Riftwalker News

Good evening you awesome people,

I've gone ahead and released a minor follow-up patch for update 0.5.2. The update just adds some descriptions for the heavy and shredder turrets, as well as fixes a minor "jittering" issue the heavy turret had.

I've also included an icon for the heavy turret so you don't have to stare at a white box.

Known Issues:

• Enemy ragdolls can still spazz out causing weird visual artifacts, I have a solution for this but may take some time to fix and test.
  
  
• Heavy turret is not yet shooting from the barrels, I'll be updating this soon.
  

I hope you all had an awesome weekend, more updates to follow soon. As always, if you have any feedback, issues or ideas - let me know in the forums.

Cheers,
Fletchy

Good evening!

This update is a follow-up based on user feedback from patch 0.5.1 - the update includes a new turret capable of shredding through low health enemies, reduced enemy wave sizes, reduced enemy wave scaling, reduced income and overall speed changes for monsters.

[h2]New Turrets[/h2]

Shredder turret - The Shredder turret takes the place of the steam rifle turret. It is cheap and has a high rate of fire with a culling effect that scales with its level. Type F in the comments to pay your respects to the steam turret.

Heavy Turret - The heavy turret is what the old steam rifle turret was, but more specialized. It hits hard, initially quite slow, but with the right investment, it becomes a vital turret to any defense layout.

[h2]Balancing Changes[/h2]

Reduced monster speed - Revealed monsters have had their movement speed reduced significantly. While darkness still moves at its original pace to get to the action without wasting your time. Monster speeds will be adjusted further over the course of the next few updates until they feel completely right.

Upgrade costs - Several towers have had their upgrade costs adjusted.

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

The following issues are visual only and will be fixed in the next update:
Heavy turret faces multiple directions, this will be fixed in the next update.
Heavy turret fires from the base, this will be fixed in the next update.
Some enemies now, occasionally adjust in size when ragdolled and may cause weird artifacts until the body despawns, this will be fixed in the next update.

[h2]Feedback[/h2]

As always, please leave your feedback in the forums and I'll reply to them as soon as I can.

Cheers,
Fletchy

Good Afternoon!

The latest riftwalker update introduces some new content and adds more polish on existing features. There's still a lot more to come, but it should feel refreshing.

New Zone: The Valerian Archives

• The valerian archives are now yours to explore. - This is the first iteration of the Valerian Archives, which includes a limited number of tiles. I'll be heavily expanding upon this zone in the near future.
  
  
• First multipath enemy spawning - The archives are the first version of procedural enemy multipathing. I'll be improving the procedural system in the future for less linear zones.
  

Updates

• Improved flamethrower VFX reliability - The updated flamethrower VFX should now correctly trigger on more vertical based tower positions.
  
  
• Improved performance on the light brazier - Temporarily removed the darkening effect on the light brazier when enemies were close for performance reasons. This will be replaced with a generic flame flicker in the future. This change will also be done to the hanging brazier in the future. You should notice the improved performance when spamming light braziers.
  
  
• Saving system has been overhauled - This will allow for better and more reliable tracking of stats and make it easier for me to expand upon.
  
  
• First achievement - The first achievement has been added, which is unlocked when discovering the valerian archives. Several other achievements will be added in the near future, this is mainly a test of functionality.
  

Final notes

As always, please leave feedback for me in the forums.

Good morning!

Time for another update, the 0.5.0 update contains several quality-of-life changes requested by you. It also paves the way for some future changes.

Quality of Life
• Tileset overhaul - All existing tiles have been reworked and rebalanced. The workflow will be carried on for future tilesets in the next content update. The new workflow provides improved performance and improved ragdolls with the terrain. There "should" no longer be any disappearing ragdolls, however, I still need to do more testing.
  
  
• First iteration of the new tower UI - I've been working on a new tower UI that will allow me to take a modular approach to design the UI, for when I add tower target priorities, and other features. This still needs a LOT of polish, but I'd like to start getting feedback as I work on polishing it.
  
  
• Camera Speedup - By popular request, you can now hold the camera speed modifier button (default: "Left Shift") to speed up your camera movement.
  
  
• Tesla tower hit visual feedback - I've added some visual feedback to the tesla tower hits, these changes will allow me to do similar things for new towers as I add them. Please provide some feedback on the intensity of the effect.
  
  
• Steam Turret added bullet smoke trail - Added a smoke (steam?) trail to the steam rifle turret.
  
  
• New console commands - I've added new console commands to access experimental features like changing graphic presets, and accessing damage number overlays. You can access the console (default: "~") and type "help" to see a list of available commands.
  
  Balancing changes
• Tower platform number reduced.
  
• Starting resources changed from 421 to 500.
  
• Income from later waves reduced.
  
• Monster HP scaling increased.
  
• Tesla tower damage is now the same at all ranks, with only range increasing.
  

I hope the patch improves the overall experience, as usual, please send me your feedback on the forums. If you encounter any issues, I keep a regular eye on the bug thread.

I'd like to improve the update frequency as time permits, this may be challenging due to difficulties in my personal life. Regardless, what day would you prefer to receive weekly/bi-weekly updates?

EDIT NOTE: INSERT SOCIAL MEDIA BANNER HERE.


A fan of all things geek and tech? So are we! Come and join us at the rAge expo within the Home_Coded Developer Zone sponsored by Huawei, where you'll find us hosting a showcase of the game, answering questions and I'll be discussing the future of Riftwalker!

Come share your thoughts and ask me anything!

- VoidFletcher


https://store.steampowered.com/app/929910/Riftwalker/