Dust Front RTS Demo · published
This article is a compilation of information you might have heard or seen on other platforms. Its purpose is to share some (but not all) news updates with people who may not follow the project as closely.
For people who have already know all this, there is also some additional information here.
First, information with pictures about the game itself, and then a small F.A.Q about important provisions.
In the game, artillery and its advantage on the battlefield play a very important role. Artillery acts as a kind of ultimatum force, which can be eliminated either with excessive losses (depends on composition of the army), other artillery counter-fire, or aircraft from tactical support abilities.
When the artillery is firing at distances beyond the "range of the auto-attack", they changes the angle of the сannons and the shells fly along a more curved trajectory and with a greater spread.
Heavy Dreadnoughts fire at long range guided by the spotters.
For beyond ranges, artillery uses a squad of spotter artillerymen.
Who are also snipers at the same time. Squad can direct heavy artillery fire at any distance. The free artillery with the required mode will immediately aim at the target after correction is completed.
Spotter squad themselves.
Correction process.
The infantry in the game works in a relatively simple way. Each dedicated squad on the screen is a separate unit. The soldiers in it intuitively display the survivability of the squad, the number of HP. Infantrymen die in strict sequence regarding the number of hp.
The number of remaining soldiers in the squad does not affect the damage they deal. It can be said that the fewer people in a squad, the more fiercely they fight. (Why? Because they eat a constant amount of the limit, and I don't wanna more complex system) The exception is when there is a unique soldier in the squad with his own personal weapons, then if he dies, then his weapons no longer work.
Examples will be given below. [The numbers are shown on the image above]
1. A soldier in a squad of 5. All soldiers are the same, so he will fight for 5 in case the unit has little health left.
2. The rocket man in the rocket squad is always the last to die, so the unit will not lose its firing function.
3. A rocket man's friend with binoculars, in fact he stands there for the mass.
4. A rocket man in a large squad of riflemen, he may die earlier than the unit, and therefore the squad will lose DPS on tanks at a certain HP mark.
5. The sniper in the gunner squad is the main one, therefore he dies last and the unit does not lose the ability to shoot with a sniper rifle.
6. His friend with artillery guidance devices dies first, therefore, the squad loses the opportunity to direct artillery fire with his death.
7. A big warrior with an autocannon is the main one. His henchmen have different weapon and always die before him.
If you need to refill your squad (for some reason). Just heal the unit.
The vehicles are a bit more complex. The game features a differentiated armor system, represented by two conical shapes: one for the front arc and a combined one for the "sides and rear."
Not all vehicles have this mechanic. For example, some heavy mutant's units, being a "vehicle" type, have all-around armor and do not take extra damage when hit in the side or rear.
Tracked vehicles, wheeled, and some others can have reverse move. This can be useful not only to expose your stronger frontal armor but also for more effective maneuvers and retreats.
Their behavior also differs. Tracked vehicles mostly turn in place, wheeled ones have a wider turning radius, while smooth-moving hovers "drift fluidly into the desired direction."
All this adds a layer of difficulty to controlling them and leaves a relatively wide scope for micro. But whether or not to engage in it is entirely up to you.
The tank turns on the spot (if the limit angle exceeds a certain value) and reverse moving.
Some light vehicles, particularly on wheels, can even drift while turns and have inertia when moving.
The mechanics and features of wrecks differ depending on the faction.
For example, mutant corpses spawn flies—a free but weak unit that can effectively attack enemy units of any type. Some corpses can create swarms of worms in large numbers, essentially serving as the mutant faction's standard infantry.
In contrast, the Industrial Empire's vehicle wrecks stand out for their ability to restore destroyed super-heavy vehicles using a special repair unit, and preserving these expensive machines.
Platform like Patreon.
I didn't want this, delayed it as long as possible, but sometimes you do what you had to do.
The project and I, as a developer, now have a donation aggregator on the boosty platform. If you want to support the project, you can still simply tell your friends, acquaintances, favorite streamers, or bloggers—and that will be more than enough—but now there is also the option of financial support.
I ask you to read the text in the header on Dust Front Boosty page, which describes the main points regarding donations. I have big plans for this year, but don't view donations as something that will speed up development. It's more accurate to consider that they will help maintain the pace. Of course, everything depends on the volume, but don't expect more than just supporting the project. Boosty page has been translated into 2 languages. Russian and English. You can also send a fixed donation without subscribing by this link: https://boosty.to/rtsdimon/donate
The part with the pictures is over, now the part without the pictures begins. ːsteamboredː
This question often pops up wherever the game is discussed. Unfortunately, I won't be able to answer it until I make an official announcement regarding the launch date.
As a developer, I'm not a fan of postponements. I have no interest in doing damage control in community or media if, for various unavoidable reasons, the date has to be moved. I prefer avoid it by design.
And your waiting is cost free, mine is not.
This is not really a popular question, but I would like to answer it for prevention. The project doesn't need it. There is no need to overestimate the scale of the game. This is a real-time strategy game with a global map. Roughly speaking: no more, no less.
The game has a certain amount of replayability mechanics and it took a lot of time to develop and invent them. That was the task, to create an entertaining single-player RTS.
Furthermore, I have no intention of building a multiplayer community. Such a community would inevitably be too small, yet it would always demand the lion's share of attention regarding support and post-release discussions. And I would inevitably have to choose between two fires (single player and multiplayer).
These are not the only reasons, but that would be too much for today on this topic.
There aren't many updates not only on Steam but on other platforms either. I'm a very busy person, and my job is to develop the game until it release, not empty talk about it. But I understand that many people are interested in advertising, not the result. I don't really care about that.
Steam requires a different approach. It's not Twitter; posts need to be long, substantial, translated, and formatted. Key limitations: no embedded video player, and GIFs must be under 5MB—less than even Discord allows. Since mini videos are central to Dust Front posting/marketing elsewhere, this is a significant hurdle for "just copy-past".
Furthermore, I don't follow modern community-building trends. I develop the game according to my own vision, and the results speak for themselves. I won't create artificial news cycles, at least not before release.
All the necessary information is written on the Steam page. There won't be any test on game knowledge when it comes out (at least, no mandatory one ːsteamsaltyː).
I'd also prefer people discover as much as possible in the game itself. I don't want to spoiler content for marketing purposes so often.
And again. These are not the only reasons, but that would be too much for today on this topic.
It is important to understand that the game is a real-time strategy, which in itself is a complex genre, but by adding a global map and making the gameplay directly dependent on it, this essentially means creating two games in one.
The most time-consuming part of development is designing and creating systems that align with my personal preferences while also feeling organic within the game. This is the key factor. Fortunately, the foundational design phase is a thing of the long past.
This is a systems-driven, not a story-linear, game. Its core lies in capturing territories, conquering the map, and methodical RTS battles. This is the essence of the gameplay, which is why all development effort is concentrated on at least one such campaign.
It's important to consider the scale: this is not a large-scale project. A single campaign is designed for approximately 15 hours. My goal is to create a small but comprehensive game that fully meets my genre requirements.
Thank you for reading.
You can find news about the game on the following social networks in a different, smaller, less official format:
VK (for Russian community): https://vk.com/DustFront
Twitter/X: https://x.com/RtsDimon
Discord: https://discord.gg/Xhe4dT3