End of the month update

Hello everyone,

First off, thanks to all the new backers. There seem to have been a few articles written about D.O.R.F. by some online publications, so that has certainly helped get more eyes on the project.

Onto actual development, work on the resourcing system is still being done. There's been a lot of tweaking, and revising existing concepts into something more workable. Long story short, some of the ideas we had regarding how resource gathering and delivering units should function in relation to the resource logistics concepts didn't quite work, so we're retooling some concepts to make sure these concepts are implemented smoothly.

Thankfully it's not as though we've had to scrap all that much: D.O.R.F. now *finally* has a functional resource system and harvesters.

Unlike in other RTS games where there is usually a single type of resource gatherer, D.O.R.F. works a bit differently. Resources aren't just gathered and instantly available to the player once deposited in a building, and instead will be need to be processed first. Your HQ building, as well as dedicated Refinery buildings, will take resources gathered by your units and convert them into something you can actually use. The junk harvested by your Harvesters and other units will be converted into useable Materiel, while Crude Oil extracted from pumps will be converted into useable Fuel (don't worry, this game won't have some kind of fuel system that vehicle units can run out of; Fuel simply refers to a second resource type that more advanced units need to be constructed. Think Vespene, from Starcraft).

Another thing to mention: infantry units aren't just combat units, and will be able to perform more utilitarian tasks, namely resource gathering.

Of course, dedicated resource units are more efficient at harvesting. But this does give infantry units a bit more utility, especially since destroyed vehicles, structures, and even environmental objects like trees and boulders will leave debris behind, which can hinder or block certain units and prevent construction. So being able to clear it with basic units, instead of solely relying on dedicated Harvesters, is obviously useful.

There's also the aforementioned logistics system. Resources must be transferred from the Refinery, to production structures to be able to build units, or to construction sites when constructing buildings. This can be done with a number of transport units, but each side will get a dedicated unit for rapidly transporting processed Materiel and Fuel from building to building. While currently, this must be done manually, the bulk of our work lately has been in trying to devise a system that allows this to be automated enough to avoid tedium, while being useable enough to avoid situations where the player has seemingly no control over his own resource units.

Of course this isn't the only way to move resources around; there's also work being done on a system that allows resources to move from building to building via pipelines. These will move resources around very efficiently, but obviously, being stationary structures, they are not as flexible as mobile forklifts and trucks.

There are also plans for more advanced methods of resource transfer as well - we want to include trains and aircraft as part of this resource logistics system - but such things are dependent on an update to the engine's pathing logic, so those are a ways off and out of the scope of the current phase of development.

That's all for development progress now, more to come (hopefully) soon as we make more progress in implementing this new resource system.