Welcome to the official RIFTHIKER Re-Hike bulletin board! This is where every development progress recap gets published every month.
February 2025 Re-Hike
The Promise
This is the first ever recap made, I’ve missed working on RIFTHIKER for quite a while, and after my long hiatus I’ve decided to come back and finally deliver what I’ve promised (I think) almost a year ago!
I was not satisfied with how RIFTHIKER turned out to be, it’s a very unstable game, with a very unstable backend and with a very lackluster frontend… I’ll spare the tech mumbo jumbo and get straight to the point, RIFTHIKER Update 2 will completely rework the game from the ground up, allowing for better optimization, experience and less pain while I work on providing new content.
RIFTHIKER
Ever since I’ve started working on RIFTHIKER, I wanted to encapsulate that feeling of a game built in the late 2012, but running on a “reimagined” 2013 Roblox engine.
Graphics
With the restart of developing RIFTHIKER I wanted to start off where I was the least happy with, the looks of the game, the current RIFTHIKER does not reflect what I’ve initially expected the game to look like, I couldn’t manage to capture that feeling of desolation, moody and cold tones, and don’t even get me started on the retro look I was hoping to achieve.
like, what even is this…
So I’ve begun on fine-tuning the lighting, messing around with properties, but I still couldn’t get down that specific “bright” and “shiny” feeling the 2013 Roblox had, then I found out about this obscure post-processing effect… The ColorGradingEffect!
Effect Disabled ^
Effect Enabled ^
Materials
I know it may look like nothing based off of the images, but my god, it makes the game feel different, atleast to my eyes, THIS is what I’ve been seeking to achieve for so long, and I’ve finally got it! But what’s a 2013 Roblox “re-creation” without those old, beloved, materials? RIFTHIKER already has them implemented into the game, but they always looked off, they always darkened the colors and the studs just looked weird, but that was because I was using Roblox’s MaterialService, I’ve decided to go back to the scrapped way of applying materials, which is via a script, and I’ve improved upon that script and made an optimized, efficient material handling system.
just LOOK at how it shines! And how it doesn’t interfere with the original color…
And as for now, I am satisfied with the graphics, do I feel like there’s more room for improvement? Definitely, but I’ve got more important stuff to work with.
UI
I’ve also wanted to make something different for the game’s UI aswell, making it feel like it belongs to the 2013 Roblox era but with some creativity thrown into it, I’ve started by making a custom UI capable of handling Hints and Messages, queue system, and also giving them a typewrite effect.
And obviously, made the Healthbar and Mouse stay the same as current RIFTHIKER, since they don’t need to change.
The Inventory
And then… I’ve began making the inventory system and… I’ll let the pictures show you…
HOW DOES THIS EVEN HAPPEN?!?!
But, despite all odds, I’ve managed to make it work IN THE INTENDED WAY (because I know what I’m doing this time…) and the best thing about this is that it is fully compatible with touch screens! Finally allowing mobile Rifthikers to enjoy their handheld experience once and for all.
Mobile support will be implemented in the rest of the game, obviously
And finally, some more show-off of what I’ve done for the UI (and chat commands, as you can see in the background)
In regards to chat commands, I won’t leak what commands I’ve made for the game, as I don’t wanna spoil the March Re-Hike.
Mechanics
I’ve been working mostly on laying the fundamentals, most mechanics that you currently see on the current RIFTHIKER will be coming back to Update 2, There’s not really anything to show off here as it’s boring code mumbo jumbo you probably won’t understand, what I can say is that I haven’t been working on the Rifthiking system because, as I’ve said, I have to “re”-make the fundamentals of the game, what it works off of, and whatever else there is.
Conclusion
That concludes February 2025’s Re-Hike! You can expect another Re-Hike at the end of March, and so on, until this update finally releases! (I’ll probably re-use this format for providing some development leaks in regards to other updates, but eh), and also I’d like to give out an apology for the length this update is taking to release, I wasn’t originally proud with what direction RIFTHIKER was going on, and the hiatus I took and along with your devotion for RIFTHIKER has helped me get back on track - And I also apologize for keeping you guys in the dark for this long! Hope this Re-Hike was satisfying enough, See you on the next Re-Hike!
