MercurySteam has steadily been working on updating and reworking their MMO title Raiders of the Broken Planet ever since it launched last year. Beyond adding different campaigns to the game, they also relaunched it as a free-to-play title on August 23 under the new name of Spacelords. Along with the relaunch, MercurySteam also added a fourth campaign to the game, called Council Apocalypse. 

The free-to-play business model brings a number of changes so as to make the  game accessible to new players and a wider audience, but without the veterans losing out either. The changes bring about some interesting methods being applied in the campaign. For instance, at the start of the game, new players will get a campaign at random, and once they finish all of the missions in this campaign, they can select which campaign they would like to complete next.

Regarding the jump to the free-to-play model, game director Enric Álvarez stated that it was done so as to reach a wider audience. He said, “When we launched Raiders September last year, we hoped its low price point of $9.99 per campaign- would open it up to a large number of users, but it didn’t work as we planned. Our vision is to see our game enjoyed by millions of users for years to come and putting all of the game’s rich content into their hands for free is the way to realize it. We’ve answered our community and hope this removal of any payment barriers will build our devoted community further.”

Furthermore, Álvarez also explained why the game’s name has been changed to Spacelords- it’s basically because the game is about more than just the Raiders. He stated, “We felt that ‘Raiders’ only focused on one specific side of the battle for the Broken Planet: The Raiders. But this is about the Aleph, a mythical substance from the Broken Planet, a substance everybody wants – the Raiders, the Antagonists, each of the invading human factions…- All of them know that whoever controls the Aleph, will dominate the universe as the ultimate Spacelord. So, the new brand is not going to change the game lore at all, quite the contrary. Spacelords comes to embrace all of them -Raiders and Antagonists- under one umbrella.”

You can check out the announcement trailer for Spacelords below along with some screenshots below. Spacelords is currently available for free on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

MercurySteam’s Raiders of the Broken Planet is still in full swing and the developer is preparing for the third premium campaign Hades Betrayal. It will release on April 4th for $9.99 and will include four new missions for single-player, 4 player co-op and 4 vs. 1 asymmetrical multiplayer “Antagonist” modes.

The story will look at The Hades Division and their plans for domination on the Broken Planet. There will be a new exclusive character Ayana Kwena, the chief of security for the Raiders. A new rewards system based on player feedback will also be introduced which will also affect progression. Game director Enric Álvarez says the changes are a result of fan feedback.

“The fans are truly passionate about the game an being in touch with them daily allowed us to dramatically and radically improve our offering. Raiders of the Broken Planet is now a much better game because of this. We also hope this shows our unflinching commitment with Raiders. The game will continue to receive new and better content over time as we work with our dedicated player base.”

Time will tell exactly how this new system functions but it is good to see MercurySteam listening to its fans. If you’re interested in delving further into the game, then its first two premium campaigns Alien Myths and Wardog Fury are available at $9.99 each on Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Raiders of the Broken Planet had initially released back in September and developer MercurySteam had promised that a second campaign would follow soon after. Well, they have now announced the release date for the second campaign Wardog Fury and it is set to release on November 30th, 2017. Along with this, a new trailer has also been released for this new campaign.

The second campaign will be priced at 9.99$ and will feature four brand new story missions that you can play by yourself or with up to three other friends.  In Wardog Fury, Harec attempts to recruit Loaht who was a genetic experiment created by General Marmalade. Additionally, three new characters will also be available to unlock in this campaign.

Speaking about Wardog Fury, Enric Álvarez, Co-Owner of MercurySteam stated that the appeal of this second campaing would  be that it “it focuses on one of the human factions and delves deeper into their lore.” Furthermore, players  will discover “how Aleph abuse can affect humans, and why they are so hell-bent on taking it all for themselves.” So far, the premise sounds interesting and we look forward to see where it goes.

Given the amount of technology that MercurySteam has to deal with compared to three years ago and the changes made to its Mercury Engine, the development scenario for Raiders of the Broken Planet is obviously more complicated. GamingBolt spoke to MercurySteam producer Dave Cox to learn more about the game and how the team is tackling development on the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro.

"Our goal was to free the players of the chore of pushing a button when they take cover, letting the game take care of that organically, and allowing them to focus on the action."

MercurySteam have a phenomenal track record in developing games with some fantastic artwork and visuals. I am a huge fan of your Castlevania series and I think for its time it was a technical marvel. Sometimes, I just sit back and start thinking how do you even approach developing these kind of games and incorporate real life elements into pixels? Where do you begin and where do you end, from a technical perspective?

Good question. We always start with a theme, drawing inspiration from sources that might not necessarily have to do with videogames -like films, novels or comic-books. We always try to stay true to the project’s original vision in terms of art, narrative and design, and our goals are always very ambitious.

We are fortunate to work with top artists, and give them total creative freedom to imagine that vision. The technical challenge lies in taking that vision into the game itself, and end up with a game that looks great and is fun to play.

Raiders of the Broken Planet is running on your in-house engine. So obviously, I wanted to ask what kind of improvements you have made to the engine in terms a. Physics b. Physical Based Rendering and c. Enemy AI?

We have added a real-time physics analysis system that allows the characters to use cover automatically when they are near an obstacle, instantly launching the right animation and obtaining a really smooth navigation feel. Our goal was to free the players of the chore of pushing a button when they take cover, letting the game take care of that organically, and allowing them to focus on the action.

About PBR, the main news is that it doesn’t exist anymore! The previous iteration of Mercury Engine used a more classic rendering system, but Mercury Engine 5 makes use of our own BRDF functionalities, similar to those used by Unreal Engine or Pixar. We have also added other technologies, like IES profiles for more realistic light sources or probes for occlusion.

Our AI has a new editing system based on behaviour trees, including parameters that allow the designers to create complex behaviours and adjust gameplay quite fast, without having to involve the code team. Our new nav meshes and smartlinks system allows the enemy to navigate the maps making use of cover, climbing up and down obstacles and even making use of transports. Lastly, we have improved parallel processing to make the most out of the current multi-core hardware configuration.

In our last interview, you spoke a bit about the potential of shipping the game on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Now we have confirmation that you will indeed be shipping the game with enhancements tailor made for these two new consoles (reference here). So, I wanted to ask how did you go about assessing the capabilities of these new boxes before you eventually begin developing for them?

It’s always easier for us to upscale a project. Having extra power is never an issue, as we work with assets of the greatest quality. We must find the balance between what we have and what we can put into the game, and making sacrifices is never easy. Both the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X are upgrades of existing consoles, thus for us it is just a question of scaling up the quality of the assets.

"We always strive to get the most out of each platform while maintaining a uniform quality, ensuring the player will have the best possible experience regardless of his or her platform of choice."

I believe the term 4K is more a “marketing” term rather than actually delivering that kind of resolution on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Personally, I use a GTX 1080Ti for rendering my games at 4K at decent frame rates. Compared to some of the high-end GPUs out there, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X are outdated, especially if you consider their archaic CPUs.

Having said that, what are you trying to achieve a desirable resolution on these consoles? Will something like dynamic 4K resolution based on load balancing or checkerboard 4K rendering suffice in order to deliver a steady 60fps on these consoles?

Our premise is to always offer the best possible gaming experience to the players. That’s why we have chosen to use that extra power to ensure a maximum fluidity, aiming for 60fps with only slight drops at points with significant graphic stress.

A high FPS is vital for such a fast-paced game. Aiming for native 4K resolution, even making use of checkerboard, would have stuck us at 30 fps. In any case, both Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro will have resolutions escalated above 1080p and improved FPS rate.

There are a ton of lighting effects, physics and various different kinds of systems working together in your game. Raiders of the Broken Planet will be shipping on five platforms (Xbox One X and PS4 Pro included), so where do you begin in terms of engine scaling in order to support so many platforms?

The Mercury Engine has been in constant evolutions since we launched Scrapland. We have kept some functionalities, while others had to be redone from scratch to adapt to the new platforms, or new paradigms like multitasking.

In terms of pure hardware perspective, the picture is clear. The Xbox One X is far ahead of PS4 Pro in terms of GPU and memory bandwidth. The differences in ROP counts and bandwidth are public knowledge. As a developer, who is making a beautiful artistic game, what is your take on the differences between the two and do you think this difference will be visible to the general audience?

We always strive to get the most out of each platform while maintaining a uniform quality, ensuring the player will have the best possible experience regardless of his or her platform of choice. If you are an expert who enjoys detailed performance analysis, you will notice slight variations in definition and frame rate, but otherwise it will be difficult to notice any differences.

"Xbox One X required us to generate two images, an HDR one an a LDR one, to be used on non-HDR compatible TVs. On PS4, this process is done automatically by the system, simplifying things greatly."

I just wanted to take you back to the earlier Xbox One days. The console’s eSRAM was painful to work with. Many developers had issues with it. Is it still that much of a problem in case of Raiders of the Broken Planet?

The problem didn’t reside on the eSRAM itself, but the amount of eSRAM you have at your disposal to fit all the render targets. The Xbox One has seen a huge improvement in that department compared to the Xbox 360.

MercurySteam stated that the game is already running at 1080p and 60fps on the base PS4 and Xbox One. Does this mean that the Xbox One X version running at “native” 4K resolution at 60fps? Also, where does this leave the PS4 Pro version?

In both premium consoles, we have achieved higher resolution without having to sacrifice fluidity, reaching what we believe is the ideal balance between both aspects. You will find resolutions above 1080p in both platforms.

The game is already confirmed to feature HDR on both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Was it easy to implement and what kind of effort went it to implementing it and which console made it easier for you?

Xbox One X required us to generate two images, an HDR one an a LDR one, to be used on non-HDR compatible TVs. On PS4, this process is done automatically by the system, simplifying things greatly. Overall, the process has not been too costly because Mercury Engine 5 already worked with HDR assets.

I wanted to end this interview about a question regarding APIs for both consoles and how you used them for Raiders of the Broken Planet. The Xbox One and Xbox One X are sharing a lot of libraries from DX12 whereas the PS4 and PS4 Pro are using their own custom API.

How much of a challenge it’s juggling between two different solutions and trying to achieve the same thing on different platforms? Any particular challenges you came across while using them?

Thanks a ton for your time! API differences aren’t too significant between platforms. The best part of the code is generic, with the exception of some critical parts that are specific to each platform, that needed to be paid extra attention to get the most out of them.

Mercury Steam may have just launched Metroid: Samus Returns for the Nintendo 3DS, but their next major release, Raiders of the Broken Planet, is already almost here as well. Ahead of its release, the studio is confirming that the game will support cross-platform play- Xbox One and Windows 10 users will be able to play with each other, as well as PS4 and Steam users.

Mercury Steam has also confirmed to WCCFTech that they are expecting a greenlight from Microsoft to enable Steam-Xbox One-Windows 10 cross platform play in the future–meaning that Sony will be left out as the odd man out yet again, due to them not agreeing to PS4 and Xbox One cross platform play.

That aside, if you are the more technically inclined, you will be happy to know that the Xbox One X runs the game at 1440p resolution, with a target performance of 60fps, while the PS4 Pro runs the game at 1260p resolution with the same targeted framerate. Raiders of the Broken Planet launches later this month on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Mercury Steam’s Raiders of the Broken Planet will be releasing on Xbox One, PS4 and PC but it will be available later this month in a rather interesting way. The Prologue will be free to download and offer two missions so players can get a grasp on the multiplayer 4v1 action that it promises. Subsequent episodes will expand on the story further.

However, Raiders of the Broken Planet will also make use of the PS4 Pro and Xbox One. It’s interesting when you consider that not all games on the PS4 Pro don’t support native 4K (mostly checkerboard 4K) while more and more games for the Xbox One X have shown signs of native 4K support.

Both consoles’  CPUs are fairly dated compared to the latest PC technology so what is Mercury Steam doing to ensure a desirable resolution on both platforms? Is it dynamic 4K based on load balancing, checkerboarding or something else for the sake of a steady 60 FPS?

Mercury Steam’s Dave Cox responded that, “Our premise is to always offer the best possible gaming experience to the players. That’s why we have chosen to use that extra power to ensure a maximum fluidity, aiming for 60fps with only slight drops at points with significant graphic stress.  A high FPS is vital for such a fast-paced game. Aiming for native 4K resolution, even making use of checkerboard, would have stuck us at 30 fps.”

“In any case, both Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro will have resolutions escalated above 1080p and improved fps rate.”

As for how difficult it is to juggle between different graphics APIs especially when the Xbox One and Xbox One X use DirectX 12 while the PS4 and PS4 Pro use a custom API, Cox said that, “API differences aren’t too significant between platforms. The best part of the code is generic, with the exception of some critical parts that are specific to each platform, that needed to be paid extra attention to get the most out of them.”

Raiders of the Broken Planet – Prologue arrives on September 22nd for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

MercurySteam’s most prominent upcoming game may be the Nintendo 3DS exclusive Metroid: Samus Returns, but they are also working on a brand new IP of their own. Raiders of the Broken Planet is a multiplayer third person shooter- and MercurySteam announced today that it will be getting an open beta on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The open beta will be held on September 15 and September 16, and will make two missions playable for players- First Round, which is the game’s tutorial, and Hanging By The Thread, which you can play single player or multiplayer (the tutorial is single player only, for obvious reasons).

That apart, we also got a brand new developer diary for the game, this one focusing on the character Lycus Dion. You can check it out for yourself below. Raiders of the Broken Planet is due to launch for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 22 (September is going to be a big month for MercurySteam).

The big thing for both the Xbox One and the PS4 has been, as far as I am concerned, not 4K, but HDR- higher resolution is all well and good, but in my opinion, it is the greatly enhanced visual quality you get via HDR implementation that truly makes a difference. And one of the games that will support HDR on consoles is MercurySteam’s Raiders of the Broken Planet .

We’ve heard a lot about how the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X handle 4K implementation– but what about HDR? In an interview with GamingBolt, Dave Cox of Mercury Steam, currently working on Raiders of the Broken Planet for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, explained how HDR works on both systems.

“Xbox One X required us to generate two images, an HDR one and a LDR one, to be used on non-HDR compatible TVs. On PS4, this process is done automatically by the system, simplifying things greatly,” Cox explained. “Overall, the process has not been too costly because Mercury Engine 5 already worked with HDR assets.”

This is actually interesting, and not something that many knew about before- I imagine it makes sense, but I am a bit surprised Microsoft didn’t add functionality to automatically downscale HDR images to LDR into the Xbox One X, as well. May be in the future, but as of right now, the game supports HDR on the new consoles and it’s easier to get it done on the PS4.

With the Xbox One X releasing in November and the benefits of the console being more clear, it’s also becoming pretty obvious who it’s for. Those who wish for improved performance and resolution for Xbox One titles might like it. Those interested in 4K gaming, though terms and conditions apply, may want it. But what about those who play third party titles on other platforms like the PS4 Pro? What will the Xbox One X provide for them?

At least with regards to Raiders of the Broken Planet, the upcoming action adventure multiplayer title who’s epilogue goes live later this month, MercurySteam’s Dave Cox said to GamingBolt that the differences between the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro versions would be hard to notice, unless and until you are an expert who loves performance analysis. That’s keeping in mind that the Xbox One X is far ahead of the PS4 Pro in terms of GPU power and memory bandwidth.

“We always strive to get the most out of each platform while maintaining a uniform quality, ensuring the player will have the best possible experience regardless of his or her platform of choice. If you are an expert who enjoys detailed performance analysis, you will notice slight variations in definition and frame rate, but otherwise it will be difficult to notice any differences,” said Cox when we specifically asked whether the difference will be visible to the players.

MercurySteam had confirmed that it will be releasing Raiders of the Broken Planet with enhancements tailor made for the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro. How did the developer go about assessing the capabilities of both consoles before development actually began?

Cox noted that, “It’s always easier for us to upscale a project. Having extra power is never an issue, as we work with assets of the greatest quality. We must find the balance between what we have and what we can put into the game, and making sacrifices is never easy. Both the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X are upgrades of existing consoles, thus for us it is just a question of scaling up the quality of the assets.”

The free Prologue for Raiders of the Broken Planet releases on September 22nd for Xbox One, PS4 and PC with subsequent episodes to follow in the future. Stay tuned for full interview soon.

Mercury Steam, the guys best known for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, are doing a 4v1 multiplayer co-op game next. It’s called Raiders of the Broken Planet, and in a new development diary that they released for the game today, they discussed how that one player, the antagonist, will figure into gameplay.

Simply put, that one player can drop in and out of the game at any time they want. Their basic objective is to prevent the team of four players from completing the mission objective that they are tasked with. They can stroll in at any time to do so. They are fully aware of your abilities, and they know how to counter them. Essentially, they are like a mixture of a dungeon master and troll, and their sole aim seems to be to grief you. Thankfully, there’s one of them, and four of you, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to work around them.

You can get more details by watching the video for yourself. Raiders of the Broken Planet launches on PC, PS4, and Xbox One later this year.