I have looked through abit on the forums and as more time allows, I will read more. I am looking for advice, so I can look in the right direction instead of spinning my wheels. I have played RTS type games for a long while and habitually I am an mmorpg gamer. I honestly get pissed off with RTs games because every one of them have imbalances in my opinion that destroy the experience and show the true raw nature of the developers intent. So I am thinking of getting off my behind, take my decades of game playing and amateur programming experience and put my "money" where my mouth is.

I have looked through sourceforge for projects and kept my ears open to engines like unity. I am not looking to just jump in get my feet wet and crumble. I want to make a strong foundation. My overall criteria for finding an engine that is adaptable (and has current support) are as following:

1) Since HTML5 is now the proposed standard, this is a must

2) Desktop browser and mobile browser compatability (mobile may not need to be detailed as desktop, but if the interface can handle it, possibly. Mobile would be more of upkeep type of play unless it can be handled inteligently to perform similarly as desktop.

3) Optional-Dedicated EXE for those of us that like having a dedicated game file (android apk, pc exe, ios ipa, etc...)

4) Customisable UI_- Across all logins from same account. Open mobile, then open desktop, you see the similarity, Even though the 2 systems are different and the core UI may not handle the environment the same. I know LUA and games like WOW can have have some great ui's, but others like Everquest use a hacked XML.

5) Monetary concerns- Able to implement a payment system for goods or services. One that is able to work across all types of gaming environments.

Away from home, I am on my phone, at home I put down the phone or tablet and I 100% prefer my laptop. And so do many of my friends and -people I play with. Questions, comments, suggestions, advice. I have a pool of friends that are experienced on many levels of experience and walks of technology, so I may have people to pitch too, but I want to bring a solid idea to the table if I do.

Thank you and I appreciate the time anyone gives to my dilemna.

I don't know of any engine that meets all of those criteria, of course I haven't done much in depth searching.

If you have some ideas for an RTS, I recommend you use the map editor in star craft II to try out your ideas. The flexibility of that editor pretty much qualifies it as a game engine. The advantage of using SC is it already does most of the work for you, especially if you want to make an RTS. Once you have your idea working in the SC editor, only then then I would consider porting it to other platforms.

Since the SC editor appears to not be available separately from owning the game, that is not so appealing to spend money on a game that I will not play. I will read up more on the editor though and keep the idea on the backburner for now. I need to be able to have an environment that is accesible to others if I gather a team or even just co develop with one other. To even have a solid working idea I may need to share to work out preliminary kinks and being able to say hey get this and try it as opposed to pay this and try it is not the greatest way to garner support hehe.

Since the SC editor appears to not be available separately from owning the game, that is not so appealing to spend money on a game that I will not play. I will read up more on the editor though and keep the idea on the backburner for now. I need to be able to have an environment that is accesible to others if I gather a team or even just co develop with one other. To even have a solid working idea I may need to share to work out preliminary kinks and being able to say hey get this and try it as opposed to pay this and try it is not the greatest way to garner support hehe.

Yeah, I agree that it wouldn't be a good choice if you wanted to distribute your game. It would just be useful for testing ideas out. The idea here is to fail quickly so you can weed out bad ideas and identify good ideas.

Well, I don't think you will find an engine that will do exactly what you want out of the box, but here are some advices:

1) If you look for an engine built for RTS games front an center, have a look at the spring engine: springrts.com

I have no idea how good the engine is (never tried it myself), nor if it can be used for mobile or web games (doubt it, but see for yourself)

2) If you look for an engine that can create web and mobile games, Unity is not that bad. With the upcoming version you can build your game as WebGL game, which is close to what you would like to do I guess.

Of course:

- Unity is just a universal engine. All the RTS logic will have to be coded by you. You might find a template project in the asset store.... also you might find the building blocks needed (AI, damage systems, special effect systems) needed to shortcut things on the asset store too.

- Unitys built in GUI classes are less than optimal at the moment. A new more powerful version is planned for the upcoming version 5, and there are many GUI systems in the asset store that are very powerful. There is even a Scaleform adaption for Unity for a Indie-friendly price (around 300$... yes, its not free, but this is a pro-level component, so don't expect it to be free)... I am using NGUI since over a year and it does all I could wish for, even handling different aspect ratios and resolutions gracefully.

- The pay system needs either self-coding, or you need to get something from the asset store

Generally, if you can shell out some bucks, you will find a solution that does what you want almost-out-of-the-box on the asset store in Unity.

This project is far too large for your first game for "amateur programming experience". A multi-platform, RTS, with a database to store configuration files, with micro transactions, and networking support is WAY too complicated. Start smaller. ALOT SMALLER. :) Or you'll just wind up getting frustrated and quitting. Take a look at this article.

http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/your-first-step-to-game-development-starts-here-r2976

As for friend help, you might be able to convince them to help you for a bit, but if you aren't paying them anything, don't expect them to put in any serious effort. Sharing in all the sweet potential profits is NOT motivating.

If you have a good idea for an RTS, then modding an existing game like StarCraft to try it out is an excellent choice (great idea HappyCoder). Not only is the game already there (building, units, resources, combat, etc), but all the framework code is there as well (networking, matchmaking, control libraries etc.) If you don't feel like shelling $20 out for StarCraft, I'm sure you could find another game with an editor that you do like. Age of Empires perhaps?

But if you ignore all this advice, then I suppose Unity is a pretty good fit. You can use the Asset Store to get modules that might meet your criteria. There are many that are free, but not all of them. If you're worried about spending $20 though, you may have a tough time acquiring all the tools you need.

- Eck

I am not at all unwilling to spend money, just do not want it limited/tied to a specific game/environment. I understand, see your point and do not disagree with it being a bigger undertaking than I currently am experienced with. I am not expecting to see immediate results and I am willing to work on/with a specific aspect until I have working examples that are stable. Then move onto a next related tier that ties in to test the coding. I expect this to be longterm. Anyone familiar with Planeshift? That mmorpg has and will be perpetually in beta status. Even if it just stays a hobby, I am good with that. If I take to it like a fish in water, coolbeans. The majority of my friends that I refer to are decades old computer enthusiasts or working in tech currently and most of them like getting their hands dirty just for kicks.

I had already downloaded the Spring Engine yesterday after reading through their website and I plan on checking it out. I have read enough in passing about Unity to know that it was a possibility. I was not expecting a perfect out of the box solution. I just want to minimize the sources I would/might need to deal with.

Not ignoring any advice or suggestions. Appreciate the time so far. :)

Just be prepared for a loooong journey. This is why a lot of people champion starting with smaller games that successivly get bigger and bigger. This way you get a steady stream of finished projects that keep your motivation up. And also you get more expierienced in "finishing projects", and releasing it to the public.

On the other hand, I am in the same boat, working on my pretty high-end 3D game for 1.5 years now. All I got this far was a soon-to-be-ready-for-public-viewing prototype, but then again, I had to learn a lot to make things work, and I am working on this alone in my free time. Still, seeing high definition 3D Models I created myself come to life is far more motivating to me than creating smaller games.

It is not a sane decision to do things this way, but that is the privilege of the hobbyiest game dev... he can do stuff any way he likes.

On the topic of friends helping: If you get help from them in the end, great! If they bring some professional skill to the table, even better! Just don't be dissapointed if it does not turn out this way. A lot of guys have high ambitions to work on a game project but burn out quickly when they see how much work it is.

In the end, be prepared to continue to work on it on your own, have a "plan B" ready for when that happens (cutting features or scale of the project). Then you will be fine either way.

It is "plan A" all the way. Unless it spins out to be a viable public offering, all critical areas to dev will be maintained by me. Roadblocks I may seek some help on, but not rely on anyone to hash it out for me. I would rather have a "stick figure" functioning game than one with pretty graphics and poor mechanics.

I do have a few smaller projects in the pipeline that I am learning from and are not related. So I should not get that burnt out feeling if I keep things like those on the side.