Indie-Resource.com

After a couple of the threads on here talking about RTS games, I figured it had been a while since I had I had Googled for RTS engines. Anyone who has ever looked knows that there is a baffling lack of indie-friendly RTS engines, and basically there have been no good options in the past outside of making your own from scratch (not a good option for a modern, 3D RTS).

This time, however, I found the Spring Engine, which is a full, free, open source, 3D RTS engine. The game "Total Annihilation" was a popular RTS released in the late 90's by Cavedog that spawned a large following of fans. After Cavedog closed in 1999, the IP was bought by Atari. With no modern 3D remake being a possibility due to its closing, a fan-made 3D remake called Total Annihilation: Spring was made, and the authors of that game released their engine as an open source project.

I have not downloaded it or tried it out yet, but it looks very professional. The website is very sharp and commercial looking and there is a pretty long list of games, both indie and even proprietary, made with it (I believe the proprietary games will release their source mods to stay with the terms of the engine, but of course their content is their own, such as models, textures, music, and Lua-based gameplay scripts).

I would be interested to know if anyone here checks it out

Did consider it for my RTS game a long time ago... didn't test it though.

It looks good for a quick prototype..

Wow, yeah, I see now the development started back in 2005. I wonder why I never saw it before.

Also, after looking a bit more, it looks like it is multiplayer-focused. Do you know if there is built-in support for single-player campaigns? If not, that is not good for indie games, since it can be hard to cultivate a community that would have players constantly ready for a skirmish. A lot of sitting around means you would lose players fast.

I believe it does support Single Player mode...
but sometime Multi-Player is easier to create, as you don't have to worry too much about Enemy AI.
Although you raise a valid point with regards to the lack of activity..

I hear you! Multiplayer is definitely easier when you don't have to worry about making the network, match-making and lobby code yourself Making a compelling single-player campaign with solid enemy AI is definitely no walk in the park!

Am gonna be working on my RTS game, so if you wanna contribute, do let me know..
I have PMed Lucius and he might be interested as well..

wow how things happen at once.

I used Spring waaay back, i think I have some posts on MMORPGMaker about it. It has been 3 years or more since I used it so I can't comment much on it. At the time it was difficult to use so we switched to a much easier engine. I will have to find the name as I don't remember.

I just started playing Starcraft 2 with some friends and they brought up making a RTS and I instantly said "Heck no!" While fun they can be a pain.

Making an RTS from scratch is definitely up there with RPG in the difficulty. Just the enemy AI and solid pathfinding can be rough (simple pathfinding isn't bad, but it has to be perfect in an RTS or your game is unfair and unusable, and that is complicated).