Are there any open-source military/war strategy simulating engines/frameworks?

Question

Are there any open-source military/war strategy simulating engines or frameworks? Combat rules engines or weapon selection guides? I'm looking for something similar to a military strategy "unit testing" in a simulated field.

What I'm trying to build is a combat advisor for troops deployed in the field. Intel' comes in with enemy's moves - software should advice about an optimal strategy - like in chess, only with two armies. The framework should be scalable - in an urban guerrilla warfare context it should advice upon tactical moves to make in order to counteract the enemy's assessed field tactics. That's why I'm wondering about any open source initiatives, so I could learn something from collective knowledge and gain insight upon such a project.

Answer 1

Check out the Battlefield Simulator at CodeProject.

Answer 2

Speaking of complete OS strategy games, you may want to look at Battle for Wesnoth. I'don't know if this suits your needs, or you are looking for a more documented and developer-friendly framework only.

Answer 3

Search this site for "game engine"

Answer 4

DIS is an open standard for linking military simulations together. There are open soruce libraries for the protocol layer. Perhaps a little digging will find some open clients as well.

Answer 5

If you're looking for a multiplayer framework
Project DarkStar examples and if you're thinking about developing something commercial, here's the license information

Otherwise could you explain what level of simulation you're looking for. e.g. Turn based strategy, real-time strategy, or something HLA (High Level Architecture) compliant?

This isn't Open source but if you're looking for inspiration check this out VR-Forces

Answer 6

If you looking for military simulations then: sorry but this get complicated.

Delta3D Open Source 3D gaming & simulation engine used for military training simulations. It does include some vehicles and other 3D assets but not a huge amount, you can import 3dsmax8 .Max files.
You can add SimCore to get HLA support plus munitions modeling and apparently even weather system. Plus you need a RTI e.g. CERTI

The common military Transmission and Interchange Formats are HLA and DIS (and CIGI)
Open-DIS this is the Open source version of DIS, its mostly developed by US Navy and Airforce officers. They are currently considering using Project DarkStar for the distributed framework.

An example game where DIS is use is ACM which while its rather old it does include DIS support. and the Unix version can be downloaded from here

There are a number of DIS C++ libraries available e.g. KDIS

AFAIK DIS is still around but is largely superseded by HLA-RTI
You can find a list of OS and commercial RTIs on Wikipedia here

The US has an "Open Source" simulator called OneSAF but it's open source only to government and military developers only. :( You can however download some docs from the website. Old Screenshot from around 2004.

Answer 7

Not sure if it's what you're looking for, but you might want to check out Operation Flashpoint and Armed Assault by Bohemia Interactive. As far as I know, the games are based on Virtual Battlespace - a military simulator. Might find something in there.

Answer 8

Not really frameworks but real games (maybe their engine will be useful though, at least the first one)...

First one is Warzone 2100, a real-time strategy and real-time tactics game (under GPL). More details on its Wikipedia page.

Second one is Americas Army: Special Forces, a FPS game developed by the U.S. Army based on the Unreal Engine. It has a Wikipedia page too.

In the America's Army game, players are bound by Rules of Engagement (ROE) and grow in experience as they navigate challenges in teamwork-based, multiplayer, force versus force operations. In the game, as in the Army, accomplishing missions requires a team effort and adherence to the seven Army Core Values. Through its emphasis on team play, the game demonstrates these values of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage and makes them integral to success in America's Army.

AFAIK, Americas Army is not open source but I don't know if it's because it's classified or because of license issues with UT. See http://forum.americasarmy.com/viewtopic.php?t=310306 for more details. Maybe the Army can help you :)

Answer 9

http://springrts.com is an OpenSource battle simulator using physics and very large maps. You can customize it as you wish, build in AIs do behave in different ways, and play against each other.

It's written in C/C++, and there is a very active community around it. A very warm and accepting community in fact I feel.

Answer 10

Also - WinSPMBT might be somewhat useful. It's not open source, but it's a pretty in-depth simulation of company-level combat.

Answer 11

Take a look at OpenEaagles.