End of February Update - More Resource Shenanigans

Hello everyone,

February was spent mostly working on further optimizations and getting more working resource-related systems. While it's difficult to really demonstrate some of the optimization changes, after some reworking with the way the game loads .obj files, it now performs more efficiently than before.

The pipelines and conveyors are now back in the game in working order, and we're testing out some additional resource functions, like a dedicated solid materials refinery structure for the Empire faction.

 

Note that there's still a bit of glitchiness in terms of how the conveyor crates are spawned. Sometimes they appear on a line where they shouldn't quite be yet.

 
As can be seen somewhat from these screenshots, buildings will all have visible "plugs" on them that correspond to pipe or conveyor entry points, allowing you to know where to place them when layout out your base and its logistics functionalities.

 
The actual 3D models viewed in Substance Painter, before being rendered into sprites that will be used ingame.

There's also been a lot of work done on the resources themselves. This is an especially time-consuming process, as each type has anywhere from 200-400 frames. These resource range anywhere from piles of scrap of different material types, natural obstacles like rocks, to actually pre-refined resources like stacks of war materiel and fuel drums. Most resource types also include a "light" and "dense" variant, to better sell the effect when buildings are destroyed, where the nearer to the footprint of the building, the denser the piles are. These also have different properties, with denser ones not just containing more resources but also blocking most unit types.

 

Creating resource piles also presents an additional issue where (in most cases) sloped variants of resource tiles must be included, adding to the workload. 

Obviously plain old rocks aren't super helpful as something to be harvested, but do present a gameplay possibility. Players can harvest them not just for the meager amount of material resources they provide, but since they can block or severely slow down units attacking to cross them, players may be incentivized to leave them be or remove them due to their use as a natural barrier; they could be useful as a natural wall for your base in the early stages of a match, for instance. The same can apply for most resources; scrap left over from destroyed buildings and units presents more resource value, but also acts as a barrier, and can be useful for defending infantry.

 
 
There are also these pre-refined materials and fuel drums, which functionally act as a sort of equivalent to Blue Tiberium from Tiberian Sun, or gems from Red Alert, since obviously, not needing to be refined means they can be accessed more quickly once collected. (Note that the fuel drums should probably be desaturated, as right now they are overly colorful looking)

There's also an obvious issue with the second image, wherein the shadows don't appear to be working. While shadows do work with resource tiles, a bug currently causes them to be weirdly misaligned depending on the sprite frame.

 As an example, the shadow meshes (the white silhouettes) seem more accurately aligned with their sprites on the box materials than they do on the fuel drums in the lower right. Just another issue we're going to have to investigate.

Unrelated to resources, here are some pretty little walls and gates to make your base look a lot nicer.

 

 Note that there's another problem with the gates, wherein units seem to partially clip through them before opening. This is more an issue with unit pathing, as right now, units can only be as large as a single tile, so vehicles will often clip through nearby objects. This will be addressed in the future with some pathing changes that allow for multi-tile unit collision (ie: a tank that is 2x2 tiles in scale, while naval ships would likely be as big as 3x3 or 4x4). There's also a bug where damaged gate sprites use the undamaged shadow mesh, but that will be presumably quite easy to fix.

Another thing to note about the gates is the adjacent guard tower on each. Gates in DORF will make use of the building operators/indoor fighting mechanic, insofar as gates will always have a small tower or guard house which possesses one or two operating technicians inside. If you use infantry of your own to capture the guard house, you can own the gate, allowing your units to slip inside while remaining shut for the enemy. For this reason, there's actually 8 versions of the gate to accommodate every facing you'd want for a gate relative to the base layout, as obviously the gatehouse can only be entered from one direction, preferably from inside the base. Ingame, a player would access these alternative rotations through a hotkey pressed while placing the structure. Some other structures (like refineries and factories) will also have at least one alternative rotation, as structure facing is important for base layout. Also, while a purely visual choice, once we do get deferred lighting, headlights and light scattering working, it would be cool to include a visible spotlight as a part of the guard tower.

As a fun final note, here's some reworked Engineer sprites:
 
That's all for this month. Ideally we'll get to working on more vehicles and aircraft next month, as the project to add fully rotatable/tilting sprites for units should be complete by then.