Hello all

me and my group are thinking about making some AI studies on RTS games so we are searching for a game engine and an open source game so we can inject our code and make our changes

we don't mind using commercial engine ... all we need is an engine and a game that editing it won't be a hard task ( well documented and Object Oriented and have good support and community ) also we prefer it to be written in C++

Thanks

Have you considered the Unreal engine? It has been written in C++ although you need to buy a license to have access to the code. If you download the evaluation version, you can use it aswell and write Unreal-code to create your own mod.

Unreal-script has many similarities to Java and if you are familiar with the C++ syntax, you should be able to pick Unreal-script very fast.

I used the Unreal engine a few years ago for displaying an AI pathfinding implementation as part of a school assignment, which I completed having little knowledge about the engine.

I've never used these, but a Google search for "rts game engine" revealed these:

http://springrts.com/ - looks very interesting
http://skatgame.net/mburo/orts/orts.html
http://glest.org/en/index.php - apparently gets good reviews

Something on this order might be better than Unreal or others as they are already targeted toward RTS. The others might require a lot of extra effort to get them to that particular genre. Just my opinion, though.

-Kirk

this might not be quite what your looking for, but maybe it could be of interest. I only just posted an image of the day for Cyberlympics.com. Currently it only provides a battle between groups of tanks, but I can add new games. RTS is something I have been thinking about, but of course on a simplified scale.

What are your points of interest?

Creating units and gathering resources should not be hard to add, maybe not beautiful. I already have implemented walls (not online) so pathfinding could/must be done. My implementation gets slow with a lot of objects. On the other hand I've implemented a kind of video-system, so it would not be hard to have things to show. Might be a good, might be a bad idea, up to you. Depends on the complexity you require.

Coding will likely be easier than with other implementations.

There's this little game called Starcraft. Largely unknown except in certain circles (like the world). There are a collection of open APIs that have been developed for it so that people can plug in their own AI. There are even competitions for it.

That should suffice.

thanks all ... but please consider that we also want an RTS game that we can have access to it's code ...as we are not going to develop our own game so I am not just searching for an engine

thanks,

Quote: Original post by TeCNoYoTTa
thanks all ... but please consider that we also want an RTS game that we can have access to it's code ...as we are not going to develop our own game so I am not just searching for an engine

thanks,

I believe all three of those I posted are open source.

-Kirk

Edit: And free.

Note that the Spring Engine has several open source games written for it, including one that is even in the public domain. That is your best bet I think. Look at this:

http://springrts.com/wiki/AI:Development

I see several active threads on the forum about AI made by students.

Next best after that might be Glest, then Globulation 2 or Bos Wars.