I know that there’s already a topic for a RTS (in Unity?), but this isn’t meant (specifically) as a RTS course.
In some Games/RTS the buildings simply “pop up” (Anno, Age of empires, Civ V, nearly every Tower Defense ever) or are inflated (Empire Earth) like a bouncy castle. In the settlers 3, if you want to build any building, something interesting compared to other RTS’ happens:
Your workers actually build it, while interacting with the environment.
They first need to clear the construction site and carry the materials there. Only then can they start building. If the provided materials aren’t sufficient, the construction comes to a halt until new material arrives. Of course the ressources would need to be gathered beforehand.
This kind of interaction between different units, environment and ressources would be really interesting to implement in either engine, Unreal or Unity.
What you would need to be able to do:
- Ressource gathering in general (Cutting trees, mining ore/stone) Remember Runescape?
- Remove foliage from a choosen area on the landscape, flatten the ground (not just putting a square Stoneplate there), maybe even removing trees from the construction site before the flattening begins
- Animate a building? making building progression visible (floor, walls, roof) and maybe destructible (like in Battlefield)
- Unit AI / Logic, units working parallel on the same object (they shouldn’t play the same animation, or they’d overlap and that looks weird)
- Unit movement (pathing, transportation of material)
- Inventory, one unit can’t carry everything at once
This could work in RPG’s, Sandbox, Real-Time & Round-Based Strategy, Tower Defense or anything that builds anything at all, like spaceships, Tanks, Battleships…