Join our Mixer stream, it's live right now! It's a great opportunity to chat with us and ask anything you'd like to know about our games, indie dev life, or the events we attended in the past month.
We stream twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3 PM CEST. At the moment, X-Morph: Defense is our main game, but we have streamed Zombie Driver in the past. Some other games might start showing up as well... :)
Hope to see you there!
THE RIFTBREAKER - Our next game
Hello everyone!
Today, we are proud to announce what we have been secretly working on for more than a year. World, meet our brand new game - THE RIFTBREAKER.
The Riftbreaker is a brand-new IP from EXOR Studios. The game combines elements of base-building, survival, exploration and action RPG. The story takes place in the distant future. Humans have managed to master the Rift technology, allowing them to instantaneously travel to far reaches of space. You take the role of captain Ashley S. Nowak, one of the titular Riftbreakers. They are a group of elite scientists/commandos. The Riftbreakers jump into newly established, one-way Rifts with no safety net, with the purpose of establishing a connection back to Earth to allow for further colonization. To make this possible, the pioneers take control of powerful Mecha-suits, equipped with all the tools necessary to get the job done.
An image says a thousand words, so let’s take a look at some of the things you are going to do in The Riftbreaker
BASE BUILDING
The first order of business after jumping through an interstellar Rift is establishing a field base. Ashley’s Mecha-suit, which she calls Mr. Riggs, has all the blueprints necessary to build the basic structures. Ashley’s task is to establish a safe, two-way connection between the planet Galatea 37 and Earth. Such a link requires massive amounts of energy. Therefore, Ashley has to build up a field base and infrastructure to complete this task. Her resources are limited. She will have to plan her expansion, mine and refine the resources available on the new planet and come up with an energy harvesting solution to complete her task. Ashley must not forget about fortifying the base, either. Who knows what might lurk in the darkness of the night.
EXPLORATION
Not much is known about Galatea 37. Rudimentary scans indicated that the planet has the necessary resources and conditions suitable for colonization, but nothing more. Ashley has to explore it on her own, visiting multiple biomes and encountering new species of vegetation and wildlife. Knowledge and samples collected during her excursions will allow her to research new technologies and adapt to the multiple threats presented by the forces of nature. Exploring new areas will allow Ashley to gain access to rare resources and discover new life forms. Setting up outposts along the way will also create a network of Rifts to safely and quickly travel across the new world.
HACK, SLASH, SHOOT
The planet is teeming with life, not all forms of which are peaceful. Ashley will often have to fight for her survival against the alien animals. The Mecha-suit she uses can be equipped with multiple weapons, allowing the Riftbreaker to fight off the enemies both in close quarters combat and from a distance. Mr. Riggs, the Mecha-suit, is fully customizable and upgradable. It will be Ashley’s main weapon against the beasts of Galatea 37. Slain enemies will often drop valuable specimens and samples. Research conducted at the base will expose the enemies’ weak points and reveal the best approach. Create new blueprints, craft weapons, and equipment. Each item you make will have unique properties.
INTERACTIVE STREAMING AND DEVELOPMENT
The Riftbreaker has built-in integration with all the popular streaming services out there. It will allow streamers and their audience to connect during streaming sessions on a whole new level. The viewers will play the role of the forces of nature, something beyond Ashley’s control. They can either hinder or boost the streamer’s progress by, for example, gifting additional resources, spawning an enemy attack wave or even directing a tornado at the base. What is important to note here is the fact that interactive streaming features are only an addition to the experience. The Riftbreaker can be experienced fully also in single-player mode.
The Riftbreaker runs on the newest version of our custom game engine, the Schmetterling 2.0. During the game development process, we are going to post regular updates on the game. You will know what we are working on at all times. We also encourage you to join in and help us with the process. If you have a great idea for an upgrade to an existing feature, or something completely new, let us know. Post on the game forum, join our Discord server, or any other social media channel and help us make the Riftbreaker the game you want to play.
Last, but not the least, here’s a teaser trailer for the game.
https://youtu.be/Za9cj2mae5w
We hope you are as excited about this project as we are. We can’t share anything more just yet, but if you’d like to see the first playable version of the game in action, we are going to present it at the GDC 2019 and PAX East. We also encourage you to add the game to your wishlist.
Reddit AMA incoming! Nintendo Switch preorders available.
Hello!
The year 2019 has been really intense for us so far, and it’s just the beginning! We would like to share with you what we’ve been up to and what you can expect from us in the near future.
As some of you might know, X-Morph: Defense is set to release on the Nintendo Switch on the 21st of February 2019. Apart from the local co-op, all the updates, features and expansions have found their way to the Switch. What that means is you can enjoy all the game features, including the Survival Mode, the advanced tower types and even all the DLCs on release day.
Moreover, we are running a preorder campaign. For the next couple of weeks, before the game releases, you can get either the base version of X-Morph: Defense or the Complete Edition with all the DLCs at a 20% discount. The game will be preloaded to your device and will be available to play the moment the game releases to the public.
As a part of our release celebration, we are going to do an AMA (ask me anything) session! The wonderful mod team at the r/nintendoswitch subreddit have given us an opportunity to take the sub over for a couple of hours and chat with the community about the game, the development process and all the things you might be interested in! The AMA is going to take place on the 21st of February at 4 PM CET, at www.reddit.com/r/nintendoswitch. Don't be shy! Even though it is a Switch subreddit, you can still come and ask your non-Switch related questions. It's Ask Me Anything after all! You are all welcome there.
As for the Nintendo Switch physical version of the game - yes, we are planning it. We have teamed up with Avance Discos in Europe and Teyon in Japan in order to get those hard copies to all the collectors out there. We will give you more details on those as soon as we get them.
We can’t tell you what is coming next just yet, but you won’t have to wait long. We have a lot of things prepared for you...
When it comes to our travel plans for this year, you will find our booth at GDC Expo 2019, PAX East, PAX West, E3 and Gamescom, just to name a few. We’re going to be waiting for you with some sweet goodies and some more exciting stuff. Stay tuned.
As always, we thank you for your support. If you’d like to stay up to date with the latest developments in our studio, subscribe to our social media channels.
11 BOSS BATTLES OF X-MORPH: DEFENSE, PART 6 - THE CHINESE DRAGON TRAIN
Chinese Dragon Train Boss
Hello and welcome back to another episode of our series on boss fight design! The boss we showed you last time was relatively easy to implement and made it into the final release of X-Morph: Defense. The one we will be discussing today had no such luck. Made up of hundreds of little pieces, the task of making all the components work together turned out to be a little bit too much for us, given the time restrictions we eventually had to impose on ourselves. Let’s take a closer look at it - here’s the Chinese Dragon Train.
This is the untextured prototype from a very early stage of development. Notice the scale of the train compared to a regular tank.
Even the sheer size of it is quite daunting. This boss was supposed to be the final enemy of the China stage in X-Morph: Defense. The battlefield is located in the middle of a military base. It is not unusual for the army to carry their freight by using specialized trains, so we decided it would be fitting and more unique than another ultra-heavy tank or a gigantic aircraft. Comprised of four completely different carriages, the Chinese Dragon Train had a number of ways to make the players sweat.
TRAIN DESIGN
The entire Chinese Dragon Train would fill up a large portion of the level and would be too large to fit on a single screen in-game.
As you might expect from EXOR Studios, the visual aspect of the boss design was rather over the top. The train with all its carriages spanned across almost half of the map. Since each part was specialized to carry out a different task, all of them had to vary significantly. That meant, of course, that our artists had to prepare 4 models to be later connected into one consistent entity. It was a tall order, especially given the fact that all the parts had completely different purposes.
The parts of the train were connected by dynamic joints, allowing it to slightly bend while making turns.
The Chinese Dragon Train is not just a vehicle packed with weapons. In fact, it is a military base on wheels, complete with an artillery cannon, a nuclear strike calling satellite dish and even an aircraft factory! A MIRV missile launcher rounds up the package nicely, giving the boss complete control over all the aspects of the battle taking place around it. There simply isn’t an aspect of the warfare the train couldn’t control.
The cannon carriage doubles up as an engine for the whole train. It is able to move forwards and backwards. It’s better not to ask about the power of its engines.
CANNON CARRIAGE
height - 43.5m
width - 39m
length - 56.5m
total number of weapons - 17
The heart of the Chinese Dragon Train is the engine. It is powerful enough to set all the other carriages in motion. It is crucial that this part stays operational for the whole machine to function properly, therefore it is constantly protected with an energy force field. Nothing goes in or out of this one. If everything else fails, however, the crew can man the onboard defense systems. The one that is immediately noticeable is the electromagnetic cannon, capable of long-range attacks. It seems like it would be the most dangerous weapon on this carriage, but it is the least of your worries.
Each carriage has its own hitbox map. The player has the ability to choose which elements they want to destroy.
Joining the fray are multiple cruise missile launchers. They are capable of firing a barrage at the alien core. The projectiles are quite slow, so they can be shot down by the player. Nevertheless, it is a daunting weapon. The carriage also defends itself by shooting at the alien fighter with its quad anti-air guns. Providing covering fire for the engine, their relentless fire is terrifying enough to drive even the most experienced pilots away. Rounding up the arms package are the grenade launchers and napalm cannons, both meant to dispose of anything the X-Morph might have put up on the ground.
The second carriage, holding the satellite dish. Nuclear strike detected.
The second carriage does not seem quite as dangerous as the first one, but don’t let the innocent looks fool you. The massive chassis covers up the satellite dish which the train crew uses to maintain comms with the space station capable of launching nuclear strikes on unsuspecting targets. It is the main weapon this carriage has against the X-Morph, but it comes with a significant drawback. The data transmission is quite long and can be interrupted, giving players a chance to counteract. In addition to calling a nuclear strike, the carriage is equipped with side lasers, capable of targeting the X-Morph core, like in a classic drive-by. Add AA guns to the mix and you have a force to be reckoned with.
The ballistic missile launcher car. The train’s cars would move on a quadruple set of train tracks due to the trains enormous size.
The third carriage on the Chinese Dragon Train is a MIRV ballistic missile launching pod. Its main weapon is only capable of long-range attacks, so we chose three points on the map they would be launched from. The train would stop and open up one of the six silos, preparing to launch one of the warheads at the alien core. The whole process is as cinematic as it can be, with smoke, sirens and red lights flashing as the rocket is prepared to start. Apart from adding dramatic flair, it was meant to be a moment for the player to strike, disabling the launch and protecting their assets.
Each weapon system is controlled separately. The number of AA guns on this beast was an absolute overkill.
The secondary anti-core weapon is swarm missiles fired from eight side launchers. They compensate their lack of sheer power with the numbers. This attack happens instantaneously, so the X-Morph must shoot down the missiles while they are traveling through the air. Apart from that, the carriage is protected by the usual - flak cannons, grenade launchers and miniguns against the alien fighter.
An airplane launch pad on wheels. What a time to be alive.
The last part of the train might yet be the craziest of the bunch. Aircraft carriers are some of the most terrifying naval vessels known to man, given their high range and firepower. No water units in X-Morph: Defense meant that if we wanted to have one, we would have to come up with a different idea for that. Therefore, we put an aircraft carrier on rails and made it a part of the Chinese Dragon. To make the whole thing even more obnoxious (in a good way) it serves not only as a launchpad for fighters but also as an aircraft factory! To cut the players some slack, the neverending air assault does not attack the core directly, its sole purpose is to attack the alien fighter.
The aircraft carrier is not defenseless without its birds. The plasma cannons on the sides fire relentlessly.
The other weapon the carriage is equipped with is side plasma cannons, shooting balls of plasma at the core that cannot be shot down. The only way to stop them is to interrupt the charging sequence, which might be a bit tricky given the swarms of planes flying around, like bees around the hive. The usual defensive package of AA guns, miniguns, and swarm missiles makes sure that the factory is well protected against all kinds of X-Morph attacks. This rounds up the whole offensive and defensive package of the Chinese Dragon.
The whole package. Notice the purple elements - humans and planes. They show the true scale of this monstrosity.
TRAIN TOTALS
highest point - 43m
widest point - 43.5m
total length - 300m
total weapons - 80
In order to take the train down, the player would have to destroy all of the single carriages. Each carriage has its weak spots, such as capacitors, generators, and engines. The player may aim at the weapons in order to reduce their functionality, decrease the damage and increase the charging time. If you decide to go for the weak spots, though, you might be able to snipe the whole part of the train before it becomes a significant problem.
LEVEL DESIGN
One of the limiting factors for designing such a machine is the fact it moves on rails only. It meant that the level would have to be designed specifically to address this need. We decided to place six train tracks on the level. The players cannot see what lies beyond the level boundaries in X-Morph: Defense. That, in turn, gave us a free hand to turn the train back, rotate it, and place it on a completely different track than it previously used. By simply teleporting the boss entity we avoided the necessity of creating a multi-kilometer rail network only to turn around the train of this size. This was supposed to show that the rail network was very complex and required the players to guard 12 points of entry in total.
A very early mockup of the level design. The whole environment is designed to accommodate the regular enemy waves as well as the boss fight.
The layout of the train tracks couldn’t be random. Had we simply put intersecting tracks on a flat surface, it wouldn’t have made the fight any more fun, just unnecessarily complex. Thus, instead of opting for a flat, desert-like environment, we went for a series of tunnels and overpasses. This element made it to the final game, as it introduces multiple ways the players can shape the enemy paths and take the level on.
Moreover, for a little dramatic flair, the train tracks would not be empty at the start of the level. To evoke the feeling of the humans being surprised by the attack, there would be regular trains all over the map. As with everything in our game, the player could destroy them. However, a more epic assumption was that the player left them alone and the Dragon Train would simply bash its way through all of the ‘regular’ trains. It came to rescue humanity after all; you’d better get out of its way!
THE FIGHT
A perspective view of the early prototype.
The boss introduction was to resemble action films of the late 80s/early 90s, with its over-the-top epicness and the general atmosphere. The train would arrive to the battlefield as the weapon of last resort, and you’d better get out of its way. It would destroy everything on its way, and if the player had blocked any tracks beforehand all the obstacles would be destroyed as well. Its initial point of entry was the tunnel track and it would begin the fight with a ballistic missile attack.
The entry and exit point schematics.
After all of the above, the train would start its routine of cruising along one of the tracks, launching an avalanche of attacks available from its current position, leave the map, choose a new entry point and do it all over again. The reason for limiting the number of available attacks on a track is twofold. First, you do not want to overwhelm the player. Second - the structure of the level, with all the height differences, overpasses, tunnels, would render some of the weapons useless in a couple of circumstances. You don’t want to shoot rockets at a wall, after all.
In order for this fight to be fair, we had to put some limits in place. First of all, as you already know, the train would follow 6 tracks with a total of 12 entry points. The attacks used by the train were determined by the point of entry it used. This way it was entirely possible to learn the attack sets by heart and how to counter them. In addition to predictable attack patterns, the intercepted radio comms would also give the player a hint of what’s to come. It would be up to the player, however, in what order they wanted to get rid of the carriages.
This mockup presents the overview of the level together with the train model to give the viewer a sense of scale.
The energy shield protecting the train engine disappeared only after all the other parts were destroyed. The wrecked carriages would still travel with the train, as the wheels and suspension system would not be destructible. Additionally, the train could move both forwards and backwards, thanks to the rocket engines mounted on the electromagnetic cannon carriage. All these elements were to result in a demanding, multi-layered boss fight. Sadly, the Chinese Dragon did not make it to the final release, but it is a design we’re quite proud of.
CONCLUSION
While daunting in scope, the boss was not as complicated as it was complex. The sheer number of elements would take at least 3 months of work and we could not justify it. All the carriages, their elements, destruction levels - we are talking about hundreds of models here. Therefore, it was not about the lack of skill or tech. Resigning from the implementation of the Chinese Dragon Train was a decision dictated by reason. All that remains of the boss in the game today are the huge tunnels and multiple tracks on the China map. Perhaps someday the design will find its way to one of our releases.
That is only one of our sick, over-the-top ideas that we never found the time and resources to finish. And since we are already on the topic of insane bosses, the next time we will try to tell you the story of another one - a boss fight comprised of two boss fights. We hope you have a pleasant time this holiday season and that you will have the chance to spend it together with your friends and family.
Nintendo Switch version is almost ready - and it's good news for everyone!
Hello everyone!
It’s been quite a while since we shared the last piece of information about the X-Morph: Defense port for Nintendo Switch. We have an excuse for that, and it’s a good one - the game is almost ready! We spent the last couple of weeks working really hard to make the gaming experience on the Switch as smooth as possible. It has been an exciting process and we have also learned a lot from it. What follows is quite a detailed description of what’s been going on (there’s also a TL;DR version, just scroll down).
We made sure to transfer the whole X-Morph: Defense experience to the Nintendo Switch.
At first, we did not plan to develop X-Morph: Defense for the Nintendo Switch. Even though many people have been asking for it we just kept saying no. We were aware that porting the game to the Nintendo Switch would prove to be a challenge. Packing so much content and keeping the quality consistently high on mobile hardware is no easy feat. All the requests from players have stayed in the back of our minds and we finally decided to give it a try. So, in a sense, you have made it happen.
During the campaign, you will see all the levels, weapons and enemies known from the other versions.
X-Morph: Defense is quite a demanding game even for the latest consoles. The amount of visual effects and physics calculations keeps all the processing cores saturated with work at 100% most of the time. Nintendo Switch is a significantly less powerful device due to its portable nature. It meant we had to optimize many elements while keeping the experience largely unchanged. Therefore, we set some goals for ourselves. Stable performance, no gameplay changes, the same level of destruction, in both docked and handheld modes.
The new towers are available with the base game at launch.
Stable performance was the first one. Our aim was to achieve 30 frames per second both in handheld and docked mode. After we got the game up and running we began performance profiling to find problematic parts of the game. Through trial and error, we arrived at a stable 30FPS in 720p in handheld mode, without the visuals taking a big hit. Sure, we had to cut some props here and there and reduce some particle effects, but the game looks and plays great in handheld mode.
Our team has pushed the Switch hardware to its limits, EXOR never gives up on explosions!
As for the docked mode, we tried 1080p at first. An important fact here is that in 1080p the device has to render over twice as many pixels as in 720p. Unfortunately, the Switch does not become twice as fast in docked mode and the performance wasn’t satisfactory. Cutting objects from the game was out of the question since we didn’t want the handheld version to suffer. Therefore, we decided to reduce the resolution to 900p. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough, so we also reduced the size of the post-processing buffer responsible for HDR bloom. The difference in rendering quality is negligible, but it gave us an extra 2-millisecond boost in frame rendering time that allowed us to equalize the handheld and docked performance.
The gameplay is dynamic and responsive, as you have to constantly adapt to the types of enemies attacking your core.
The gameplay itself is exactly what you saw in other versions of X-Morph: Defense. The number of enemies has not been reduced, all the missions are the same and all the levels play out exactly as you would expect them to. We had to reduce the amount of debris left by the enemies, but we compensate for that with added score multipliers, counting both for the resource gathering and the final score. Some maps have undergone cosmetic changes to reduce the strain on the hardware, but these changes have no effect on the gameplay.
The destructible environment has always been one of the biggest advantages of the game. Keeping this feature and maintaining performance required some clever trickery.
The destructible environment was a big challenge. Buildings consisting of physical chunks require the device to render a huge amount of polygons and it was too much for Nintendo’s handheld. To combat that, we made custom, static versions of all physically simulated destructible objects in the game, which we swap for the dynamic versions once they are damaged. This saves up performance when it comes to the polygon count, but costs 90MB of system memory in our case. It is a lot. Nintendo Switch has a lot less memory on board than the PS4 or Xbox One. Just to get the game running we had to reduce memory usage by about 30%. Code optimization, texture size reduction, and sound compression got us there, but it was not a cakewalk. Memory fragmentation was one of the greatest issues, causing crashes and rendering the game unplayable. We fixed the stability by allocating static memory pools for the game components, such as sounds, particles, GUI, videos and save files. We eventually managed to stick to the limits.
Even though we had to cut down on some visual effects, the game still looks gorgeous.
The only gameplay feature we had to cut is the co-op mode. Our split-screen mode requires the device to render almost twice as many elements as in the single-player mode. It doesn’t mean that all calculations are done twice - the physics, AI, or pathfinding require only a single operation. Our experience from working with other platforms shows that split-screen requires about 30% more processing power. Such a number exists under the assumption that we have some spare CPU cores and we can use them to parallelize some calculations. We do not have this luxury on the Switch - we use 100% of resources at all times. It means we would have to cut down on some features and do a lot of extra work. This is why we decided to leave the split-screen out from the game for now. We do not rule it out in the future, but can’t promise anything at this point.
The red-hot rivers of lava on Iceland are one of the most eye-catching features in X-Morph: Defense.
We know that download sizes are a big concern in the Switch community. Through numerous optimizations, we have reduced the package size from over 4GB to just a little bit over 1.6GB. Among other things, we have used OGG Vorbis compression on our audio files and removed the 4K-ready textures, as they would never be utilized anyway. Moreover, this is the first release of the game on the Switch, meaning we do not need to keep older versions of the maps just to keep save files compatible. This way you will be able to have X-Morph: Defense installed alongside other games, without worrying about the free space on your device.
The boss fights remain as epic as ever.
X-Morph: Defense will be available together with all the updates that were previously released on other platforms. It means that you will be able to enjoy the survival mode, additional tower types and all the little changes that happened over the course of the game’s lifetime. All the pieces of premium DLC will be available for purchase day one. We also do not raise the cost of the game - it will be around the $20 price point, with currency-specific adjustments.
Tricking your enemies into taking a suboptimal route is very important. The control scheme remained unchanged, so you have perfect control over the battlefield.
Last, but not the least important is the release date. We wanted the game to be released before the end of 2018. The reality has verified our plans, but the delay is not that big. X-Morph: defense will become available on Nintendo eShop in very early 2019. We are also looking into releasing a physical edition of the game - we will share more info about this as soon as everything is 100% confirmed.
And finally - TL;DR:
Very early 2019.
The base game has all the free updates that were previously released on other platforms.
All DLC available for purchase at launch.
720p/30FPS handheld, 900p/30FPS docked.
All gameplay features including fully destructible environments and building physics remain except split-screen co-op.
1.6GB install size.
$20 price point with currency-specific adjustments (check Steam pricing for reference).
No gameplay changes.
Digital download from Nintendo eShop.
We’re looking into physical release options.
Developing the Nintendo Switch version has been a challenge, pointing out problems we did not know about and allowing us to optimize the game beyond what we imagined. All the optimizations will also find their way onto other platforms with future patches. This way our fans can enjoy improved performance on all devices. We hope you’ll have as much fun playing it as we had working on it.
Let us know if you have any further questions!
EXOR Studios
First of all, we would like to apologize for being so quiet here lately. We’ve had our hands full working on the Nintendo Switch version and the recently released mouse and keyboard support patch for Xbox One. We aren’t the only ones who have been at work, however! One of our community members, Makichika, known here as Daisy 023 created an awesome map we would like to showcase today.
The map is called Oasis and it’s Makichika’s first one ever. And, oh boy, what a first map it is! The setting enchanted us with all the little details spread around the city. Just to give an example - there are emergency team cars standing beside the buildings on fire. It’s minute, but evokes the feeling of invading a city that is actually inhabited!
When it comes to gameplay we have to give you a word of warning. Oasis is really hard. The number of enemy units, especially the air support is through the roof. You can easily control the ground units with proper mazing and most of them can be forced to take a single path, but you’re going to have a lot of things to take care of. We recommend starting on easy and then working your way up, once you’ve got a grip on the specific waves’ power levels.
Once you jump the hurdle of 1000 (sic!) jet fighters you are going to be rewarded with something we have not seen before on a custom map - dialog lines and cutscenes implemented from the original campaign, Makichika has chosen the elements which fit the narrative of the Oasis and added them to the level. It’s another small thing that just adds to the awesomeness, You will also encounter Manticores and Tortugas, the enemies from the latest DLC (even if you don’t have the DLC)!
There is one small bug you have to look out for - there is an armored door to the south of the core. It is supposed to be destroyed in the bomber cutscene, but sometimes it does not happen. It can lead to some errors, but it’s resolved by simply bombing the door. We know it’s going to be fixed soon, though! Makichika is also working on more custom maps, so we’re very excited to see what’s next.
When Pacanus saw me playing the map he just said “What pretty chaos!”. Do you have what it takes to survive this madness? Find out today, download the map from the Steam Workshop!
We are back from PGA 2018. We had a lot of fun, met lots of amazing people and learned a lot from our fellow indie exhibitors. Shows like these are draining physically, but we always come back with our heads full of ideas and invaluable knowledge.
As we continue our efforts with the Nintendo Switch version of X-Morph: Defense we stumbled upon a stash of old versions of the X-Morph core. Like almost everything in the game, this structure went through multiple iterations and changes in style. We made a short video presenting the various stages of the core’s development.
https://youtu.be/Gb0_zp3KycI
As you can tell, initially we wanted the core to look entirely different. At first, it was supposed to be consistent with the fleshmachine design, just like our towers and the fighter. With the introduction of the new, energy-based style, we began the search for the design that satisfied us. It was a long road.
The whole history of the core design is an interesting one, so we will write a more extensive piece about it. Stay tuned!
The dust has settled after the Last Bastion DLC release. The X-Morph storyline is complete, and the humans have been almost completely wiped out. It is not the end of the road for the game, though! The community maps section of the Steam Workshop is home to many interesting and inspiring levels. Today we will take a look at one of them - Mirkwood.
The X-Morph core lands in the middle of a dense forest situated in between hillsides and a couple of small villages. A calm river to the south and vivid green of the vegetation in the north give the whole area a very peaceful atmosphere. However, where the X-Morph land, the army follows.
The first couple of waves are not particularly threatening. Some Humvees, Buggies and a sprinkle of Bulldog tanks are nothing that a skilled pilot can’t handle. Further into the level, the serene atmosphere dissipates, as the humans roll out their heavy hitters. There is even a full-on carpet bombing in one of the waves, razing all of the cottages into the ground. Even though the tempo increases over time, the level doesn’t feel imbalanced at any point. The player is given enough resources to build up a defensive network.
All the cottages, rocks and dense vegetation give the X-Morph the opportunity to create intricate mazes for the humans. The ground units should not stand in your way in Mirkwood, however, due to the difficult terrain, you can expect a lot of aircraft to join the fray.
If you are looking for a well-balanced mission with a lot of possible defensive configurations to choose from, Mirkwood is definitely one of the community maps you should give a shot. If you are an aspiring map builder - check out the wave configuration and attack paths for airborne units. All players can learn a lot from this one.
11 Boss battles of X-Morph: Defense, part 5 - KM-2 REDWING
Today’s culprit intro sequence.
Hello and welcome to another installment of our series! It’s been a while since we presented the last part to you, but we’ve had a lot of work in the meantime. We attended Gamescom 2018, where we had the opportunity to meet some of you and we’ve been working on the recently announced Nintendo Switch port of X-Morph: Defense! We are back on track though, aiming to deliver articles on all of our boss designs. Let’s take a look at one of the most complex designs we had, the KM-2 REDWING ekranoplan.
A COLD WAR RELIC
KM2- REDWING model in-game. The screenshot comes from an early prototype, hence the shadow quality.
First, a little bit of history. An ekranoplan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-effect_vehicle] is a machine that’s something between a plane and a ship. It uses the ground effect [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics)] to generate enough drag to lift off from the ground, or from the water surface, to be precise. Machines like these were supposed to revolutionize water cargo, by combining the speed of a plane with the capacity of huge container ships. Since research on ekranoplans was done mostly in the Soviet Union during the cold war, being undetectable by radar and immune to most navy weapons were additional advantages. The KM ekranoplan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea_Monster] was a top secret project. Several iterations were made, more or less weaponized, but none reached the stage of mass production and the project was discontinued.
The boss is able to drop multiple ground units to the battlefield. The cargo nature of its protoplasts shows.
In our version of reality, however, the research did not stop and the X-Morph attack pushed humans to deploy their newest gunship to the battlefield. The KM-2 REDWING ekranoplan is a spiritual successor to the earliest KM model, dubbed the ‘Caspian Sea Monster’. It is powered by multiple jet engines, which generate thrust and exhaust the air under the wings, generating the massive lift force required to carry this giant war machine. Equipped with lasers, rocket launchers, and anti-aircraft weapons it is the boss enemy of the Russia stage in X-Morph: Defense.
BOSS FIGHT DESIGN
Hitbox map of the boss. There were a lot of active parts at first. Later revisions reduced their numbers quite a bit.
Now that you have a general idea about the ekranoplan, let’s talk about what we wanted the fight to look like. The model is quite complicated, representing all the different systems the boss is equipped with. The player may choose what kind of approach they would like to take to fighting the boss - destroying the wings, engines or weapon systems are all viable strategies. We wanted all of those to lead to different outcomes, but more on that later. The fight itself would take place on a map that’s situated near a harbor. This decision was made both to emphasize the naval capabilities of the KM-2 and to give us possibilities of incorporating ground units into this fight.
The boss can fire multiple kinds of missiles at the core, each with a bit different characteristics.
Even though all of the above is still true, a round of testing has shown an issue with our design. The number of hitboxes on the ship was much too high. This caused the fight to go on for a very long time if the player did not focus on dealing with the gunship. Since there were many distractions, such as the ground units dropped from the ekranoplan, or missiles fired at the core, the players felt threatened by too many things at once and often did not manage to get a decent hit on the boss. Thus, the number of hitboxes and distractors was severely reduced, leading to a more fun player experience overall.
The level design did not change much. Flight patterns have been reworked, other than that, we managed to stick to our early design.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/408410/announcements/detail/3395033269048008525
Similarly to the bomber concept that we presented to you earlier, the boss would follow predefined flight patterns. At first quite far from the X-Morph harvester core, but getting closer as the fight progressed. In X-Morph: Defense we give the player perfect information about the wave they are about to face off against. It means we show all the possible attack paths, enemy numbers, spawn points etc. The first playable version of this boss fight, however, had so many possible paths that the ‘perfect information’ we wanted the players to have turned the screen into complete chaos. It was also around the time when we invited several people from outside the studio to help us test some ideas and all of them were confused upon seeing this. That is why we decided to limit the number of possible attack angles.
WEAPON SYSTEMS
Artillery barrage is one of the toughest attacks the boss has to offer. Without anti-air defenses, it is really difficult to counteract.
We decided to use a mixture of direct and indirect attacks against the core, each telegraphed to the player by a dialogue line. One of the marquee features of the KM-2 were powerful lasers, able to scorch everything in their path. The only means of defense against those was dealing enough damage to the laser cannons to temporarily disable them.
A textbook definition of ‘scorched earth’ tactics.
The second type of direct attack were several types of projectiles fired directly at the core. The gunship would have a choice of using a swarm of small missiles, a couple of larger and tougher cruise rockets or artillery shells dealing splash damage. The small missiles are fairly fragile and the player can take them down in a number of ways, such as the EMP defense field. Bigger rockets can take a couple of hits or can be disabled by an EMP shockwave. The shells from an artillery barrage aren’t affected by EMP but can be shot down directly. Such a variety of attacks would require the players to have a decent network of anti-air defense towers or, thanks to the fixed flight patterns and clearly announced barrages, to counter those attacks directly with the X-Morph fighter.
The player must find the balance between protecting the core both from the missiles and ground threats.
Not only the alien core was in danger while fighting against the REDWING KM-2. We gave the boss the ability to bomb the terrain, clearing the defense towers placed by the player and clearing other terrain obstacles. That last point was especially important, given the fact that the boss could drop ground units onto the battlefield. Apart from introducing another layer to the fight, this feature was connected to the cargo nature of the early concepts of real-world ekranoplans. The numbers of the dropped units weren’t spectacular, as we did not want to distract the players too much, just enough to keep them on their toes.
The boss is not defenseless if you try to backstab it. Air mines are quick and very effective.
The attack package wouldn’t be complete without actions aimed directly at the player ship, so we mounted miniguns, rocket launchers, and AA cannons onto the gunship. The problem with all of those was that they could fire in a limited radius, leaving the KM-2 defenseless if the players managed to position themselves directly behind the boss. The problem was essentially the same as in the case of the bomber, but given the lower flight altitude of the ekranoplan, we managed to find a solution this time. Taking deep-sea mines as an example, we equipped the REDWING with air mines. They would be dropped behind the boss, directly on its flight path, making sure the players weren’t able to easily exploit its vulnerabilities.
KILL IT WITH FIRE
It wouldn’t be an EXOR Studios game without explosions.
As for the kill conditions, we decided on three different ways the players could deal with this monstrosity. The first one was going after its engines. As the players dealt damage to engines, the boss’ behavior would become progressively more aggressive, as the crew would want to destroy the aliens before they completely lose all power. If the X-Morph survived the onslaught and managed to destroy most of the ekranoplan engines, the remaining ones would go into overload, leading to a spectacular series of explosions, concluding in an epic catastrophe.
A rudimentary schematic of the wing fragment hierarchy. The player must destroy the wing fragments in order.
The second way to get rid of the gunship was to destroy the wings. The players were able to destroy them piece by piece, lowering the lift force capabilities and eventually leading to the plane spiraling down and crashing into the ground. As in the previous example, the crew would anticipate this and become more pervasive in their attack patterns and barrage intensity.
A well-timed EMP blast can damage multiple systems at once.
The last way the players could defeat the gunship was to destroy all of its weapons. All of the individual defense systems had their own hitboxes, making them targetable and destructible by the X-Morph. Once all of the KM-2’s guns were dealt with, the boss would switch into a kamikaze attack mode, going straight at the alien core in the last effort to stop the alien invasion. In order to make this preventable, the overall toughness of the ship would be lowered at this stage, giving the players the chance to destroy the ekranoplan before it hit the harvester core. In the end, due to time and resource constraints, we had to scratch the multiple endings idea. In the current version of the game, upon receiving serious damage to any set of components the REDWING first changes the attack pattern. Then, it attempts a direct core attack with lasers, similar to the kamikaze run, only to finally attempt it in its last stand.
IMPLEMENTATION PROBLEMS
This is NOT working as intended. We added an invulnerability shield to the core to prevent feel-bad moments.
A large number of targetable elements was also an attractive idea when the game was a pure shoot’em up. When we had transitioned to introduce the tower defense elements another problem arose - which part of the REDWING were the towers meant to shoot at? This problem required us to assign each individual part a targeting priority. First, they will shoot the elements with the highest risk factor or the closest one if all target priorities are equal. The only exception to this rule is the laser attack - when it is active, only the laser emitters are the targetable element.
The defensive towers switch between targets on the go, but according to a specific ruleset.
As we downscaled the complexity of the boss fight and the number of elements, the death sequence has been unified for all player approaches. The dialogues will acknowledge the damage done to the gunship, however, the fight phases are exactly the same. First, the boss tries attacking from a distance with long-range missiles. After that, it attempts to pressure the core by adding missile and artillery barrages to its repertoire. Lastly, it may attempt a suicide run at the alien base, unless it is defeated before it can go on a collision course.
The player is able to defeat the boss even before it is capable of launching the final, kamikaze attack.
Of course, the plans we had in our heads at the beginning of the project were quite ambitious and due to time constraints and the game’s redesign we had to cut down on some things. This resulted in the version of the boss you encounter in the game today. The attacks remained largely unchanged. A large number of solutions were reused from our previous boss designs.
CONCLUSION
The KM-2 model without textures. The perspective on this image makes it easier to spot the different weapon systems.
All in all, the REDWING KM-2 was not the most difficult boss to implement, technically speaking. We managed to reach most of the design goals we set for ourselves. The true challenge here was to show to the players how to fight this machine effectively and evoke positive feelings during the fight. After all, the challenges we set for our players are meant to be pleasant and gameplay is supposed to be fun. Without external testing, this would not have been possible, as it opened our eyes to many problems we previously did not think of.
The cruise missile barrage is very dangerous, especially when launched close to the core.
Join us next time, as we continue on our journey through the 5 years of X-Morph: Defense development history. We will dig up a concept of a boss which did not make it past the design phase. Also, if you enjoyed reading this article and would like to ask us questions, leave comments here or join us on our live streams! We love hanging out and chatting with you!
We are proud to announce that the long-awaited save feature is now available in Survival mode! Thanks to your help and participation in the public beta test we managed to squash a lot of bugs.
The game will now automatically save your progress every fifth wave after all the enemies are killed. You can reload the game, restart, exit, reenter... do whatever you please - as long as the core does not die, you may return to the previous save point. Additionally, at each save point you will have unlimited intermission time to optimize your defenses.
The community feedback has made us aware that not everyone has the hours to invest in a single game session. We hope these changes will lead to a more enjoyable and accessible survival experience. Moreover, perhaps we will see more high scores going into millions, such as this one from Ghost / ngus2angus.
They are truly insane! Check out this endgame vid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykU6cK96CC4
We can only wonder what will happen now, with the save feature! If you encounter any problems, let us know! Also, if you have any more suggestions for the game, do not hesitate to share your ideas with us. We listen and we act.
All yours,
EXOR Studios
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