The Riftbreaker News

Thank you for your patience and all the testing sessions that you have conducted over the course of our break! We have cooked a new build up for you, introducing some much-needed fixes and changes. We're already working on the next one - we have a couple of cool tricks up our sleeves so stay tuned!

We will send out a new batch of beta keys tomorrow. Please make sure to sign up here:



[h3]The Riftbreaker Multiplayer Closed Beta, September 18th, 2024. DATA: 49 EXE: 9463 Changelog:[/h3]

• We reworked the game's behavior after the player's mech is destroyed. This is the biggest change in this build. Your feedback on this is very welcome.
  
  • When a player's HP drops to zero, and there are no other mechs taking part in the game, the character blows up and is respawned in the HQ, just as usual.
    
  • When a player's HP drops to zero, and there are other mechs present, the mech enters a 'disabled' state. The mech can spend up to 30 seconds in that state.
    
  • During the 30-second countdown, other players can walk up to the downed mech and 'resurrect' it by pressing interact. The resurrection is almost instant.
    
  • After resurrecting a player, both mechs receive a "Revive Boost" - temporary double damage, health regen (up to 50% HP, more or less), and invulnerability for 5 seconds. These values are subject to change.
    
  • The player can opt out of waiting to be resurrected. They can press and hold the spacebar to speed up the 30-second timer. After the timer expires, the mech blows up and resurrects at the HQ.
    
  • If a player is resurrected from the downed state, they don't lose any weapons.
    
  • If a player is not resurrected in time, they will drop one equipped weapon.
    
  • The dropped weapon is visible to all players, but can only be picked up by the player who lost it. The weapon is automatically re-equipped upon pickup.
    
  • In downed state, players can enter all menu screens, except the inventory screen.
    
  • When your mech is down, you can spectate any other players taking part in your session.
    
  • The downed mech is marked on the minimap and players can teleport to it at any time.
    
  • These changes have been introduced to discourage the self-sacrifice strat of dealing with bosses and to increase the amount of player interaction during gameplay. This mechanic needs more work and careful consideration. Try playing around with it and see how you like it. We are open to making any necessary changes to make it feel good and natural.
    
• Players can now heal each other. Walk up to another player's avatar, press and hold the 'interact' button, and wait. The healing rate is 30HP per seconds at the moment, and it is possible to overcharge the player beyon their current max health.
  
• Added overcharged health and shields icons to let players know they are above the maximum values.
  
• Naturally occurring creatures on the map will now respawn faster after being killed. the respawn speed is increased with the number of players on the server.
  
• Added a loading progress bar with descriptions of loading stages. Thanks to this it will be easier for us to identify any errors during loading. For multiplayer mode, the progress bar is replaced with a 'spinning' bar, letting you know that an operation is in progress.
  
• The localization of the proximity boost has been changed from "Apes together strong" to "Team Boost". Riot in the comments.
  
• Tweaked the "Team Boost" activation parameters. The players still have to be close to each other to start charging the boost, but can now move away from each other significantly further before the connection is broken. We also added a cooldown display.
  
• Added support for enemy damage scaling. It is currently disabled for all difficulty levels, but if you fancy a bigger challenge, you can increase the enemy damage by X percent per player using the 'enemy_damage_factor_per_player x" modifier when starting a new server.
  
• The first wave on all difficulty levels will not be accompanied by a boss creature to give players more time to build up defenses.
  
• Tweaked the Hammerocerros boss and Krocoon boss units to make them more effective in combat.
  
• Added a new boss skill - damage wave. After a melee attack, a small directional shockwave appears, dealing damage to everything in a small arc.
  
• Your Steam avatar should now appear next to your nickname in the main menu screen.
  
• Changed the disconnect message from "You have been kicked from the server" to "The server has been shut down".
  
• Optimized the number of entities that liquid resource volumes generated, reducing their impact on system memory.
  
• Solved multiple issues with the engine's way of handling OGG Vorbis audio files.
  
• Renamed 'cheat_{win,lose}_game` to `debug_{win,lose,end}_game` and moved it to debug.lua.
  
• Fixed an error that could occur when restarting a server.
  
• Fixed the starting position of the cursor when entering the build mode. It will no longer jump to the upper left corner of the screen when entering the build mode for the first time, which was especially painful when using a gamepad.
  
• Fixed a crash that could happen when players were browsing their inventory.
  
• Fixed a problem that caused the depleted shield bar to never disappear from above the player's avatar.
  
• Fixed a problem that prevented the "Don't show again" checkbox in the maim menu intro pop-up message to not work properly.
  
• Fixed a crash in the BuildingService system.
  
• Fixed a crash in gather_resource.lua function.
  
• Fixed an error that prevented users from switching the menu screens using the right and left shoulder buttons on gamepads.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur in the menus due to custom action mappers.
  
• Fixed a crash in GUI that occurred when interacting with tooltips and slider/scroll by pointer mouse drag.
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause the player to spawn in without equipment,
  
• We have introduced a ton of memory usage optimizations in the game, which should result in quicker loading times, shorter saving slowdowns and general improvements in performance.
  
• We have also fixed a ton of smaller issues with the game's network code, which should result in greater connection stability.
  

EXOR Studios

In our Closed Beta Progress Update article last week, we discussed the communication options for The Riftbreaker's multiplayer mode and what improvements we need to make. While we believe that most players will use voice comms during online play, we don’t want to leave anyone without the means to coordinate their efforts with their team. This is why the Co-Op mode of The Riftbreaker will feature both an in-game chat and a “ping wheel.” On the surface, these two might seem like pretty simple tools. However, designing them requires careful consideration and deliberate design. We value your input immensely, and today, we will talk about the design process behind these devices and how your feedback is not just important but integral to what they look like in their final form.

The current, barebones implementation of the chat. It needs a lot of improvements and added features, but it works - for now.

Let’s start with the text chat. Its current implementation is straightforward. Press ‘enter’ to bring up the chat box, type in your message, and press ‘enter’ once more to broadcast your message to all players on the server. The message is accompanied by your nickname so everyone knows who they’re talking to. The message disappears after a couple of seconds. That sounds simple enough. What could go wrong here? As it turns out, quite a lot of things!

The building menu overlapping the chat box is just the tip of the iceberg. If you miss the message, it's gone forever, which isn't good, either.

The first problem is the placement of the chat box. Currently, the messages are displayed right where your building menu would go. If you’re building simultaneously as someone sends a message, it is easy to miss it. Furthermore, we currently have no chat history, so you cannot see what they typed if you miss the message. To solve these problems, we plan to move the chat window to the middle-left portion of the screen, right above the weapons HUD and below the objectives list. This new location ensures that the chat window is always visible, even when you're building, and the chat history feature will allow you to catch up on previous messages by scrolling the window with your mouse wheel if the chat box is open.

Our playtesters suggested moving the chat to the side. This is a mockup of what it could look like. However, the space on the left of the screen is occupied by building information tooltips. The right side of the screen might be a better choice. Luckily, nothing is set in stone at this point, and we will make improvements based on your feedback until the very end.

Now, let’s talk about the ping wheel. It is a well-established feature of online games that allows players to send out short phrases and mark objects of interest with a short series of button presses or gestures. This solution works very well in games ranging from first-person shooters to strategy. We decided to implement it in The Riftbreaker as well since it is a great tool regardless of whether you are on voice comms or not. Allowing players to pinpoint an exact location on the map that requires attention is very valuable in the heat of battle. In our case, when you use the ping wheel, your current location is marked on the minimap, and a message is displayed to all players on the server.

This is a very early mock-up of what the D-pad ping wheel would function like. We scratched that idea thanks to the improvements in our GUI model.

We’re usually reluctant to add new user interface elements. Programming GUI elements has always been difficult in the Schmetterling Engine. Usually, we try to reuse as many parts of the interface as possible, which is not possible here. Additionally, we needed to make the ping wheel functional for both keyboard + mouse players and gamepad users. Our first design utilized the keyboard's up/down/right/left movement buttons or the directional keys on a pad. A player would bring up the ping wheel using a dedicated button. Then, players could send messages with a single or double press of a directional key. This seemed simple enough to implement but felt clunky compared to modern titles with similar features.

Luckily, as we were refactoring most of the game’s engine in preparation for the co-op gameplay tests, we also worked on the GUI. We streamlined the entire user interface framework, making it easier to change existing elements and add new ones without a headache. This allowed us to move away from the clunky button-pressing to the sleek and modern radial menu. For now, it is usable only with the mouse controls, but eventually, we will allow players on gamepads to choose the command they want by just pointing one of the analog sticks in the right direction.

The current implementation of the ping wheel. It is adorned with placeholder 'programmer art' and fancy, wrap-around text that is impossible to read. We will improve on those! Welcome to the 21st century.

As we moved away from the D-pad idea to the analog stick, we needed to introduce changes in the layout. It was necessary since we wanted to fit eight phrases on the wheel instead of four, and we didn’t want players to hit the division line between phrases if they swung the stick in one of the cardinal directions. After shifting the wheel around a couple of degrees, you can send a ping by moving your cursor straight up, for example, without looking. This solution works much better in gameplay but is still far from ideal. Our playtesting has shown that there is only one truly useful phrase - “Assist,” affectionately known as “Gondor calls for aid” at the moment. This decision was made to improve the user experience and make the ping wheel more intuitive and efficient.

Clicking a command sends a message to the server and marks a location on the map. We also implemented some placeholder emotes.

What phrases should we feature on the ping wheel? What sort of quick commands seem the most useful to you? We already have some ideas, and our Beta playtesters have also shared their suggestions. However, in this case, the more information we get, the better the results will be. After all, we’re building these tools for you, so let us know what you need. Your feedback is not just welcome, it's crucial to us. We are open to customizing the wheel with additional phrases, pings, and gestures, but that will come later. First, we want to build a first usable prototype. Then we can improve on that. Leave your suggestions in the comments section of this article and on our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios!

[h2]To sign up for The Riftbreaker Multiplayer Beta please fill in the following form:[/h2]
We reserve the right to contact only select participants.



We let more and more people in every week, and we plan only to keep expanding. All people invited to the beta also receive additional keys for their friends, so you always have someone to play with! As beta participants, you can also join our server during streams and take part in the action every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 PM CEST at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios/

See you there!
EXOR Studios

The Closed Beta test of The Riftbreaker Co-Op mode has been running for about a month. Throughout this time, our playtesters devoted hundreds of hours to trying out the brand-new multiplayer mode. It is fair to say that the test is going much better than expected. We were concerned about the game's performance and potential connection issues when tested in real-world conditions. People have access to PCs of varying configurations, and not all internet connections are created equal. These things can lead to a lot of issues. However, most of the feedback we received was about the gameplay itself, which leads us to believe there are fewer tech problems than we expected. This does not mean that everything is working perfectly - of course, it’s not. There is still a lot of work to do. In today’s article, we will summarize the conclusions from the first month of MP testing and the steps we will take in the immediate future.

We're happy with how the beta test has been going - which means we can let more of you play really soon!

Let’s start by talking about the performance of the game. Our playtesters have two options when hosting a new gameplay session:

• Personal (Listen) Server: In this case, one of the player’s PCs serves as the client and the server at the same time. This means all the game calculations are conducted on that player’s PC and then sent to all session participants. This is the most typical usage scenario.
  
• Dedicated Server: A dedicated server must run on a separate PC. The game is not playable on that PC, but all the calculations are carried out in the background. Players connect to the server as usual. The advantage is that no one has to take the cost of running the server AND the game simultaneously. A dedicated server could also have a preferable geographic location, e.g., a server in France could sit halfway between a player in Germany and a player in Spain, cutting the distance that data has to travel in half. The disadvantage is that an additional PC has to be involved.

Because not everyone has access to two powerful PCs, most multiplayer sessions have been run in the Personal (Listen) Server mode. We were worried that the player hosting the session would have a significant disadvantage because the server calculations generate major overhead, but that is not the case. In typical scenarios, when 3 or 4 players play simultaneously, the performance is well within the acceptable limits. The dedicated server is always a better choice, but the difference is not as big as expected. We have successfully played the game even with five players and did not encounter much bigger issues than when playing with two players. However, when this number increases further, more problems become apparent.

We're glad we don't do friendly fire, because walking across another player's line of fire is a common thing!

During one of our developer streams (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3 PM on our Twitch channel), we encouraged people to join the session we hosted in our office. Feeling adventurous, we set the player limit to nine people and made the server public, allowing anyone with Beta access to join. What resulted was complete madness. At one point, we had nine players from around the world connect to our server in the office, playing a game of survival together. Fifteen minutes in, we had our first fusion power plant running. Half an hour later, the entirety of the map was cleared and built over, which absolutely killed the game's performance. That was a great sign. Even though we don’t officially plan to support play sessions with more than four people, we won’t block that option. If your PC is powerful enough to handle more than four players simultaneously - go for it!

The boss creatures receive a huge HP boost, elemental resistances, and additional abilities. However, some turned out to be a bit more OP than others...

Apart from the ‘officially hosted’ sessions, our beta testers have been playing their game on their own a whole lot. They have given us a ton of helpful feedback regarding gameplay. One of the most significant changes we introduced at the start of the Multiplayer Beta was the addition of boss creatures with each wave. The bosses are based on the largest creatures in the game and their strength depends on the number of players present on the server at the time of their spawn. They receive additional abilities that make them more dangerous and challenging. For example, you can encounter a Hammeroceros with Acid Damage resistance and a Fire Aura that damages everything in a large radius.

...but players found a way to defeat those OP creatures anyway. Still, not what we intended, we will do better!

The addition of bosses completely changes the dynamics of the battles in the game. Thanks to the feedback from our playtesters, we quickly learned that some creature/ability combos are a bit too difficult to deal with, especially in the game's early stages. When players have nothing but an SMG, a blaster, a sword, and a couple of grenades, perhaps sending in a creature that is resistant to most types of damage is not the best idea. This led to the introduction of what we call the 'kamikaze meta, a play pattern where players willingly run into the creature’s grasp and deal damage with the mech’s explosion. This is not a play pattern we want to cultivate. Additionally, dealing with bosses often becomes trivial in the game's later stages. We don’t want it to be a chore, so we will take steps to improve on this aspect of the game.

A Baxmoth can be terrifying on its own. An empowered baxmoth with an acid damage aura AND a Necrodon 'raise dead' ability is nightmare fuel.

We also received a lot of feedback when it comes to economy management. In single-player mode, you have all the knowledge about the factories you’ve built, the number of armories, ammo storages, and the power plants that sustain all those buildings. However, with four players running around the map, it is not the case. Without clear communication, knowing what your base actually needs is difficult. There should be a way of getting all that information with just a glance. This is why we have decided to upgrade the minimap. We will move away from representing the important buildings with colors and grant them icons instead. The common stuff, like energy or material storages, will still be marked with colored squares, but Armories, Comm Hubs, and similar buildings will be marked with individual icons. This way, you can get all that critical information by just looking at the minimap. This feature is crucial for effective team coordination and resource management. We also know that some of you will want the ability to personalize what is displayed on that map - we will give you filtering options to help with that.

Sometimes an attack comes at you from the worst possible side, leaving your base in shambles. It's important to have a team that will allow you to bounce back after that!

While watching others play, we also realized that the game needed features to encourage players to group up and work together. It is excellent that some players can take on the building duties while others go exploring, allowing you to play into your individual strengths. Still, it felt like players only joined in together when fighting an attack wave. We want to encourage you to play together, so we are experimenting with bonuses that activate when mechs are close to each other. At present, the bonus is straightforward - if two mechs stay within a 10-meter radius from one another for a few seconds, they get a temporary +100 bonus to shields and a +10% bonus to movement speed. It naturally boosts players during battles without a lot of thinking about it. We will experiment with this idea and perhaps introduce other buffs to encourage teaming up for other activities.

Here's what the 'Team Boost' proximity bonus looks like. Barebones for now, but we want it to be really meaningful, encouraging players to work together.

We could go on and on about the improvements we plan to make. However, they will take time, and in that time, we will invite more and more of you to test the game with us. In the coming days, we will move away from how we conducted the Beta tests up to this point - a separate, hidden Steam app - to the Steam Playtest feature. It will allow us to stay in touch with you better and open up some exciting growth avenues down the line. Until then - we want to reassure you that everyone who signed up for the test will get the chance to play the Beta before the official release of the Co-Op mode.

You will need to team up with the biggest and baddest creatures we're cooking for you!

[h2]To sign up for The Riftbreaker Multiplayer Beta please fill in the following form:[/h2]
We reserve the right to contact only select participants.



Looking forward to meeting you on Galatea 37!
EXOR Studios

When we released The Riftbreaker in 2021, we also published the Original Soundtrack album alongside the main release. The album featured select music pieces from The Riftbreaker, remastered and adapted from their in-game form to something more suitable for standalone listening. Not all songs from the game made the cut, but we promised that we would release them in due time. That time is now - we have just published a free update to the Soundtrack DLC, featuring all the missing songs from the original game soundtrack. In this article, we will tell you why it took such a long time, what the differences are, and what you can expect from us in the future.



Creating a good game soundtrack is an uphill battle. On one hand, it has to be unique and captivating. You want people to instantly associate the music they hear with the game they are playing. You want the soundtrack to emphasize what is currently happening on the screen. On the other hand, the last thing you want the music to do is distract players. It has to fit just right. The pace and dynamics of the music have to be relatively steady, with as few high and low points as possible. This also limits the range of instruments you can use. Some sounds might stand out too much and sound out of place in the context of the soundscape you want to create. Due to these constraints, the composer often has to limit their creativity, considering the good of the game as a whole rather than the song itself.



Our music composer, Marcin Pukaluk, encountered precisely these issues. He’s a super creative person and a brilliant artist. Although he was happy with the soundtrack of The Riftbreaker, he also thought he could do better. He suggested remastering the tracks from the game and giving them a more song-like structure. This meant adding intros and outros, changing the arrangement of some parts, and emphasizing different instruments within the mix. Take a listen to these two tracks. The first one is ripped straight out of the game files, and you’ve probably heard it a thousand times now. The other one is the remastered version.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Here's the original version of one of the tracks that accomapny you during the intense battles on Galatea 37.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
And here's the remastered one. Which one do you like better?

We chose this piece because the differences are audible right away. The in-game track lacks the ‘marching’ intro from the remastered version. Additionally, the drums and brass instruments are brought much more forward in the mix. The atmosphere of the second version is much more heroic, which wouldn’t necessarily sit well with the chaos of the battle on screen.

Naturally, reworking the entire soundtrack into this new, standalone formula takes some time, which we did not have. The new World Expansions required brand-new music to fit the theme of the biomes we introduced, so Marcin was too busy writing new pieces and couldn’t work on the old ones. After the release of World Expansion III, however, we could finally start the Multiplayer Co-Op Closed Beta test, and we won’t be producing any new expansion content for a while. That gave Marcin a window of opportunity to remaster the remaining tracks.



In today’s update, The Riftbreaker Soundtrack expands by ten additional tracks from the main game. The OST is extended from the original 44 minutes, to 70 minutes. This update is free for everyone who purchased the soundtrack separately or got the Complete Pack edition of the game. All tracks from all playlists are now available for your listening pleasure (except for the ‘Anticipation’ playlist, also known in the community as the ‘no drop music.’ Listening to that stuff for too long could be unpleasant, so we skipped those songs). For those of you who don’t want to get the soundtrack - we got you! Here’s a YouTube video with the entire album.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The full extended soundtrack for your listening pleasure.

In the foreseeable future, Marcin will continue working on remastering the music from the World Expansions. We will also add them to the Soundtrack DLC as a free update, so be on the lookout for that! Meanwhile, we’re returning to work on the Co-Op Closed Beta Test. We have distributed over 100 access keys this week alone. Keep an eye on your Discord inbox so as not to miss your keys! And if you have not signed up for the test yet - do it! Join us, play The Riftbreaker in multiplayer before everyone else, and help us shape the game into something great!

See you next time!
EXOR Studios.

Thank you for your patience and all the testing sessions that you have conducted over the course of our break! We have cooked a new build up for you, introducing some much-needed fixes and changes. We're already working on the next one - we have a couple of cool tricks up our sleeves so stay tuned!

We will send out a new batch of beta keys tomorrow. Please make sure to sign up here:



[h3]The Riftbreaker Multiplayer Closed Beta, August 27th, 2024. DATA: 29 EXE: 9356 Changelog:[/h3]

• Fixed the 'Close Server' button on the dedicated sever options screen.
  
• Boss Aura skills no longer destroy Energy Connectors - they will get severely damaged, but always stay operational not to disable defensive towers.
  
• Boss Aura visible radius is now properly aligned with the actual damage area.
  
• Bosses with the 'Waller' ability will not be able to use walls even in densely built-over areas. Their skill will now be able to damage buildings as well.
  
• Tornadoes and meteor showers can now track all players, not just one.
  
• Fixed blueprints spawned by objective and weather logic files not being precached. This will prevent stutters when dealing with creature nests, for example.
  
• Added a team boost for players that can be activated by staying close to one another for a couple of seconds. It's a damage and resistance buff, just like a miniature Power Well.
  
• Upgrade tooltips in inventory can now properly display all their bonus stats.
  
• Fixed a freeze on loading screen when the client fails to connect to the server.
  
• We will now display a 'Connecting...' message when the game is trying to establish connection with the server.
  
• Buildings that bring up the menu screen during interaction (Armory, or Comms Hub, for example) are now able to do so.
  
• Fixed the time of day indicator not being updated for clients.
  
• Fixed time calculation problems on the Research screen that caused the research times not to sum up or display as infinity.
  
• Fixed issues with comets jumping from spot to spot. They will now fly at a steady pace.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused resource deposits to flicker on the minimap.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused players to spawn inside of the HQ when joining the server or respawning.
  
• Partially improved the camera interpolation during the mech's movement. This will be improved further.
  
• Mech aiming direction moved to client, should reduce the feeling of lag.
  
• Added support for quicker unit respawn timers. The more players take part in your session, the quicker the units will respawn.
  
• Reduced the number of parts spawned by the tornado.
  
• Fixed the problem that caused upgraded buildings not to display their localized names correctly.
  
• Fixed boss healthbar problems.
  
• Optimized the size of textures on various meshes that used emissive textures - should save you about 700MB of traffic.
  
• Various fixes in GUI.
  
• Fixed several crash scenarios.
  
• Introduced minor performance, memory and network optimizations.
  
• Other minor fixes.
  

EXOR Studios