Steam Workshop Available + Big Game Update!

Hello Riftbreakers!

We’re super happy to present you with the latest update for The Riftbreaker, and it’s a big one! This version of the game comes with a brand-new integrated Modding Management screen, which allows you to browse and download new mods for the game with just a couple of clicks. The update also comes with new technical features, including the highly-requested AMD FidelityFX FSR 2.1 update, as well as lots of balancing changes and bug fixes. Let’s dive into the contents of the update!

The first and most significant change is the addition of an integrated modding manager into the game. It allows you to browse the contents of the Steam Workshop (with support for more modding platforms coming later) and download mods with just a couple of clicks. You can also enable or disable any of the installed mods through an in-game menu, which means no more copy-pasting zip files into The Riftbreaker’s install folder. The release of this version of the game is accompanied by an update to our Riftbreaker World Editor Suite. The upgraded editing tools allow you to easily upload mods to the Workshop and make them discoverable in the game. You can read how to prepare your mods for distribution in this article. We hope this addition will make modding more accessible and encourage you to experiment with the game. With that being said, let’s check another item off of our roadmap!

The next milestone on our roadmap is World Expansion II, which should be ready at the beginning of the next year. You can wishlist it right now over here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker__World_Expansion_II/

Another bunch of upgrades goes towards the technical front. We have added support for the much-requested AMD Fidelity FX Super Resolution 2.1. The upgraded AMD FSR 2.1 algorithms produce much sharper image compared to version 1.0, allowing you to enjoy a high level of visual fidelity without sacrificing performance. We are really impressed with the results and hope you are going to enjoy it as well. AMD FSR 2.1 is available on all systems, regardless of the GPU vendor.

The next new feature is also a member of the AMD FidelityFX family. Stochastic Screen Space Reflections (SSSR for short) allow suitable surfaces to show reflections of their immediate surroundings. They show up best on metallic surfaces, as well as on the surfaces of liquids. SSSR is a very subtle effect that adds an extra layer of realism to the graphics of the game. We made a video comparing the visuals with SSSR on and SSSR off. You can watch it here:

This feature is available on all DirectX 12 systems - no raytracing needed.

The update also features a large number of quality-of-life upgrades, as well as balance changes. Most of them have been introduced thanks to your feedback on the Steam Forum, our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios, and the suggestion board at https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. While some of them, like rebalancing the damage output of certain weapons, might be a little controversial, we believe that introducing them is the best thing for the game overall. We are continuing our efforts to make the Campaign mode a better experience overall by offering more challenge and open-endedness. Try the game out after these changes - we believe they lead to a much more enjoyable and balanced experience.

Without much further ado, here’s the full changelog!

NEW FEATURES

• Added an integrated modding manager. The new manager is a comprehensive built-in browser that allows users to download mods for The Riftbreaker with just a couple of clicks. The manager screen will currently allow you to browse the mods available on Steam Workshop, but we're also working on supporting Mod.io and Curse Forge. Installing a mod is a matter of just a couple of clicks. It will also inform you of any dependencies - if a mod requires another mod to be present to work properly, we will tell you exactly what you need to download. As for the mod creation pipeline, we have updated The Riftbreaker Workspace Editor to allow direct upload and authoring of mods, all in one place.
• Added support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1. The latest version of FSR allows you to enjoy high framerates at a greatly improved level of visual fidelity compared to FSR 1.0. The advanced algorithms used in this version of FSR greatly reduces the visual glitches and improves the sharpness of the image without that artificial 'sharpen +100' look.
• Added AMD FidelityFX Stochastic Screen Space Reflections, or SSSR for short. This feature adds dynamic screen space reflections that add an additional layer of graphical fidelity to the game. You will now be able to observe reflections of buildings and map props on reflective surfaces, such as various metals and liquids. This feature is available for all DirectX 12 compatible systems.
• Optimized CPU Performance - new memory allocator that results in more efficient memory use and improved CPU performance - especially during high-intensity battles and late-game scenarios with large bases.
• FramePrepareMeshRenderable contention decreased. It's quite a big optimization step, as on a 12-core CPU, the cost per frame decreases from 15% to 5% of the overall rendering time. Your mileage may vary depending on the number of CPU cores available to you, but it's a step in the right direction.
• Added radius displays to all defensive towers, repair towers, and shield generators. Selecting one of them in the Build Mode will display the radius of that one specific building. In the case of Shockwave and Flamer Towers, the radiuses of all towers of that type will be displayed to allow you to cover the desired area effectively.
• Picker tool added. You can use it to quickly build copies of existing buildings. Press the hotkey ('B' by default) or select the Picker tool from the Build Menu, select the building you want to build more of, and you're set!
• Attack waves triggered by interacting with bioanomalies have been reworked. They are now much more demanding and scale, along with the bioanomaly rarity level and game difficulty level. Opening one of these should be a conscious and well-thought-out decision!
• 4 additional map tiles for the Acidic Plains biome and 2 additional tiles for the Volcanic Area biome have been added to improve the randomized map generation variety.
• (Modding) Teleport: created teleport machine for working with all entities. Required parameters in the database are: target (as int or vector3), optional parameters: (float) disappear_time, wait_time, appear_time, and (int) portal_entity (for getting a notification on appearance)
• Added a Reflective floor variant so that you can enjoy the glorious Screen Space Reflections in your base.
• Added level 2 and 3 Heightened Wall Floors.
• Mech radar can now be upgraded, and it will, in fact, affect the fog of war reveal range!
• Radar Pulse received Advanced, Superior, and Extreme versions with upgraded range.
• Added the missing level 2 and level 3 of Biocomposter to the research tree.

CHANGES

• Energy Walls and regular Walls now share the same menu tile. We made this change to allow you to use the same keyboard shortcut for both variants.
• Mods in Campaign Mode will start dropping only after the Communications Hub has been built. Previously building the Armory was the trigger for these drops, which caused players to end up with several mods and no real use for them for a long time.
• Changed the effect for the Rift Station startup sequence interruption - now with more camera shake and louder sounds!
• Added sound emitters to liquid resource deposits.
• Reduced the chance for mod drops from 'smaller' boss creatures - Nerilians, Stregaroses, and Magmoths.
• Orbital Laser and Orbital Bombardment now require advanced resources to be crafted.
• You can now reconstruct after being destroyed on a mission that has already been completed.
• You can now lose weapons if your mech is destroyed after finishing a planetary mission if you choose to return to HQ and abandon that mission location.
• Skills of higher quality now replace their lower-quality counterparts after being crafted.
• Orbital Bombardment and Orbital Laser now display a large glowing decal in the targeted area.
• Research Completed' popup will now be displayed for 10 seconds instead of 5.
• Morphium Towers now need to be built in a 4-grid radius from one another - they were too powerful if stacked tightly close to each other.
• Significantly decreased research costs for magma powerplants in the campaign mode.
• Reduced the fire rate of the Sentry Gun.
• Reduced the damage and piercing values for the Lightning Tower.
• Increased the ammo consumption for Laser and Heavy Plasma.
• Production times of (almost) all consumables have been changed. Higher quality consumables take longer to recharge.
• Sentries and Mini Miners can now be deployed quickly, one after another, but the player's inventory capacity for them has been reduced.
• Reduced Bioscanner Turret crafting time.
• Storage space for Gravity Grenades reduced to 5.
• Lowered the fire rate of more advanced versions of the Mini Nuke Launcher.
• Explosive ammunition for the mech has been tweaked - the storage space has been reduced, and the recharge time has been increased. This prevents the players from 'going infinite' with basic explosive weapons and 6 ammo storages.
• Changed the effects for Heavy Plasma - the sounds, explosions, and projectile trails are much beefier, making the weapon more satisfying to use.
• Heavy plasma charges much faster(shield), but the charged shot has reduced damage.
• Reduced the Railgun charged shot charging time.
• Reduced the High Caliber Rifle charging time.
• All varieties of liquid-based weapons consume more ammo now.
• Higher levels of the Armory building are now more expensive.
• Obsolete or non-functional modding options were removed from several weapon types.
• Player drones damage type changed from acid to physical.
• Tweaked Brabit scannable chance and added Alpha and Ultra species to the discoverables.
• Increased the Bioscanner scanning chance from 0.1 to 0.15 for some crystals species.
• Doubled the chance of large props being able to provide a sample for the Bioscanner.
• Added destructible metal sounds to metallic biome destructible objects.
• Wall Gates can no longer be overridden by other buildings, such as wall segments or floors.
• Changed building upgrade sound to have more variety and to be more robust
• Heightened floor can now override basic floors but won't affect your walls and gates.
• Pressing 'Escape' in any level of the options menu will immediately take you back to the previous one.
• The game will automatically save after typing in the save name and pressing 'enter.'
• Radioactive Desert Scouting mission tweaked - only Standard bioanomalies can appear during this mission.
• Changed the muzzle flash effect for Floating Mines.
• Shockwave Tower's shockwave effect is now more visible.
• Added more loot possibilities to the Flurian Boss.
• Idle sounds for spawners are louder and audible from a greater distance.
• Increased Magmoth Boss' HP.
• Different types of player's drones can now be distinguished more easily.
• Increased the Stregaros Boss HP.
• Removed an unnecessary dialogue line about crafting the Bioscanner in the armory
• Sentry Guns and Landmines are now destroyed if placed on quicksand.
• Changed the timing of the announcement in the Ash Cloud event.
• Increased the creature difficulty boost after finishing any campaign outpost.
• Creature Eggs now have a new, fully 3D model.
• In order to reduce the length of some localization strings, we replaced the words 'mech' and 'tower' with dedicated icons in ammunition-related information boxes. Thanks to that, the descriptions are much shorter, especially in languages known for long, compound words.
• Portals and liquid pumps should now display their operating radiuses after selecting them in build mode.
• Changed the radius decal for Magnetic Stabilizer.
• Changed some old loading screen tips that were no longer relevant due to gameplay changes. We also added a couple of new ones - for now, they are displayed in English only.
• The 'P' key can now be bound to any action in the Controls Customization screen. The only hardbound key that is left in our control scheme is 'Esc.'
• We reduced the bloom effect occurring during the thunderstorm event. Light flashes should be much less severe now. Let us know what you think.
• Grenades have been added to the player loadout in the Prologue.
• Reworked and added many sounds for working buildings.
• Changed how ears are positioned in the 3D scene and smoothed out the 3D sound positioning parameters (surround sound channel mixing).
• The Canoptrix Nest model has been entirely changed to fit the 21st century better.
• The Shield Generator should now finally display its operating radius.
• Added magma powerplant research item unlock to magma survival. Players don't have to research an 'empty' node anymore.
• Changed spear damage collision timing. The spear should not deal damage when retracting.
• Building time for compressors and decompressors has been reduced.
• Solar damage after researching Environmental shielding - sun has been reduced from 0.2 to 0.
• Missing third base statistic added to Fusion Core's and Magnetic Pistons' upgrades.
• Tweaked the defensive drone lighting effects.
• AMD FSR 1.0 has been replaced by AMD FSR 2.1.

FIXES

• Fixed an error that caused building cubes to stay behind after completing construction or repair.
• Fixed the Rift Station not shutting down properly in case of disruption of the resource delivery chain.
• Removed the collisions of corpses with buildings. It might cause some bodies to land in your base, but it saves us a lot of technical issues, including levitating corpses!
• Fixed an issue that resulted in some tooltips displaying doubled resource values while selling and upgrading buildings.
• Fixed an issue that caused drones to get stuck in certain situations.
• Fixed the positioning and scaling of objects in the Cultivator Sapling menu and the Tower Mod selection menu.
• Added the missing localization string for 'Minimap Zoom In' keybinding option.
• Fixed the appearance of quicksand.
• Fixed cache counts and instance limits for many types of particle effects in order to increase the game's performance.
• Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when disassembling an item with mods installed.
• The HUD will no longer deform when resizing the window in windowed mode.
• The initial build menu selector position when playing on the gamepad has been moved from the corner to the middle of the screen.
• All types of resources are now displayed properly after entering the building menu.
• Keyboard and gamepad shortcuts are now displayed properly on the crafting screen.
• Removing items from the research queue or changing their priorities will no longer automatically scroll the queue list to the top.
• Fixed a possible campaign mission flow block that could happen if a player attained stregaros familiarity lvl1 before unlocking the find stregaros objective.
• Fixed the displayed range for the Railgun. It now properly states that the base range of the weapon is 33 meters instead of 50.
• Fixed the positioning of certain weather events to cover the entire screen without wasting performance on rendering particles out of bounds.
• Buildings rebuilt from ruins (hidden, optional feature for the time being) no longer double your resource storage.
• Pipes should no longer connect to buildings that do not use liquids.
• Sentry turrets should now properly sink in quicksand.
• Fixed the effects of the Offensive Drone for the mech to match the damage type.
• Fixed issues with key binding options disappearing in certain conditions.
• Shield Generators now display their operating radiuses.
• Added missing icons for Energy Storage building levels and Ironium Factory building levels.
• Long in-game dialogs should now scroll properly.
• Gamepad building tool shortcuts now work properly in build mode, which allows for double-binding some keys on the pad.
• Loading tips should now properly display button symbols.
• Pipes built in the older versions of the game should now properly connect to the new ones and vice versa.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when loading a save file made during the construction process of a building.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when entering the research screen with no Communications Hub present.
• Added the Acidic yeast phrase mentioned in the dialogues to the bestiary sample name
• Multiple miscellaneous fixes and improvements that were lost within murky or missing source control commit comments. Press "F" to pay respect...

If you've read this article this far - congratulations, you are awesome! If you want to read even more things, join us on our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. We are waiting there for all your feedback and suggestions. You can also use the Steam Forum, comments and our suggestion board - https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. We check all of those daily.

Have fun with the new update!
EXOR Studios