RAIN for RTS games?

[hardcoderParticipant]

Hey,

straight to the point: is RAIN suitable for RTS games? I mean: couple of hundreds of units, navigating on 3D terrain, moving in formations and fighting each other. If yes, what would be the way to approach it?

[primeKeymaster]

That’s tough to answer, because it depends on how you plan to build your RTS. I’ll answer it this way:

If I were going to build Starcraft on Unity would I start with RAIN? Yes. But I would also expect to do a lot of tuning, customizing, and writing complementary systems to manage computation and performance.

One other issue though: most RTS games require a dynamic nav mesh. There’s been a lot of talk about that on the forums lately. Although it is a feature on the roadmap, RAIN doesn’t currently support it.

[hardcoderParticipant]

Thanks for your reply. Starting with RAIN was indeed my idea, I was just worried that it mint not be good idea at all for some reason. I am thinking about getting your Warfighter AI package and see it it is suitable to adjust for hundreds of units miving in formations on the battlefield. I am not worried about dynamic navmeshes. TBH we won’t probably even bother with dynamic obstacle avoidance to save CPU cycles, it is not going to be a simulation after all. Any more hints on how to start?

[primeKeymaster]

I don’t think our Warfighter AI package (Squad Command) is a good starting point for hundreds of units. Don’t get me wrong, I like our package a lot. However, the soldier model used in that package doesn’t scale to hundreds. You’ll start seeing quite a bit of performance drop once you hit about 20 soldiers. The problem can be solved with a simpler model and LOD (including possibly AI-LOD). Pick up Squad Command if you want a good starting point for building soldier AI, but not as a roadmap for scaling.

[hardcoderParticipant]

I was planning on swiching to low-poly models 😉 My questions are strictly AI-wise also because mu understanding is that Warfighter demo has formations support. Does it mean it is optimized for pathfinding for groups / formations? I would assume that only leader does full path search and rest of the squad just follows w/ obstacle avoidance?

[DrisangParticipant]

Would RAIN be suitable for a futuristic city building game? Specifically if I just want NPCs to go,via flight, from a mine to a storage facility upon detecting the mine is full. Then another unit from a factory goes to, via a road, the storage facility upon detecting raw materials are available. I would like to have a combination of roads and flight paths if possible. I am considering possibly considering adding a military component where NPCs, in aircraft, come at entry/spawn points attempt to raid the city. I do not want direct control of NPCs like a traditional RTS, but move upon detecting certain conditions and/or for combat NPCs a priority of targets upon detecting them on grid.

[primeKeymaster]

Possibly, keeping in mind that RAIN doesn’t support dynamic nav mesh updates. But you could (and might want to anyway) do it using waypoint systems.

[DrisangParticipant]

Any news when dynamic nav mesh will be available for RAIN?

[joehesParticipant]

And can you release a starcraft sample project? If not for free, I would definitively pay for it.

• This reply was modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago by  joehes.

[Medusa ZenovkaParticipant]

Im building a RTS with RPG elements on maps that can reach epic sizes (2000×2000 map size, 0.1 = 1 Meter), also with dynamic platforms. For the former Im using the Unity 5 Navmesh-System, for the latter Im using NavMeshPro, a custom navmesh system heavily optimized to support dynamic navmeshes like space ships, giant freight elevators ect.

The reason why I now consider switching to RAIN is a runtime Navmesh generation, AI behaviors in general and the thought of an unified pathfinding system that features dynamic and static navmeshes.

Now my questions:
1. Can RAIN support about 1000 units or even more on a map (just pathfinding)?
2. Can you attach and use a navmesh to a gameobject and can children (units) use RAIN to navigate on their parent - multiple navmeshes?
3. Object avoidence?

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by  Medusa Zenovka.

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