Hello Riftbreakers!
Last week, we showed you what our organization of work looks like when it comes to larger-scale projects, like expansions or major patches. It takes hundreds of hours of work from individual people to eventually create something that is much more than just a sum of its elements. Today, we would like to tell you what kind of tools and technologies we use daily to make our jobs a) possible and b) easier. Some of the tools we use are quite specialized and unpopular. Others - you might very well have them installed on your PC. Let’s take a closer look, going from team to team.
GRAPHICS
Blender. Throughout this article, you will see what we're working on at the moment. Pay attention to details!
Blender - This open-source 3D modeling software is the bread and butter of the graphics department at EXOR Studios. The vast majority of the hard-surface objects are modeled in this program. It is used for all stages of asset production, from basic sketches through detailed high-poly models to simplified low-poly versions ready for use in-game. We make animations in Blender as well! Thanks to Blender’s open nature and plugin-based expandability, our designers always have the freedom to look for new tools and add-ons to help them with their work. The best part is that the software is completely free, and with a large number of courses available online, anyone can learn it and start their journey with graphics design!
Zbrush. New creatures are coming to life right as you're reading this!
Zbrush - As good as Blender is, it is not perfect for all tasks. When it comes to modeling organics, such as creatures or plants, Zbrush is the tool of choice for our team. This program allows the artists to sculpt models with fine details as if they were working with a real-life material such as clay. Using a range of virtual brushes, our designers can intuitively create lifelike models with relative ease.
Substance Painter is where all models get their colors. And materials. And basically, everything else that makes them not look like an unpainted Warhammer mini.
Substance Painter and Designer - We use Painter to create textures for our models. It allows our artists to create highly detailed textures using a range of smart tools. It simplifies the texturing process by automatically wrapping the model and allowing the artist to observe the effects of their work in real-time. Designer, on the other hand, allows us to create materials for our in-game models using procedural generation.
Photoshop. Layers, keyboard shortcuts, 20 gigs of RAM usage. Photoshop in a nutshell.
Photoshop - When it comes to creating 2D graphics, nothing beats good old Photoshop. Apart from the more obvious use cases, such as creating concept art and loading screen art, we also use Photoshop to create the elements of the Graphical User Interface, or GUI. All buttons, frames, and menus have started their lives in Photoshop. They are later cut into individual elements for the engine to use across all the different screens in the game.
After Effects. Even the animations you can see in the game's main menu were born in After Effects.
After Effects - the layered 2D graphics created using Photoshop can also be used to create basic animations. By applying simple movements to some elements of the artwork made by our team, additional particle effects, and a dash of post-processing, we can prepare in-game animatics on our own. Of course, they may not be as spectacular as fully-rendered 3D movies, but they serve the purpose of conveying story elements quite well. Additionally, we can make changes to them quickly and avoid the need to rent costly render-farm hardware.
PROGRAMMING
Visual Studio and Visual Studios Code. For non-programmers out there: spot 5 differences.
Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code - our programmers’ weapons of choice. The Riftbreaker’s game and engine code is written using C++. Our Programmers use Visual Studio as their development environment and debugger. However, the code is only a part of the game and works in tandem with the game’s content. This is where Visual Studio Code comes in. Our programmers use it to navigate the game’s scripts and content. It also gives us a LUA debugger that we can attach to the game’s process. Additionally, there is a number of different shader languages (depending on the platform), various tools written in Python, Powershell, C#, or whatever new tech the programming team finds useful at the time.
SVN keeps track of all changes ever made to a file. You can't hide your mistakes, even if you really want to!
SVN - A free and open content versioning system that can be integrated with the Windows interface through e.g. TortoiseSVN. It allows us to distribute the working copy of the game to all developers in the studio, keep track of changes made by each user, and fall back to any revision of The Riftbreaker in the history of the project. It serves both as a tool for organizing our work, as well as one of our many backups.
TeamCity. This list goes on and on, as we have multiple configurations for all platforms and all our games there.
TeamCity - This piece of software allows us to automate a lot of things around the office. It directly controls our four dedicated build machines - the main job of these computers is to compile game code quickly. TeamCity maintains the building queue, distributes tasks between the build machines, as well as helps us automate some tedious tasks, like deploying new game builds to the repository, running benchmarks, and automated game tests.
SOUND
REAPER. After a little while you stop seeing weird shapes and start seeing sounds. Is this synesthesia?
REAPER - We choose to work with this Digital Audio Workstation because it is simple, robust and lightweight. Its functionality can easily be expanded with VST plugins, as well as plenty of free JavaScript addons created by users. REAPER offers a huge amount of customization and has never let us down in our day-to-day work. We use it mostly for working with dialogues - cutting long recordings into samples, and applying post-processing effects. You can read more about how we work with audio here.
MISCELLANEOUS
Notepad++. You can edit the majority of the game's files in this program. Very much recommended.
Notepad++ - the #1 most popular computer program in EXOR Studios. Used for editing LUA scripts, editing entity files, and, of course - taking notes. It has a multitude of features that help us with our daily jobs, such as finding all instances of a phrase in multiple files at once, the ability to open many text files in several tabs, and saving your work regardless of not clicking the ‘save’ button yourself. Much recommended.
Paint dot net. Photoshop for people without talent or skills. Or both!
paint [dot] net - For those of us who do not need or can’t use Photoshop, paint [dot] net is a sufficient alternative. The programmers and designers use it to quickly edit textures and mark them as temporary - something that is often needed when creating prototypes of new game features. It has a simple interface and offers just a bit more functionality than regular Paint, with layers and transparency support, for example. Also - sorry for the weird spelling. Steam recognized the name of this program as a link, and the link did not lead anywhere we would want to lead you.
Paint - the most legendary and classic tool available. Used by those who can’t grasp the complexities of paint [dot] net (wait, what!?). You might think this is a joke, but it was even used to create EPIC cutscene mockups:
You know what? EPIC doesn't even cut it for this video.
The Riftbreaker World Editor Suite - last but not least important. All the props, creatures, items, and all the other game pieces that we create using the tools mentioned above are put together into one using our editors. We use the map editor to create map tiles for all the game’s biomes. The model editor allows us to attach particle effects to models and add events to specific points in the animations of those models. The Riftbreaker Editor gives us access to all the databases of the game - loot tables, damage values, and many others. Mission Editor allows us to create campaigns, missions and in-game events using a simple, block-based setup. These programs, combined with some of the ones we mentioned earlier, give you everything you need to create great mods for The Riftbreaker.
You can read about these tools here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/780310/view/3109170041988719336?l=english
That’s probably not all the individual pieces of software we use daily, but we have certainly covered the most important ones. Are you surprised by some of our choices? Did you expect to see something different? Or perhaps there are some omissions that you’d like to ask us about? et us know here in the comments! You can also get in touch with us on our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios - we’re always happy to share our insights!
See you soon!
EXOR Studios