In our announcement article for the second Riftbreaker World Expansion - Into The Dark, we told you about a major new game mechanic - rock excavation. The areas beneath the surface of Galatea 37 are teeming with life and troves of resources, often buried under tons of rocks and rubble. However, the naturally formed caverns and tunnels aren’t always accommodating for a four-meter Mecha-Suit. The only way of getting to those underground riches is by getting your hands dirty and doing the digging yourself. This article will tell you all about our excavation system, how it will affect the gameplay, and what you can expect to find in the unknown depths of Galatea 37.
Sometimes Crystal Caverns offer nice views!
Let’s start with the technology behind the excavation mechanic. Maps in the caverns biome are filled with two general kinds of rock formations. The classic, indestructible rocks give each map tile its individual layout and set the structure of the play area. What’s more interesting is the second category: destructible rocks. They are visually distinct from the structural rock formations and make up the majority of what you’re going to see in the caverns. This doesn’t mean things are going to get boring - far from it. You can dictate where you want to go, which areas to defend, and exactly how much you want to explore. The soft, destructible rocks can be excavated using Mr. Riggs’ upgraded drilling arm. The process is very simple: you walk up to the wall you want to get rid of, hold the interact button, and in a couple of moments, you will be able to enjoy more room for your future endeavors.
When you get bored of manual digging, you can use nukes.
Now, let’s get down to the bottom of how all of this really works. The destructible rock formations are really comprised of individual boulders. They are densely stacked one next to another in what we call a ‘prefab’. For more information on prefabs and how they work, you can check out this article. The destructible rock prefab fills the area marked by the level designer with tons of individual pieces that you can later dig out. To save performance, the game renders only the outside walls of these areas, spawning new ones as you progress to give you the feeling of digging out individual pieces of rock. If we simply stacked 2x2 walls next to each other, it would be impossible to dig out any shape other than a square. Utilizing boulders of various shapes and sizes and rotating them gives us much more freedom and granulation.
As for the gameplay itself, the Crystal Caverns biome will welcome you with a couple of open areas where you can set up your initial headquarters. However, the existing caverns won’t be large enough to set up a base strong enough to withstand the enemy attacks (yes, you read that right, you’re not safe, even underground). You will have to walk the fine line between excavating more room for expansion and opening your base to attacks from creatures of the dark. Every corridor you open and every cave you create has the potential to be crawling with monsters straight out of your nightmares. They can feel your presence… and they can dig, too!
Always watch your back!
Even the best plans can fail miserably if a massive creature decides to dig a path right to the middle of your outpost. Radars play a big role in detecting these threats early and preventing the destruction they might bring. Large creatures that are able to excavate tunnels are often followed by a horde of smaller ones. Make smart decisions and make sure you take the necessary precautions, otherwise, you might lose everything.
Terrifying as it might be, excavating new tunnels and caverns also yields great benefits. Apart from discovering new resource deposits, you can also find places that will allow you to boost your energy production. Wind Turbines and Solar Panels do not generally work in the Crystal Caverns biome. However, you can find some spots where the cave's layout creates strong air currents. You can take advantage of that by placing a Wind Turbine farm around the spot. That won’t be enough to power you for long. What you really want to find and take advantage of are Geothermal Vents. They will keep the lights on in your base and keep the darkness at bay.
You can find a lot of treasures in the caves. Treasures and horrors beyond comprehension.
Into the Dark changes the way you play The Riftbreaker in many ways. We are excited for what’s to come and we can’t wait to let you play! We’re definitely going to hold an extended experimental period for Survival balancing purposes. If you want to get information about that first-hand, you should definitely join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. You can also check out our VOD of the first pre-alpha Survival mode session right here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1718954824. We will tell you more about Crystal Caverns in the coming weeks, so don’t miss it!
EXOR Studios
Modding Spotlight: Rift City & Arctic Map
Hello everyone!
Every time we launch the live build of The Riftbreaker, we can’t stop ourselves from clicking on the ‘mods’ menu and checking what’s new. Your response to the modding integration has been great. Ranging from balance tweaks to complete overhauls of certain game modes, your mods have been nothing short of amazing - and they get better every day. Today we would like to showcase a couple of truly special mods created by a Steam user by the nickname Molch. They have created a couple of custom survival maps for The Riftbreaker, which are nothing short of amazing. Let’s take a look at them now!
No, Mr. Riggs! You can't eliminate your competition in a running contest!
Rift City
The first map from Molch is called Rift City. It is a 12x12, non-randomized map, taking the game’s action to an urban environment. It might seem like an easy idea at first until you realize that there are pretty much no assets in the vanilla version of The Riftbreaker that you could use to create such a map. Sure, you can use some flags, potted plants, statues, and regular lamps as decorations, but that won’t be enough to create a full-fledged city. Molch had to get creative. Spoiler - they did not disappoint.
Instead of modeling entire buildings, texturing them, and using them as ready-made props, Molch took a modular approach. They created a set of 1 and 2 grid-sized cubes and applied our floor tile textures to all faces of the model. Thanks to that, Molch ended up with a collection of bricks that could be used to create buildings, pathways, walls, and any other architectural structure you could come up with. Granted, these won’t be the most detailed structures ever, but with enough creativity, they can still form stunning art pieces. Just check out the EXOR HQ and the abstract sculptures surrounding it!
To breathe more life into Rift City, Molch also added custom flying objects to the map. Instead of our classic birds, jellyfish, or unidentified insects, the skies of the City are populated with hot air balloons, as well as blimps. You can also catch a glimpse of a jet plane soaring through the skies. Best of all - there is also a full-sized airport, complete with airway beacons, hangers, and a control tower. Molch achieved all that by skillfully connecting their own custom-made elements with clever use of the assets that were already available in the game.
Speaking of using assets in a clever way, raise your hand if you remember our previous game - X-Morph: Defense. XMD featured a destruction system that allowed you to destroy buildings piece by piece, bulldozing cities one skyscraper at a time. Molch managed to replicate that using… tree trunks! There is a shack built from wooden logs hidden on the map. Since it’s made from individual, destructible parts, you can tear it down piece by piece, revealing the internal structure of the cabin, which even includes supports under the roof! It’s just like a building from X-Morph: Defense, but on a much smaller scale. Amazing stuff.
Rift City offers a ton of easter eggs and hidden features. We don’t want to spoil them all, so just go ahead and play it! The map is intended for regular survival gameplay. You will find all the necessary resource deposits to set up your base. However, you will need to be cautious - the city is currently inhabited by tons of creatures from all the Riftbreaker biomes, including several dozens of boss creatures, just waiting for you to misplace your key infrastructure. Conquering this map is certainly going to be a challenge.
Arctic Map
Molch’s next creation is slightly different from the one we discussed previously. Unlike Rift City, Arctic Map takes advantage of The Riftbreaker’s map generation system to provide you with a new level layout every time you launch a Survival run. This means that no two games played on this map will ever be the same. Molch created a bunch of custom tiles, each featuring something special that separates this map from the ‘natural’ formations found in other Galatean biomes.
The Arctic Map is a masterclass in utilizing already existing props in new and unconventional ways. Molch combined assets from the vanilla version of The Riftbreaker into awesome, atmosphere-building contraptions. Not to spoil too much, you will find evidence of yet another alien civilization taking interest in Galatea and its inhabitants. The equipment they left behind is still operational - take a walk around the map yourself and try to see what secrets you may uncover.
Creative tile construction is not the only thing that stands out in this mod. Molch added custom ground textures and modified the existing boulder sets to fit the Arctic atmosphere much better. Thanks to that, all tiles are very detailed and simply feel right - this is what you would expect from a polar region of a planet such as Galatea 37. A perfect place to plan your next science trip!
The Arctic Map is fully adapted for Survival mode gameplay, meaning you will easily find all the necessary resource deposits and plenty of good spots to set up your headquarters. Be cautious, though, as once again, Molch did not go easy on the number and difficulty level of the creatures you will encounter! Bring your best gear and tactics if you plan to take on the challenge.
We highly recommend downloading both Rift City and the Arctic Map. They are both available on the Steam Workshop, which you can easily access through The Riftbreaker’s main menu. Don’t forget to rate and add the mods you like to your favorites! It gives the creators a chance to see that you appreciate their work and want more!
And if you ever need any modding help, catch us on Discord - www.discord.gg/exorstudios.
Enjoy! EXOR Studios
Stability Update, January 19th, 2023
Hello Riftbreakers!
We've just released a patch addressing the most common crash bugs and stability issues you've reported to us over the course of the past two weeks. There are no content changes in this patch - only stability fixes. Here's the full log:
The Riftbreaker Stability Update, January 19th, 2023. EXE: 674, DATA: 298 Changelog:
Fixed a crash in ActionMapResource system that occurred when trying to read a broken action mapper configuration file.
Fixed a crash in DeserializeNodeIntoStruct that occurred randomly.
Fixed a crash in RaytracingFramePrepareMeshRenderable that would randomly occur when playing with raytracing enabled.
Fixed raytracing thread assignemnts to avoid crash bugs.
Tweaked raytracing acceleration node container capacity to reduce crash bugs.
Fixed error handling during mod.io service initialization - the game would hang at certain moments during startup if mod.io couldn't initialize properly.
Fixed building menu item highlights visibility.
Fixed a random crash in TransformSystem caused by buffer reallocation.
Fixed an issue that caused movement key rebindings to revert to defaults in certain conditions.
Enjoy! EXOR Studios
Stability Update, January 9th, 2023
Hello Riftbreakers!
Welcome to 2023! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season. As you know, we have a lot of things planned for you this year, so there is no time to waste. Here's the first maintenance patch of '23, aimed at fixing the most common issues you have been reporting to us over the course of the past couple of weeks. Enjoy!
The Riftbreaker Stability Update, January 9th, 2023. EXE: 661, DATA: 287, Changelog:
Fixed a crash that occurred if the game encountered incorrect text encoding.
Fixed a crash in Transform System caused by buffer reallocation error.
Fixed a crash in the XAudio2 system.
Fixed various GUI issues - animation start/end points, layering, offsets and visibility of GUI items.
The game will no longer crash if the VfsZipArchive system detects a corrupted zip file.
Stability Hotfix, December 22nd
Hello Riftbreakers!
We've just published a small stability update for the game.. It fixes several crash bugs in various areas of the game. If you have had crashes in any of the areas mentioned in the changelog, try out this version, as it might fix your issues.
The Riftbreaker Stability Hotfix, December 22nd, 2022. EXE: 649, DATA: 275. Changelog:
Fixed several crashes connected with the crafting system.
Fixed a crash that occurred when jumping to different maps in Campaign Mode (it looks like the same thing that we did last time, but this is a different crash!)
Fixed a crash in Blueprint Component Manager.
Fixed a crash in State Machine Transistion System that occurred after loading the game.
Fixed skybox blending at night.
Fixed an error with skybox mipmap generation.
There are no gameplay or content changes in this build.
EXOR Studios
2022 in Review
Hello Riftbreakers!
2022 is almost behind us. It’s been a very busy year for us, and we are looking forward to taking a short break from the office and clearing our heads a little bit to put our future plans in motion. The support that we’ve been receiving from you has been simply incredible. Thousands of players visit Galatea 37 daily. Our inboxes are filled with messages of support, feedback, and questions about co-op (wink, wink). Today we’re taking a look back at what we’ve managed to get done in 2022, the lessons we learned from those events, and what we aim to make happen in 2023. Read on!
Let’s start with a short summary of the major milestones, as well as some statistics that characterized the course of The Riftbreaker’s development in the year 2022.
An artistic depiction of void crunching the numbers and mashing all these stats together. 2022, colorized.
We released 7 major updates for the game in the past 12 months:
World Expansion I and Metal Terror DLC - a huge free update and a brand new part of the Story Campaign taking place in a new biome. The update included a new survival map and dozens of technologies, weapons, and enemy species never seen before. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3367020691428249994
We released 46 updates on Steam. 7 of them were major updates, 21 were experimental updates, and 18 were either smaller patches or hotfixes. A major update for The Riftbreaker sees 3 preceding experimental updates on average.
We released a total of 136 updates for the game across all versions on all platforms. That’s one patch for some version of the game every 2.68 days!
For every update, we need to perform several manual and automated save tests: loading, saving, and reloading 132 save samples. The automated process takes 3:09 hours on average. We ran save tests a total of 295 times this year. They took 55,755 minutes to complete. You can watch The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Director’s Cut 77 times during that time.
On the 1st of January 2022, The Riftbreaker repository revision number was 26911. We end the year on revision 34397. That’s 7.486 changes we’ve made to the game over the course of the year. That’s 20.5 changes a day. An average member of EXOR contributed 499 times.
We had to expand our server storage by over 24 TB this year alone.
Void streamed 68 times for you while you watched him for 6610 hours, or 275 days. That’s about how long it takes for a baby to come into this world!
We published 81 news articles on Steam, amassing 26.489.858 impressions (times they showed up when you were browsing Steam). That’s 327.035 views per news article. Naturally, a very small percentage of that converts to reads, but let’s imagine that every time we publish a news item, the entire population of Orlando, Florida, looks at the thumbnail. Weird. They have so many nicer things to look at over there.
The population of Riftbreakers has grown by another 350.000, bringing up the total to slightly over 1.000.000 players across all platforms, with more than 90.000 braving the Metal Terror.
That’s quite a lot, isn’t it? Naturally, with loads of tasks to complete, there are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. Miscommunications, lapses of concentration, or pre-existing biases will inevitably lead to mistakes. However, it is important to learn from those and take steps not to repeat those errors in the future. Here is a short summary of some of the things that we learned while working on The Riftbreaker through 2022.
Lesson 1: Clearly communicate your intentions to the players, especially in case of changing existing mechanics. Being assertive and confident about your decisions is one thing. Making sure that others understand there is no ill will behind your actions is another.
We spent the early months of 2022 patching the game up and introducing various tweaks and balancing changes. Some changes were overwhelmingly popular and appreciated, for example, making the acid rain/hailstorm events local instead of global. Unfortunately, others were not - look no further than changing the yields from cultivators. In the early days, it was entirely possible to just ignore the economy aspect of the game as long as you had an array of cultivators and collectors working 24/7. While we still stand by our decision to reduce their output, we could have communicated our intentions behind this change much better, which we did a week later. Still, we should have given you the full picture up-front and will do so in case of major changes in the future..
Lesson 2: It’s okay to give yourself a bit more time. Plans work great on paper, but as life evolves from day to day, plans need to evolve as well. We underestimated the time needed to playtest and polish the Metal Terror World Expansion. We learned that extracting the ‘fun factor’ can take a lot of time.
At the beginning of the year, as we moved from one patch to another, the production of Metal Terror was going full-steam ahead behind the scenes. We originally planned to release the expansion on May 30th. We had everything lined up: the trailer, press release, we arranged for some content creators to play the game and make videos… We encountered a problem though - we needed more time. The expansion was almost ready. All the assets were there, the voiceovers and videos were already recorded, and all the missions worked as they should.
Unfortunately, it was lacking a couple of finishing touches and details that would bring Metal Terror to the standard that we aim towards. We didn’t want to disappoint you with something half-baked, so we made the difficult decision to postpone the release until July. Your response was amazing - we received hundreds of messages telling us that you were happy to wait a little longer if it meant the game would be more fun. It was heartwarming and motivating for the entire team. The extra time you’ve given us allowed us to reach the goal and deliver a sizeable expansion that ties in nicely into the entire story of The Riftbreaker.
Lesson 3: Don’t be afraid to share your work with the world ahead of release. Sure, keeping a game’s story a secret is a no-brainer, but everything else should be fair game. It allows you to get feedback early, introduce changes, and get everyone excited for what’s coming.
Staying on the topic of Metal Terror, our approach to sharing information about it was much different than during the development of the main game itself. We purposefully decided not to release any articles about the upcoming creatures, technologies, and storyline because we didn’t want to spoil things for you. In our fear of not letting you know too much, we missed an important opportunity to gather feedback and make improvements on what we’ve done. Holding everything in secret hampered our ability to gather feedback early. This resulted in a too optimistic approach to announcing release dates and a lot of resulting stress. This is why we will be sharing a lot more info with you leading up to the release of the second world expansion and its story-based part - Into the Dark.
Lesson 4: Minimize the effort that you require from players when giving you feedback.
This leads us nicely to another thing that happened last year: the introduction of our feedback board at riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. For a very long time, we have been collecting feedback and suggestions from across all our media channels. We knew that some issues came up more often than others and made a point to include them in our development schedule. However, what we didn’t take into account was the fact that we only collected feedback from those players who devoted time and energy to actually type out a message to us.
Only after setting up the suggestion board did we realize what your opinions on the requested features are. We learned that single-player content is just as important as multiplayer. We also realized that not that many of you would like us to prioritize PVP modes. That gave us a lot of information to work with. Feature Upvote doesn’t require setting up any accounts, logging in, or writing essays on things you would like to see changed. Any user can just come to the board, click ‘upvote’ on things they like and move on. The ease of use and accessibility have given us great, actionable feedback we could start implementing right away.
Lesson 5: Don’t be afraid to share information, even about the most difficult of topics. Our ‘Co-Op when?’ article was one of the most popular blog entries in EXOR history. Almost 60.000 of you gave it a read. Hundreds have left comments appreciating the explanation and asking for more.
The overarching theme of 2022 and the number one most requested feature has always been clear - CO-OP WHEN?! We’ve known since the beginning that implementing multiplayer mode for the game was going to be very tough, and it was going to take at least a year. It turned out to be longer than that, and with the Q4 2022 release becoming more and more unlikely with each day, we decided to tell you everything about it in a lengthy, detailed article. It explained the network architecture we chose for the multiplayer module, listed the things that we had already reworked, and pointed out the plans for future reworks and optimizations. That leads to a very important conclusion - take the time to share what’s going on behind the scenes. People will appreciate it!
Enough about the past. Let’s talk about the future of The Riftbreaker.
A lot of good things are coming in 2023, starting with the second world expansion and its story-based campaign part - Into the Dark. The story will follow Ashley and Mr. Riggs into a network of caverns and tunnels beneath the surface of Galatea 37. The new expansion will open up a new biome, along with its unique fauna and flora, and give you access to tons of new technologies and gameplay mechanics. And as we promised - we’re not going to be secretive about it. Be on the lookout for articles featuring the new content!
We won’t slow down with regular updates, either. Our plans to expand the endgame of the Campaign Mode are big and won’t happen overnight. You can expect plenty of updates featuring new mechanics, reworks of existing ones (looking at you, mods!), as well as updates to the game’s balance. We can’t wait to see the final results!
We are also continuing our efforts on the multiplayer front. As soon as we have a working version that would allow two players to have a go at one of the survival maps together, we want to make it available as a closed beta. We will use that as a base for further development of the co-op mode that will allow you to enjoy all the content available in The Riftbreaker together with your friends. Those are, naturally, not the only things we have in store for you in the coming year. We plan to add even more content and technical innovations. We also want to involve you in the process of development in more ways.
Mr. Riggs wants to get involved, too!
Speaking of involving our community - a huge thank you for your positive response to the brutal survival challenge we issued a couple of days ago! We received many entries, and the first three people who successfully completed the challenge were:
Mr. Riggs plushies go your way! We also have an honorary mention - Harkonnen28, who was actually the first one to send in the video. Still, he was going to receive a plushie, either way, thanks to his contributions to the community.
Cracking presents means something different on Galatea 37.
We leave you with the Winter Holiday seasonal event active. The jungle biome of Galatea 37 is covered in snow, landmines turned into gift boxes, sentinel towers became snowmen, and the lamps in your base resemble gas lights. If you don’t see that in your game just yet, make sure to enable the ‘seasonal events’ option in the gameplay section of the options menu. If you prefer the classic look of The Riftbreaker, you can turn that option off, too. We don’t mind. You can even switch between the two modes on the fly. Go wild. We’re not going to tell you how to live your life.
Most of the EXOR Studios team will be back in the office in the second week of January. At that point you can expect the return of regular streams at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios, new articles about the upcoming content, as well as game updates. For now, though, we would like to wish you a great winter holiday. Spend some time with your loved ones, eat some good food and have a break from everything. You earned it.
Happy holidays! EXOR Studios
Experimental Hotfix, December 21st
Hello Riftbreakers!
We've just published a small update for the experimental version of the game. It fixes several crash bugs in various areas of the game. If you have not experienced any crashes on this list, there is no reason to switch to the experimental branch. If you have had crashes, try out this version as it might fix your issues.
Since we haven’t fully finished testing this update yet. We strongly recommend you to back up your save files before moving onto the experimental branch.
How to join the experimental branch:
create a backup copy of your save folder (Documents/The Riftbreaker)
disable Steam Cloud save backup
go to your Steam Library
right-click on The Riftbreaker
select 'Properties,’ then 'Betas,’ and use the following password: IknowWhatImDoing
After that, you will be able to choose 'experimental' from the drop-down menu. Download the update, play the game and let us know if you encounter any issues. We also have a channel on our Discord: #rb-experimental-feedback - we highly encourage you to join in and share your feedback.
The Riftbreaker Experimental Update, December 21st, 2022. EXE: 649, DATA: 275. Changelog:
Fixed several crashes connected with the crafting system.
Fixed a crash that occurred when jumping to different maps in Campaign Mode (it looks like the same thing that we did last time, but this is a different crash!)
Fixed a crash in Blueprint Component Manager.
Fixed a crash in State Machine Transistion System that occurred after loading the game.
Fixed skybox blending at night.
Fixed an error with skybox mipmap generation.
There are no gameplay or content changes in this build.
EXOR Studios
Hotfix, December 14th, 2022
Hello Riftbreakers!
We have just released a small patch addressing some of the issues that you have reported with the latest update. Thank you for pointing out the issues and providing us with valuable feedback. The changelog today is not that long, so let’s get right to it.
The Riftbreaker Hotfix Changelog, December 14th, 2022. EXE: 646 DATA: 271
Gamepad icons should now change properly according to the hardware you have plugged into your PC.
Fixed the look of some debris particles that appeared black on one side.
Fixed a crash that occurred if the MinimapSystem failed to initialize on time
Fixed a crash that could prevent players from loading into other maps they visited before in Campaign Mode.
Fixed a crash in PipesSystem.
EXOR Studios
Mod.io and Survival Improvements update!
Hello Riftbreakers!
After a period of intense testing on the experimental branch, the latest update for the Riftbreaker is now live!
This update is very important for modders, as it adds support for Mod.io - a 3rd party mod hosting service. Mod.io is integrated in the same way as Steam Workshop - you can access it in-game through the Mods menu. Once Mod.io is populated with user-generated content you will start seeing mods from that site on the available mods list. The Riftbreaker World Editor Suite is getting an update that will allow mod creators to upload their mods to both Steam and Mod.io.
Adding mod.io support is an important step, as it will allow non-Steam users to participate in the modding scene. We strongly encourage you to experiment with this platform and upload your mods there. All feedback when it comes to this integration is crucial to us.
The changes that are likely to have the most significant impact on your gameplay experience are the additional hard and brutal difficulty waves that were added to the Desert, Acid, and Magma biomes in Survival Mode. The two higher difficulty modes for these biomes were not quite on par with Jungle and Metallic Valley regarding the power level. With the addition of the new waves, all biomes should now be challenging on the hard difficulty and really demanding on brutal.
This patch also fixes several crash bugs and other errors that you pointed us toward in your reports. Thank you for that.
The Riftbreaker Update, December 13th 2022. EXE: 644, DATA: 269. Changelog:
Changes
Mod.io modding integration added. This service allows you to upload and install mods using the mod.io website and through the in-game interface in the Mods menu. This service is implemented in a similar way as Steam Workshop. This will enable users from platforms other than Steam to access mods.
HBAO improvements incoming! Our old SSAO was running at 720p res, which didn't yield great results. The new HBAO utilizes adaptive resolution (and a few tweaks), resulting in a much greater quality-to-performance ratio. If you don't use raytracing, you should see a noticeable difference in the ambient occlusion quality after this patch.
New Hard and Brutal difficulty balancing in Survival Mode on the Acidic Plains, Radioactive Desert, and Volcanic Area biomes. They are much more difficult now. You have been warned! (Feedback will be much appreciated)
Added Acidic Plains biome alpha and ultra attack waves for survival mode.
Added Radioactive Desert biome alpha and ultra attack waves for survival mode.
Added Volcanic Area survival mode alpha and ultra waves.
Enabled difficulty-specific final attack waves in the survival game mode in the Acid, Magma, and Desert biomes.
Enabled difficulty-specific regular attack waves in the survival game mode in the Acid, Magma, and Desert biomes.
Added wave spawn markers in multiple desert biome attack waves, which were previously missing.
Added some acid biome attack wave spawn markers, which were previously missing.
Added additional safe mode localization strings.
Reduced sound volume for some buildings in 'working' state.
Added a popup informing players about the modding feature's Terms of Service.
Enabled wave spawn markers in all jungle biome attack waves.
Added IsHardcoreModeEnabled() for modding purposes.
Text search in the mods menu is will now work with partial inputs, e.g. typing in 'rocks' will make the 'Destructible Rocks' mod show up. The end results still depend on the Steam Workshop/Mod.io backend, so your mileage may vary.
Fixes
Fixed a crash that occurred when performing a Power Jump skill.
Removed unnecessary button from the Tower Ammo Factory action menu.
Fixed a crash that occurred when building the Planetary Scanner before researching it (through cheats).
Mini Miners no longer keep working indefinitely after leaving them behind on an Outpost.
Fixed a missing header on the Sentry Turret entity.
Prevent building overlap by making sure that the grid culler nodes are populated after building spawn.
Research Screen: fixed a research tooltip when the subspecies field is empty.
Buildings should now connect to pipes in a proper way.
Safe Mode now ignores any startup commands and launches the game in an intended way, with the safest values possible.
Fixed random crashes that occurred during loading
Increased the limit of world entities from 300.000 to 1.000.000.
Fixed a crash in the InventorySystem.
Fixed Day Only/Night Only time of day modes in Custom Difficulties.
Fixed the appearance of the seasonal event popup.
Fixed a crash when stereo files were used for spatial sound on multichannel (e.g., 5.1/7.1) systems.
Fixed FSR 2.1 ghosting effect on DirectX 11.
Fixed a bug that caused players not to get AI cores back after selling a damaged defensive tower.
Fixed building selector size bug that occurred after jumping to another biome through the Orbital Scanner action menu.
Fixed a crash in DiscoverableSystem.
Fixed unsynchronized access to audio sources that caused crashes.
Fixed a bug that caused players not to get AI cores back after selling a damaged defensive tower.
Fixed multiple issues with multiple mod providers support.
Fixed errors and glitches in the Mods menu related to disabling and enabling mods.
Fixes multiple crash bugs and other minor errors.
EXOR Studios
Experimental Brutal Survival Challenge!
Hello Riftbreakers!
Earlier this week, we published an experimental update for The Riftbreaker that added support for Mod.io alongside Steam Workshop. Additionally, that update featured balancing changes for Hard and Brutal difficulty levels of the survival mode in the form of improved Alpha and Ultra creature attack waves in the later stages of the game on the Desert, Acid, and Volcanic biomes.
The latter change has significantly increased the expected power level of the waves that you are going to encounter in those biomes. Previously, the difficulty level only affected timers, damage, and resource multipliers. It didn’t really change the quality of the creatures that you had to face. With the addition of the improved waves, we are about to witness a new chapter in the survival metagame.
While the number of creatures in each wave did not change, you are much less likely to encounter regular strains of enemies, while Alpha and Ultra variants are going to be a common occurrence. Those aliens do not only pack a punch but can take one on the chin as well. You are going to need significantly more firepower to deal with the new attack waves. That means you will need more ammo and power, which means you will need a better economy. You can see what kind of trouble is waiting for you at the end of a Brutal survival run in this video, taken from our stream (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3 PM CET, https://www.twitch.tv/exorstudios):
What a chump, right?
Before we decide whether to push the reworked Hard and Brutal survival structure to the default branch, we would like to issue a challenge to all of you.
Get on the experimental branch (be careful though, back up your saves), and record your successful playthrough of a Brutal survival run on Acid, Desert or Volcanic biome. Post it anywhere you like and send the video to voidreaver (via DM) on our Discord - https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios.
The first three people to complete this challenge without the use of any cheats are going to receive a limited Mr. Riggs plushie!
Phone, hands and wall not included.
We will announce it on Discord when we receive 3 qualifying, winning entries. One entry per person. We ship worldwide! NO MODS, PLEASE.
