There is an old saying in the game industry: “Getting the last 10% done requires 90% of the total effort.” This “proverb*” essentially says that the final layer of polish for any given game is a difficult, demanding process. The game needs to hold its own without any additional fluff, but the attention to detail and subtle features make the difference between a mid game and something special. During the final phase of production, developers often come up with a ton of small details that bring the game world to life. It was no different in The Riftbreaker's case. Today, we would like to highlight some small features that often go unnoticed but play an essential role in shaping the game's atmosphere.

*The word ‘proverb’ implies the existence of ‘noobverb’, and I find it amusing


One feature we are particularly proud of is our dynamic vegetation system. The trees, bushes, mushrooms, and tufts of grass play a large role in creating the right feeling for the players. If these elements were static, you would feel as if you were trapped in a diorama. To avoid that feeling, we have developed a system that allows both you and the atmospheric conditions to interact with the elements of flora.


Most living things in the game (we count Mr. Riggs here as well) affect nearby plants by making them bend.


Bending vegetation is made possible by attaching a special component to an entity. Here, it is visualized by the red sphere - that sphere is what collides with the grass and produces the effect.


Rockets can do it as well! The possibilities are endless!

To facilitate those interactions, all the entity files for our plants include a VegetationComponent. It is a set of instructions for our game engine that marks those props as interactable plants. The first thing you will notice after equipping a prop with this component is bending. As you walk through the grass, the individual tufts bend away from you, imitating what would happen in real life. This applies to trees as well - if you collide lightly with a tree trunk, it is going to bend away from you and spring back to its original shape. If your angle of approach or speed is too high, you will exceed the maximum bending force. The tree will snap in half as a result.


You can try playing around with wind power in the game using the developer console.


Just be careful not to go too hard, you might get unexpected results.

Our plants also react to other things. Shockwaves, rocket propellers, air turbulence behind bullets - all of these have the potential to bend the vegetation a little. If you want to see this system in full effect, you have to wait until the weather changes. A good portion of the Galatean weather events increase wind speed. Thanks to this, you will see all the plants on your screen sway from side to side in response to the wind forces acting on them. And if you manage to catch a large meteor flying above a forest, you can marvel at the trees ‘giving way‘ to their new cosmic neighbor.


This clip was made in 2020. Still looks quite nice, even with the old version of crystal shaders.


And here's a special tornado fired from our debug gun. The purple lines depict the wind forces that affect the trees.

Developing this system was demanding, as we had to research and implement the ‘springiness’ equation that felt right, but the effects are immediately visible. It doesn’t affect the game's performance much, but you can turn it off in the options menu. We kept it because we understand that some gamers need to reduce screen movement for various reasons, but we are mentioning it to encourage you to experiment! Try disabling this option. You will see why we’re saying it was 100% worth the effort.


Experimenting with bending forces values was quite fun!



It's safe to say that we had a lot of ideas regarding hiding bodies back in the day...

One of the key features of The Riftbreaker has always been fighting overwhelming hordes of enemies. Apart from the obvious fun gameplay implications, a large number of creatures inevitably poses a problem: what do we do with all the bodies after you’re done hacking, slashing, and kabooming? We needed to limit the maximum number of corpses because even though they are no longer active entities, they still consume system resources that could be better utilized elsewhere. At first, we handled this problem with a magic trick - now you see me, now you don’t. We simply deleted the “oldest” corpses as soon as the number of them crossed the threshold. It’s good enough when you see a pile of dead meat, since you’re very unlikely to notice that one of 483 ex-canoptrixes has gone missing. But what do we do when you have a single enemy body lying on the ground? Do we abracadabra it and have it vanish after some time, or do we keep it forever?


Cockroach apocalypse: Galatea 37 edition.

We decided to take inspiration from nature. Nothing goes to waste - scavengers will happily take care of any organic matter that has reached the end of its road. This is how Quelver came to be - our own take on a super simple scavenger creature. It’s so small that it doesn’t need any animations, detailed geometry, or even complex logic. Quelvers exist in one of three states: wander aimlessly, run away from Mr. Riggs, and, most importantly, eat the corpse. Whenever a dead body appears on the ground, all Quelvers in the area will swarm it, as it gradually disappears. We were very happy with the results - thanks to the little red bugs, we solved one of our problems and made the Tropical Zone feel much more lively. Later on, we made custom scavengers for each biome. Which one is your favorite?


Oh well, only one thing to do if there is too many of them.


As game developers, we have to convey most of the information we want to give you through audio and video. That’s only 2 of the classic 5 human senses, and we must compress everything essential into the images you see and the sounds you hear while playing the game. However, there are ways to go beyond this limitation. Luckily, no one can force us to smell or taste the games we play (imagine the Poogret missions with Smell-O-Vision!), but we have some options to add a little bit of touch and movement to the mix.


Just imagine how TOTALLY AWESOME it would be if we could smell this scene!

The first way to do so is through screen shake. It is a controversial effect. Some people love it; others turn it off the instant they see the option in the main menu. Still, by adding screen shake to certain events in the game, we can simulate high-intensity situations, big impacts, the footsteps of giant creatures, and explosions. While this technique is purely visual, it does add a sense of movement and immersion. It is very important to get the potency of the effect right. Too little and you end up annoying the player without much positive effect. Too much and you can induce motion sickness or other conditions, from unpleasant to downright dangerous. The sensitivity to such effects varies from person to person, so that this feature can be adjusted on a 0-100% scale rather than a binary on/off toggle.


Without screen shake, this nuke-throwing minigun would look completely unrealistic. We wouldn't want that.

If we want to go one step further, we can use the various features built into gamepads these days. Apart from the usual vibration feature, modern pads also oftenr offer additional options for developers. The Xbox gamepad allows us to modulate the rumble effects felt through the triggers. We make use of that to give our guns a slightly different feel when firing. The DualSense controller gives us even more options, as we can modulate the amount of resistance each trigger provides. Thanks to this, we were able to emulate a real trigger mechanism for Mr. Riggs’ weapons. There is a short “preload” period as you start squeezing the button. Then, the resistance increases as you approach the trigger point. Only after you cross the required force threshold does the gun fire. We have separate trigger effects for various types of weapons, and also alter the behavior of the triggers when you have no ammo. It is a cool way to enhance the feeling of control over your mech’s guns.


Here's some organic, free-range, corn-fed human-generated slop trying to explain how the adaptive triggers work.

One last, tiny detail that DualSense controllers allow us to put into the game is haptic feedback. Unfortunately, haptics are only supported on the PS5, and other controllers rarely have this feature. However, with the introduction of the new Steam Controller, we might find a way to implement this in the future! This tech enables developers to emulate various tactile sensations using highly specialized rumble motors built into the gamepad itself. They are very different from the usual, vibration-generating ones. Haptic feedback generators can modulate the intensity, frequency, and character of the effects they produce. Thanks to that, you can feel it in your hands when Mr. Riggs is walking on sand, snow, or wading through mud. You can feel the droplets of rain hitting your gamepad when it’s raining in the game. And the way these effects are generated is quite genius - you provide a custom, simplified sound sample to the gamepad’s software. The sound is converted into instructions for the haptic motors, without the need to program every minute vibration or bump. If you get the chance, try it on the PS5. A free demo is available there, too!

And that’s it for today! We hope that you learned something interesting today. As always, remember to follow us for more Riftbreaker news and gamedev articles. Sign up for our newsletter here[www.exorstudios.com], and join our Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios!

Have a great weekend!
EXOR Studios

We have always said that keeping in touch with you, our players, is one of the most important things we can do as game developers. Publishing our thoughts consistently, weekly, opens avenues for constructive discussion and allows us to plan for new features and content. In fact, over the course of The Riftbreaker’s history, we have added, removed, and modified countless things in the game thanks to you. Some of those features turned out to be the best parts of the game. Today, we would like to highlight our personal top picks for features we added thanks to our community at various points in The Riftbreaker’s history.

Click-And-Drag Walls

A closer look at the first version of our defensive walls from the Riftbreaker World Editor. All the individual wall pieces were 2x2 structures back then.

Wider wall pieces were supposed to reduce the number of structures you have to place in order to have a functional defensive setup. Here's a look at the wall pieces with the gate in between and some notes about the planned animation elements.

We have no idea how many of you will remember this part, since it is ancient history by now. We’re going back to 2019 - the year of our first trade shows with The Riftbreaker and closed pre-alpha tests of our demo. It is not a surprise that we changed a ton of things since then, but we want to focus on one structure you always use when playing the game - the walls. In 2019, they were much different from what you’re used to now. First of all, they were 2 grids wide (the same width as the current Wall Gate). Second, they came with the Heightened Wall Floor part as a default, making the wall a 2x2 structure. Last, but not least, each piece had to be built individually. Needless to say, you found these to be a bit cumbersome and suggested improvements. We got to work.


We wanted Mr. Riggs to stay inside the base and shoot over the defensive walls using the attached heightened platforms. You still have this option, but now you are free to build these platforms only where you feel you need them.

The width of 2 grids was problematic because it shoehorned you into building bases in open areas with very little natural protection. If you wanted to build a wall between two rocks, you had to measure whether the gap spans an even number of grids. Otherwise, you had to fill in the gap with a defensive tower. Given the fact that our grid culling algorithm (the part of the code that determines where you can actually place buildings) wasn’t very precise back then, it often resulted in walls that enemies could easily walk past. You also pointed out that the included Heightened Wall Floor made stacking wall pieces awkward, as it greatly reduced the range of defensive towers behind walls. We decided to resize our wall pieces to 1x1 and make them fully stackable.


Even after we changed the walls to 1x1 pieces, you couldn't drag the cursor and build wall segments. Each piece started construction immediately when your cursor left the grid. It was very easy to misplace single pieces of the wall, which was a frustrating experience.

However, the most problematic aspect was the building process. Placing hundreds of wall pieces one by one left a lot of room for error. A simple slip of the mouse when clicking, or an imperfect touch of the gamepad analog stick while moving over, would result in building the structure in the wrong spot. Then you would have to select the deconstruction tool manually, wait for the structure to dissolve, and rebuild it. It was a frustrating and lengthy process. Many of you expressed your concerns about this, so we decided to implement the ‘click and drag’ building method you know today. You simply point to the point where you want the wall to start, and drag the cursor to the end point. It is not as simple as it sounds - we had many problems and edge cases to solve, but it was worth it. All thanks to you!


Years later, building up your base is free of the teething problems we experienced in alpha and beta!

Mass Repair Tools and Building Ruins

Back when dinosaurs still walked the Earth, this is how we repaired our walls...

The next change you brought about is in a similar vein, but came much, much later in the game's production cycle. This was around late 2020 and early 2021. Many of you had your chance to try the game, either in the (wildly popular!) demo version or during the Closed Alpha and Beta tests. You were tested against the power of the Galatean hordes, and while many emerged victorious, the walls and buildings in your base took tons of damage. Unfortunately, repairing buildings was not easy. All damaged buildings had to be repaired by clicking each and every structure individually. Moreover, you had to keep track of what buildings got destroyed during the attack and manually rebuild them as well. Initially, we planned to make Repair Towers and Mr. Riggs’ repair drones more relevant, but your feedback showed we needed to solve this in another way.


We quickly added the repair/upgrade/sell tools after your feedback. Later, we added the option to increase the selector up to 8x8 grids.

First, we developed tools for mass building repair, upgrade, and deconstruction. All of them work essentially in the same manner. Your cursor becomes a building selector of a chosen size (anywhere from 1x1 to 8x8 grids), which you can simply drag around your screen (in a calm and collected manner, of course!). As long as you’ve got enough resources stored up, your structures will be repaired or upgraded, according to your wishes. Just be careful with the deconstruction tool. That thing doesn’t care about your bank - it will just sell everything and swallow it all up like a supermassive black hole.


Thanks to Houdini and our graphics team's invention we can procedurally generate building ruins. It saves time for all of us - we don't have to model all ruins manually, and you don't have to guess where your structures were before they got destroyed.

Another upgrade for mass building repairs had to wait until 2023. In 2022, we participated in the Game Development World Championship, where we placed second. One of the prizes for that was a one-year license for Houdini - a powerful tool for procedural generation, visual effects, and much more. There was one small caveat - it is just as powerful as it is difficult to use, and none of us had any previous experience with it. Nevertheless, our brave graphics team jumped on this opportunity to learn something new. As a result, they created a script that procedurally generated building ruins from a game-ready model. Thanks to this, we could prepare decent ruin models for all the structures in the game, retaining their shape, size, and recognizability. From that point onwards, you’d never forget to rebuild your armory - just select ‘repair’ on the ruin, and it is done!

Customizable Minimap

Another change that came about relatively late into development is the addition of minimap-related filter toggles and icons. The minimap in The Riftbreaker is quite simple, since it is generated automatically. It takes the map's topography into account to show you where terrain obstacles and resources are. All the other dynamic objects, like Mr. Riggs, base buildings, and enemies, are drawn on top of the terrain representation. We only specify the color and size of the squares that appear on your end. It was good enough when playing survival, but when you started building up headquarters spanning entire maps and added more outposts in different biomes, it was a bit hard to find your way around. You asked us to make some improvements.

We won't bore you with pictures of the minimap. Have a pretty base instead.

To make it a bit easier to get a grasp on the minimap, we have added several icons for the most important objects and buildings around the base. Resource deposits are now represented by their corresponding icons, eliminating guesswork. You can immediately tell how many Armories and Comm Hubs you have, since they got their own icons as well. However, the most important addition, in our opinion, is the filter toggles. With just a couple of clicks, you can now scan your base for any damaged or destroyed structures. You can see which buildings are upgradeable. You can turn off the display of drones and mines on the map. It seems like a small quality-of-life change, but the potential benefits are massive.

The Co-Op Mode and the 2.0 Update

And now, we come to the biggest fan request we have ever completed: the co-op mode. Requests to add co-op mode began as early as 2020. Back then, we were hesitant to promise it - our engine was geared towards single-player mode only, and we weren’t sure if we could even pull this off. However, when the game launched, we received such overwhelming support that we decided to tackle co-op mode. What happened over the next four years was an insane uphill battle: reworking every aspect of the engine, redesigning it, and sometimes losing our minds. Luckily, we documented every step of the way in our “Co-Op When?” articles, which you can find linked below.

Conclusion

Naturally, there are thousands of things big and small that you influenced over The Riftbreaker’s production period. Going over them in full would take ages, so we hope that today's brief stroll down the memory lane has been enjoyable for you. You will even have the opportunity to influence us further, as we are planning to give you another large free update towards the end of the year. The update will focus on Survival Mode and increasing the game's replayability. If that sounds like fun to you, make sure to join our newsletter and the Discord server at https://www.discord.gg/exorstudios - we will run a beta test period, where every voice matters!

See you next week for more Riftbreaker news!
EXOR Studios