Other than buying the Torque engine and accomping guide, (as well as the other expensive art/modeling programs that go with it) what tools exsist for those who want to create their own RTS? I'm thinking it would be best if I modified an exsisting game perhaps, but from the ground up is perfectally acceptable.

I'm not 100% sure but you could probably licence the engine used by a similar rts game to the one you want to make. It all depends on how serious you are about creating an RTS game and how much you are willing to invest.

Try ORTS. It is an open-source RTS engine. While it is not very well documented, it can be a great starting platform to build an RTS.

Maybe you should go for a graphics only engine and then add your RTS specific functions to it. OGRE would be a great start here. It is a feature-rich graphics engine and you can use it for free (even with commercial projects) without making your code open-source. Moreover, it is well documented and has an relativly experienced and helpful community...

EDIT: I forgot. There is also TA Spring, which is a complete RTS. It is open-source, however, and I'm sure you can somehow use their engine. I'm not sure about the license, though.
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/

Looks like something to use, the TA Spring project. Hopefully the've decient doccumentation.

*EDIT* It says it runs off the game Total Anhialation; so I'm guessing I can't do anything with this without TA? i.e., it can't be run as a stand alone

The code is standalone. To run the code, you'll need either original TA, or mods/modded maps. Fortunately, when you download Spring, there is already a mod included (XTA6 which stand for Xtended Total Annihilation), with 2 maps.

I took another look at that other one, seems really well done too; I saw some impressive screenshots. I wish there was some better doccumentation, but perhaps I'll find some user written stuff.

I am fancy of RTS games we even have one on our site (www.tamestorm.com) : The Virus. I'm just wondering if it's possible to know more about your project. RTS is very hard in programming and in ART and in AI programming. I think it's harders gerne but it's not so profitable.

I'll check yours out.

As for my project, nothing definate yet, just a few buds of mine and I looking to toy around and have a learning experience. Is an RTS really that hard?

*EDIT* Come to think of it what is the url for the Torque based engine? It seems to have slipped my mind; I didn't find much of a manual for ORTIS so I might have to check this one out instead, if the Abstract RTS Engine I discovered isn't simple enough for this noob.

[Edited by - TheKnight on May 5, 2006 7:22:00 AM]