The Riftbreaker News

Every week, we publish an article designed to keep you informed about the development of The Riftbreaker. Some of these news pieces tell you about upcoming features, like the one about the Randomized Mission Generator a couple of weeks ago. Other times, we tell you development stories and explain our approach to certain challenges we encounter along the way. Our Co-Op progress reports are a great example of this kind of news. No matter the news topic, we want to keep you in the loop and well-informed about everything related to our studio and the game. Direct communication between the developer and the player community is one of the keys to a great game.

Each article we publish takes a lot of effort, planning, and preparation, but it is very well worth it. Your feedback, suggestions, and criticism allow us to improve on the features of The Riftbreaker before the official update releases. The articles we release receive a good amount of attention, and a huge number of you read them every week, for which we are beyond grateful. However, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look for improvements. This is why we decided to start our own EXOR Studios newsletter.

Yes, an email newsletter might seem a little dated in the era of short-form videos, but the data doesn’t lie. Email is still one of the most efficient ways of notifying people about news, and we would like to try. As always in EXOR Studios fashion, there is something in it for you. By signing up for our newsletter, you will receive a code that will allow you to unlock a unique in-game skin for Mr. Riggs. That is not the only newsletter exclusive we are planning - we want you to get real value from interacting with our news.

This is our take on "steampunk, but futuristic".

We also know your time is limited, and we don’t want to overstay our welcome. We promise not to spam you with anything irrelevant. Here’s what you can expect from us after signing up:

• Our weekly developer blog. These articles show you what we're currently working on and explain our daily challenges and design choices.
  
• Major Update Changelogs. We release one or two major updates a year. They are free for all our players and significantly expand the value you get from our games. We will not update you about every minor update - only the most significant ones.
  
• Beta testing opportunities. Get involved with the development process and help us shape the future of our games. You will test the most significant updates and other exciting projects before release.
  
• Special offers and promotions. We will let you know about discounts in case of historically lowest prices.
  
• Exclusive offers for our newsletter members. We will give you access to cosmetic in-game gifts, like skins and decorations, available only to the members of our mailing list.
  

[h2]If you’re into receiving some news from us, sign up for our newsletter here.[/h2]

Please note that emails might reach you with some delay. We are in the process of warming up our IP address and the number of emails we can send per hour is throttled.

EXOR Studios

The player community is the backbone of The Riftbreaker - and always has been. Since the early days, you provided valuable feedback about the early builds, highlighting our successes and shortcomings. This allows us to improve the game and address the hiccups you encounter. However, giving us valuable insight is not the only thing you have provided us over the years. Another aspect you have excelled at is modding the game. You’ve been making them since the days of Alpha and haven’t stopped since. Every once in a while, we try to showcase the most interesting mods available. Some are featured more than once - and this is one such case. Let’s take a look at the latest update for WirawanMYT’s Expanded Arsenal!

You can expect a lot of explosions and destruction with this mod.

This update has taken quite a while to cook. WirawanMYT told us that besides having to sort out his IRL matters, he wanted to solve several issues in his mod backlog. He has been steadily fixing the Lua bugs in the mod since the earlier versions, but that has taken a toll on the overall pace of development. The release of World Expansion 3 has not made things any easier, introducing changes to existing Lua scripts and adding completely new ones, which Wirawan couldn’t have accounted for. Still, he braved on, learning and improving as he went. Here are some of the things Wirawan has changed in the latest update.

The reworked gravity blasters are great against hordes of smaller enemies.

Since the mod’s name is Expanded Arsenal, it’s natural that we will talk about weapons first. Wirawan’s mod introduced unique elemental heavy blasters with several firing modes - a regular one, a charged shot, and an alternative charged shot that triggered if you held the charge button longer. The latest update revises some of the second firing modes of these blasters to make them more useful—for example, the heavy magma blaster used to lay mines as an alternative charged shot. To improve its usability, it releases a magma wave instead, providing a temporary area denial against smaller mobs. Other heavy blasters changed similarly - we’ll let you discover precisely what they do.

The bouncing blade tower looks like a lot of fun, and a lot of carnage.

Magma artillery doesn't seem like it would do great in the MOIST conditions of the Fungal swamp, but it does!

This might look like white phosphorus, but it is not. It's cryo artillery!

The defensive tower suite has also received some updates. The volley tower has been replaced by an all-new type of tower that shoots bouncing blades. It is an excellent anti-swarm measure but not very effective against singular targets. The elemental artillery tower suite has also been reworked. Instead of being simple copies of the artillery tower with different damage types, various artillery towers now have different shells and impact effects. The acid artillery explodes into a gas grenade, affecting multiple enemies over a long period. The cryo artillery shoots a shell that splits into five smaller shells, dealing cryo damage in a wider area. The radioactive artillery uses a fragmentation shell and bursts into piercing radiation in a horizontal axis, dealing almost instantaneous damage. This expanded and reworked lineup of towers offers excellent strategic and tactical depth. Not to mention all the cool effects Wirawan made from scratch - you must see them for yourselves.

How about a flaming power rod, which turns into a tornado after it expires?

Wirawan’s mod had long-range missile towers long before the release of World Expansion III and the arrival of HCMs and Power Rods. The modded towers were more powerful, with their ranges spanning the entire playable area. With the addition of the “official” long-range towers (and the accompanying Lua improvements on our side), it made sense to restrict the range of the long-range towers. To make up for that sacrifice, Wirawan gives each missile tower a unique effect meant to deal with a specific type of threat. Now, you have plenty of towers to choose from, and they differ in the amount of damage and type, projectile travel time, or damage pattern. There are plenty of things to experiment with.

Each shot from towers like these will drain your liquid storage reserves, so make sure to have a lot stocked up in case of a lengthy defense.

Naturally, with great power comes great upkeep cost. To fully utilize the power of all the new defensive towers at your disposal, you must supply them with various fuel types, including several different liquids. Pipe crossings will become your best friends as you try to supply each tower type with its corresponding liquid and solve the pipe spaghetti. Moreover, Wirawan has brought back a mechanic from The Riftbreaker’s past. Towers have a certain upkeep cost when they are in idle mode. That cost rises dramatically when towers are firing at enemy creatures. This requires you to have a strategic reserve of liquids saved up for attacks, further increasing the strategic complexity of your base economy. Be sure to manage your resources wisely and plan ahead to ensure you always have enough reserves for when the enemy attacks.

Here, you can see enemies spawning from the magma eruptions. You have to stay vigilant, as the enemy might literally spawn behind your back!

Wirawan introduced innovations not only in the weapons department but also in the weapons department and wave spawn mechanics. By playing around with spawn rules, Wirawan managed to give some enemies the ability to spawn in unusual circumstances. For example, acid rain can bring in waves of creatures from the Acidic Plains biome as an “extra” attack outside the regularly scheduled ones. Earthquakes and other geological events might cause the Volcanic Zone enemies to appear. Falling meteors can take some bio-hybrids from the Metallic Valley along for the ride. You get the point - you are not safe and should invest in some new defenses and be on high alert. Hostile Galatean creatures may appear in unexpected places! And remember, Wirawan’s Omega creatures are much more potent than the ones you can expect from us!

Wirawan's Omega creatures can shoot down the incoming artillery projectiles.

It’s also worth mentioning that in the Expanded Arsenal mod, neither the players nor the creatures are defenseless against artillery attacks. Wirawan has spent considerable time implementing the “active defenses” mechanics, which allow all sides of the conflict to shoot down enemy projectiles mid-air. The player can do that using their defensive towers or mech upgrades - projectiles on the collision course will be automatically intercepted and shot down. Some aliens, especially the Omega strains, also possess this ability. However, such defenses aren’t impenetrable. Simply launch more shells and overpower the enemy’s defenses with the sheer volume of projectiles. You can also use weapons that do not use projectiles at all - like the flamethrower or laser.

Your towers gain the ability to shoot down artillery projectiles!

Unfortunately, so did other enemy creatures and structures.

The list of changes and improvements could continue, but trying the mod out on your own is best. Go to Steam Workshop or mod.io and download Expanded Arsenal. We recommend playing it in a new Campaign, though - there is so much new tech to learn that a Survival run simply will not do it justice. If you have any questions, the mod's author is very active both on Steam and on our Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios, and we’re sure that he will answer all the questions you might have!

Get the mod here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2893151510

See you next time!
EXOR Studios

Disclaimer: Make sure to back up the files you save before you play any mods. Modded saves are incompatible with the vanilla version of the game.

We have just released a patch featuring our latest fix for the stability issues you have been encountering on Nvidia RTX GPUs.

A couple of weeks ago, we released a patch aiming to reduce the frequency of the crashes, but stated that it was not a permanent solution. We have conducted a thorough investigation and came up with a build that we believe will remedy this situation.

We found out that the problem lay with our acceleration structure. The raytracing implementation requires us to prepare Bottom Level Acceleration Structures (BLAS) and Top Level Acceleration Structure (TLAS). We have two types of BLAS - static and dynamic. The static BLAS contains information about static props and terrain. It is generated once, during loading, and stored for the entire gameplay duration. Dynamic BLAS contains information about all the other objects - buildings, destructible props, creatures, and the player. These structures need to be rebuilt every frame to maintain accuracy. TLAS uses the information stored in BLASes to provide us with accurate data during the raycasting pass.

If you want to know more about raytracing in our game, here's a detailed article about it:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/2890711124511610519

We noticed that the issue occurred when a "fast rebuild" of our acceleration structures was triggered. It is an optimization technique that reuses some parts of the old acceleration structure to build a new one. When using fast rebuild on the new driver version, it was possible for the data stored in the GPU memory to get corrupted and result in a critical failure. This only became apparent on new driver versions. Disabling this optimization reduces the risk of failure by quite some margin, but we are not 100% certain whether it is the final fix. We will continue investigating this issue and hope that the patch we are releasing today will solve this problem for as amny people as possible.

We are very sorry it took so long for us to find and fix this error. It was well hidden - it relied on a specific combination of GPU, drivers, and other variables. Only one PC in our studio was capable of reproducing the crash on a regular basis, which made the process extremely tedious and difficult.

Please let us know if you encounter any GPU-related issues with the latest build.
EXOR Studios

We have just released a patch for The Riftbreaker Closed Co-Op Beta. The full changelog is available below:

[h2]The Riftbreaker Closed Co-Op Beta Update, March 19th, 2025 Changelog:[/h2]
[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• Changes have been made to the disassembly system. You should now be able to disassemble multiple items at once.
  
• Changed the "Assist", "Warning", and underground treasure markers from old flags to new 3D meshes for better visibility.
  
• Added placeholder voice lines to several ping menu options.
  
• Poogret Poo now produces much more loot.
  
• The biocache scale now grows with rarity.
  
• Nuclear Power Plants no longer have a uranium upkeep cost.
  
• Players now have access to the menu options when the server is paused.
  

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed several issues with the Multiplayer Lobby screen and the "Invite a player" functionality. Now, you can invite players from your friends list even if they do not have the game open. If a player accepts an invite when the game is not launched, we will launch the game for them. However, they still won't join your lobby. Inviting players who are already in the game joins them to the correct lobby. We are still working on a fix that will allow you to join with just one click.
  
• Fixed some issues with the Repair Facility materials missing.
  
• Fixed the display of resistance statistics on the Characteristics screen.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Carbonium Factory animation that caused Carbonium samples to get stuck on the screen forever.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when client received the server heartbeat before the world initialization.
  
• Fixed issues with muzzle flash replication between clients.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused players not to receive items when connecting mid-session.
  

EXOR Studios

It is time to unveil one of the major innovations in the free Riftbreaker 2.0 update, which will be available to all our players. During your exploration of Galatea 37, you go on several expeditions taking place in the seven varied biomes of the planet. However, those storylines end with the establishment of your permanent resource outposts. Many of you wanted to keep exploring the biomes - either because you were fond of them or because you needed the resources that those biomes provided. We wanted to give you such an option for a while, and now the time is right. Here’s your first look at The Riftbreaker’s randomized mission generator.

Choose the biome and mission type, roll to find what you want, and ahoy, adventure!

Our newest feature becomes available once you have established a resource outpost in a given biome. Mind you - you have to finish the entire storyline of that leg of the campaign. Bolting out before the objectives are complete or setting up an Outpost building on the scouting mission do not count! Once you’ve “completed” a biome, you can simply go to the Orbital Scanner menu screen and select the ‘Scan’ option. That will take you to a brand-new screen, where you can order your long-range radars to look for a place viable for one of two things: exploration or resource extraction.

Exploration: The Riftbreaker style. You can find groups of bioanomalies in some spots. Perhaps activating them all at once is not the best idea, but we won't tell you how to live your life.

Exploration missions are perfect for those players who want to experience the thrill of venturing into areas densely populated with Galatean wildlife. These places are rich in Bioanomalies, Biocaches, and underground resource deposits, encouraging you to scout the entirety of the mission area. You can find something useful around every corner and test your arsenal in combat situations. Resource extraction missions, on the other hand, take place in areas with more raw resource deposits and fewer natural dangers. They are perfect for setting up additional outposts that will boost your economy to reach the mysterious, long-term endgame goals (which we’ll keep a secret for a bit longer).

Here's the preview of the Scanner screen with all the mission data. The data points are explained below.

Once you choose the biome and the mission type, the scanner will try to find a suitable location for you. When it does, it will present you with a list of basic facts and statistics about that area. You wouldn’t want to make a blind rift jump into the unknown, would you? Here is a short description of the data you will receive from the long-range scans:

• Map Size - informs you about the size of the area of interest in kilometers. Not all maps are square!
  
• Threat Level - This stat tells you about the area's density of the alien population. It is possible to find areas where a specific species dominates over others, making it much more likely to encounter a particular type of creature and making missions much more exciting.
  
• Terrain Type - This will inform you about the area's terrain formations. Flat and open areas are better for setting up outposts. Lakes allow you to take advantage of liquid resources. Canyons give you a tactical advantage when fighting aliens. We have crafted over thirty new map tiles with varied layouts to enhance gameplay’s strategic depth further.
  
• Bioanomalies - The higher the stat, the more Bioanomalies you can expect to find. This is what you’re going to be predominantly interested in when looking for an area for an exploration mission.
  
• Underground Deposits - The number of hidden resource caches you can excavate using the Geoscanner.
• Resource Types - Informs you about the variety and amount of resources you can find in a given area. This will help you decide what factories you can build during your mission.
  

Here's an example layout of a resource-rich map in difficult terrain. Building an outpost here would be challenging, but imagine all those resources ready-to-go in your Storage!

This example, on the other hand, shows what you can find during exploration missions. That's actual water in the Tropical Zone biome! We finally have the technology!

Galatea 37 is an enormous place. There is a virtually infinite number of places you can visit, explore, and use to expand the economy of your proto-colony. If you dislike the area found by the scanner, you are free to perform another scan. This will allow you to find a place that will help you fulfill your goals. However, each area picked up by the scanner is interesting for one reason or another. They contain anomalous objects and sites that should spark your scientific curiosity. For example, a freezing cold area in the middle of a radioactive wasteland. Or a meteor impact site. Or a gravitational anomaly in the middle of nowhere. Each map is worth exploring, but ultimately, the choice is yours!

Sometimes you will find unique formations or sites that will tell a story of their own. Explore everything and look at anything unusual!

The ability to scan for additional planetary missions is one of the biggest innovations in the upcoming Riftbreaker 2.0 update. It will play a huge role in the Extended Story Campaign and allow you to elevate your infrastructure to levels you have never seen before - and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Be on the lookout for more news, where we will reveal even more new mechanics and upgrades to the ones you already know. If you hang out on our Discord at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios or our streams at https://www.twitch.tv/exorstudios you’ll be among the first to find out what we’re talking about.

See you there!
EXOR Studios