We published a series of patches for The Riftbreaker Closed Co-Op Beta a couple of days ago, featuring some experimental changes in many areas of the game. Massive overhauls of the weapon and loot systems were a significant portion of these updates. These reworks are something we have been planning for a while now. The experimental nature of our Closed Co-Op Beta makes it a perfect environment to test and consult these changes with our community, whose feedback is invaluable to us. Today, we want to tell you more about this process. We will explain our philosophy behind the reworks, what the process looked like, and how we are working with our community playtesters to ensure we are moving in the right direction.

There's been a lot of testing going on lately, both in and out of the studio.

Let’s start by talking about the reasons behind these changes. The weapon system in The Riftbreaker has never been perfect. The lower-quality weapons were often underpowered, while higher tiers shredded through everything the game could throw at you. You could fire some weapons with seemingly no end, while others would run out of ammo after only a few seconds. Moreover, the weapon mod system was more complex than it should have been, with some mods being outright useless in the grand scheme of things. On top of all that, some of our guns simply lacked their identity and did not encourage players to try them out, as they were likely to already have better alternatives.

Co-Op on higher difficulty levels is going to throw some difficult Omega creatures at you. We want you to have an arsenal that is ready to tackle them.

We knew we wouldn’t solve these issues overnight, as the scope of the necessary work extended far beyond tweaking some numerical values in the weapons database. Clearly, the ammunition system, mods, and crafting also had to be improved. Based on the results of multiple gameplay sessions, we decided to examine each weapon individually and determine the proper course of action. We inspected each weapon, examined mod interactions, and asked our community on Discord for their thoughts and conclusions.

Working together is important - both when playing co-op AND developing it. This is why we pay a lot of attention to what our community has to say about the game.

One of our community members, wzysb, went above and beyond this call to action. Wzysb is a high-level player with extensive experience in strategy and action games and a deep understanding of the systems that make them run. He produced a 40-page document with his own analysis and thoughts about the weapons in The Riftbreaker. Wzysb’s conclusions offered us a different perspective and highlighted some issues we wouldn’t have considered otherwise. While we did not agree on all fronts, it was a great resource that helped us considerably.

Since we're giving Omega creatures more abilities, we can't leave our players behind!

Once we started testing in detail, we realized that the vast majority of the standard-level weapons were either fine or slightly underpowered. We boosted the weaker weapons, as we wanted to keep the damage output consistent across all variants. Please note that we are not going by DPS here, as this stat is often quite misleading. For example, the Flamethrower deals a little bit of direct damage, but the burn damage over time does the heavy lifting in its case. It is also worth noting that weapons are created with specific use cases in mind. A Lightning Gun will shred through Canoptrix and do very little against a Gnerot. Once we were happy with the baseline, we moved on to more advanced weapon tiers.

Tweaking weapon stats is not an easy task - here's just one screen of our Weapons Editor. The table goes much further, both horizontally and vertically, and each value has the potential to completely mess things up. Boy, am I glad I'm not in charge.

When you crafted higher-tier weapons, they received additional characteristics on top of their regular properties, such as piercing or multiple projectiles per burst. We quickly realized that these additional abilities had the potential to mess with the weapon’s power level by quite some margin. Certain combinations of stat rolls could double the weapon's damage output, but on the other hand, they could also increase the ammo consumption to very high levels. On top of that, the crafting screen DPS calculation would take into account the absolute worst and absolute best rolls, neither of which were actually possible, throwing the numbers off by a country mile. This situation needed some radical steps.

One of the complaints we often got was that the Corrosive Gun felt like a tool to destroy the magnetic rocks in Volcanic Zone. This is no longer true. More projectiles, more splash, more firepower will solve all your Volcanic Zone issues.

We decided to remove the extra characteristics from the craftable weapons to combat the inconsistencies. To compensate for that, we adjusted the base stats, like damage, rate of fire, and ammo consumption. Thanks to these actions, we removed the extreme outliers from the craftable range and ensured that the power level remained consistent across weapon tiers. The additional properties can still be added via mods, allowing you to still get truly devastating combinations. However, managing the power level of weapons stat-wise is not the only thing we have done.

No trickery here - this is a basic, crafted Advanced Laser, with no cheats or unlimited ammo, dealing with 40 Hammeroceroses. There is a delicate auto-aim going on to help you keep the beam on target and not lose the bonus damage.

We have also introduced some functional changes to those weapons, which didn’t see much use for one reason or another. Two great examples of this are the Laser and the Root Gun. The Laser used to grow in power the longer you managed to keep it on a single target. However, the bonus damage was immediately lost after you lost track of the creature you were firing at. We decided to change that. Now, the Laser will gain extra damage as long as you keep firing at enemies. You can switch targets freely, and as long as you keep hitting an enemy, you will retain the damage bonus. The laser is now very effective against single targets and groups of enemies. We hope you like it.

Two Superior Root Guns vs a pack of 50 Flurian Alphas. The weapon is much easier to use thanks to its high fire rate, piercing, and unlimited ammo. Perhaps a bit too good, but we'll iron that out at some point!

The Root Gun arrived in the game with the latest World Expansion but did not amass a huge fanbase. The leading cause was that the weapon utilized high-caliber ammo - a very valuable resource used by some of the most reliable weapons in the game, like Burst Rifle and Shotgun. The Root Gun simply did not deliver the same kind of firepower you could get from other weapons using the same type of bullets. To address this, we decided to take a radical step to improve its effectiveness - we removed ammo requirements from this weapon altogether and gave it a bit of a boost. This means that players can now use the Root Gun without worrying about running out of high-caliber ammo, making it a more viable alternative to other more established weapons in The Riftbreaker arsenal.

You can still do some crazy damage using weapon mods. Cluster Projectiles and a Minigun are a match made in heaven!

We hope it is pretty clear that the purpose of our weapons rework is NOT a nerf. It is not in the best interest of our players to decrease their firepower. The DPS stats on the newly crafted weapons will most definitely be lower than before, but that is mainly due to us correcting the calculation algorithm. The gameplay impact is negligible at best, while the weapon line-up is more straightforward for us to control. That last part is essential because The Riftbreaker 2.0 update will also include an overhaul of the loot system, allowing you to find unique, more powerful versions of weapons in the wild! We are committed to bringing you more exciting updates in the future, and we can't wait to share more details about the improved loot system in next week’s news.

You will get to know more about finding unique loot items in next week's article, stay tuned!

We hope you’re as excited about the upcoming updates as we are. If you want to try them out early, sign up for our Closed Co-Op Beta. We treat it as an experimental playground where anything goes, so you always have the chance to play with the latest developments and shape the game going forward. We encourage you to join our streams on Tuesdays and Thursdays, where we share the new developments and answer your questions live.

We reserve the right to contact only select participants.


See you there!
EXOR Studios

We've just updated the co-op beta playtest version of the game. The latest build features improvements for all weapons to adapt them to the new loot system. It also fixes multiple issues that you helped us discover. Thank you!

• Additional weapons have had their stats and properties reworked to match the new loot drop system: Charged Bomb, Crystal Gun, Floating Mines, Heavy Plasma, Bouncing Blades, Insect Gun, Cryogenic Atomizer, Corrosive Gun, Acid Spitter, Cryo Spitter, Flame Spitter, Chainsaw, Laser Sword, Flame Blade, Root Gun, Laser, Railgun. All weapons are now adapted to the new system.
  
• Unique loot item drop frequency has been reduced. The previous values were a result of a numerical typo. The frequency is reduced, but you will still get plenty of loot.
  
• We also introduced individual adjustments to loot drop probabilities for lower rarity Biocaches. You are now less likely to get a unique item from a White or Blue Biocache, but you are still guaranteed basic resources.
  
• Skills found as loot drops do not display the "unique" icon, as they cannot receive additional properties.
  
• Higher-quality Skills will now correctly replace lower-quality ones in your inventory after picking up a Skill as a loot drop.
  
• Laser beam behavior has been improved. Previously, the beam would get stronger the longer you kept it on target, but you lost the bonus immediately after you stopped shooting at the target. Now, the beam will retain the damage increase even if you switch targets - as long as you keep hitting enemies. You only lose the bonus damage if you miss completely. We believe this change will make the Laser a better weapon overall.
  
• Increased the base creature difficulty for Hard and Brutal difficulties. Players will now encounter stronger ambient and Omega creatures earlier in the game.
  
• Increased the wave intermission time for Easy and Normal difficulty from 6 to 7 minutes to match the single-player mode. This will make the game easier.
  
• Flammable Gas Vents and Geothermal Vents that are being actively mined will now be marked as used on the minimap.
  
• Buildings icons will now show up on the minimap the moment the constructions starts instead of waiting for the building process to complete.
  
• Increased the ammo consumption of the Insect Gun.
  
• Increased the base damage for the basic Sword to always be able to kill Arachnoids in one hit.
  
• Fixed the streaming integration by switching the Oauth token generation from an external website to www.riftbreaker.com.
  
• Increased the armory consumable manufacturing rate to compensate for the decreased number of armory buildings.
  
• Brought back player name labels that hover over the player pawns.
  
• Increased the radius of the Radar Size Power Well.
  
• Removed the nuclear explosion effect from Power Rod and Floating Piercer towers.
  
• Fixed issues with minimap icon visibility if the icon doesn't have an assigned "layer_group".
  
• Fixed a dead loop in Loot Container System.
  
• Fixed some issues with the display of chat messages.
  
• Introduced some additional network optimizations to the Nav Mesh System.
  
• Fixed issues with animation states of the Arachnoid Omega.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from accessing the chat when the player pawn is dead.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from entering the menu in the spectator mode.
  
• Removed the additional projectiles from Spewer weapons.
  
• Fixed issues with the display of Wind and Solar Power values on the HUD, including changes during weather events.
  
• Fixed issues with the Research Queue not updating in real time.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented building explosions from damaging nearby structures.
  
• Players can now connect to the selected server by double-clicking on the server list.
  
• The 'unknown' icon on the minimap is now smaller.
  
• Adjusted some of the weapon icons to have more contrast and color saturation.
  
• Adjusted text sizes and fixed several typos in the chat box.
  
• Fixed anti-aliasing issues with the "remove research" icon on the research screen.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the chat box to break after opening the build menu.
  
• Fixed issues with player pings not always being replicated for all clients.
  
• Fixed issues with network replication of interactive components.
  
• Fixed a crash in the EquipmentSystem when an inventory item is missing.

EXOR Studios

Welcome to 2025! We’ve had a good break, returning to work refreshed and ready to tackle the challenges ahead. As mentioned in the Year in Review 2024 article, we are focused on The Riftbreaker 2.0 - a massive, free update that will expand the game's features and give it a new level of depth. If you missed that news, give it a read, as it will give you a good idea of what our plans are this year. Starting with this article, we are coming back to our series of developer blogs, giving you a peek behind the curtain of development.

It would be a bit difficult to portray the story of this article in pictures - it would mostly be a series of photos of us in various stages of despair. Instead, we'll show you the model that caused us all this hassle, and the improvements we've been trying to implement all this time.

The Hammerocerros was one of the first creatures modeled for The Riftbreaker. The other two were the Canoptrix and the Arachnoid. The model dates back to 2018. We've learned a lot since then, so it feels a little dated, especially compared to the new creatures.

The story we want to tell you today is multi-layered and will show you the unpredictability of the game development process. As we told you a couple of months ago, we decided to introduce a new strain of creatures into The Riftbreaker: Omega creatures. They are much beefier and larger variants of regular Galatean creatures. They also come with a suite of extra abilities, such as damage auras and calling in meteor showers on demand. To make Omega creatures extra special, we decided to give them custom models that reflect their unique nature and extreme danger level.

Omega creatures are larger than their regular counterparts. This increase in size wasn't kind to the Hammerocerros. Even this big, it still looked like an amorphous blob. We decided that the Omega variant needed significant improvements.

While modeling creatures is a gratifying task and one of the most pleasant parts of a 3D artist’s job, animating those models is a complex task that involves the work of several people - a designer to come up with all the creature’s states, an animator to create the animations, and a programmer to put them all together in an Animation State Machine. Any changes made after all this work is done may generate potential bugs and require a new round of tweaks. We wanted to avoid that, so our artists would create new, enhanced versions of the existing models that could still use the same skeleton, animations, and animation state machine. It worked great for the vast majority of creatures. The problems began when we reached our good old Hammerocerros - one of the first models purpose-made for The Riftbreaker.

The first Zbrush sketches of the Omega strain. The armor on the back is much more pronounced. A pair of large horns are meant to show you that this guy means business.

Our game’s development started in 2018. Back then, we used 3DS Max for modelling, rigging, and animations. We had been using that program since Zombie Driver days (fun fact: the level editor for ZD was made entirely using the 3DS Max scripting language). When we started prototyping The Riftbreaker, we still used 3DS Max and gradually moved to Blender. While most in-game models have been created using Blender, a few of the oldest meshes are still in the 3DS Max format. You can see where this is going - Hammerocerros is one of these models. To modify this creature, we had to open the old source file.

After cutting down on the horns a little - at least the ones on the back - we put this model next to the Ultra strain to see how they compared. We liked the results, so we moved on to texturing.

In theory, Blender should be able to open a Max file and convert it to the new format, but there is no guarantee that everything will work right out of the box. At first, things seemed promising - the model and its materials were imported successfully. However, one crucial part was missing - the animation rig. No matter what we did, we could not make Blender read the rig from the Max file. This would force us to recreate the model’s skeleton and create all the animations once more, which was far more work than we were willing to accept. We had to come up with an alternative solution.

We still wanted to retain the color palette of the original creature. However, we used the colors in a more structured way, which allows you to see shapes and details with much more clarity.

Our first instinct was to fire up 3DS Max and export the model in a more compatible format. Luckily, we bought a perpetual license all those years ago (remember when perpetual licenses were a thing?), and the CD was somewhere in our storage space. We went treasure hunting, found the box, plugged in an external CD drive, and began the installation process. As you can imagine, things did not go smoothly. As it turns out, the version of 3DS Max we had access to was so archaic that it refused to work on newer systems… Windows 8.1.

Here's a high-detail render of the "regular", physical damage Hammeroceros Omega...

...and here's the fire damage elemental variant. This model receives additional particles to emphasize the 'elemental' aspect.

Up until a couple of months ago, this wouldn’t be a problem. We try to keep at least a couple of machines in our office on older hardware and software versions to test for compatibility issues, so we had a PC with that system in our office. However, when Microsoft stopped issuing security updates for Windows 8.1, it was no longer safe for us to keep it online. The machine got a slight hardware upgrade, and we switched it to Windows 10. That meant we had to find a workaround and try to run 3DS Max elsewhere. Our first idea was to set up a virtual machine with Windows 8.1 and run Max there. It was relatively quick to set up but failed just as fast - the software refused to install on a VM. We had to bring out the heavy guns.

We liked the new version so much that we decided to use a slightly more 'polite' version to replace the base strains of the creature.

We dove into our storage space once more, grabbing all the PC components that bordered on being classified as “electro-junk,” and put together a period-accurate PC to give it the best shot at working right out of the box. We constructed the grandpa-PC, installed Windows 8.1 again, and attempted to get 3DS Max running. We entered our perpetual license software key, hit enter, and… nothing happened. We tried several more times but to no avail. When we called support, they were shocked that somebody was even trying to use software this old. Upon investigating our issue, it turned out that validation servers for this program version were turned off several years ago.

Here's the full Hammeroceros family with a bit of foliage to see how they blend in with the environment. We're quite happy with the results!

All hope seemed lost. After all, it felt like we couldn’t run away from remaking the animation rig for Hammerocerros. Then, we had one last idea. What if we didn’t have to authenticate the software after all? Was it possible to use the program's trial version and export our model that way? Turns out that it was! The trial version of Max had a time limit but no functionality limit, meaning we had bought ourselves a couple of days to open all our old models, reexport them, and save ourselves from all this trouble in the future. Our saga has finally ended, and you can enjoy updated Hammeroceros family models in upcoming Riftbreaker updates.

Obligatory xkcd. The original work can be found here.[xkcd.com] Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

If there's one lesson we've learned from this misadventure, it's this: never let any part of your project be entirely dependent on external software. We often hear about the importance of backups and the best practice of having redundant copies. However, backups won't save you if the crucial software needed to open the files is missing. That's why we've decided that if there's a software switch in the future, we'll re-export all our work ahead of time. It's a small step that could save us from a lot of trouble in the future.

Now the other "old" creatures are asking for a rework... Should we? We've got the tools, after all.

That’s all for the first Riftbreaker blog of 2025. We hope puzzles like this won’t happen too often this year and that we will be able to focus on delivering all the promised content updates as soon as possible. If you want to receive daily updates on our progress, join our Discord server at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. You will get to see what we are currently working on and influence what the game looks like in the future.

See you next time!
EXOR Studios

- Replaced broken Twitch streaming authentication with a dedicated authentication service on www.riftbreaker.com

The first Closed Beta update of the year is here, and it is a huge one. In this version of the Co-Op Playtest build we are introducing two major improvements: Gameplay State Prediction Algorithms, and our first attempt at the weapon and loot systems rebalance. Prediction should significantly improve the network performance of the game and reduce camera jittering. The weapons and loot portion of the update is a bit harder to explain, so read the changelog to find out more!

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

The Riftbreaker Closed Co-Op Beta Update, January 16th, 2025. DATA: EXE: Changelog:

• Introduced the first version of Player and Creature Movement Prediction Algorithms. This is a set of algorithms that allows us to simulate the behavior of the player's avatars and enemy creatures on your machine. Player movement prediction allows us to react to movement input without delay and removes the lag that was present in previous builds. This feature also allows us to smooth out camera movement and removes the jitter that was observed when moving diagonally. Creature movement prediction and interpolation algorithms allow us to send creature movement data 5 times a second instead of 30 times per second. This reduces the amount of data transferred by an order of magnitude. We hope it will positively affect your gameplay experience. Still, we have to note that both of these features are still work in progress and have introduced a number of new bugs that were not present in previous builds. That being said, this is the perfect moment to gather feedback from the community. Please let us know if you think that player movement has improved or gotten worse in comparison to the previous closed beta build.
  
• Weapons and Economy Rebalance Changes - We have introduced several balance changes to our weapons, ammo production, logistics, and loot drops. This is the first iteration of these revamped systems, and nothing is final yet. Your feedback is very welcome. Our aim behind these changes is to bridge the power level gap between the lower tiers of weapons and the higher ones. The following is a list of changes we have introduced in this build. We would like to extend our thanks to one of our community members, Wzysb, who has conducted a lengthy analysis of our weapons system and pointed out many mistakes we made. We managed to correct most of them thanks to Wzysb's help.

Please note that not all weapons and mods have been modified yet. We focused on the most commonly used ones first. The following weapons have received changes:

• Acid spitter
  
• Atom bomb
  
• Blaster
  
• Burst rifle
  
• Corrosive gun
  
• Cryo spitter
  
• Cryogenic atomizer
  
• Fire spitter
  
• Flamer
  
• Grenade launcher
  
• Insect gun
  
• Lava gun - immolator
  
• Lightning_gun
  
• Minigun
  
• Mortar
  
• Plasma gun
  
• Rocket launcher
  
• Semi auto
  
• Shotgun
  
• Small machinegun
  
• Sniper rifle
  
• Swarm missile
  
• Sword
  
• Hammer

The following weapons are waiting to be rebalanced/reworked:

• Bouncing blades
  
• Charged bomb
  
• Crystal gun
  
• Floating mines
  
• Heavy plasma
  
• Laser
  
• Railgun
  
• Rootgun
  
• Trident
  
• Sonic fist
  
• Pickaxe
  
• Flame blade
  
• Laser sword
  
• Chainsaw
  
• Power fist

WEAPONS & ECONOMY CHANGES

• The first and probably most significant change is that weapons, consumables of higher levels, and player skills can now be dropped as loot from Bioanomalies, Biocaches, Omega creatures, and underground treasures.
  
• The weapons you find as loot are marked as unique. They have additional skills and a higher DPS ceiling than the ones you can craft yourself.
  
• Your research level determines the quality of the loot. You can find an Advanced one if you have blueprints available for a regular-level weapon. You may find a Superior item if you have access to Advanced blueprints. Researching Superior items opens up the possibility of finding Extreme items.
  
• The parameters of all weapons have been rebalanced. Weapon stats have been adjusted to be more helpful and to give each weapon a distinct purpose. Higher-tier weapons have been tweaked with co-op in mind.
  
• Many previously missing weapon characteristics have been added to the weapon rolling process. All characteristics have been adjusted to make them useful.
  
• Weapons crafted by the player no longer receive additional abilities, like cluster projectiles. You can add them later via mods or try to loot a weapon with these stats. This has been changed to make the items you find in the wild more exciting and powerful compared to what you can craft.
  
• Higher-tier weapons have had their fire rates changed. Some of them have had it increased to make them more useful. Others have had their values reduced, such as the Repeater Rifle - no one could physically pull the trigger 40 times a second, and it seriously messed with the DPS calculations, leading players to make wrong assumptions about the power level of the gun.
  
• The ammo cost for higher weapons has been adjusted to offer a steady consumption rate. We wanted to eliminate situations where you would never run out of ammo or, completely opposite, where the high ammo cost would render a weapon unusable.
  
• The amount of ammunition stored by the mech has been increased.
  
• The number of Ammo Storage buildings has been reduced. Initially, you get to build 2 Ammo Storage buildings. At level 2 of Ammo Storage technology, the limit is increased to 4, and it is up to 6 at level 3. The amount of ammo stored by individual buildings has been increased. Your total ammo storage for Mech ammo will be slightly lower. Tower Ammo has been kept at the same level.
  
• The armory building limit has been reduced to one. Armory upgrades are more significant now, increasing ammo and consumable production by a considerable margin. You will save on the amount of resources and space needed. However, you must protect your sole armory at all costs!
  
• Consumable manufacturing speed has been increased to compensate for the lower Armory building limit.
  
• Solid Material Storage buildings now store more resources.
  
• Carbonium and Ironium production speed has been slightly reduced. Level 1 factories remain unchanged - 1 resource per second. Level 2 factories produce 1.5 resources per second. Level 3 - 2.5 per second. The cost of factories has been adjusted to reflect this change.
  
• Weapon Mods have been rebalanced to make them more useful. Some bugs that caused certain mods to be overpowered have also been fixed.
  
• Spread and Critical Chance mods have been removed from the loot pool since they were not quite as helpful as we hoped. If you have a save file with these mods, they will still work, but you will no longer receive new ones.
  
• Consumables and Skills don't get as much stat increase as they used to on higher levels.
  
• Biocaches now always drop Carbonium and Ironium, with a chance to drop advanced and rare resources.

Please note that all of these changes are up for debate and none of them are final at this point.

OTHER CHANGES

• The in-game chat is now displayed in the middle-right portion of the screen. Message history has been added. Server messages are also displayed in the new chat window.
  
• The party members status icons have been moved to the left side of the minimap to accommodate the new chat window.
  
• Lesigian Omega has received a new, custom model.
  
• Hammerrocerros Omega has received a new, custom model.
  
• All Omega creatures now have NetAlwaysRevelantComponent added to ensure that their position and state is always up-to-date between clients and the server.
  
• Added localization strings to warning and assist ping menu actions.
  
• Drexolian Ultra has been added to the Volcanic Zone survival ambient creature pool.
  
• Acidic Yeast Colony event has been changed - the colony now grows at a rapid pace, making it a real threat that you can't ignore for more than a couple of minutes before it destroys your base.
  
• Biocaches now explode with more force to scatter the loot in a bigger radius.
  
• Changed the 'stunned' visual effect. The particles are more visible and rotate faster. Adjusted effect placement in many units.
  
• Changed the earthquake visual effect to be better visible.
  
• Added a custom effect for lightning cascade Omega attack.
  
• Shortened the duration of acid bulb explosions.
  
• Shortened the visual lifetime of acid spitter explosions. No functional change.

FIXES

• Fixed Twitch streaming integration authentication.
  
• Reduced the minimap system network transfer usage,
  
• Removed TransformSystem from various areas of the game to improve the network performance.
  
• Updated many textures to reduce their memory usage through emissive channel optimizations and resolution fixes.
  
• Fixed Nurglax Omega projectile errors.
  
• Reduced the loudness of sounds for many defensive towers. Added instance limits to tower sounds.
  
• Gravity grenade model has been removed from the magnetic rock destruction effect.
  
• Fixed an invalid memory read in UpdateWorldTransform when bone didn't exist, which resulted in a crash.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused building explosions not to deal damage to nearby structures.
  
• Fixed the Metallic Valley wind power generation ratio back to 1.25x.
  
• Introduced many transfer, replication and latency optimizations.
  
• Improved CPU performance.
  
• Multiple miscellaneous fixes and improvements.

EXOR Studios

The year 2024 has come and gone, and what a year it has been! The past 12 months were filled with equal parts hard work and excitement. As is our tradition by now, we will take some time to reflect on what we’ve done in 2024 for The Riftbreaker and our studio as a whole. We will draw some conclusions from this year’s achievements and try to set our goals for 2025. There will also be a portion of fun statistics to show you some aspects of the game development process that are not always obvious at first glance. Enjoy!

We're very pleased with the visual side of the new Fungal Swamp biome. The models, textures, lighting, and reflections come together to form a very cohesive environemnt.
• We released the World Expansion III free update, and the Heart of the Swamp paid DLC in June. The update allowed you to visit the Fungal Swamp, a brand-new biome on the surface of Galatea 37. As usual, when developing this game expansion, we explored the unused design space that lingered in the back of our heads for years. We’ve always wanted to create a biome where water plays a major role, challenging you to build bases on small, scattered islands. To facilitate that, we gave you access to more than 70 new technology items, including powerful superweapon towers like the Heavy Cluster Missile Launcher and the Floating Piercer Towers. Your tactical prowess would be put to the test by the hordes of new creature species. We also introduced visual improvements, like our new liquid rendering techniques, which are so essential in a swamp-themed biome.
  The co-op tests have been a lot of fun. The online mode is not perfect yet, but it doesn't prevent us from having a blast, whether we play with each other at the office, or with our testers online.
  
  
• We launched the Closed Co-Op Beta test. We have already let hundreds of our community’s most active members play their first matches of The Riftbreaker Survival mode over the web. We can’t stress enough how massive this milestone is for us. As we have mentioned in our previous articles, the multiplayer mode for The Riftbreaker has been in the works for at least three years. Despite all the hardship we endured and the obstacles we had to overcome, we finally managed to get a playable version of online play into your hands. It performs better than we expected, and, more importantly, it is a lot of fun! For now, the Beta version is limited to three Survival scenarios, but we keep updating it every couple of weeks with new content and performance optimizations. We also send out more access keys every week - the latest wave has gone out today!

Both the World Expansion III and the Co-Op Beta were the goals we set for ourselves at the end of 2023. We are very happy that we managed to complete these objectives. However, there was one more item on our last year’s to-do list - the Endgame Update. We decided it needed more time in the oven to have the quality and impact it deserves.

We have started our work on the Endgame expansion for The Riftbreaker. We call it Extended Story Campaign, but in reality, it is so much more than just that. This massive, free expansion will completely overhaul large portions of the game. It will open up an entirely new mission branch if you decide to stay on Galatea 37 instead of going home. The update will feature:

• Improved Orbital Scanner functionality, allowing you to scan Galatea 37 for even more interesting areas within the biomes you’ve visited previously. The scanner will allow you to pick and choose where you want to go, but each location presented to you will be noteworthy - some of them will be full of resources and perfect for an additional outpost. In contrast, others will show signs of anomalous activity that you will have to investigate. No matter what you choose, you won’t be disappointed with the rewards - tons of sweet loot await those who dare!
  
  Here's a sneaky preview of one of the 'encounter' map tiles we've created. It's a lot different than what you usually fin in the Radioactive Desert biome.
  
  
• Exploring and expanding to new areas of interest will be essential to fulfill the expanded endgame goals. We won’t reveal what they are at this point, but we can share just a little bit. Ashley wants to ensure that when humanity finally arrives on Galatea 37 it doesn’t turn it into yet another industrial wasteland. She will have to lay the foundations for that, preparing enough sustainable infrastructure to deter her fellow humans from their usual STRIP-MINE-EVERYTHING approach. You will have to build complex networks of new structures, power plants, and factories to facilitate that. New resource outposts will be essential to that goal.
  
  Omega creatures are beefier and more dangerous. All of them received new models to stress their uniqueness and significance on the battlefield.
  
  
• While traversing the unknown, you will run into powerful Omega-strain creatures. These giant beasts have evolved abilities far beyond those of their smaller family members. Each Omega creature you encounter will be a test of skill for you and your mecha-suit. Apart from being much more demanding than Ultra-strain creatures, Omegas have unique abilities that will keep you on your toes the entire fight. Still, you will want to fight them for your future safety and the rewards.
  
  Each weapon you find in the wild has a couple of 'boosted' stats. This allows you to break the power ceiling of the craftable weapons.
  
  
• The new and improved loot system. Each time you defeat a powerful Omega creature or open a Bioanomaly, you will get the chance to receive a unique weapon - sometimes even beyond your current tech level. Weapons you find in the wild will get additional stat bonuses and will generally have a higher potential than those you craft yourself. For example, you can encounter a crazy Minigun with a built-in splash damage increase, which you can mod even further. Alternatively, you can just dismantle it for even more resources.
  
  We felt the minigun was too weak, so we added nuclear explosion effect to every hit. Thoughts? <this_is_a_joke.png>
  
  
• Such a massive overhaul of many systems will require balance changes. We will give you many ways to spend your extra resources that would often become irrelevant later in the game. We will also give some love to various weapons that turned out to be underperforming in real gameplay scenarios. We have actually received a 40-page document from Wzysb, one of the community members, pointing out problematic areas when it comes to our guns. Wzysb makes some good points there that we will give careful consideration to.
  
  Here’s a randomized map from the new generator we mentioned earlier, plus a sneak peek at the new and improved map screen layout.
  
  
• Lots of quality of life improvements. The map screen has been reworked to offer greater clarity, especially in large and densely built bases. The most significant buildings now have dedicated icons, allowing you to find what you need quickly. The map will also feature a symbol legend so you always know what you are looking at. Or more robust liquid compression-decompression mechanics. Or improved inventory screen. There’s a lot of QoL stuff coming for you!

As you can see, the Expanded Story Campaign update will be a massive change. This requires us to be extra careful and take time with our decisions. There is still a lot of work ahead of us. Luckily, our Closed Co-Op Beta is a perfect playground to test our ideas so that the final product will be tried and tested by us and the community. We can’t wait to hear what you say about this free expansion.


We are also continuing our work on the Online Co-Op Multiplayer mode for The Riftbreaker. Community feedback from playtesting allows us to make the necessary gameplay changes and adapt the Survival missions to the reality of multiple mechas running around, wreaking havoc. Internally, we have completed several full Story Campaign playthroughs, which, surprisingly, were far more stable than we expected. It feels like we are making progress every day, which fills us with enthusiasm and motivation.

With the new prediction algorithms in place we will reduce the amount of data transferred by an order of magnitude. It will give you smoother gameplay, and less network problems overall.

Netcode is the current focal point of the development of Riftbreaker Co-Op Multiplayer. Our team is researching and developing prediction algorithms to make the gameplay experience smoother and more predictable. These algorithms will allow us to send data from the server to the client much less often while the client's PC fills in the blanks by predicting what happens between updates. Implementing a suite of prediction and error correction algorithms will make the game feel more responsive and play smoothly, even in cases of long-distance connections with high latency. Of course, higher latency leaves more room for error, but we test our solutions with an artificially implemented lag to make sure that they hold their ground. We know that real-life scenarios are never perfect, and there are a lot of variables in play - this is why we want to be prepared for them in advance. We will test these solutions carefully with our closed beta testers and make sure that the final product meets your expectations.

The Extended Story Campaign update and the Online Co-Op Mode release are incredibly complex projects. The extent of changes they bring is so massive that we dubbed these updates combined as ‘Riftbreaker 2.0’. This is going to be the largest and most impactful update for the game to date. We will be gradually testing it with the community, first through the current Closed Coop Beta and later through an open-to-everyone experimental phase. It is a lot of work and we don’t expect it to be ready sooner than within at least 6 months.

It is time for our yearly portion of fun stats and trivia. We've hit a couple of milestones this year!

• We started the year on The Riftbreaker repository revision 42203. We managed to break the 50000 revision milestone, finishing the year on revision 50203. That is 21k revisions more than X-Morph: Defense’s and 28k more than Zombie Driver’s lifetime revision numbers.
  
• This gives us exactly 8,000 times someone uploaded changes to the game’s repository. However, this number doesn’t tell the whole story. These 8000 ‘commits’ contained a whopping 177718 total file changes. From missing semicolons through blueprint changes to the new cinematics - it’s all there.
  
  The graph showing the commits over time to the game's main repository. You can clearly see the pre-release heat, and the month where we all took a holiday together!
  
  
• Commits to The Riftbreaker repository don’t tell the whole story. There is a separate repo for The Schmetterling Engine. This one is primarily used by our programmers. Here the stats are as follows: 2502 commits, 42999 file changes.
  
  As you can see, the engine develops alongside the game, expanding it's capabilities each and every day.
  
  
• An average member of EXOR contributed to the main game repository changes 533 times over the course of the year.
  
• Our automated save test gauntlet ran 412 times. This means we forced our PCs to load 80+ game states gathered from various campaign points, save the game, and load it again. All these tests amount to more than 1600 hours. In this time, you could complete the journey from Miami, FL, to Seattle, WA, on foot, and you still have 400 hours left to watch soap-cutting videos on TikTok. (We know it's cringe, but we have to stay up to date. If you could drop us a follow, we would be very grateful: https://www.tiktok.com/@exor_studios)
  
• Zombie Driver has turned 15 years old, which means we are very old indeed.
  
• We have consumed more than 50 kilograms of coffee. Given that a kilogram is roughly 8800 beans, that’s about 450.000 beans that we turned into code and animated explosions. 450.000 is the approximate population of our city—Szczecin, Poland. We could have given every citizen a single bean instead of drinking it all, dang.
  
• We have streamed on Twitch 73 times for a total of 154 hours and 10 minutes. You watched our struggles for 229.214 minutes total, or 3,820 hours and 14 minutes. That’s almost 160 days of nonstop watching—half a year. Mental!

And with that, it’s a wrap on 2024. Thank you for your support and patience this year. We are entering 2025 with a clear path forward and good foundations laid out. We hope you stick with us to see everything we’re working on now.

The in-game Winter Event will launch any day now. Luckily, we tried if it still worked ahead of time. Our snowmen were quite unruly this year!

EXOR Studios

Hello Riftbreakers!

We've just updated the co-op beta playtest version of the game. The latest build features the foundations for a suture patch, which should reduce the game's data transfer requirements. It also features many bug fixes and improvements.

• High Caliber Rifle and Burst Rifle projectiles now have more glow to improve their visibility.
  
• The effects for deactivated mechs in Multiplayer are now more visible.
  
• 2D collisions have been turned off. This matters mainly when it comes to projectiles hitting enemy hitboxes. To compensate for that, most projectiles now have an invisible, artificial 1-meter diameter.
  
• The visual effect for Gnerot's stomp is now shorter.
  
• Improved Sonic Shockwave effect. It now has a shorter lifetime, and a better matching damage cone. The sound has also been made louder.
  
• Added animated minimap icons for unique rewards.
  
• Added NetAlwaysRelevantComponent to Omega creatures to ensure their status is always up-to-date between the client and the server.
  
• Added the missing missing `Connection to server...` progress message for the loading screen.
  
• Added new, dedicated models for Level 1 and Level 3 AI Hubs.
  
• Added new, dedicated models for Level 1 and Level 3 Liquid Material Storages.
  
• Added some of the missing minimap legend localizations.
  
• Updated the 'weapon dropped' minimap icon.
  
• Reduced the opacity of the 'inactive' visibility filter icon in the map screen.
  
• Added support for throttling entity update generation, so that clients are not overwhelmed with the data amount ( `server_max_delta_relevant_entities` )
  
• Reduced the amount of data transferred by the AttackTargetSystem.
  
• Introduced optimizations for spatial queries.
  
• Added ServerEntityDeltaBuilder - an entity component delta customization tool for Riftbreaker that allows us to do more custom logic for transfer/prediction optimizations in the future.
  
• Added damaged/upgradable/ruins buiulding status filter for the map screen.
  
• Added support for navmesh navigation information on client side (will be used for units/mech prediction in the future).
  
• Refactored the mech movement mechanics to support prediction algorithms in the future.
  
• Implemented NetReplicateIgnoreOwnerComponent, so that you don't have to send information about your own entities to yourself.
  
• Reduced the amount of data transferred by the NetReplicationSystem.
  
• NetConnectionGNS: added the `debug_gns_fake_send_rate_limit` variable to test gameplay in limited connection bandwidth.
  
• Reduced the amount of data transferred by the HealthComponent.
  
• NetWorld: replaced DetachEntity with removal of ParentComponent (DetachEntity modifies local transform which silently breaks entity transform delta flow and causes entities to appear in wrong places).
  
• Added the debug_gns_fake_latency_variation_ms config variable to test gameplay in various ping situations.
  
• Added a dedicated server checkbox to the multiplayer loading screen.
  
• Added a `debug_client_update_extra_overhead_ms` to test gameplay with extra overhead costs.
  
• AdaptiveMusicSystem: separated the client/server implementation so every client can decide which playlist to choose at any given time.
  
• Dialogs: reduced silence gaps when playing multiple dialogs in a row.
  
• Build Menu: fixed 3rd level menu controls ('alt') and last selection storage.
  
• The client gameplay state now runs at 33ms intervals.
  
• Decreased the gameplay 'choppiness' of clients with higher latency values.
  
• Implemented the `server_max_delta_ack_delay_ms` and delta ACK timeout support.
  
• Start skipping delta generation when we have detected timed out delta ACK's
  
• The 'M' button is no longer hardcoded to the map screen.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Crystal Gun projectiles to hit the ground after shattering into pieces.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused an error icon to appear in the first frame of visibility of the interactive popup.
  
• Fixed a couple of crashes related to the Detector.
  
• Fixed a typo in the Ping Wheel that made the 'cheers' action not work.
  
• Fixed multiple issues related to Headquarters upgrades.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused melee attack sounds to get desynchronized with the visuals.
  
• Optimized and reduced performance spikes generated by the EnergyLineSystem.
  
• Fixed some issues where the game would not wait for assets to load before entering the game, resulting in big stutters during gameplay.
  
• Normalized the 'empty_explosive_weapon.wav' sound volume.
  
• Fixed item mesh visibility when entering inventory while the mech is invisible.
  
• Fixed issues with artillery units disappearing from the minimap view.
  
• Fixed text display errors on ultrawide resolution screens.

EXOR Studios

The Steam Autumn Sale has begun, and the first part of the annual Steam Awards has arrived, too! For the next couple of weeks, you can cast votes on your favorite games in several categories. Since The Riftbreaker has been around for a couple of years, we are only eligible for one of those categories: Labor of Love. This award is meant for games still receiving developers' support years after their official release.

We would appreciate you considering casting your vote for The Riftbreaker in the Labor of Love category of the 2024 Steam Awards.

It is no secret that developing The Riftbreaker has been a life-changing experience for us. We have reached more players than ever before. Hundreds of thousands of you have set out for your Galatea 37 colonization mission, showing your trust and faith in our work. We have always planned to support The Riftbreaker for a long time, but it is your unwavering interest and support that made it possible. Ever since the launch of the game, we have managed to give you the following:

• Three massive world expansions, each with an entirely new biome to explore, dozens of new technologies, buildings, and weapons, unique fauna and flora, and a new portion of the Story Campaign in the form of paid DLCs.
  
• Over 80 game updates, improving on the game’s quality of life features, gameplay changes, and thousands of fixes, with a vast majority influenced by your invaluable feedback.
  
• Cutting-edge graphics features. We never stop working on our custom-built Schmetterling Engine and keep adding the latest technologies, such as AMD FSR, Intel XeSS, and our own implementations of raytracing and volumetric lighting effects.
  
• Dozens of performance optimizations. We know that satisfying performance is one of the pillars of a good gameplay experience. Each update we release features new optimizations so we can maximize your system’s resources.
  
• An entire suite of Editor Tools, which we have used ourselves to create the game. Now, they are in the hands of modders, who are already putting them to good use.

We are still going. We are still working on something special - a massive, completely free update we named ‘Riftbreaker 2.0.’ It is going to consist of two massive modules:

• Online Co-Op Multiplayer for up to 4 players. This mode will allow you to play both Survival Mode and Campaign Mode with your friends. It is currently in the Closed Beta phase - we keep releasing more and more keys every week, along with frequent content updates.
  
• Extended Story Campaign. We will allow you to go on additional planetary missions and set up new resource outposts. The extra missions will feature unique ‘encounter tiles’ with events you have never seen in the game. You will need to strengthen your economy to reach endgame goals that will serve as a ‘true’ ending to the game.

Apart from the two major features mentioned above, the Riftbreaker 2.0 update will also feature omega class creatures, an extended loot system, improvements to game balance, visual clarity, quality of life, and much more. We will discuss the features and improvements you can expect in the months leading up to the update’s release.

We hope you will consider The Riftbreaker for this year’s Steam Awards Labor of Love category. The game truly is a labor of love.

Thank You,
EXOR Studios

It’s a pretty intense period in our studio. We’re firing on all cylinders, working on dozens of additions to make The Riftbreaker the best it’s ever been. The programmers are implementing prediction algorithms to make co-op play smooth and predictable even over long-distance connections. Our artists are busy sculpting the powerful Omega creatures, the most powerful strains of Galatean monsters we’ve yet seen. At the same time, the design department is implementing gameplay changes and entirely new features with the free endgame update in mind. Today, we will show you some of the latest additions to The Riftbreaker. No lengthy stories or design deep-dives today - we just want to share some cool stuff that happened over the past few weeks. Enjoy!

NEW OMEGA STRAIN CREATURE VARIANTS

We already discussed these monstrosities in depth in an article a couple of weeks ago. Not all the creatures were ready for the show by then. Since then, our artists have managed to finish a couple of brand-new models and skins. They look just as dangerous as they are in the game, so we think you will enjoy testing your skills against these creatures on the battlefield.

The Necrodon family gathering. As you can see, the clan elders have been hitting the gym pretty consistently. The regular Necrodons are relatively small and look brittle thanks to their thin arms and legs. We wanted to make the Omega strain a bit bulkier to help it stand out in the crowd. The Omega strain will stay far beyond the frontline, just like the regular creature, supplying the enemy attack waves with endless ranks of the dead. Get your longest range towers ready!

Gnerots are naturally big and bulky. Our first attempt to make the Omega strain different from the regular version included spikes and extra stones. However, we weren’t quite happy with the result. The original Gnerot blends with the environment well when it is sleeping, and we wanted to keep that property.

The next step was to literally stick some of the rocks that naturally occur in the game to try to determine what shape would work best.

The end result was a blend of all the options we considered. We wanted the rocks on the Gnerot Omega’s back to be blunt and eroded. We also decided to keep the rocky arm ‘gauntlet’ from the first version. We think this version is distinct enough but maintains the character of the original.

“dope af” - one of the devs, 11:48 AM, Tuesday, November 19th Anno Domini 2024

Nurglax Omega has received its Acid and Energy variants. Like the Omega Necrodon, this creature will try to keep its distance from your base and attack from afar. Still, it should be easy to notice its impact on the battlefield - the larva-filled sack is bigger and more spikey than ever.

NEW OMEGA CREATURE ABILITIES

Apart from giving our Omega-strain creatures a visual makeover, we are still experimenting with new special abilities to provide our new favorite beasts. Here, you can see an acid cascade. A couple of lines of hit markers appear on the ground, signaling incoming danger. After a brief warning period, the Omega makes the earth open up.

This ability works well with other elements as well. Imagine a violent lightning storm like this hitting your base. Omega creatures with this skill will have to be your priority when you encounter them.

ENDLESS MISSION GENERATOR

Here’s a randomized map from the new generator, plus a sneak peek at the new and improved map screen layout.

One of the major additions in the free endgame update is going to be the ability to extend your Campaign playthrough by going on additional planetary missions. You will have the ability to choose the biome you’re interested in and go on a mission on a completely new, randomized map. We’re going to let you choose from a couple of locations with varying layouts and resource densities. This way, you will be able to expand your economy even further, amassing a wealth of resources you’re going to need to fulfill endgame goals. And boy, do we have some endgame goals for you… but more on that later.

WRAP-UP

As you can see - we have tons of cool new things coming to you in the coming updates. However, that is not everything we have in store for you. For example, we are working on remasters of the music added in our World Expansions. So far, we have finished working on the Metal Terror soundtrack. You can give it a listen now - we published it on YouTube, and the video is linked below. Into the Dark and Heart of the Swamp, music is also getting the same treatment, and when we are done, we will publish all the music as a free update for all owners of The Riftbreaker OST.

The best way to test all the new additions out early is to sign up for the beta test of the co-op build. We have just sent out a couple hundred new invites to celebrate the release of our third test biome - the Metallic Valley. Check your Discord inboxes! Join us at www.discord.gg/exorstudios to never miss any news about the latest developments and to sign up for the beta.

See you soon!
EXOR Studios