RTS engine out there?

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Original post by hyrum
Looking to play around with some game engines out there mostly for my son who is interested in making little games (he is 7). I am wondering if there are any RTS engines out there either free or pay that are half decent.

I saw Freecraft awhile ago but it appears to be gone now.

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Sorry, don''t know of any, but I hope you don''t hope to teach a 7 year old how to program

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Original post by Peon
Sorry, don''t know of any, but I hope you don''t hope to teach a 7 year old how to program

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Heh well my choices were like so:

Dad, teach me how to make a cartoon or a video game So...since I''m a programmer by profession as opposed to a designer

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Original post by Peon

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Original post by hyrum
Looking to play around with some game engines out there mostly for my son who is interested in making little games (he is 7). I am wondering if there are any RTS engines out there either free or pay that are half decent.

I saw Freecraft awhile ago but it appears to be gone now.

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Sorry, don''t know of any, but I hope you don''t hope to teach a 7 year old how to program

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Why not? I was coding in BASIC when I was that age.

--hellz

It appeared to be a set up somewhat like RPG Maker. So you''re not looking at much code but more of a piece together thing I can help him with.

As for coding and ages - I too was around 8 when I started coding in BASIC on a C64

Freecraft was a warcraft II clone. They got in trouble and had to shut down. Upsetting, really.

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Far too much time has passed
For us to lament that we were in love.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster

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Original post by Peon
Sorry, don''t know of any, but I hope you don''t hope to teach a 7 year old how to program

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I don''t know what your problem is, but I was programming BASIC at that age too

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I really don''t think a 7 year old has enough understanding of even basic concepts, such as variables, but I might be wrong. Now if the OP wanted to make a new RTS for his kid, and his kid took more of a designer role, I could see that working a little bit better. Programming text / basic games in BASIC != programming an RTS in BASIC.

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As for coding and ages - I too was around 8 when I started coding in BASIC on a C64

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got you beat by about a year, i started around 7 on the C64 (i still have the thing too, im attached to it ) even that young it only took me a month or so to get up to making a simple breakout game using text. (i started by making a O bounce around the screen, then i started adding the block character in places and made the O bounce off the them, and removing the block, and then i added a paddle, a life counter, and finally removed a life and reset the O if the ball hit the bottom, so dont say a 7 year old cant learn to program)

to get back to the topic however, here''s about 500 of what you''re looking for http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=81

BASIC isn''t a language, it''s a toy =)

.lick

... yeah, sure it is, that''s why so many buisnesses use it.

im a c++ programmer, and dont use any form of basic anymore, not since QuickBasic on a msdos 6 IBM, but trust me, basic is no toy.

There''s no set age on when you can and can''t learn to program. If you have a computer with a compiler and can read you should be able to learn to program, the question is wether or not a seven-year-old is willing to sit down and read.

I started with BASIC on a TRS-80 model 1 when I was 1.5 so nyah. BASIC on a c-64 turned me off of computers for years (well, that and girls). Why an rts? Why not galaga or pacman?

Oh yeah, I've got the freecraft source on my harddrive; email me if you want it.

[edited by - nonnus29 on September 12, 2003 11:04:19 PM]

[edited by - nonnus29 on September 12, 2003 11:05:32 PM]

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Original post by nonnus29
Why not galaga or pacman?

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Hmm, I suppose...is there an engine somewhere? Reason why I''m looking for a good engine is because he IS just getting into things...

Want to ease him into it since he is just 7 If I start talking about objects and references etc etc, he might just say it''s time to watch Pokemon or something

I think a Galaga or Pacman, or even a Pong game would be a lot more practical. I guess I was wrong about nto being able to program at seven, as the general consensus is that it is very possible. I still think an *RTS* would be impossible though. It was quite a challenge for me to understand, and the implement the A* pathfinding algorithm, which I imagine would be used for an RTS; I seriously doubt a 7 year old could understand something like that. What about AI? That's a huge topic in and of itself. And for an RTS, you probably DO need objects, and a lot of them. I dunno, I guess I'm just not convinced that a 7 year old, unless they're a child prodigy, could program an RTS.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I ALSO programmed when I was younger (11) but it was things like choose-your-own-adventures, madlib games, and VERY BASIC ASCII games. I really think at least a very basic understanding of variables is absolutely critical to program anything; I didn't REALLY understand what I was doing much later.

[edited by - Peon on September 13, 2003 1:11:16 AM]