Hello everybody, I've been following these forums for the last little while, and I have to give you all a big thumbs-up for great team play, and helpfulness! :D

So I decided to join, because I have one huge project on the tip of my head. Before I go into the details, I want to say that I have attempted projects like this before (FPSs and MMORPGs because of popular demand), and I have found tons of software to help make these types of games. Unfortunately, being in my teens has its disadvantages (school, no credit card :P) and so I have never been able to complete any of these large scale projects. Reasons I think I previously failed include lack of interest (not my favourite types of games, RTSs are my favourites) and little to no support (thats where you guys come into play :)).

Now that I settled all of that, its time to get to the big guns. I've been thinking of ideas for a campaign and stuff, however, I've yet to find my soulmate software. I have one in mind specifically, RTS Game Creator, www.rtsgamecreator.com/ , but it seems to be incomplete or a broken link. Other software I've tryed include GameCore and Visual 3D, with a bit of Havok Physicks($50 bucks I mispelled that last word :P), but still nothing.

If you guys could suggest a software that will make a RTS (real time strategy) game a do-able possibility for a hobby, and with very little to no scripting work required, I'll share my project ideas with you guys.

I hope I gave enough details, but this is a forum, so post questions and hopefuly I'll be able to answer them.


P.S. I hope this is the right forum for this . . .

The map editor that ships with Starcraft 2 is very powerful and you get a pretty nice game as well. Modding a game is by far the way to go in this situation.

Creating an RTS game/engine is a task involving a very high degree of time, money, and experience. Any tool you find is not going to do all of the work for you, and the tools themselves are only as valuable as the person using them.

If you mod a game such as Starcraft you can gain some experience with RTS map editing tools, and you get a chance to implement some of your concepts without a very heavy time investment.

Heh. . . interesting you should mention Starcraft (2). . . thats sorta what inspired me to make an RTS of my own ( I love Protoss. . . can't wait till the thrid expansion of Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void, its all about Protoss :D )
and it just so happens I was a beta tester too! :D If anyone plays Starcraft 2, add me. . .I don't play 1v1 s. . .. . hmmm. . . . better for a different forum, srry :D!

Ok. . .thatbks for feedback, and I'll see what I can do. . .just one question. . . .what can I do when I get to the Stand Alone version? And won't I have to change all of the stuff to the way I want it if I were to make a second map? ( I'm thinking of the Warcraft 3 editor here. . .hmmm )

Either way, thanks for the feedback, its greatly appreciated, and I'll see what I can do! :D

I'm by no means an expert, but shadowisadog's advice seems good to me. There are a lot of very clever offerings from the SC2 community, many of which are stunning to me in their dissimilarity to the actual game that underlies them. It must be a very powerful toolset indeed, and yes, the game alone is well worth the purchase price for an RTS enthusiast.

Don't worry about your lack of resources, especially since you're so young. In the next few years, I think we'll see tools and resources become more powerful and more readily available, and so the key ingredients in a successful independent game project will become experience, expertise and work ethic. If you glom onto the tools that are available to you, put a few dozen projects (successful or otherwise) under your belt and manage somehow to continue to find pleasure and motivation in game design in spite of setbacks, you yourself will become a powerful, versatile agent of game creation that can adapt and capitalize on unforeseen future opportunities. As with anything else, cultivate virtue in yourself, and you will become great.

A few custom SC maps, a few custom SC gametypes/rulesets, and you'll have some strong building blocks for moving into engine creation, modding in other games, high-level game design theory, etc. As long as you focus on becoming awesome, instead of making something that's awesome, the sky's the limit, and you'll make awesome things as a byproduct of your own growth.

I also have to agree with shadowisadog. RTS type of games are generally complex to create, so your best bet to learn and create something easy could be by creating a campaing in a comercial RTS that has a campaing editor. The type of games refered as "RTS" are not my favorite but I'm sure there must be a comercial game that allows you to create campaings, change the images or models of the units, change sounds, etc. but to add abilities or make some more specific stuff I'm sure you will need some degree of scripting.

For creating new games one of the apparently easiest tools I have found is Construct. You can make simple shooters and other 2D games with almost no codding, I think you can even make simple RTS type of games in it, and best of all it's free.

Of course If you wanted to create a more complex game you would need more than 1 person, and for that maybe the best road to take would be to develop an specific skill (art, 3d modeling, programing, sound, music, mission/game play design, etc.) and ask to help a team who is already creating something.