The European Assault is in full force. We hope you are having as much fun playing the new campaign as we had while developing it. We must not forget about the survival mode as well - the scores some of you put up on the leaderboards are nothing short of crazy! Thank you for all the kind words and engagement.
We would like to also express our gratitude for the detailed feedback you provided us with. It allowed us to develop fixes to numerous bugs and polish out the issues we were made aware of. This is exactly why community is so important for small teams like us. Here is a short list of all the changes in the current patch:
- Fixed audio in the outro sequence,
- Fixed dialog voice over on the Germany map,
- Fixed multiple crash bugs,
- improved lighting in night missions
- Misc fixes
Take a look at the rooftops on the screenshot above - we added some lights to make everything a bit more lively.
Regarding the survival mode - we are constantly monitoring the situation and noting down all the suggestions you make. We are planning balance changes, but we need more time to test the solutions. We hope to provide you with a more enjoyable experience, geared not only towards the hardcore crowd, while not abandoning the survival idea.
All feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thank you again and have a great weekend!
Did you know that we absolutely love destroying things? Our physics model is based on what happens in the real world. The system calculates the compression and tension on all the destructible elements. It happens in real time, allowing the players to create masterpieces of destruction as you can see above.
However, it took a lot of experimentation to get all the values exactly right. Below you can see an example of what happens when we fail. It’s hilarious, but not quite realistic enough for us. Oh and by the way, that’s not smoke, that’s water splashing :)
Have a question about the game, the development process, or just want to hang out? Come join us on our social media channels, we’re more than happy to chat with our fans.
It's Throwback Thursday time - and today we cover our destructible buildings.
As you most of you know, one of the main decisions we made early on in the development of X-Morph: Defense was to make the whole environment destructible. Also, we wanted our game to look as realistic as possible - and the result of uninhibited destruction is a lot of rubble!
These things meant we needed to prepare our in-game assets with our destruction system in mind. In order to achieve the level of realism we were satisfied with, we cut up our large objects into chunks of similar size. You can see the example in the gif above. Together, they constitute a greater structure, but when, let’s say, a large enough alien bomb hits one of them the structure loses stability. Then, the chunks might separate and start falling, while still interacting with everything around them, therefore, a part of a falling building might destroy your fighter, knock over another building, or crush a forest.
Every building you see in the game was handmade, with our brave artists cutting skyscrapers up into logical parts. All for you to blow up at your heart’s desire. Enjoy!
We are always happy to share gems like this with our community. You can chat with us all the time on our Discord server - https://discord.gg/pmdANAF
Laser Weapon Update
Hello!
We hope you are enjoying all the brand-new content we’ve released this week. Whether you’re invading Europe or trying to withstand the enemy onslaught in the survival mode, you are given a plethora of weapons to choose from.
Unfortunately, not all weapons are created equal. We have received a lot of consistently unfavorable feedback about the laser gun. This weapon was supposed to be used against heavily armored opponents, dealing massive damage per second and increasing over time up to a cap. This comes at the cost of having to keep the laser on the target and leaving yourself vulnerable to enemy attacks.
Even though the laser has gone through several iterations during development (there was no aiming aid, for example), we agree that it has been the most underpowered weapon in the X-Morph arsenal. After considering all the feedback from our fans, the latest version of the game comes with a major overhaul of this classic weapon.
BEHOLD! LET THERE BE LIGHTNING!
In order to make using the laser more satisfying, we have made the beam wider (dual purpose - makes targeting easier and looks cool) and introduced chain damage. It comes in the form of lightning beams, targeting clusters or lines of foes nearest to the main target. This way you no longer have to deal with unharmed enemies with a ton of HP one by one - they are softened a bit. Also, groups of small enemies can be dealt with effectively, without the need to switch the weapon on the fly.
We hope these tweaks will be helpful to your quest of achieving world domination.
European Assault DLC is now available + New Free Game Mode!
Hi Everyone,
We are proud to announce that the first DLC for X-Morph: Defense - European Assault is now available! Check out the new trailer for European Assault below:
https://youtu.be/UpA1OL8tgQY
“European Assault” features a brand new, high-impact, story-driven mini-campaign that takes place in parallel to the events of the main game. As the invading X-Morph, you will face-off against the formidable General Duncan Clarke in Finland and Holland before an explosive showdown at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
The new content will challenge both new and veteran players as General Clarke employs new advanced tactics and weaponry in the field – including an orbital Frostbite Cannon and the European Massive Assault Vehicle he calls the Rhinocharger – in a bid to quash the alien threat.
Together with the DLC, we are also releasing a large free update to the base game with a new game mode. Survival Mode features 10 intense new levels of endless gameplay, delivering tons of replay value, and encourages fierce competition on the leaderboards. With a focus on rapid-fire decision making, you must adapt quickly to the destructible environment in a bid to defend your core against a never-ending onslaught of incoming enemies.
The latest update introduces all of the changes that were being tested in the Survival Mode Open Beta as well as a number of new ones. The list of changes includes:
New Survival Game Mode with 10 new levels and 10 new achievements
New Main Menu
Improved Steam Workshop Support
Modified X-Morph laser - some of you were complaining that the laser was underpowered and difficult to use. We decided to revamp this weapon and added a chain-damage mechanism. Let us know how you like it.
Added all European Assault content to the Level Editor. You can use the new textures, buildings - even the new boss inside your levels. The resulting creations won’t require other players to own the European Assault DLC.
Multiple obscure crash bug fixes.
Slight performance improvements.
Misc changes.
And here is a short GIF of the new laser weapon in action:
We hope this new update will be as fun for you to play as it was for us to develop. We have some great ideas for the things that we’d like to add to X-Morph, but we’d also love to hear your input. Let us know if you like the game on our social media channels and discord server!
As some of you may know, the development of X-Morph: Defense took over 5 years. Over the course of this time the game went through several concept changes and redesigns.
As a little blast from the past we would like to show you something no one outside of the studio has seen before - one of the first playable prototypes of the game! Admire the hyper-realistic explosions. Lose yourself in the ultra detailed urban jungle. Survive intense combat against state-of-the-art war machines, recreated in almost every detail.
https://youtu.be/rTUAkz1vECQ
On a more serious note, it goes to show how much work goes into making a game such as X-Morph.We are glad we decided on a more dynamic and less limited style of gameplay. Limiting player interaction to one route only would go against what we like in games - open-endedness.
Did you enjoy the video? Share your thoughts with us, who knows what else lies deep in the darkest corners of EXOR hard drives...
Combining tower defense with a shooter - game design implications
Merging the base mechanics of two different genres, without overburdening the player, required us to fight against a lot of common design clichés and our own misconceptions. This game design journey took us more than five years. Here’s how we did it.
OUR DESIGN GOALS
Being a game developer has both its awesome and less-awesome sides. You can create basically anything and every idea can be viable, which is great. What isn't so great is the fact that if you let yourself loose you can come up with too much stuff. The story of X-Morph: Defense’s development is no different.
The core idea for the game was to combine the mechanics of a twin-stick shooter and tower defense. What it meant for us, was that we had to come up with two balanced game systems, both for the player-controlled ship and the AI-controlled defense towers. The challenge was to make the means of defense inseparable and complementary to each other. A few core ideas emerged, giving us a framework to build on.
The core concept of a tower defense game is that enemies attack along a known path and the player’s goal is to defend against them by placing towers along their route. One of our primary goals was to give the players ultimate freedom in where they can place their towers. Allowing the players to raise towers wherever they wanted meant that the enemy path could be obstructed and thus had to change. Without fixed attack routes we gave the player the choice to redirect the enemy forces. Given the open nature of our levels it would require a lot of towers to block passages. The idea of a laser fence was born - a tool introducing even more depth into the player’s decision-making process.
Early mockup showing how the laser fence divides the battlefield.
The laser fence mechanics and freedom of placing your defenses introduced so much strategic depth you could lose yourself in this part of the game completely. It was further enhanced by introducing destructible environments. This topic is in fact so vast that we will have to come back to it in another article.
Placing laser fences during combat can be intense.
Specific tower designs turned out to be secondary to the laser fence mechanic. We wanted to make various kinds of towers, each specialized to deal with specific kinds of enemies. This was supposed to introduce variety and more strategic planning into the game, as we did not want our players to simply build a wall of ultimate supertowers and completely wreck the enemy. We had to make sure that all types of defensive structures had significant enough drawbacks.
While working on all of the above it was incredibly easy to stray away from the main idea behind the game – twin-stick tower defense. Since its inception X-Morph: Defense has been an action game. Had we included too many complex tower defense mechanics, the player would have had hardly any time to fly around and blow stuff up. On the other hand, if the players had got too few choices the game would not be fun at all. It soon turned out that lifting the burden of knowledge off of the player and streamlining our ideas was the most important decision we made.
TOWER TYPES AND THEIR FUNCTIONS
At first our thought process was very simple – good tower defense games have a lot of enemies and towers to match against them. We obviously wanted our game to be good, so we came up with a large number of different tower types. Thus, the first collection of towers was born. What is interesting, though, is the fact that we introduced a couple of basic types and making the player choose from them. As such, a basic ground turret was introduced. The simplest design of them all, a tower shooting at ground units within range until there are no targets left. Since we wanted the fight to take place in the skies as well, the anti-air counterpart was born. Same stuff, different plane. Introducing complexity came at a cost we would have to pay later.
Early concept of various tower designs.
At this point in the development process we let our creativity completely loose. To get rid of heavier units, we made the armor piercing tower. Low fire rate made it nigh useless against infantry, however, the ability to fire continuously on one target proved to be a viable option against supertanks. But what if there were no tanks to blow up? We had a solution for that too – artillery, able to annihilate groups of small units over long distance. It also served as a means of protection, as it could destroy enemies endangering your carefully planned defensive layout.
Nothing fancy so far. How about a lightning generator? A tower so powerful it could destroy multiple flying units in one shot? Yup, got it. If we are going into using elements against the enemy, why not introduce a corrosive, damage-over-time kind of weapon? We made that too. But what about those fast units rushing my base? There you go buddy, a slowdown tower for you. And if you wanted to get extra fancy, you could place hidden portals, transporting enemies to a desired point of the map to meet their doom.
Early mockup showing the chain-lightning tower in action.
We set out to create something for every kind of adversary. Our playtesting showed, though, that giving the player 58 choices with 92 different kinds of add-ons was far too many. We had to gut the tower types, because of their redundancy. Let's take a look at the corrosive tower. You would want to use such a weapon on a heavy armoured enemy, to break through their armor. However, we already had an armor-piercing laser to do it. Introducing a second weapon to do essentially the same thing would be pointless, only resulting in players trying to figure out which one is better, whereas in reality both were great at doing the same thing. It would become obvious that we had to drastically limit the number of ship weapons and towers.
These are all the tower types that remained in the game.
Given that at the beginning there were supposed to be time limits for setting up towers in X-Morph: Defense, there was simply not enough time to make a choice. This would discourage players and set the entry bar too high. We decided to remove the time limit for setting up towers in between enemy waves, since it only added unnecessary tension. Instead, we opted for intermissions between waves without any time limitations.
Through these decisions we managed to stick to our goals, while maintaining the delicate balance between the dual nature of our game. You could still experience intensive action, being overrun by various units from all sides of the map, yet there was a moment of peace after the storm. A calm break, where you could strategize to no end, placing towers where you wanted and setting up mazes for the little human insects.
TOWER PROPERTIES
Before designing any tower we had to decide what parameters each of them would have. Cost was the first, as nothing comes for free, even if you are an intergalactic conqueror. Destructibility of towers meant they would have limited health. In order to give them some individuality they would come with different range, firepower, rate of fire, rotation angle, movement properties, influence range and a huge number of other parameters.
This part of design received the same kind of treatment as tower types themselves. While some parameters became obsolete because of natural design shifts, others were removed on purpose. Take the influence area as an example. At first we wanted the alien structures to emit a metallic sort of infestation that other buildings could be placed on, much like the Zerg creep. Even though you would be able to raise new structures only within your influence range, they could be relocated freely later. However, it proved to limit the gameplay style too much, favoring the 'make a fortress' style of play. It also introduced another layer of micromanagement, which wouldn't go well with our action-based gameplay. The influence area made it to the final version of the game, but just as a visual gimmick.
I nfluence area expands around all X-Morph structures. It can change trees into lifeless metallic husks.
Building costs also received a major overhaul. Most strategy games will present you with some kind of money or other resources. In order to build a basic tower you need, for example, 100 gold. Artillery is more expensive, at, let's say, 175 gold. X-Morph had a similar system, with every structure coming with an associated cost, specific for its kind. As a result you would have to check the costs time and again in order to see if you have enough money to build what you want. The solution to this was unification of costs.
A single tower can morph into any other tower type. It makes modifying tower setups much easier.
Resources in our game amount to energy bars. When you gather one energy bar, you can build one basic tower. It can be further morphed into an improved tower for an additional energy bar, giving it new functionality and a more specific function. It creates a much simpler model, that needs very little introduction and is easily understandable even for new players. Another consequence is that you can set up a maze first, and worry about changing the types later, as the base structure is already where you want it to be.
Another feature that changed during the course of development was tower relocation. Originally we wanted our towers to crawl and take time to move from one spot to another. Instead we opted for instant transfer. Therefore, if you make a mistake or overlook something you can easily fix it in the heat of battle. It doesn't cost you anything, neither does getting rid of a tower completely. It is a natural consequence of simplifying costs. We didn't want anyone to deal with fractions in game while there are thousands of enemies to shoot.
Moving towers is free and almost instant.
It is sometimes hard to let go of some concepts, especially if you already spent weeks making the model, adjusting parameters, polishing the balance. However, the game is for the players, and even though it is your creative outlet sometimes you have to limit yourself not to overburden your audience. It was a hard, but necessary lesson to learn for us.
ART DESIGN
Art design was very important to our gameplay goals and it was primarily driven by function. Our graphics team went through several iterations of tower design. At the very beginning we wanted the style of alien structures to resemble machine-flesh. We also briefly experimented with crystalline structures, and Giger-like monster towers.
To be honest, machine-flesh presented another problem. All those awesome details would not be visible. Moreover, at the zoom level of our camera, they would simply form a chaotic mess of pixels, rendering our goal of achieving visual clarity virtually impossible to reach. Moving the camera closer was out of option as well, since it would limit vision and obstruct the strategic layer of the game. A much more sleek design was necessary.
We finally settled on metallic constructs with beams of energy decorating them and emphasizing their purpose.
Hard, metal structures with energetic highlights worked best in contrast with world scenery.
The art style that we decided on was also a consequence of following the lore that we created together with our design goals. In order to achieve consistency and solid design we had to discard many ideas which we really loved. Of course, nothing goes to waste and it is possible that one day we will use those designs, should the stars align. As you can see, we had to abandon a lot of ideas. Sometimes it is not difficult at all, you just invent something better and go with it. The problem arises when you have worked with something for a long time, really determined to make it work.
CONCLUSION
All things considered, the development of X-Morph: Defense was a valuable lesson in modesty. We learnt that less is more most of the time, and that nothing can surpass clarity and simplicity. There were more changes along the way in other aspects of the game’s design, but they are also long stories, worth multiple articles each. You can stay tuned for more posts like this, we plan to publish more regularly. In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter,
Discord,Facebook, and stay tuned for our new DLC! We promise it's worth it! :)
Community Map Spotlight - The Drill
We are back! The Steam Workshop custom map we would like to share with you today has been made by SBrewBlade and is called ‘The Drill’.
All the events you will encounter while playing this level are story-driven. Really cool, considering it is not a part of the campaign.
This time the X-Morph have not managed to reach their landing site successfully. It will force you to fight humans in sub-optimal conditions, and they have a few tricks up their sleeve!
The terrain plays a big role, pay attention to mazing and don’t let the guerrilla tactics surprise you. The map is quite challenging, but we guarantee you, it is also very rewarding.
After trying out the map make sure to leave some feedback for the author! :)
Last, but not the least, check out the rest of the maps on the Workshop page. Perhaps they will inspire you to create one as well? :)
Survival Mode Open Beta - 3 New Maps!
Hello Everyone,
It took us a while, but we finally have a new update for the Survival Mode Open beta. Please restart Steam if it doesn't download automatically.
We've introduced quite a few major changes/improvements:
- Infinite setup time before the first wave - now you can check out the map before the fun starts,
- tweaked timers in between enemy waves,
- new voice overs - we've added a bunch of new voice overs to this game mode to liven up the atmosphere and to add some new warning messages as well as comments from the alien. You can also check out the new voice of General Duncan Clarke who will be appearing in the European Assault DLC.
- added Survival Mode achievements - a bit of extra fun
- tweaked difficulty levels in Survival mode - Easy and Very Easy will get progressively harder with each wave. We tried to eliminate the possibility of getting a better score on Very Easy than on Hard.
- rebalanced Canada and Mexico maps,
- added USA, Russia and Egypt maps - these maps have different starting upgrades, different balance, and different difficulty. We're really looking forward to your feedback on these,
- fixed game HUD disappearing under certain conditions,
- fixed a few crash bugs,
- fixed changing difficulty in Workshop maps,
- other multiple smaller fixes, and changes
Please let us know what you think about these changes and how you like the new maps. We read all of your feedback, and we take it seriously. Please leave your feedback in this discussion thread:
http://steamcommunity.com/…/discussi…/0/2860219962082344024/
The final version of the Survival Game Mode is going to include 10 maps and is going to be a free update for everyone (yes we're also talking about PS4 and Xbox One players). We're planning to release the Survival Mode on March 26th. Thanks for sticking around with us and for all the support!
P.S.
If you are new to this discussion and haven't heard about the Survival Mode beta before, here's how to join the fun:
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.
European Assault Store Page is now live!
Hello Everyone,
We just launched the store page for the European Assault DLC:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/800340/XMorph_Defense__European_Assault/
This new DLC will be taking place in parallel to the main storyline and will take you to Finland, the Netherlands and to France. As you've probably noticed in the GIF above - you'll be able to wreck the Eiffel Tower and you'll fight a new boss - The Rhinocharger. In case you missed our previous announcements it will be out on March 26th, and now you can add it to your wishlist.
We're also continuously working on the new Survival Mode that is coming as a free update (which you can already play in the Open Beta). In fact, we'll be releasing a new update to the beta tomorrow. It will include a lot of fixes, improvements and 3 new maps! Stay tuned.
