Hello Riftbreakers!
During the development cycle of the game, the schedule has to remain flexible. Some tasks take more time than others, new priority issues come up, and you never really know what the next week is going to be like. This often causes delays, which unfortunately made us miss our initial release window. On the other hand, being flexible allows us to fix things before they become an issue for end-users. It is a double-edged sword and today we’re going to tell you one such story.
Apart from being oriented the wrong way, these numbers simply didn't work really well.
The most commonly used buildings in The Riftbreaker have got separate models for each advancement level. Let’s look at them and talk about why we decided to do it.
New and improved windy bois - they got a buff, too!
The stats from almost all gameplay sessions in The Riftbreaker show very clearly that some buildings are placed en masse, far more often than others. These include basic walls, basic power plants, as well as energy storage buildings. None of them take up a lot of space on their own but seeing dozens of them in one scene is a common sight. In fact, when those buildings appear, they usually cover most of the area on the screen. That is not a problem on its own, though - it’s just the nature of these things.
There were a couple of designs for solar panels, but we decided we wanted a much more simple solution.
An issue arises when we add building upgrades into the mix. We decided not to introduce separate models for each level of a building in The Riftbreaker - we want our buildings to be easily identifiable, and if they changed their appearance with every upgrade it would be quite easy to get lost amid the chaos of your own base. Instead, we added small attachments with a level number on top of the original model - that way you can easily identify buildings that you have upgraded already. It’s easy to do in the case of large buildings, but what about the smaller ones, like walls or towers?
This is the final design of solar panel levels - really simple and effective.
All of a sudden, after upgrading your renewable energy sources, you were greeted with a field of ‘2’s or ‘3’s, according to the building level and it did not look great. In the vast majority of cases, there was no way to attach the numbers to them, so we decided to make separate models for all walls, gates, and defensive towers. Attaching numbers to Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, and Energy Storages was doable, but their tendency to appear in large groups came to bite us.
The energy storages get beefier with each level, giving you a much better sense of their capacity.
Luckily, our graphics department runs on a more relaxed schedule than the rest of us. That meant they could squeeze in a couple of extra models of buildings into their plans. It was important for us to make sure these were done in the spirit of the original models so that you could tell at a glance what the purpose of any given building is. That’s how we managed to avoid the ‘number spam’ and still allow you to know what level your buildings are with just a glance. While we were at it, we have also redone the liquid pumps, so that they get more massive with each level.
Pumps didn't really need a visual update, but hey, since we're already doing it, we might as well show them some love.
The final result. Yay or nay?
Join our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios for more behind-the-scenes stories and developer insights. We also stream twice a week, where we try to answer as many questions as possible. Join us Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3 PM CEST at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios.
See you next time!