As the release dates of the update and the DLC draw near we would like to present one of the new enemy types. We will kick things off with a very special flying unit. Meet the Vulture Gunship, a.k.a. the flying fortress!
This aircraft is one of the most formidable enemies you can face in X-Morph: Defense. Even though it keeps its distance from the heat of battle, circling around the map, it is certainly not harmless. Armed with a long-range rocket launcher it attacks the core directly, without the need to get up and close to your base. Your core health will get depleted really fast if you do not plan against this kind of attack.
Taking the battle to the Vulture is not easy either. The gunship is equipped with dual air-to-air cannons, providing a flurry of bullets aimed at your ship. Heavy armor doesn’t make things any easier. Luckily, the Vultures are loners and do not attack in large groups. This gives you the chance to counteract and survive.
That is just one of the four new units we are preparing for you. We promise a lot of new challenges and new angles of attack.
This is just the beginning.
EXOR Studios
New towers - extended gameplay!
Hi!
This has been an exciting week for us already, but we're not done yet!
We have done some tweaking and balancing to the Flamer Artillery and the Railgun Tower. In order to show you how they work in gameplay context, we have recorded a full mission gameplay video featuring these two new weapons.
https://youtu.be/6YY3-T_0QgI
The tactics employed in this video are... interesting, although suboptimal at times. There are a couple of situations where survival wouldn't have been possible if not for the new towers.
Check the video out and let us know what you think!
New tower - Flamer Artillery
Hello everyone!
Last time we showed you a new toy - the railgun tower - and a new playground in Madagascar. This time, we are going to show off another tower joining the X-Morph arsenal soon. World - meet the Flamer Artillery.
This new and exciting weapon is designed to destroy large groups of small units over a long distance. Once an enemy gets in its firing range, the tower launches a barrage of 3 shells. They not only deal damage by themselves but also set off a flame wave, setting the enemies and surroundings on fire. If the initial blast doesn’t get them, the damage over time will.
The Flamer Artillery is great against small units. What about dealing with larger ones? Well, this tower and the Railgun are best pals. Coupled together in strategic places of the map they can stop almost anything. That comes at a cost, however.
The Flamer Artillery costs 3 resource units to build, making it rather a mid-to-late game option. The barrels can be shot down by the tanks' active armor, but due to the fact that there are 3 shells fired each time you're sure to get some damage through. Try comboing it with regular artillery!
This is still work in progress, but we hope you are as excited for the update as we are. See you on the battlefield soon!
Since summer has hit with full force (at least in our hometown) we are going to take you on a short tropical trip today. We would like to present to you the first of the maps you will find in our newest story DLC. Let’s visit Madagascar!
The story in the third X-Morph: Defense expansion takes place after the events of the main campaign. Humans have taken refuge in the most remote locations of the planet, trying to survive the alien invasion. Madagascar is one of those places.
With its azure water, green hillsides, steep cliffs, and towering baobabs the island seems like a little piece of heaven. The X-Morph are unrelenting in their expansion, however. As soon as they discover elevated activity on the island they decide to get rid of this threat.
The map does not feature a lot of architecture. Cottages, containers and small huts are the only buildings you will find. The aliens will have to find another way of blocking enemy paths and protecting their harvester core until it’s fully developed. Those baobab trees seem like they might be useful…
We are still working on the details and the map will surely get a facelift before the release, but we are already excited! This tropical paradise will turn into a blazing inferno under the heat of battle. We hope you are ready.
It is time to start teasing some new content coming your way in the next big update to X-Morph: Defense! Over the course of the next weeks we will show you the new toys we prepared for you. Let’s kick this off with a blast - a blast from a railgun, to be exact.
The railgun is a second-stage upgrade to the laser tower. This high-power weapon is able to deal with heavily armored enemies easily and is especially useful against plasma shields. It fires a high velocity energy beam, piercing through the enemies and the surrounding structures.
Yes, you read that right - the railgun can easily destroy smaller buildings in its line of fire. Apart from giving us the joy of destruction it also has strategic implications, as the tower quickly clears out the line of sight for other, less powerful X-Morph weapons.
Using the railgun effectively requires a bit of planning. Such a powerful weapon has to come with a drawback and in this case it is the rate of fire. There is a long delay between shots, so quick and small units can try to simply pass the tower. It is also the most effective when used perpendicularly to the enemy path - then it can deal damage to multiple enemies. It is not a good single-target means of defense.
The railgun will be available to be unlocked in the upgrade shop, as an extension to the laser tower. The in-game cost of placing one railgun is 3 resource units - 1 for the basic tower and 2 for the upgrade, much like the advanced anti-air towers from the base game. You will be able to use it in the original story campaign as well! This tower and more will come to you at the end of August, as a part of a free content update.
In the meantime we would like to remind you about the video contest we have going on - record a video from X-Morph: Defense, send a link to our Discord server and win an awesome T-shirt! Also - tune in every Tuesday and Thursday at 2PM GMT+2 to our Twitch and Mixer channels! We stream regularly, so it is your chance to have a chat with us, ask questions and take part in giveaways! Links below!
In just a little over one month we will celebrate the first anniversary of X-Morph: Defense’s release! In order to make the event a little more special we are currently working on a set of new features that we will add to the game at the end of August! The things we are working on can be divided into three major parts.
First of all, we finally caved in to your requests for more variety and we’re introducing new towers! With the anniversary update you will be able to upgrade the current laser tower, flamethrower tower and artillery tower even further, much like the AA flak tower. The upgrades are more powerful, but more specialized than the ones you are used to using now. They will be balanced to be used alongside existing tower types - we don’t want to make the older towers obsolete. The new toys will often require strategic placement in order to be used effectively. We will share all the details with you as soon as we get all the gears running and plasma flowing. Oh, and one more thing - the new towers will come to all of you as a free content update.
With the new weapons comes the need for some decent targets. That is why we’re adding four new types of enemies to the game - one new flyer and three ground units. They will test your mettle and strategic planning skills in all new ways. They will not appear in the base game, as that would turn all the levels upside down, but you’re all free to use them while creating your own maps in the level editor.
The place where you will be able to see the new units in their natural habitat is the third DLC. This time we are going to deliver another story campaign to you, taking place after the events from the base game. The remnants of human forces have escaped to four remote locations, and your task is to eradicate all the resistance. They will put up a fight!
If you would like to learn a little more about the new features you can check out the VOD of the stream we did on the 19/07/2018. We have a chat about the new content around the 1 hour 20 minutes mark. Make sure to follow this page and our other social media channels as we will publish sneak peaks of all the features regularly.
https://youtu.be/cFSuB7GJjF4
Thank you for this year of amazing support! We hope we can share more exciting moments together, so take a look at our social media channels and stay tuned for more news. Also, join us every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:30 PM GMT+2 on our streams. You can get your questions answered right away! See you there!
11 BOSS BATTLES OF X-MORPH: DEFENSE - PART 4, THE JAGUAR TANK
Jaguar Type S intro sequence fragment. Collateral damage is not a problem…
It’s time to present to you another boss design from X-Morph: Defense. In this series we have already covered the Tarantula MK V, the Scorpion and the Bomber. The JAGUAR tank you will read about today seems relatively harmless compared to the previous entries on our list, but there is nothing harmless about it. In fact, the mayhem caused upon the city by this behemoth is one of the biggest you will encounter in the entire game.
DESIGN
If we were to use only two words to describe the tank, the phrase would be ‘collateral damage’. The concept for this boss fight sequence started in the early days, back when X-Morph: Defense was still a shoot’em up. You would chase down the tank over a busy highway at breakneck speed (as far as tank speeds go, at least). The tank crew wouldn’t care about either the cars they’re crushing or the bridges they’re destroying. This deadly race was the only thing that mattered, and the prize was survival.
Early prototype scrolling shooter gameplay, circa 2010-2011.
Jaguar Type S is a huge beast, taller than most buildings.
As for the visuals, we wanted the JAGUAR tank to be the biggest, baddest and the most fearsome war machine you’ve ever seen on land. Designing tanks is quite pleasant, apart from a couple mandatory modules, you’re pretty much free to do whatever you want. Not long after we started iterating on initial design, we had a model which was satisfying enough to deserve a spot in the main game.
IMPLEMENTATION
The Jaguar tank spawns multiple automated drones that prevent the player from mindlessly shooting at it’s hull.
Over the 5-year development of X-Morph: Defense we had one major redesign. the game became a tower defense/shooter hybrid, as opposed to a classic shoot’em up. When the redesign hit our project, we wanted to save as much content as possible. Luckily, the tank’s design was so elastic, that designing a new map around it was enough to make it all work. Since the boss model is huge we had to give it plenty of room to drive around and crush the surroundings. Also, there are enough cars on the tank’s way to make sure there are plenty of explosions and debris decorating the players’ screens. The rest of the urban area was also designed to make the most of the tank’s ability set.
The Boss’ signature attack sequence is introduced through a cinematic cutscene. The first shot always misses its mark on purpose.
At the beginning of the fight the JAGUAR fires off a shell in an arc aimed at the X-Morph core, over the city rooftops. The attack misses, however, due to imprecisions in the targeting mechanism. It serves the purpose of warning the player of unprecedented possibility of a direct attack at the core. The aliens see this as a direct threat and set off to stop the war machine from firing further shells at the core. The player has to disable the main cannon before it fires. This requires a direct attack using the fighter, as the boss appears on a new part of the map that was previously locked, so the player has no stationary defenses available there. This is what can be seen in the game today.
The Jaguar tank is armed with a variety of anti-aircraft guns and a special EMP attack that can disable the player’s weapons for a time.
What changed, however, were the events after that. Originally, the player’s attack on the main cannon would damage the aiming gear so much, that the operators would be unable to raise the barrell high enough to fire in an arc. This would force the crew to fire the main cannon in a straight line. In a densely populated city. Through the buildings. Collateral damage is secondary. On a more serious note - this would make (some, but not a lot) sense if the tank remained stationary. After giving it the ability to move around the map this ‘tactic’ didn’t make much sense and seemed like wasted potential. Therefore, we decided that the alien can only temporarily disable the main cannon.
Translating the other prototype mechanics required a little bit of mental gymnastics. During the highway chase the gargantuan tank would destroy the overpasses, as it was too tall to fit under them. Being the 80s action movie maniacs we did not want to remove this from the game. We included this in the final stages of the boss fight. As the JAGUAR tank reaches 25% health it starts rushing the alien core head-on in the last attempt to stop the alien invasion, destroying everything in its path. Apart from looking cool it also evokes a feeling of urgency, making us feel that the tank can really do damage to our core.
A good boss cannot simply be a pile of hitpoints, it also needs a special set of attacks. In our case, enemies are designed specifically to attack the core or the player. When it comes to bosses, they need to be able to do both. The tank is equipped with EMP emitters at the front. When they are fired, the X-Morph fighter loses all abilities. Then the double AA cannons the tank is equipped with pose a much bigger threat. Moreover, the boss spawns multiple sentries as a distraction. Apart from high fire rate and decent damage, they are characterized by a plasma shield, significantly raising their survivability. The JAGUAR tank can also launch a missile barrage against the alien core and fire the main cannon at it. All of these different forms of attack give the boss a complete set of abilities the players have to learn in order to defeat it.
PROBLEMS
All in all, tanks are relatively easy to design, as far as boss battles go. The ability to move in any direction, turn around while stationary and provide fire in any direction are all helpful features to use in design. The implementation of this boss in the game was also quite straightforward, as it was one of the last we actually programmed. It was also one of the first times we used our designer-programmer combo, making the whole workflow easier. The core idea behind such an approach is that both people support each other, make necessary changes on the fly and work out the problems together.
Unfortunately we did not avoid making a serious mistake in the boss’ design. The JAGUAR tank is equipped with many components the player may destroy in any order. They are packed so densely on the main hull that aiming at individual parts is almost impossible. The result of this is that most players simply equip bombs, shoot at the tank and damage whatever they can using the splash damage. We learned that a boss of this type must be bigger and/or the fight must be divided into phases in order for this kind of design to work.
CONCLUSION
A boss’ death sequence must be accompanied by dozens of explosions.
Even though you can always find something to fix, some bugs are not as painstaking to get rid of as others. The Jaguar Type S tank was one of the easiest bosses to implement in X-Morph: Defense. This kind of work makes for a much-needed break from woes of more complicated boss fights. Our next article is going to cover a huge area of the game that we decided to drop completely, together with its boss fights. Ironically it was also one of the first boss fights that we designed for the game - The Dreadnought battleship.
Thank you for taking the time to read through this article. We hope you learned some fun facts about gamedev and the production process. If you'd like to stay up-to-date with the latest news from our studio make sure to subscribe to our other social media channels. Thank you again and see you next time!
The time has come and the long-awaited Survival Mode update is finally here! After careful testing and taking all your suggestions into consideration, we have made several changes to the way we handle Survival Mode in X-Morph: Defense. The timer has been reworked, allowing the players whether they would like to earn extra points for skipping countdown or strategize during the intermission a bit longer. We also updated some of the maps, adjusting early waves and resources available.
The difficulty levels have been renamed and their descriptions updated. This way we can prepare the players better for the challenges ahead, avoiding unnecessary confusion. We hope this will smoothen the new player experience and make the learning curve a bit less steep for our users.
https://youtu.be/amWyrVR15xA
Along with these changes we are releasing a new DLC - Survival of the Fittest! You can put the new features and your skills to the test on 5 new maps, designed with the specifics of the Survival Mode in mind. Revisit reworked South Africa, Great Britain, France, Netherlands and Finland. The last three maps also feature the unique defensive measures used by the humans, known from the European Assault DLC.
Please note that the balance changes are global - all X-Morph: Defense players will be able to enjoy the enhanced Survival Mode experience, regardless of the purchased DLCs - those stay entirely optional.
Changed countdown timer in Survival Mode. Enemy waves don’t start automatically on the Easy and Normal difficulty modes allowing infinite setup time. Hard and Brutal difficulty modes are unchanged. This change does not affect leaderboard scoring.
Renamed difficulty modes: Very Easy = Easy, Easy = Normal, Normal = Hard, Hard = Brutal.
Updated Survival Mode maps. Starting waves are now generally easier to defeat.
Fixed a few very rare crash bugs.
Balanced base levels in some audio samples.
Added Nvidia Highlights Support.
Updated Main Menu to accommodate new DLC.
mproved mission failed tips.
In our efforts to improve X-Morph: Defense we are constantly monitoring your feedback and considering all the suggestions that you make. We are extremely grateful to our community for being so helpful and patient and we hope we can deliver more great content that fully meets your expectations. Feel free to post on Steam forums and contact us on our social media channels if you have any feedback about the game.
P.S.
This update and DLC is also coming to the PS4 and Xbox One.
P.P.S.
Follow us on our social media channels to stay updated!
We have decided to do a little bit more testing on the survival mode balance update and we need your help!
If you would like to see the gameplay changes we've talked about in action you may do so by joining a public beta we're holding this weekend. Note that the beta will only affect the survival mode gameplay.
To access the Beta build follow these steps:
1. Select X-Morph: Defense in your Steam Library
2. Right Click on it and select Properties
3. Switch to the BETA tab
4. Select "beta_survival Survival Mode Open Beta" from the drop-down list
5. The download should start after you close the properties window
Note: If the beta_survival is not visible in your BETA tab, then please restart Steam and check once more.
The full changelog for this update is:
Changed countdown timer in Survival Mode. Enemy waves don’t start automatically on the Easy and Normal difficulty modes allowing infinite setup time. Hard and Brutal difficulty modes are unchanged. This change does not affect leaderboard scoring.
Renamed difficulty modes: Very Easy = Easy, Easy = Normal, Normal = Hard, Hard = Brutal.
Updated Survival Mode maps. Starting waves are now generally easier to defeat.
Fixed a few very rare crash bugs.
Balanced base levels in some audio samples.
Added Nvidia Highlights Support.
Updated Main Menu to accommodate new DLC.
improved mission failed tips.
If you have any feedback leave it here or at our discord server, which you can find at www.discord.gg/exorstudios
X-Morph fighter design
Greetings, friends!
Our free update and the new DLC should reach all of you very soon. We decided to take this moment to show you some more interesting things from the X-Morph: Defense development history.
The X-Morph fighter serves as the player’s avatar in our game. All the fighting and tower building is controlled directly through this spaceship. It serves the role of the main character and a valuable asset when it comes to creating the rest of game art. As the game design went through various iterations, so did the fighter.
At first we wanted all the X-Morph structures to follow the machine-flesh style. Organic body parts combined with metallic elements made for a really aggressive image, however all the detail would not be visible in game, due to the isometric camera. All the teeth, muscles and other small elements would amount to an incoherent, noisy and forgettable model. That is why we changed the X-Morph design to metal and energy based, giving the game a much clearer look, like the one you can see in the game today.
We made a short timelapse video, showing you how the alien fighter model changed over the years. It’s a combination of classic 2d concept art and 3d Zbrush models. Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/D1XqpcYvFvI
Make sure to follow us on our social media channels - over the course of the summer there will be a lot of big announcements from us, and we want to share this excitement with you. Also, the newest article in our ‘11 Boss Battles of X-Morph: Defense’ series, about the JAGUAR tank, is coming soon! Don’t miss it!
