Hello Riftbreakers!
Today we will look at a much-requested quality-of-life improvement that will come to you as a part of the second free World Expansion update - the free part of our upcoming Into The Dark expansion. The feature in question is building ruins. Many of you let us know that rebuilding the base after a large attack is difficult and time-consuming. It is not easy to remember the exact placement of all structures, and setting everything up manually when under time pressure makes matters even less pleasant. We hope that this feature will remedy that.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker_Into_The_Dark/
You could previously see the prototype of the ruins feature during our developer streams (every Tuesday and Thursday, 3 PM CEST, www.twitch.tv/exorstudios). The premise is really simple - once a building is completely destroyed, it leaves behind a pile of wreckage. The wreckage can be identified either by selecting it in build mode, where it will display the name of the original building, or by the visuals. Each building has a custom-made wreckage model to make identification a little easier - more on that later.
Testing destruction features is always the most fun.
Once a building is destroyed and wreckage spawns in its place, you have two options. You can use the deconstruction tool to remove the rubble completely and recover the space, or you can use the repair tool to rebuild the original structure for its full price. You can also use the mass repair/deconstruction tools to take care of multiple pieces of wreckage all at once. If you want to reconstruct multiple buildings, a tooltip will appear, informing you of the total cost of repairs. If you can’t afford the total cost of repairs, the game will try to repair as many buildings as possible instead, so you can bring your base back into shape piece by piece. Ruins have an unlimited lifetime, so you can simply come back to them whenever it is convenient for you.
Less time spent on repairs = more time spent on upgrades!
Naturally, modeling ruins for all buildings in the game would have taken a long time, and using a generic model for all structures would make identification very difficult. To speed the process up, we used Houdini. It’s a tool suite that uses procedural generation to let artists quickly iterate on their models, create visual effects, and much more. In our case, one of the artists created a specialized setup that can remove large parts of building models from The Riftbreaker in a matter of minutes. Here’s how it works.
We swear, this is work, it's not just fun.
First, we import the Blender building model into the specialized Houdini setup. The base part of the setup is a very large cube (large enough to cover all individual building models we have in the game). The bottom surface of the cube is irregular instead of flat. That is because the bottom surface is where the actual ‘cutting’ process will take place. When the bottom of the cube reaches the top of the building model, polygons are automatically removed.
Before and after the procedurally-generated destruction.
The artist can control at what height they want to cut the building. Houdini automatically generated the new geometry that covers the wreckage surface. That surface is then covered with a ‘burnt metal’ texture. When the artist is happy with the result, they export the new wreckage model to Blender for a final touch-up. Thanks to all this, a monotonous process that would take weeks for all buildings in the game can be completed within a couple of days.
As we slide the cube further down, more parts of the building disappear.
This feature will arrive to you as a part of the next large free game update. It will work even on saved games made earlier, so you can continue your campaigns with this new option available to you. We hope you will enjoy playing with it and that you will suggest even more improvements to us. In fact, this idea came from our suggestion board: https://riftbreaker.featureupvote.com/suggestions/332558/ghost-buildings-to-show-where-destroyed-buildings-were. Don’t hesitate to post your own ideas - we carefully consider all of them! If you want to contact us directly, reach out on Discord: www.discord.gg/exorstudios.
Have a great weekend!
EXOR Studios