🦥Unit Formation

Overview

UnitFormation is a component designed to manage the spatial arrangement of units in various formations within a game environment.

Properties

• Place On Ground: Determines whether the formation should align with valid NavMesh surfaces, ensuring units are placed on navigable terrain.

• Max Ground Distance: Defines the maximum distance that the component checks to adjust unit positions to the nearest valid ground point from their original formation position.

• Noise Enabled: Adds random noise to the formation positions, which can be useful for creating more natural or less grid-like unit positions.

• Units: A list of Transforms representing the units that are to be arranged in the formation. These units must contain a component which implements IFormationUnit to receive new destination commands.

Public Interface

• SetUnitFormation(IFormation formation)

  Sets a new formation pattern for organizing units.

• ApplyCurrentUnitFormation(UnitFormationData formationData)

  Applies the specified formation data to the units.

• CalculatePositions(Vector3 position, Vector3 direction)

  Calculates the positions for the units based on a specified starting position and directional vector.

Customisation

Currently the provided components support Unity's NavMesh system, but formations do not depend on this. You can use your own navigation system using the IFormationUnit interface.

public interface IFormationUnit
{
    public void SetTargetDestination(Vector3 newTargetDestination, 
                                     float newFacingAngle);
}

Best Practices

• When using Place On Ground, ensure that the scene's NavMesh is properly configured to match the gameplay area as the component relies on this for placing units correctly.

• When Noise Enabled is enabled in tight formations, it can lead to disorganised arrangment.

• Regularly update the Units list to reflect any runtime changes in the unit group, such as additions or removals. Destroying a unit and not updating it, may result in invalid position calculation because the component it will still count it as living.

Example Use Case

// Assume this script is attached to a GameObject that manages a group of soldier units
void Start() {
    var formation = new RectangleFormation(10, 5);
    GetComponent<UnitFormation>().SetUnitFormation(formation);
    GetComponent<UnitFormation>().ApplyCurrentUnitFormation(transform.position, transform.forward);
}