End of the year update: DORF now has physics

Hello everyone,

First off, thanks to everyone who voted for us in the IndieDB Best Upcoming Indie Games list. I honestly wasn't expecting to see that, given how little I kept that page updated.

This month was pretty busy for reasons beyond this project, as you might imagine, but we did manage to implement a projectile physics system, and neat little things like ammo casing ejection systems for certain units. 

This system originally started as something that would solely exist as its own distinct casing projectile function, but we realized it would actually just be more efficient to create a broad-use projectile physics system and just use that for casings as well as for existing weapons and debris. Despite the more accurate simulated physics, this new physics projectile type is just as optimized as the previous less advanced projectile system, the latter of which will likely be dummied out after we completely polish this physics projectile type.

This physics projectile type has also been applied to explosive debris, adding a bit extra realism and dynamic feel to battles. This new projectile type can also stick to the ground after ceasing movement, adding a bit of extra scarification to battle sites, although for performance reasons, these projectiles will eventually despawn.

Physics has also been applied to certain weapons, such as grenades and dumbfire bombs, to add a bit of extra realism. Grenades and similar thrown weapons will bounce slightly and remain on the ground a bit before detonation. This opens up some more possibilities, such as a weapon similar to a traditional cannonball or a WWII-style skip bomb, which falls short of its maximum range but continues bouncing along its initial trajectory until it strikes a target.

There are still aspects of this system that need additional polishing. Right now, physics projectiles can't really be aimed properly, and units that utilize them as a weapon can only fire them to roughly their maximum range, and will overshoot the target if it is closer than the maximum range. 

This new system also opens up further additional possibilities. While its current use isn't totally obvious, we have added an actorspawner feature for projectiles. This could allow for something like a type of artillery that unleashes smaller hostile units, or a unit that fires missiles that deploy into drones, or a means for a psychic unit to create psychic illusions that enemies will target. Another feature could be an aircraft which drops landmines.

A similar (though distinct) feature that this leans into would be a warhead type that spawns a different warhead type upon detonation. This could be used for things such as a torpedo launcher that fires its torpedoes through the air, which then become submerged when contacting the water (or similarly a torpedo-bomber aircraft), or artillery shells which unleash chemical gas clouds. The plan is for a number of naval units to fire torpedoes through a launcher (rather than them being fired beneath the surface from the beginning), and the current Imperial Destroyer and its center-mounted torpedo launching turret was designed with this in mind, it simply needs to be implemented. Similarly, some Empire units will make use of a chemical gas, such as artillery which can alternate between firing HE or chem rounds, although it's not known how exactly this should be implemented in terms of UX; should this be an alternative fire that can be toggled on or off, or should firing chemical weapons be a specific order/target type?

We are also floating the idea of releasing a basic demo sometime in Spring, though this depends on some more systems being finished first and a substantial amount of polishing, as right now, a lot of units and buildings only partially work, a lot of each factions' tech trees are missing, and basebuilding/resource gathering in general is in a half-implemented state. There's also the issue of the new rendering lighting/shadowing system I've brought up many times, which will require almost every graphical asset in the game be stripped out and completely replaced/updated, which as you can imagine, is no small task.

That's all the news we have for now. As always, thank you all for the continued support. I also decided to make this post completely public, as we haven't released many public updates on our other social media channels recently, so the people who follow this project but are unsubscribed should have a better idea of the status of DORF. We are also still trying to work out all the kinks regarding implementing that new rendering system that we've talked about for the better part of half a year, and there are a few upcoming features we want to get out, such as the spreading wildfires mentioned in last month's update post, and other features like terraforming may show up sooner rather than later, depending on how things go.