Steel Command is a classic-style RTS inspired by games from the 1990s and 2000s, including Command & Conquer, StarCraft, and Total Annihilation. It is being developed in Godot by Smitty and Syphotic, a two-person team.

The game includes a built-in mission editor for creating skirmish maps, custom missions, and complete solo campaigns. Players can upload what they make to the Steam Workshop for others to play.

The editor also includes the Creation Cube, a 3D modeling tool for making environment props inside the game. 

Map edits affect more than how the battlefield looks. Buildings and other obstacles also change where units can move, so the navigation data needs to update whenever players add or remove one.

Steel Command uses Godot's built-in navigation system. A NavigationMesh marks the areas units can cross. NavigationRegions place those meshes in the game world, and the NavigationServer uses them to calculate paths.

With one NavigationRegion covering the entire battlefield, adding or removing any obstacle would require the full NavigationMesh to be rebaked. So Smitty split the map into a grid of smaller regions that stitch together.

When an obstacle changes, the game rebakes only the NavigationMeshes in the affected regions. The other regions remain unchanged.

Interested in Steel Command? You can learn more about the game and follow its development through the links below:

If you want to learn more about shaders in Godot, The Godot Shaders Bible covers topics like stylized shading, screen-space VFX, lighting, and vertex manipulation through step-by-step examples.

It is a good starting point for developers who want to better understand how shaders work and improve the visuals of their games.