously. Additionally, to reflect the fact that Resource Cultivation is the ultimate, eco-friendly way of preparing Galatea 37 for human colonization, we limited certain saplings to their native biomes. That, in turn, requires you to set up several farms around the globe if you want to harvest all of the available resources



That reduced the overall yield you got from your existing setups. There are several reasons for this. First of all - the ratio of Harvesting Stations needed to fully operate one Cultivator has changed. Harvesters now have more drones at their disposal but a reduced operation radius. There is a chance that your current setup is still good, but now you have more room for optimizations. The resources you gain from individual saplings have changed too. If you have noticed that, for example, your previous tanzanite farm might not be producing tanzanite anymore, you might just have to choose a different plant. All resources are available from at least two different species, so we encourage you to experiment.



These changes have been made to make resource cultivation more predictable and controllable. They are more in line with the endgame content we have in mind, facilitating more than one viable strategy. We understand that this might have made some of your setups obsolete and might have generated extra work for you. We are sorry for that and hope that you will understand that we have to make these changes to make the game more enjoyable in the longer perspective. We know that the adjustment period might be a little bit of a shock, but please trust us - it’s all going to be worth it in the end.

As you can see, we have a lot of plans for the Campaign Mode. Its modular structure allows us to expand the game’s mechanisms as well as the world of Galatea 37 and whatever lies beyond…

P.S. We’re making ALT great again. The users from the experimental branch have already had a taste of the ALT key shortcut for building the maximum level building working as a toggle, but we are going one step further. We have designed a system that allows you to toggle the default building level per building. For example, you will be able to set it up so that you always build Solar Panels Level 3 and Wind Turbines Level 2.No more holding the ALT key. No more locked movement. Greatness!

[h3]THE SURVIVAL MODE[/h3]

We have received a lot of feedback regarding the difficulty level of Survival Mode. As it stands now, significant difficulty spikes are an issue for many players. We also heard complaints about the feeling of lack of accomplishment after beating it, as it offers no real gameplay advantage. We have some plans on how to fix that.



Survival Mode will be getting a major balance overhaul. It is definitely true that this game mode could be improved by introducing more variety of enemy attacks. A more gradual increase of difficulty over time could also bring some good. That is why we are going to be reworking all survival difficulty levels from the ground up. We aim to make survival on all difficulty levels demanding but fair. At present, players are sometimes attacked by waves of creatures that they are ill-equipped to deal with early on. That is going to change. We will also give each biome its own specialized technology loadouts. That will make more strategies viable, thus increasing the variety of options available to you.



One of the major changes that are coming for the Survival Mode is the revamped Research Tree. At present, it is shared with the tree used in the Campaign. As a result, you sometimes are forced to spend precious minutes of research on unlocking tech that you will not benefit much from. To solve this, the Survival Mode will get an entirely new Research Tree, to allow you access to as many upgrades as we can, thus increasing the strategic potential. The less impactful technologies will be available from the start, and the ones that have no use in this game mode (like Magnetic Stabilizers or the Research Station) will be removed from the tech tree. We are also planning to make Alien Research much easier to attain.



[h3]CUSTOM GAME CONTENT & MODDING SUPPORT[/h3]

We have seen a lot of great mods published for The Riftbreaker already. Ranging from tweaks to select buildings to complete overhauls of entire biomes and weapon systems - it’s fascinating to see how you put the tools we gave you to use. And our support has only just begun.



An integrated, in-game content distribution service is coming. We know it’s taking a bit long, but as we have said before: this is an important decision that will have its consequences for the entirety of the game’s lifetime. We want users of all platforms across the entire world to be able to use the same platform and interface to share and download custom content. There are a couple of solutions on the line, and we are doing our best to make the best-informed decision. That will, unfortunately, take some time.



What will not take so much time, on the other hand, is an update to our game editing tools. Ever since we published the first version, we have received a lot of feedback and feature requests. We’re happy to tell you that we managed to implement a lot of those changes, and a brand-new editor suite is on its way. We hope to see even more amazing creations from you, just like the ones we spotlighted before: Jungle Variation Pack and Expanded Armory.



As more mods are being created, the number of questions about copyrights increases. To keep a long story short - you are free to use any assets from within EXOR Studios games to create your mods within other EXOR Studios games, and you are free to share them with other players for free. We will publish our policy guidelines around the time the integrated mod support is implemented. We just want you to know that we’re fine with you reusing any existing assets from our games.

Content Creation is a major point for The Riftbreaker. The possibility of using custom tweaks, adding new maps, and even entirely new mechanics are all amazing ways to keep you engaged and give you more creative freedom. Rest assured, we will not abandon this.

[h3]MULTIPLAYER[/h3]



We have a plan. We have a schedule. We have developers. We are working on it as we speak. Even though we don’t have much to share at the moment, we can tell you that we have already implemented the basic client-server architecture and are working on refactoring many game systems that would not work well in a network environment. A positive side effect of that is that we can optimize some systems while doing so, meaning there is even a chance that the single-player game performance is going to improve from that. Our vague ETA is the end of the year 2022.

[h3]CONCLUSION[/h3]

The Riftbreaker’s journey has only just begun. While it might seem that we are working on several big things at once (and we are), the work is structured and divided evenly among our developers. You can expect small, regular updates increasing the stability and quality of life every couple of weeks, leading up to the next point on our roadmap - World Expansion I. It will be an absolute banger, so make sure to stay up to date with the news - we can’t wait to share it all with you.

As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or general feedback, the comment section is yours. We also encourage you to join our Discord server at www.discord.gg/exorstudios to get insights and updates daily.

Cheers!
EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just released a small patch addressing some of the issues that you have reported with the latest update. Thank you for pointing out the issues and providing us with valuable feedback. The changelog today is not that long, so let’s get right to it.

[h2]The Riftbreaker Hotfix Changelog, Package #121, Binaries #510:[/h2]
We heard your feedback regarding the ability to pick up loot while your storage is full. The majority of you dislike that change and dislike your resources going to waste. We’ve reverted this change.
The raytraced light flickering issue that occurred during the Resource Comet flyby sequence has been fixed.
We fixed a bug with the building override functionality. If you used a gamepad and tried to build a gate replacing existing wall tiles, the game would not sell those tiles and they would become stuck forever. The same occurred when trying to replace any two compatible buildings with each other. It is fixed now, and you can safely go back to building The Great Wall of Galatea with your gamepads. This issue did not affect mouse and keyboard controls.
We made Cobalt nuggets more distinct by giving them a slightly brighter light, as they looked too similar to Carbonium.
The lights on other lootable objects have also been slightly intensified to make them easier to spot on the battlefield.
We’ve fixed several obscure crash bugs that were reported after the previous update.

Thank you,
EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We have just published a very small hotfix with an updated executable file for the game. You should see much-improved performance in the game. There are no other changes in this build.

EXOR Studios

It is time for us to let you get your hands on some of the changes we have been working on for the past couple of weeks. This Update brings in some much-needed quality of life fixes, changes that you have requested, as well as a massive makeover of the Cultivator technology branch.



[h2]FEATURES:[/h2]
[h3]AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION[/h3] - We have introduced pretty significant changes to the way Cultivators and Harvesters work. It quickly became clear that we missed the mark when balancing the cultivator chain. It was entirely possible to skip resource production entirely in the late game, as having several level 3 Cultivators and Harvesters supplied the base with everything you'd ever need. Additionally, the UI and UX of the system were not great. Well - it all changes today. We have introduced a massive number of changes and improvements when it comes to plant cultivation in The Riftbreaker:

• The number of drones for both Cultivators and Harvesters has been reduced which also results in improved performance in large base scenarios.
  
• The amount of resources that the Harvester drones can carry has been reduced.
  
• Drone speeds have been changed - Cultivator drones are faster and Harvester drones are slower.
  
• Drones now differ in size to make it easier to differentiate between the two types.
  
• Drone targeting algorithm has been altered: Harvester drones now prioritize plants at the highest growth level.
  
• Speaking of growth, the growth cycle has been fixed and upgraded. Saplings planted by the cultivators are always very small at first. However, they grow 3 times as fast as the same plants found in the wild.
  
• Harvesters now pull the plants out together with their roots - you will no longer see a mix of several plants growing next to one cultivator after changing a sapling.
  
• Amounts of resources that can be harvested from all plants have been changed.
  
• Saplings now have biome requirements - they can only be grown in their natural habitat.
  
• All biomes now have a separate 'default' sapling that gives you different resources.
  
• UI and UX have been drastically improved - the menus are much clearer and fewer clicks are required to get Cultivators working.
  
• Energy usage has been increased.
  

Out with the old (on the left, no selector indicator, no current sapling, overall mess) and in with the new (right, selected/equipped distinction, clearer resource display, information about requirements, and much fewer clicks to get there)!

All in all these changes result in much slower, but a lot more reasonable and stable flora cultivation. We hope you will enjoy tending to your gardens after these changes.
Added an option to manually turn off certain types of audio announcements. You can use them if you feel the game is nagging you to build more storage too often.

[h3]IN OTHER NEWS:[/h3]

• Added support for clearing key bindings on gamepads. 'Clear Binding' tooltip has been added to the 'Customize Controls' screen.
  
• Added support for adding custom research trees for all your modding needs and purposes. This will also allow us to create custom research trees for Survival Mode rebalance, which is coming soon.
  
• Added a config variable 'full_storage_announcement_limit' with 10000 as the default value. It stops announcements from playing if the storage limit is higher than 10000. We assume that if you have this much storage then you know what you’re doing and don’t need any more help with this aspect of economy management.
  The localizations are programmer art, don't judge.
• Custom Game button has been added to the main menu. You can launch new maps and scenarios created by the community through this option. It will later serve as a Hub for all modded content. In order for this menu to appear you need to have mods with
• .campaign files installed - otherwise, the menu is hidden. The next release of our modding tools will have a feature that will generate that file for you.
  
• Improved placing buildings in a straight line. If you build a series of small buildings, such as solar panels, one next to another, they will now have less of a tendency to snap out of line.
  
• Added a debug switch `r_show_vegetation_phase`.
  
• Added EntityService:CreateQuickSandSinkMovement(entity, float duration). Allows modders to make certain entities sink underground as if they were built on quicksand.
  
• Added Exor::Optional BuildingService:GetWorkingTime(Exor::Entity::Id building). This method gives you information on how long a given structure has been operational.
  
• Added Lua: expose ResourceManager:GetResource( type: string, name: string ) - to allow you to meddle with resources.
  
• Added methods: SetWeaponAllResistances and RemoveWeaponAllResistances - to change weapon resistances for entities on the fly.
  
• Added `cheat_disable_cultivator_biome_requirement` - to let you grow everything, everywhere.
  

[h2]CHANGES:[/h2]

• Loot can now always be picked up, even with full storage - experimental, to avoid clutter and chaos on screen. Please let us know what you think about this - it’s experimental.
  
• Introduced changes to creature Nests. We improved their materials, effects, and made sure that they always spawn eggs. Also - the eggs now have randomized sizes and rotation.
  They're even more disgusting now.
• After a Bomogan is killed, if it had a projectile ready on its back, it will no longer disappear immediately, but gradually phase out.
  
• Increased starting resources in survival mode on the jungle biome and disabled tutorial objectives. You can now immediately place the HQ and a couple additional buildings.
  
• Increased the amount of carbonium and ironium in starting resource patches in survival mode on the Jungle, Desert, and Acid biomes. The goal of this change is to make the early phase of survival somewhat easier, so that the difficulty ramps up in a more gradual way.
  
• Enabled hedroner, phirian, kermon, baxmoth and krocoon species on the Jungle survival map.
  
• Delayed the possibility of Acidic Yeast Colony objective spawn in survival mode on the Jungle and Acid biomes on easy and normal difficulty settings. This creature was a bit too much for starting players.
  
• Decreased the opacity of objective/event radiuses on the minimap.
  
• Decreased the size of light effects on loot items to avoid clutter/chaos on-screen during and after big fights.
  Before, all loot elements used to be highlighted. Now, only the most important elements (specimens and mods) retain their strong highlight, while resources are much less prominent.
• Floors and power lines no longer cast shadows for performance purposes.
  
• Health bars have been added to all boss enemies.
  
• Item sorting in the inventory screen has been improved. New items receive a little (+) marker and always appear on top of the list.
  
• Loading and Saving popups now have a background behind the text label.
  
• Liquid-related buildings can now be built directly on pipes, overriding them, much like in the case of walls and gates.
  
• Cheat_free_build applies to building upgrades now as well.
  
• The ribbon trail for the hand grenade is now different from the ribbon trail of a projectile fired from a grenade launcher.
  
• Shorter lifetime for acid decals, to match their damage time.
  
• Proximity Mines will sink into quicksand.
  
• Buildings: remove ghost blueprints from drone buildings, they are now auto-generated. This is a game backend change that will make modding easier.
  
• Drones no longer work at full capacity when their home building doesn't. If there are resource shortages, only one drone spawns per building. It will also fly slower than usual.
  
• Added prologue finish hint text, directing the player to play the Story Campaign next.
  
• Tanzanite Concentration mission cultivator build conditions have been set to more 'relaxed'.
  
• Improved the "Mission Complete" display at the end of campaign missions to ensure the player that they have done everything they needed to do.
  
• Mission Complete objective status is no longer displayed after returning to a finished mission.
  
• Added a build menu highlight for the Orbital Scanner in the 'Build Orbital Scanner' mission.
  
• Added a build menu highlight for the Radar Station in the 'Find Titanium Samples' mission.
  
• Increased the uranium treasure volume in the 'Find Uranium' mission
  
• Improved the 'Acidic Plains Reconnaissance' mission flow. The first mission objective can be fulfilled by either destroying the Colony or by scanning it.
  
• The treasure marker in the 'Desert Find Uranium' mission now properly disappears after digging up the treasure.
  
• Improved the 'Acidic Plains Palladium Concentration' palladium vein marker flow.
  
• Reduced exploding mushroom density in the 'Acidic Plains Palladium Concentration' mission.
  
• Added a new custom desert tile for the Stregaros encounter mission and changed the aggro value for the stregaros spawner volume.
  
• Reworked the first Stregaros encounter in the 'Desert Scouting' mission to be more reliable.
  
• Increased specimen and mod mesh sizes by 50%.
  
• The ice crater decal has been modified to reduce noise on the screen.
  
• Floors can be overridden with other floor types - now you can easily create pathways and patterns in the base.
  If you try to replace a larger tile with a smaller one, the larger will be automatically broken up into smaller pieces.
• The floor removal tool has been upgraded to delete only the marked tiles.
  
• Increased Gnerot's resistances during sleep state to prevent players from killing it before it can do anything.
  
• Added a planetary quest reminder to nudge players towards checking out the planetary scanner screen if there are no other local objectives currently visible.
  
• Removed underground resource deposits other than palladium in the 'Find Palladium' mission.
  

[h2]FIXES:[/h2]

• Fixed decals disappearing too early on quicksand.
  
• Fixed missing effects on boss creatures after packing.
  
• The HUD now correctly displays 0% solar power efficiency at night.
  
• The Planetary Scanner screen does not count walls, pipes, energy connectors in the buildings count.
  
• Disabled DirectInput support to avoid problems with steering wheels/HOTAS systems.
  
• SoundPlugin: fixed crash on shutdown during startup.
  
• Building type "pipe" removed from the armory, advanced magnetic stabilizer, and tower ammunition factory. We don't know how it got there in the first place.
  
• Fixed plasma storage and production in Fusion Power Plant level 3.
  
• Fixed AI cost problems in custom difficulty while using the building cost multiplier.
  
• You can no longer perform a planetary jump if Headquarters is missing.
  
• The blood moon event is now correctly recognized as a 'night' event.
  
• Fixed too small collisions in small crystals to enable scanning.
  
• Fixed mech searchlight disappearing after jumping between maps.
  
• Fixed some desert tiles to avoid resources spawning on quicksand.
  
• Plants spawned by the cultivators are no longer scannable.
  
• Ghost buildings no longer cast shadows.
  
• Fixed portal addons not being built when the player is out on other missions.
  
• Fixed an issue in the DamageSystem where weapon with different damage over time mods was not clearing hit effects on enemies.
  
• Fixed an issue in the TileablePrefab system where vegetation spawned from prefabs was not re-growing.
  
• Consumable Sentry Towers no longer play sounds when they are damaged or destroyed.
  
• Fixed a rare issue when a Baxmoth Drone could get stuck in a 'calm' state and fly around forever.
  
• Nerilians are no longer targeted by towers when they are hidden.
  
• Fixed turret jitter in idle state after losing the target.
  

[h2]SOUNDS:[/h2]

• Sound: added EQ filter SoundGraph node (SoundNodeEQBiquadFilter) with LPF
  
• Sound: added HPF to SoundNodeEQBiquadFilter
  
• Sound: SoundNode_ADSR uses SoundCurve as an amplitude envelope
  
• Sound: SoundCurve initial implementation
  
• Sound: SoundCurve prototype (SoundNode_ADSR test: attack + decay + sustain)
  
• Sound: XAudio2: flushing source buffers only during stopping procedure
  
• The floor removal tool now has sounds.
  

Let us know about any bugs and issues you find!
EXOR Studios

We are very happy that the previous Community Modding Spotlight article has been received so well. WirawanMYT’s Expanded Arsenal Mod received a lot of well-deserved attention and praise. Wirawan also plans to develop his mod further and has a major update lined up just around the corner. If you haven’t checked that mod out just yet, you can do so here.

Today we want to highlight another mod that has genuinely amazed us. This one is called ‘Jungle More Variation’ and it has been created by sublimecala13er. We think the name undersells what this mod really does. It is a pack of 12 brand-new tiles for the Jungle survival mode and the Jungle part of the Campaign, which does not ‘just’ give you more variation - it makes you feel like you’re playing an entirely different game!

Sublimecala13er created his map tiles using the World Editor component of The Riftbreaker Editor suite. The pack features a wide selection of tiles for the map generation algorithm. Apart from the classic, open tiles designed for base development, the mod offers some truly original and surprising ‘landmark’ tiles, which make use of our existing assets in new and exciting ways. Let’s take a look at some of them now!



This canyon tile looks quite simple - it’s just four holes in the ground and four passages with a larger, central hub. However, incorporating this tile into your base structure gives you the possibility of funneling and blocking the enemy hordes so that your defenses can actually keep up with the thousands of creatures trying to wipe out everything you have built. Neat! If you’re lucky enough to find resources on this tile, it is also quite easy to create a well-defended outpost. Double neat!



Another awesome thing sublimecala13er has done is using a couple of tiles stitched together to create a larger, more controlled environment. This 2x2 tile is a great place to build a compact, but complete base that is easily defensible and gives you a fighting chance even on brutal difficulty. Large amount of terrain obstacles and natural barriers also means you don’t have to sell your robot body parts to afford walls.



The thing that excited us the most, however, is the way sublimecala13er used the tools and props available to him to create this beauty - an asteroid ‘landing strip’. How cool is that?! This shows you just how creative you can get and what an effect a clever arrangement of simple props could have. 10/10 would visit again.

Sublimecala13er’s tiles are complete game pieces - they do not miss any elements that you could find on our original map tiles. If you want to refresh your next Jungle Survival or Campaign Mode playthrough this mod is for you. We highly recommend checking it out. We also highly recommend trying the editors on your own - sublimecala13er learned everything by watching our tutorial videos and reverse-engineering existing tiles. You can do it, too! And when you do, we will be there to show your work off.

As promised, we are working on a robust mod distribution system that will allow you to publish and download mods in-game. We want to make the content distribution as seamless and safe as possible, while also enabling users across all platforms to take part in the modding community. We will keep you updated on that as we progress, but rest assurred - we do want that to happen.

Looking forward to more mods!
EXOR Studios