RTS Movement + Navigation + Destination
- by Oliver Jones
I'm looking into building my own simple RTS game, and I'm trying to get my head around the movement of single, and multi selected units. (Developing in Unity)
After much research, I now know that its a bigger task than I thought. So I need to break it down. I already have an A* navigation system with static obstacles taken into account.
I don't want to worry about dynamic local avoidance right now. So I guess my first break down question would be:
How would I go about moving mutli units to the same location. Right now - my units move to the location, but because they're all told to go to the same location, they start to 'fight' over one another to get there.
I think theres two paths to go down:
1) Give each individual unit a separate destination point that is close to the 'master' destination point - and get the units to move to that.
2) Group my selected units in a flock formation, and move that entire flock group towards the destination point.
Question about each path:
1a) How can I go about finding a suitable destination point that is close to the master destination? What happens if there isn't a suitable destination point?
1b) Would this be more CPU heavy? As it has to compute a path for each unit? (40 unit count).
2a) Is this a good idea? Not giving the units themselves a destination, but instead the flock (which holds the units within). The units within the flock could then maintain a formation (local avoidance) - though, again local avoidance is not an issue at this current time.
2b) Not sure what results I would get if I have a flock of 5 units, or a flock of 40 units, as the radius would be greater - which might mess up my A* navigation system. In other words: A flock of 2 units will be able to move down an alleyway, but a flock of 40 wont. But my nav system won't take that into account.
I would appreciate any feedback.
Kind regards,
Ollie Jones
