Command and Conquer had traditionally used a “right-pillar” control interface, with your map at the top. utility controls like “sell building” or “power down”, followed by a build selection screen below. There you had 4 panels you could select between - “main base” buildings, defensive buildings, infantry, and vehicles - and you could scroll up and down a given panel. So long as you had the right production building, you could select things to build from anywhere on the map. If a unit had a “special ability”, it would be triggered by double-clicking on the unit.
Come 2003’s Command and Conquer: Generals, the UI had been totally redone to resemble the layout of Blizzard’s wildly popular Warcraft 3: The control panel now sat at the bottom of the screen, with the map on the left. Building a particular kind of unit required you to select the building or unit that produced it. Selecting an individual unit gave you a list of magic spells special abilities it could take, such as using an alternative weapon or purchasing a particular upgrade.
Generals also took the base construction and resource harvesting systems from Blizzard’s games. The entire game feels like it should have been named ModernCraft or something instead of C&C.
Going the other way, Warcraft 1 and 2 used used a left-justified UI that was very similar to the one C&C used, but with elements that would evolve into the StarCraft and Warcraft 3 UI.
Age of Empires was, afaik, the first RTS with UI on the bottom, Starcraft and Warcraft 3 both took inspiration from it, though they differed slightly on placement of information
Command and Conquer had traditionally used a “right-pillar” control interface, with your map at the top. utility controls like “sell building” or “power down”, followed by a build selection screen below. There you had 4 panels you could select between - “main base” buildings, defensive buildings, infantry, and vehicles - and you could scroll up and down a given panel. So long as you had the right production building, you could select things to build from anywhere on the map. If a unit had a “special ability”, it would be triggered by double-clicking on the unit.
Come 2003’s Command and Conquer: Generals, the UI had been totally redone to resemble the layout of Blizzard’s wildly popular Warcraft 3: The control panel now sat at the bottom of the screen, with the map on the left. Building a particular kind of unit required you to select the building or unit that produced it. Selecting an individual unit gave you a list of
magic spellsspecial abilities it could take, such as using an alternative weapon or purchasing a particular upgrade.Generals also took the base construction and resource harvesting systems from Blizzard’s games. The entire game feels like it should have been named ModernCraft or something instead of C&C.
Going the other way, Warcraft 1 and 2 used used a left-justified UI that was very similar to the one C&C used, but with elements that would evolve into the StarCraft and Warcraft 3 UI.
Oh absolutely. OP only asked about UI, so I focused on that. But Generals had a lot of WC3 flavor in it.
Age of Empires was, afaik, the first RTS with UI on the bottom, Starcraft and Warcraft 3 both took inspiration from it, though they differed slightly on placement of information