The Riftbreaker News

All resources are randomized. You could find sludge, mud or water in the same spot on different playthroughs!

Hi!

Last time we told you how our algorithm that creates a random map from the pieces we created beforehand. However, the map is not the only element that undergoes randomization at the start of a run. Another thing that is important to make you feel like you are exploring the unknown are the resources you’re able to find in the wild. Today we’re going to tell you what goes into that and what problems we have to overcome in order to make the mechanic fun and challenging at the same time.

Looking for resource deposits will often mean fighting numerous alien creatures.

When we create the map pieces (as a reminder, we call them tiles) we have the possibility of adding resource spawn points to them. They are areas where the resources of any kind may spawn. Mind you, we do not tell the game that it should spawn any given type of resource there, or even if it should spawn any deposit at all. It is just an indicator of the place where the algorithm can place carbonium, iron, sludge, mud or any other type of resource that the player can use.

You can always find something useful in the wild. Both creatures and inanimate objects drop loot when destroyed.

The resource system is free to distribute the minerals and liquids between the spawn points, but we had to introduce some rules. All resource types are given minimum and maximum values. The algorithm has to distribute them in such an amount that it meets the lower limit but does not exceed the upper one. The limits are in place because we do not want the player to be given a map without any carbonium, for example. There are also rules on how big a single deposit can be so that the machine doesn’t put the whole map’s worth of iron all in one deposit.

There are only a few basic resources you have to keep track of, but there's plenty more for you to explore later in the game.

That brings us to the point of limiting randomness with arbitrary rules. Random distribution is fun, but only up to a certain point. If the player is not able to locate a proper spot to set up a base within a reasonable amount of time, the fun turns into frustration. We do not want that, so the player is guaranteed to find necessary resources within a certain radius of their spawn point. There is no guarantee that the player will go in the right direction to find it, but the solution works most of the time. We will probably continue tweaking it until the release (and after), to minimize the risk of having no resources to start building the base.

Build an impenetrable base and show those creatures who's boss.

We hope that the randomized elements in The Riftbreaker will lead to a fresh experience every time you launch a new survival run. If you join our Discord, you might get the chance to test these features with us - www.discord.gg/exorstudios

See you on Discord and on the streams! (Tue & Thu, 3 PM CET)

Other social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios

Resources? Check. Sufficient space? Check. Angry aliens? Check! We're setting up camp here!

Hello everyone!

We often emphasize that gameplay in The Riftbreaker is randomized. No two playthroughs are ever the same thanks to our intelligent systems that mix everything up before the player is set loose on the map. This week we will try to explain to you how the maps are generated and what changes between them on a run-to-run basis.

Building scenery pieces is very important - it creates memorable places like this one.

The survival maps in The Riftbreaker consist of several tiles. Tiles are smaller, square pieces of terrain prepared by us. The random algorithm chooses several tiles from a biome set - each biome has its own collection to choose from and biomes do not mix with each other. The algorithm then creates a map of the desired size e.g. 5 tiles wide and 5 tiles high, giving you the play area of 25 tiles (this is the size of current survival mode maps, we plan to expand the maps to larger sizes in the future). The tiles can also be rotated - the system knows which sides fit together and which ones don’t. These possibilities already give you a lot of combinations.

Sometimes you have to build your base in the middle of a space swamp...

In the current state, you can often recognize the patterns of certain tiles, lessening the impression of the world being truly autogenerated. We have a couple of remedies for that. First of all, we can create entirely new tiles and add them to the mix, making each one less probable to be chosen by the system. The second solution is to add some variance within the tiles themselves. Our programmers are currently working on a system to do exactly that, but in order not to spoil the surprise, that’s all we have to say for now.

The campaign mode will require you to jump to different locations, and all of them are going to be randomized as well.

An exciting thing about map randomization is the fact that each map has its own ‘seed’ - a set of characters that holds the encoded information about the specifics of the map. It gives us the option to enable seed sharing. You could share the exact scenario you’ve just played with your friends. Or, we could set up daily challenges so that you can compete with other players on leaderboards! There are a lot of possibilities that we can explore here.

A sneak peek into the new biome we're working on - the desert.

That’s it for today, we hope that this short piece will give you some insight about the randomization in The Riftbreaker. The next one we publish will tackle the idea of randomized resources, so stay tuned!

Join our Discord server - www.discord.gg/exorstudios - and see you on the stream! (Tue & Thu, 3 PM CET)

Other social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios

Hello everyone!

We never expected this day would ever come. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of the first standalone EXOR Studios title, Zombie Driver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-wNhKdML38

We left our jobs and founded EXOR in 2007 to realize our dream of making games on our own, independently. Even though the early months were quite rocky we kept going and bet everything on Zombie Driver. Originally released on the 4th of December 2009, it greatly surpassed our expectations. It grew a loyal fanbase, secured our future as a game development studio and paved the way for our future projects.



Zombie Driver received a healthy dose of DLCs, updates, and reeditions, including the HD version in 2012 and the Immortal Edition this year. Over its lifetime the game:

• sold almost 1.000.000 copies worldwide.
  
• was released in physical form in 58 countries.
  
• was ported to many platforms - PC, WinRT, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3, Nintendo Switch, Nvidia Shield, Ouya.
  
• made EXOR Studios recognizable and made us irreplaceable friends all over the world.
  

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Zombie Driver, for the next 24 hours the game is free on Steam. You can add it to your library free of charge. X-Morph: Defense is getting a 75% discount, too. We are also very close to publishing Zombie Driver on the Playstation 4, so keep an eye out for that.



We hope you had or will have as much fun playing Zombie Driver as we had making it. In the meantime, we are continuing our work on the next project, The Riftbreaker. It is a completely different game - a combination of base-building, survival and hack’n’slash, but the engine it uses evolved from what we used in Zombie Driver. You can’t stop the undead!



Thank you for all these years of support! We hope that 10 years from now we will have even more reasons to celebrate with you!

EXOR Studios

Hi everyone!

The end of the year draws near. That means Game of the Year contests pop up right, left and center! We are taking part in one and would love to ask you for your help in securing a spot in it!

Vote for The Riftbreaker in the 2019 Indie of the Year Awards



IndieDB has a special place in our hearts since the days of Zombie Driver. It served as a hub for all our media activities before the rise of social media. It would mean a lot to us if you decided to give The Riftbreaker your vote in this competition.

Thank you!

The tech tree in The Riftbreaker is expanding all the time. We make adjustments to existing technologies, change the research patterns and add completely new items to the list. Today we are going to continue showing off the newest additions to Ashley’s tech arsenal in the energy department. The two we are about to show you are very different from each other and provide some exciting new ways to utilize what the planet offers you.



The first one is the Carbonium Power Plant. It can only be placed directly on a Carbonium deposit. Thanks to its massive grinder it easily breaks up carbonium ore into usable chunks and uses them as a fuel source. It might seem wasteful because Carbonium is necessary to construct almost all buildings in a Riftbreaker’s base. However, you need to remember that the largest part of the early base setup is centered around establishing a power grid that can later sustain the other buildings. You can save the Carbonium you’d otherwise use to build Solar Panels and Wind Turbines and use it as fuel. However, the Carbonium field will eventually run dry. You have to make a choice - short-term gain or sustainability.



The other building we would like to show you today is the Geothermal Power Plant. It utilizes the natural processes happening under the surface of the planet. Just like on Earth, there are underground rivers and lakes on Galatea 37. In some spots, the heat emanating from within the planet raises the water temperature so much that it starts boiling and turns to steam, increasing pressure. If the pressure breaks a certain threshold, the surface will rupture and a steam vent will appear. The Geothermal Power Plant is built directly on steam vents and uses hot steam to power the turbine within the plant, generating electricity. It is an eco-friendly solution but requires you to find a steam vent first.

We hope that we will be able to show you some of these buildings in action soon. Join our streams every Tuesday (Mixer) and Thursday (Twitch) to catch some Riftbreaker action. We have also shared the pre-alpha build with select streamers - they usually share info about their streams on our Discord - www.discord.gg/exorstudios.

Other social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios