I'd like to begin tinkering around with an RTS AI, but I'm having trouble finding a good environment to work with, ie a game that has been already created. I have looked at Spring RTS and Bos Wars, but they don't seem to be conducive to creating simple examples.
I am not totally opposed to writing my own game environment, it would just take a long time. Does anyone have a suggestion as to how I can get my feet wet without programming my own game?
There's actually a starcraft AI competition going on right now. The BWAPI ai api is very nice and should get you going very quickly. There are already many impressive entrants.
http://eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition
Edit :(, just realized how old this question is.
I can not say anything about the other projects, but i can speak for Spring RTS:
It supports a plugin system for AI Interfaces, and as of January 2011, comes with a Native (C/C++) and a JVM (Java, Groovy, JRuby, ...) AI Interface plugin. A Python plugin is quite mayor already, but not yet considered stable. There are lots of C++ AIs to be used as reference, while for Java, there is a small tutorial and a few AIs.
As the base of all the interfaces is the same (the engine), they are very similar in nature, so it is also possible to use C++ AIs as a reference when writing a Java AI and vice versa.
The AI development forum and the #ai channel on the lobby (also reachable through IRC) may be of use too.
The engine has already been used for at least 7 AIs developed during university thesis.
The engine its self is mostly written in C++, uses the CMake build system and compiles on Linux+GCC and Windows+MinGW (unofficially also on MSVC). You may want to follow the guide under Development - Compiling on the projects homepage, which explains how to compile the engine, and in turn also gets you the source code of the engine and a few AIs.
Check out ORTS, maintained by Michael Buro at the University of Alberta.
I haven't used it myself, but I've seen it in action since even before the first release in 2003, and it's definitely grown in leaps and bounds.
I'm pretty sure Strarcraft II will come with a very complete, programmable, editor (some people even transformed it into a FPS). It will be released on July the 2nd.
Supreme Commander is also moddable via Lua. There are several WWI - WWII strategy games also moddable via Lua.
On the Opensource front, glest and temulous have their source available; you might want to try modding them.
Finally, there's 0 A. D., which is also opensource, but on alpha.
My recommendation, however, is that you give a look at the Spring project.
If you have a few bucks, Garage Games has an RTS kit for its Torque game engine. http://www.garagegames.com/products/rts-genre-kit
This should allow you to begin writing some AI code immediately.
