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Using RGB highlights to enhance the player experienceJun 26, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsRGB lighting has become a mainstay of gaming accessories in the past couple of years. Apart from giving our peripherals and PC components a sleek, modern look, it can also serve an informative purpose. Different colors can give us a quick update on the state of our machine or the running software. It gives the developers the ability to convey information at just a glance, increasing accessibility and ease of use - some of the most important aspects of good software. There are various companies that produce RGB-enabled gear for gaming enthusiasts all over the world. Most of those companies, such as Razer, Asus or Logitech, use their own APIs to control these features. They might offer slightly different approaches to handling the communication between hardware and software, so extensive, hands-on testing is key. We decided to implement RGB highlights in The Riftbreaker and X-Morph: Defense and would like to share our experience with you. https://i.imgur.com/IRiuECI.gif The main menu ambient highlight for our previous game, X-Morph: Defense. We have already had some experience with the dynamic RGB highlights while working on X-Morph: Defense. We were one of the first companies to add the mouse and keyboard support for the Xbox One. Working with the Razer Turret set gave us an option to dip our toes into the world of RGB illumination. In X-Morph, we used the keyboard highlights to show the players which keys could be pressed in order to perform a game action. The row of function keys represented the health of the player’s ship and core. The keys that were not relevant to the gameplay received a blue, ambient highlight. While not overly spectacular or flashy, we thought it would serve the game best. https://i.imgur.com/IrYzcZv.gif The action keys receive their own highlights in distinct colors, while the rest of the keyboard informs the player about the status of the ship and the core. https://i.imgur.com/8sz6thd.gif Once we take the controls away from the player, we can go a little more crazy with the RGB effects. The desire to keep the highlights functional limits our options, but we did go a little crazy at times when we took the controls away from the player. During the cutscenes, we gave our camera shake system a degree of control over the RGB highlights. This way, we managed to synchronize the camera shake with the behavior of the LEDs. The whole keyboard could flash white, yellow, and red according to what was currently going on in the game. It was a great feature for increasing the immersion and expanding the experience of playing the game beyond the screen. Our next project, The Riftbreaker, follows that exact philosophy. The Riftbreaker is a mix of various genres - it is a base-building game with elements of exploration, survival and hack and slash. The player takes the role of the titular Riftbreaker, an elite scientist/commando, whose task is to prepare a distant alien planet for human colonization. The game runs on our proprietary game e...The Riftbreaker - Operation: Alpha TestMar 18, 2020 - Community Announcementshttps://i.imgur.com/dp502d1.gif The moment we have all been waiting for is here! https://youtu.be/d1p6N44UwvI Today, almost exactly one year after our initial game reveal, we have started sending out The Riftbreaker Alpha Test access keys to our community members! The first batch of keys is out in the open. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/fef9b59a8c76a1ab021b5203e32bebeaf3579cf3.jpg The keys are being sent out to those people, who applied to join our testing through the form available on our Discord. Don’t worry if you have not received your key yet. We are distributing them in waves, according to your activity in the community and the hardware you have. We will be sending out new waves of keys together with new updates to the alpha. If you’re new to our community and would like to sign-up for Alpha testing then you can still do so through our Discord. www.discord.gg/exorstudios {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/f4c12c132ac17249e99f1ef74070430f14071f52.jpg This “pre-Alpha 2” build of the Riftbreaker offers an Introductory Mission and Survival/Sandbox Mode. The Introductory Mission is a scripted experience that is meant to guide you through the basics of gameplay. Once you are ready for a real test of your skills, try the Survival mode. You can pick one of the pre-made difficulty settings we designed or adjust the difficulty sliders to your liking. If you feel especially adventurous, you can also randomize all the game parameters and jump in blind, only to see how long you can last. There is also a sandbox mode available, where you can enjoy endless gameplay without being bothered by enemy attacks. It’s a perfect setting to test new solutions and toy around with the game. A Sandbox Control Panel will allow you to change what happens in the game world, too. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/25911adcdf5ba4c9cac97afa956e72fc2099e342.jpg Please take note of whatever bugs you find in the game and report them to us, using the built-in ‘Send bug report’ option in the game menu. We are going to be fixing the problems on a regular basis. If the game crashes, it will ask you what you were doing at the time of the crash and ask you to send the crash report. This is very important - the sooner we can catch a game-breaking bug, the sooner we can fix it. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts about the game on Discord, too! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/772ce6199b6e7e32780cc087c59050abbe17acd2.jpg You are free to stream your game sessions, make YouTube videos and other forms of online content. The only thing we ask of you is to disclose to your audience is that the game is not finished and that the footage they see does not represent the final quality of the Riftbreaker. We work on improving the game every day. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34659267/bf92bd49489c0dc8b9d55f7dc314cf9fca4878c5.jpg Some Streamers, YouTubers and Media have already had access to our previous pre-Alpha build in November. The current “pre-Alpha 2” build has a lot of changes and improvements since that time. If you’d...Zombie Driver is 10 years old today! FREE for the next 24h!Dec 4, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://i.imgur.com/fevmi0I.gif Hello everyone! We never expected this day would ever come. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of the first standalone EXOR Studios title, Zombie Driver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-wNhKdML38 We left our jobs and founded EXOR in 2007 to realize our dream of making games on our own, independently. Even though the early months were quite rocky we kept going and bet everything on Zombie Driver. Originally released on the 4th of December 2009, it greatly surpassed our expectations. It grew a loyal fanbase, secured our future as a game development studio and paved the way for our future projects. https://i.imgur.com/ADQGkGz.png Zombie Driver received a healthy dose of DLCs, updates, and reeditions, including the HD version in 2012 and the Immortal Edition this year. Over its lifetime the game: sold almost 1.000.000 copies worldwide. was released in physical form in 58 countries. was ported to many platforms - PC, WinRT, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3, Nintendo Switch, Nvidia Shield, Ouya. made EXOR Studios recognizable and made us irreplaceable friends all over the world. https://i.imgur.com/6vKqunb.png To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Zombie Driver, for the next 24 hours the game is free on Steam. You can add it to your library free of charge. X-Morph: Defense is getting a 75% discount, too. We are also very close to publishing Zombie Driver on the Playstation 4, so keep an eye out for that. https://i.imgur.com/eXhy05e.png We hope you had or will have as much fun playing Zombie Driver as we had making it. In the meantime, we are continuing our work on the next project, The Riftbreaker. It is a completely different game - a combination of base-building, survival and hack’n’slash, but the engine it uses evolved from what we used in Zombie Driver. You can’t stop the undead! https://i.imgur.com/kB35e4j.png Thank you for all these years of support! We hope that 10 years from now we will have even more reasons to celebrate with you! EXOR Studios KABOOM-BOOM - explosion sequencesNov 22, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://i.imgur.com/ctfXUiD.gif You still have a chance to survive in The Riftbreaker when your HQ explodes, but you will have a lot of cleaning up to do. Now that you know how we prepare particle effects in our games, let’s move on to some practical applications of those. Single explosions, bullets, blood splats or wood splinters flying around look fun, but our possibilities do not end there. We very often combine multiple effects into sequences. Thanks to this technique it is possible to achieve massive, spectacular cascades of fire, sparks, and debris that look as if they were taken from a Hollywood action film. It’s quite an interesting process, which requires some creativity and destructive imagination, so let’s take a look! https://i.imgur.com/Ff8lwFW.gif Multiple buildings changing their state at once is often a sight to behold. Most objects that you see in EXOR Studios’ games can be either damaged or completely destroyed during regular gameplay. Some of those objects are small and relatively insignificant - a tree, for example. It can either stand perfectly healthy or be destroyed. Entities with the health point system are a little different. Apart from the “100% OK” state (max health) and the “dead” state (0 health) we also have a ‘damaged” state - anywhere between 1% and 99% health (approximately, of course ;)). The bigger an entity is, the more HP it is likely to have - and if it has a lot of HP, we might give it destruction levels. https://i.imgur.com/NZXHLil.gif Friendly fire is not a thing in The Riftbreaker, but we used it to show you different destruction levels for the Armory in a controlled environment. Destruction levels are damage thresholds that we use to trigger certain effects. For example, the Headquarters in The Riftbreaker look different when they are at 100%, 75% or 10% health, with more smoke and fire breaking out as the building becomes damaged. This system is not exclusive to buildings and applies to creatures as well - they get wounded and bloody as the damage increases. The purpose of the destruction level system is to give players feedback. We want you to know that your attacks are hurting the creature you’re hunting. We want you to know that the creatures hunting you can hurt you too. https://i.imgur.com/IQcOzDI.gif The core blowing up in X-Morph: Defense is not a positive thing, but the visuals at least make up for the game loss. There are usually several destruction levels for a destructible entity. When the health drops below a threshold specified by one of the destruction levels, a group of effects is triggered. Physical parts are spawned, each with individual properties, such as weight, dimensions, buoyancy, friction upon hitting the ground - you name it. The parts are given the texture of the object they were spawned from in order to maintain consistency. What is also important - the parts do not just appear out of nowhere - they are pushed out by a force at the center of the object that randomly changes th...BOOM! - How explosions are madeNov 20, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://i.imgur.com/cPU9g73.gif Kaboom. When a Steam user left a review on the X-Morph: Defense Store Page saying that the game looked as if it was directed by Michael Bay, it dawned on us - there are lots of explosions in our games. We never gave that much thought, to be honest, but taking a look back it has always been true for all our projects. We love blowing things up and we think we’re quite good at it, so we would like to tell you what goes into creating realistic-looking explosions (and other effects) for EXOR Studios games, including The Riftbreaker. https://i.imgur.com/NcMkT6y.gif A sample scene from Zombie Driver HD. There are lots of particles in this one - blood, sparks, explosions… The game wouldn’t be the same without these effects. The explosions you see in our games are realized through the extensive use of the particle effects system. The particles are prepared by our artist in a specialized tool and then imported into the game. They consist of quadrilaterals (two-dimensional shapes, often referred to as ‘quads’) with a texture and set transparency. The artist can give each of the quads different properties, changing their overall appearance and how they behave in relation to other quads within the same effect, but it is the texture that is the base of it all. In much simpler terms - we set flat images in motion, make them see-through and add some eye candy. https://i.imgur.com/WeRo52G.png A view from the editor we use - Particle Universe. The tree goes on and on, and each node is a different variable! You need to have a general idea of what you want to achieve and pick the right textures for the job. There are many types you can choose from. They vary between each other in how they interact with other textures in terms of light and transparency. We mainly use emissives (textures that appear as if they were light sources and can be blended with textures that are underneath them) and refracts (special textures that distort the surrounding area, like in the case of hot air, or a shockwave). When we are not working on explosions, we also make use of alpha blend textures. They do not fake being light sources, but simply mix with other textures in their vicinity. The whole process of creating a particle effect begins with choosing the right texture for the context. https://i.imgur.com/QRwvxkD.gif By choosing correct textures you can get a whole range of effects. Every effect consists of sub effects. They are lower-level structures that allow you to group quads together and apply some properties to them - more on those properties later, but in general - you can individually move the sub effects and make them behave in a certain way. Of course, it is extremely important to position the sub effects right. You don’t want a large cloud of black smoke to cover up all the fire, sparks and debris from the remaining ones. In general, you need to start creating an effect with a clear end goal in mind. Reference videos and images are very usefu...Gamescom 2019 - Play The Riftbreaker Demo!Aug 20, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://i.imgur.com/kPl8YhZ.gif The biggest gaming holiday in Europe (perhaps in the world) has arrived! It is time for Gamescom 2019. We are present there as well. You can find us in hall 10.1, booth A031. We recommend using the official Gamescom app to make the navigation a little easier. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/1433338/45034c20cfe84f61a647f3e0d16a3b39a19537db.jpg During this year’s event, we are showcasing our latest project - The Riftbreaker. Visit our booth and play our custom-made event demo - a special, standalone mission designed to take you through the basics of gameplay. There is a little bit of everything there - base-building, fighting, exploration, and if you prefer to just admire the views - that is possible, too. When you’re at our booth, you can also get some sweet EXOR Studios swag. We have loads of goodies to give away, including pins, energy drinks, pens, and X-Morph: Defense game codes. The only thing you need to do is to come over and spin the wheel of fortune. Don’t worry - we won’t run out ;) Lastly, you can take a picture with a giant, 2.5m sculpture of Mr. Riggs! Come and see it for yourself! https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/1433338/b7ba234555bc4db3f65d60edfafff399ede23d74.jpg Hall 10.1, booth A031. We’re going to be there during the whole show. Come and say hi, especially if you’re a member of our Discord server. If you aren’t, join now! www.discord.gg/exorstudios We’re going to be chatting there during the event and sharing some sweet, behind-the-scenes footage. We will also be giving closed beta access to early builds of The Riftbreaker through our Discord. Lastly, we are also going to be streaming The Riftbreaker development builds right here on our Steam page. Look out for further announcements :) See you there! Other social media: www.facebook.com/exorstudios www.twitter.com/exorstudios www.mixer.com/exor_studios www.twitch.tv/exorstudios www.youtube.com/exorstudiosThe Schmetterling Engine AMA on Reddit is live now!Aug 13, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://i.imgur.com/D3SF2Nq.gif Hello everyone! We are holding an AMA on the r/Games subreddit right now. The general topic of the thread is going to be our game engine, The Schmetterling. We have been working on it continuously since the days of Zombie Driver and we think it is a pretty interesting topic in the days of big-name, free-to-use game engines. The AMA is available under this URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/cps839/hello_we_are_exor_studios_we_have_been_making/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x Since this is an AMA - ‘Ask Me Anything’ - you can ask us about anything you like. The questions do not have to be related to The Schmetterling Engine. You can ask about any aspect of indie dev life, our games, plans for the future and other things that might interest you. All questions are welcome! If you can’t make it this time, join our Discord server. It’s an almost 24/7 AMA ;) Find us at www.discord.gg/exorstudios!The Riftbreaker - Survival mode interactive streamAug 2, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://i.imgur.com/4udghBY.gif Hello everyone! We are very excited to announce that we are going to start streaming in-development builds of The Riftbreaker regularly, starting next week! The first stream is going to take place on Thursday, August 8 at 3 PM CEST at www.mixer.com/exorstudios! We have finally reached the point in development where we can finally let you see some real, live footage from the game. What we are going to show you is the basis for what we call ‘survival mode’. Our task is going to be building up a base and surviving a set amount of time while fending off waves of monsters trying to get rid of us. You’re going to see some of the new features in action and, best of all, you can take part in the stream! That’s right! On Thursday we’re going to show off our interactive streaming features for the first time. You will get the chance to help Piotr by giving him resources or canceling attack waves, or to make his life a nightmare! Tornadoes, acid rain, doubling the strength of the attack wave - that is all within your power through the use of our features and the interactive MixPlay interface. If you have never seen The Riftbreaker in action we have a couple of videos for you to catch up on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDuBjKhDhho - the highlights from the event demo we present at various trade shows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZH0GhDAdNQ - the VOD of the first Riftbreaker livestream ever. The streams are going to show off all the new features we introduce into the game on a regular basis. It’s also a chance for you to ask questions and give us direct feedback. We love interacting with the viewers, so all questions and suggestions are welcome! Mark your calendars. It is going to be awesome. If you'd like to interact with us on a regular basis and take part in future beta testing of The Riftbreaker later down the road, then we invite you to join our discord server: www.discord.gg/exorstudios EXOR Studios Zombie Driver Immortal Edition is coming to the Nintendo Switch on July 25th!Jun 27, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://i.imgur.com/NXCL8xV.gif We're proud to announce that our all-time classic - Zombie Driver Immortal Edition is coming to the Nintendo Switch on July 25th! https://youtu.be/YLqfRemwcpw It's been almost 10 years since the game's original release on the PC and the game has seen a lot of changes through the years. This latest edition has been ported to the Schmetterling engine which some of you might know from X-Morph: Defense. The new renderer is about 10x faster than the old one that we had in Zombie Driver (we've learned some things over these years). Thanks to this improvement the Nintendo Switch version of the game has the same gameplay features as the PC or Xbox One versions with even slightly improved graphics and runs really smooth even during very intense action. https://i.imgur.com/RxeFcAT.gif All previously released DLC extensions have been incorporated into the Immortal Edition. The Apocalypse Pack, Tropical Race Rage, Burning Garden of Slaughter, and Brutal Car Skins have been included in the game as rewards for completing gameplay objectives. https://i.imgur.com/AFO8P98.gif If you'd like to ask us any questions in regards to the game you can always find us on our Discord: www.discord.gg/exorstudios Other social media: www.facebook.com/exorstudios www.twitter.com/exorstudios www.mixer.com/exor_studios www.twitch.tv/exorstudiosTHE RIFTBREAKER - Our next gameMar 8, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://thumbs.gfycat.com/DimpledLinearHawk-size_restricted.gif Hello everyone! Today, we are proud to announce what we have been secretly working on for more than a year. World, meet our brand new game - THE RIFTBREAKER. The Riftbreaker is a brand-new IP from EXOR Studios. The game combines elements of base-building, survival, exploration and action RPG. The story takes place in the distant future. Humans have managed to master the Rift technology, allowing them to instantaneously travel to far reaches of space. You take the role of captain Ashley S. Nowak, one of the titular Riftbreakers. They are a group of elite scientists/commandos. The Riftbreakers jump into newly established, one-way Rifts with no safety net, with the purpose of establishing a connection back to Earth to allow for further colonization. To make this possible, the pioneers take control of powerful Mecha-suits, equipped with all the tools necessary to get the job done. An image says a thousand words, so let’s take a look at some of the things you are going to do in The Riftbreaker BASE BUILDING https://thumbs.gfycat.com/TangibleSpiffyInchworm-size_restricted.gif The first order of business after jumping through an interstellar Rift is establishing a field base. Ashley’s Mecha-suit, which she calls Mr. Riggs, has all the blueprints necessary to build the basic structures. Ashley’s task is to establish a safe, two-way connection between the planet Galatea 37 and Earth. Such a link requires massive amounts of energy. Therefore, Ashley has to build up a field base and infrastructure to complete this task. Her resources are limited. She will have to plan her expansion, mine and refine the resources available on the new planet and come up with an energy harvesting solution to complete her task. Ashley must not forget about fortifying the base, either. Who knows what might lurk in the darkness of the night. EXPLORATION https://thumbs.gfycat.com/KeenMiserlyAnnelid-size_restricted.gif Not much is known about Galatea 37. Rudimentary scans indicated that the planet has the necessary resources and conditions suitable for colonization, but nothing more. Ashley has to explore it on her own, visiting multiple biomes and encountering new species of vegetation and wildlife. Knowledge and samples collected during her excursions will allow her to research new technologies and adapt to the multiple threats presented by the forces of nature. Exploring new areas will allow Ashley to gain access to rare resources and discover new life forms. Setting up outposts along the way will also create a network of Rifts to safely and quickly travel across the new world. HACK, SLASH, SHOOT https://thumbs.gfycat.com/KindRegularAmericanshorthair-size_restricted.gif The planet is teeming with life, not all forms of which are peaceful. Ashley will often have to fight for her survival against the alien animals. The Mecha-suit she uses can be equipped with multiple weapons, allowing the Riftbreaker to fight off the...X-Morph: Defense is now available!Aug 30, 2017 - Community Announcementshttps://giant.gfycat.com/FittingGivingBlueshark.gif After five years of developing X-Morph: Defense, we are very proud to announce that it is now available on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/408410/XMorph_Defense/ Thank you for your continued support during all that time. We can't wait to hear your opinions about the game! https://youtu.be/zpAd1b6kFx4X-Morph: Defense is now available!Aug 30, 2017 - Community Announcementshttps://giant.gfycat.com/FittingGivingBlueshark.gif After five years of developing X-Morph: Defense, we are very proud to announce that it is now available on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/408410/XMorph_Defense/ Thank you for your continued support during all that time. We can't wait to hear your opinions about the game! https://youtu.be/zpAd1b6kFx4Our next game X-Morph: DefenseFeb 14, 2017 - Community Announcementshttps://giant.gfycat.com/TestyUnitedHuia.gif Hello D.I.P.R.I.P. fans :) We are finally able to announce our next game X-Morph: Defense. Check out the Announcement trailer and tell us what you think: https://youtu.be/wvoqAA7ZUVs If you like the trailer you can read more about the game at: http://www.xmorphdefense.com Or you can join X-Morph's community HUB and ask us directly: http://steamcommunity.com/app/408410 Our next game X-Morph: DefenseFeb 14, 2017 - Community Announcementshttps://giant.gfycat.com/TestyUnitedHuia.gif Hello D.I.P.R.I.P. fans :) We are finally able to announce our next game X-Morph: Defense. Check out the Announcement trailer and tell us what you think: https://youtu.be/wvoqAA7ZUVs If you like the trailer you can read more about the game at: http://www.xmorphdefense.com Or you can join X-Morph's community HUB and ask us directly: http://steamcommunity.com/app/408410 Update 1.0.0.10 for D.I.P.R.I.P. Warm Up has been releasedMar 2, 2009 - Community AnnouncementsA non mandatory server update addressing missile balancing issues has been released. The changes will be applied as soon as a server is updated. The full change log for this update is: Version 1.0.0.10 CHANGED - changed missile homing time from 1.5s back to 2.0s - changed blue rocket fire rate from 0.85s to 1s There has been a lot of controversy about blue rocket spamming and we hope to eliminate the problem with this update. Let us know what you think.Update 1.0.0.10 for D.I.P.R.I.P. Warm Up has been releasedMar 2, 2009 - Community AnnouncementsA non mandatory server update addressing missile balancing issues has been released. The changes will be applied as soon as a server is updated. The full change log for this update is: Version 1.0.0.10 CHANGED - changed missile homing time from 1.5s back to 2.0s - changed blue rocket fire rate from 0.85s to 1s There has been a lot of controversy about blue rocket spamming and we hope to eliminate the problem with this update. Let us know what you think.Server problems fixedFeb 25, 2009 - Community AnnouncementsAn update was released yesterday fixing the recent dedicated server problems. Achievements and statistics are also working properly now. Server problems fixedFeb 25, 2009 - Community AnnouncementsAn update was released yesterday fixing the recent dedicated server problems. Achievements and statistics are also working properly now. Required update 1.0.0.9 for D.I.P.R.I.P. Warm Up has been releasedFeb 17, 2009 - Community AnnouncementsA required update fixing the yesterday's startup crash problems has been released. It also adds the map list map icons and two rocket balancing changes. The full change log for this update is: Version 1.0.0.9 ADDED - server browser map icons FIXED - client crash on startup caused by a Source Engine update CHANGED - changed missile homing time from 2s to 1.5s - changed blue rocket fire rate from 0.7s to 0.85sRequired update 1.0.0.9 for D.I.P.R.I.P. Warm Up has been releasedFeb 17, 2009 - Community AnnouncementsA required update fixing the yesterday's startup crash problems has been released. It also adds the map list map icons and two rocket balancing changes. The full change log for this update is: Version 1.0.0.9 ADDED - server browser map icons FIXED - client crash on startup caused by a Source Engine update CHANGED - changed missile homing time from 2s to 1.5s - changed blue rocket fire rate from 0.7s to 0.85s
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