Game Engine Design

Well, this is the first proper post on the subject of coding which essentially is what this blog is all about. Currently in my spare time I'm using Unity to create an RTS game, I don't want to give away much more than that at the moment on the actual subject of the game, however the actual process of building a full 3d game in a modern game engine is completely new to me. This means that I'll be documenting my process being various parts of the system along with my thoughts and reasoning behind certain decisions, while I don't claim these are all going to be correct or necessarily make it into the finished game, hopefully they'll give you an insight into what I'm doing and why.

The first steps I've taken is working out the things an RTS would (or should) have the ability to do, I believe this to be:

• Resource management
• Unit creation
• Building creation
• Using your units/buildings to overcome some form of task or difficulty
• Achieving an end goal for the level you're playing
• You should be able to navigate around the map
• Areas of the map should be dulled to it (usually with a fog of war, or cloud cover)
• Occasionally on some levels events will occur at set points or when particular criteria are met
• You (the player) should have a clear mind of what you need to achieve to complete the level
• You should be able to easily select a unit and see it's current health
• Units should be able to navigate from their current location to one you tell them to, navigating around objects such as buildings, mountains etc
• You should be able to see what your current resource levels are at any time
• Occasionally we may want fully scripted "cut scenes" to happen, demonstrating something such as a "hero unit" killing a particular enemy or being captured as part of the story
• Buildings should be upgradable
• Units should be able to receive promotions to improve their stats,

There are far more things that I've not mentioned I'm sure, however I think it's best to take it one step at a time, I'll do another post explaining exactly what I chose to focus on first from that list.