The Riftbreaker News

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Hello!

As many of you know, The Riftbreaker runs on the latest version of our game engine, The Schmetterling. The biggest difference between this version and the previous one is the implementation of physically based rendering, also known as PBR. It is a lighting model that tries to replicate the behavior between materials and light as it is in the real world. Making use of this technique opens up a lot of possibilities for us, one of which we are going to talk about today. Let’s take a look at the details behind the day and night cycle in The Riftbreaker.


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In order to achieve the feeling of the realistic passage of time, we have decided to specify four distinct parts of every day - dawn, day, dusk and night. They are defined by a couple of parameters, such as the color and intensity of light, environment skybox, shadow intensity, fog parameters, wind power, and other weather effects.

A look at our Scene Parameters control panel from the EXOR Level Editor.

Skybox is a set of textures in the form of a cube that tries to emulate your surroundings. What is important to note here is the fact that the skybox does not contain the light source but only the ambient part of the sky. It is a completely separate entity. To emulate sun behavior we use a directional light that is the main source of light for everything you see in The Riftbreaker. Its position and strength can be regulated independently of the skybox. What is important because we could not generate as many skyboxes which will represent every minute of the day. The two elements working together give us realistic lighting and almost infinite possibilities when it comes to setting up our time of day environment. By the way, checkmate, round-Earthers - the world is flat and the Sun goes around it! ;)

One of the skyboxes that was used for X-Morph: Defense.

Another aspect we can tinker with are the fog parameters. We can determine the exact distances at which the fog starts and stops being visible. Apart from that, we can also change the density of the fog. It is very useful for setting the mood of the scene. A delicate morning mist over grasslands feels a lot different than thick fog accompanied by heavy rain. With proper sound effects and wind strength, the feeling of immersion in the game world increases greatly.

Oh my, these mushrooms grow so fast!

On top of that, with time passing, each part of the day is blending with each other depending on what time it is. The sun direction reflects the position of the sun in the sky, and the length of the shadow is accurate. And at the end of that, we are not limited to only one set of parameters - we can create any number of presets and change between them on the fly - the engine blends them with each other to give us a smooth transition.

All weather effects can blend with any given time of day preset.

The fact that we can create multiple presets for each time of day means we can introduce variety into the cycle. Every night an algorithm randomly chooses the presets it is going to use for the following day, making it slightly different from the last one. This way some days are going to be sunnier than the other ones. We also control the weather effects, making the possibilities virtually infinite. Moreover, certain events in the game, such as tornadoes and acid rain, can trigger either local or global changes to the weather that additionally blend with the parameters of the lighting.

The Riftbreaker will feature multiple weather events, such as acid rain.

The last piece to this puzzle is making the night look interesting. It’s an alien planet, after all, and pitch-black won’t cut it. Therefore, we put our affector system to use here. We mentioned it briefly when we talked about bioluminance here. At night, our shaders change the way they behave and giving way for all the emissive lights on plants, stones, and wildlife to shine. Combined with the building lights, base lamps and spotlights mounted on Mr. Riggs and defensive towers, it creates a beautiful, rich atmosphere even in the dark of the night.

Other light sources take over when the Sun is not around.
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And that is all we have for you today. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment below or chat us up directly at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. Thanks for reading and see you next week!

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Hey there!

Exactly one week ago we asked you to participate in the first of many voting events that will shape the future of The Riftbreaker. We presented a couple of Ashley’s outfits and the summaries of the stories they are connected with. Here is the picture again:



The option D won the contest by a wide margin. It is a light recon armor, a very advanced protective suit that grants the user protection and support during dangerous Riftbreaking missions. It looks sick as well, and you seem to appreciate both the style and function! :)

As we promised, we are going to describe the armor in greater detail through a story that will reveal a little more about Ashley’s past. It should appear by the end of the month, but take that with a grain of salt - we’ve got a lot going on right now. ;)

Everyone who voted also automatically entered a giveaway. One of our Discord users - Skylord - won an EXOR swag bag, filled to the brim with our gadgets and a signed copy of X-Morph: Defense Limited Edition for the PS4. Do not worry if you missed it, though! There’s going to be a lot more in the future!



This event is the first that we will carry out as a part of our ‘Community-Driven Design’ philosophy. We want you to feel that you have a real impact on how the game turns out. We are making it for you, after all! You can expect to have many chances to decide the future of The Riftbreaker.

Our Discord server is the best place to leave all the feedback and suggestions for us. Reading messages from the community and discussing ideas is a great source of inspiration and knowledge. We would love to have you there! Visit www.discord.gg/exorstudios

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We said many times that we want the development of The Riftbreaker to be community-driven. We want to make choices together with you, let you shape the game and make this project something unique and engaging. Today, we ask for your help with making one of the choices.

Ashley Nowak is the main character of The Riftbreaker. Although we don't see her in-game outside her Mecha-Suit, she still is the most important character and will appear on most of the artwork we make. We decided to have a little bit of fun and design a couple of clothing styles for her to wear as a default. Each of those tells a little story of its own. Your votes will determine which story you'd like us to describe in greater detail, revealing more about Ashley's past.



A - an infiltration suit, designed to make moving as effortless as possible. She used this one while doing recon on illegal mining operations during her years in the Academy.
B - a casual outfit, a little adventurous, inspired by pilots and thrillseekers of the 80s cinema. The jacket used to belong to her grandmother and reminds her of home.
C - a scientist suit, a callback to Ashley's scientific training and background. This outfit survived its fair share of accidents and explosions, yet still holds together.
D - light recon armor, providing protection and life support on dangerous missions but without overburdening the user.
E - full heavy assault armor, for the times when Mr. Riggs' protection was not enough. Every Riftbreaker cadet has to complete a 10 mile run in one of these.

If you would like to take part in the voting, join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. You will find the vote in the #vote channel of The Riftbreaker section once you've joined. Everyone who participates will get the chance to win a bag of EXOR Studios goodies. We ship worldwide, so everyone can join.

If you take part in the vote you get the chance to win an EXOR Studios swag bag including A SIGNED COPY OF X-MORPH: DEFENSE COLLECTOR'S EDITION for the PS4, and other cool gadgets! We ship worldwide, so everybody can join. The voting starts today, July 10th, and ends in exactly one week.



We will pick the winner among all the participants. If the option of your choice does not win the vote, you can still get lucky and win the prize.

Good luck!

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Hello!

Just a quick update this Saturday, as we’re really busy with preparing the Zombie Driver launch on the Nintendo Switch and some other things for the upcoming trade shows. Hope you can forgive us :)

As you know, we want the world of The Riftbreaker to be as varied as possible. It is quite a difficult task, because each biome will need its own set of props, fauna, flora, unique weather conditions and other elements that fall under the ‘look and feel’ category.

Last time we showed you the general process of creating props. They all start as simple, hand-drawn illustrations. Some of them never make it into the game, others do, but in a completely different form than originally anticipated. Today we would like to present to you some more pieces of concept art. Some are already in the game, others wait for their turn.



This is of course just a small fraction of the things our graphics designers are working on. We can’t wait for the results. Would you like to see them too? Join our Discord - www.discord.gg/exorstudios

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It is not so easy to design an alien-looking set of decorations. The years of observing the nature here on Earth have left all of us with pretty solid images in our heads. We all know what features we should expect from a tree, a flower, a mushroom. Luckily, the nature has a few tricks up its sleeves. A little imagination combined with some more exotic references can lead up to pretty interesting results. Let’s take a look at some space mushrooms!

There are several approaches you can take here. The first is to take some ordinarily looking Earth mushrooms and give them a fresh paint job.



These already look more interesting than an ordinary deathcap, but adding some more vibrant colors, together with bioluminance can work wonders here!



Another way of going about creating such a model is looking for references in places the most of us do not usually get to visit everyday. This way you can adapt an Earthly species into a completely otherworldly prop.



This winding mushroom is essentially a mix of 3 different species found in various places on Earth. We do not have a 3D model for this one just yet, but you can already see how many variations you can get from just one concept.

It is, of course, possible to let your imagination loose and design something completely out of the ordinary. In that case, our graphics designers usually draw a concept art first in relation to Mr. Riggs. This way we can get the sense of scale of the prop. Once it’s done, a simple 3D model is prepared, this time to show us what it may look like in game. After receiving feedback and implementing changes (if necessary), the designer creates textures for the model, so that it can finally become a part of Galatea 37 ecosystem. Here’s a couple of examples of this process:

We start with a hand-drawn concept.

Then, each size from that concept is modeled and presented in scale.

With each stage the mushroom starts to differ from what we see on Earth...

...up to the point where you wouldn't say it's a mushroom at all!

This is another fun concept.

We can hide the bulbous bottom part underground. Who knows, perhaps you'll be able to rip them out?

The tentacles expand even further.

Here we are - a mixture of a cactus and an octopus in a mushroom form. I'm not even going to try and name that thing.

Once the model is ready, the level designers are free to use them in whatever context they like. Additionally, they can easily change the scale and orientation of the models, which changes the look and feel by a lot!

Which concept do you like the best? What other alien-looking species of plants, animals or mushrooms do you think we should incorporate in The Riftbreaker? Let us know here and on our Discord server - www.discord.gg/exorstudios.

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