So I have a 12 year old son who wants to dip his toes in game development, while I am good enough at programming but know very little about game dev specifically, or graphics. And from the advice I already got. trying a project of his own is (surprisingly) a favored option. His favourite genre is real-time strategy, and I do have a ready lore set that would make for two factions with wildly different units (balancing that is a topic for another say).
But while my favourite language is Python, I'm not exactly optimistic about him implementing a full RTS UI from scratch with Pygame. What with a search for an RTS in Pygame yielding a huge lot of unfinished stuff... So I think he needs to start with a genre specific RTS engine.
Python bindings are not essential. I can work out any language and help him work that out. While something like ANSI C would be a major pain, most modern high-level languages, from Java to LUA, would be acceptable. Free to use is a hard requirement, open source is preferred but not essential. Running the games on Android and making them available as Flash would be a bonus but very much not essential.
From googling alone, SpringRTS is the number one contender for now, but I would really appreciate advice from people who actually know what they are talking about. (Unlike y own position at this point).
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