EXOR Studios, the proud developer of The Riftbreaker, has announced the opening of the experimental branch for the game.
To put it simply, it is sort of a beta channel where developers can push updates for testing before they are implemented in public servers.
That said, if you want to contribute to the development and test the new features, you can download the beta starting today.
How to Get into the Experimental Branch
Before anything else, it is important that you create a backup of your save folder, which is found in the Documents/ The Riftbreaker. Then, you need to disable Steam’s cloud backup feature so that it will not accidentally overwrite your saves.
Now that has been cleared, you need to go to your Steam library, right-click on The Riftbreaker, and then select Properties. From there, choose “Betas” and type the password, IknowWhatImDoing.
You should now see “experimental” from the drop-down menu. Once done, the beta update will automatically be downloaded and you can test the latest and greatest features.
Keep in mind that if you want to participate, you are asked to provide feedback and report any issues that you may encounter. Furthermore, updates will be pushed irregularly. Sometimes it may take a few hours, and there are times where new features arrive once every few days.
October 26 Update
If you’re good to go, there is an experimental update now available. Most of the things implemented here are optimizations, particularly to CPU performance.
The developers have improved the component packing and unpacking speed, and they added fixes and optimizations to the Resource System. They said that the latter will reduce CPU performance costs by up to 15 times the original.
Here are the highlights:
- Added new environment tiles to the Radioactive Desert and Acidic Plains biomes improving the richness and variety of these environments
- The process of creating labels and bars now uses CommandBuffer to increase CPU performance
- Added debug_recreate_buildings command. Use it if you encountered a bug that disconnected all your buildings from the energy grid. This command will remove and recreate all buildings and connections in your base
- The game will wait for the user profile to finish saving before exiting to the desktop to prevent data loss
- Added more constraints to ResourceVolumeRenderable to prevent resources from spawning in wrong spots
- Initialize uninitialized member variables to prevent some issues with loading the game
- Fixed camera_enable_zoom crashes with ray tracing enabled
- Added debug output for render window creation to give us more information in case something goes wrong
So, are you going to enroll in The Riftbreaker’s experimental branch?
