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"Supreme Commander" was supposed to basically be an improved remake of TA.
I guess you didn't get that memo.
I'd have bought it because I knew it was going to be a new TA with shiny new models, graphics and so on... but then I found Spring and a friend of mine on the SC beta said it wasn't so great, so I just stuck with Spring.

It's very different in feel and gameplay from C&C.

Check out TA Spring sometime, BTW...

I think innovative games do have a chance in this day and age. They just shouldn't try compete head to head with the incumbents. That being said I think it will be quite difficult to have the same sales volumes as the big distributors who pump millions into marketing and getting their products on every advertising medium in front of customers. Our games reporters are also conditioned today to focus on the big box titles because in a round about way, those big box titles pay their salaries.... But small dedicated communities are able to produce awesome products case in point: http://spring.clan-sy.com/

While it is true that there are only a few prominent strategies used in high-level Starcraft games in the beginning, this is only because they were found to have the right combination of versatility and effectiveness. Once the initial rush phase is over, if the various sides have survived then it becomes a whole different game, and much more individualized and reactive. Terrans and Protoss start setting up defensive structures, and can go in several different directions from there (for example, the Terrans could continue with marine-medic rushes to keep the enemy on their toes while building up to, say, battleships, nukes, goliath-siege tank groups, or others). That many games end in the first few minutes following the initial rushes is a testament to the players that pursue those strategies, being able to pull them off as well as they do. Add additional players and things get more interesting, as you have to not only beat your first target as fast as possible (or at least slow them down), but also defend your own base from the other players. Its strategy on a more micro-management level than TA, and one of the reasons I enjoyed TA was that it didn't require that level of nit-picking.

You are correct, TA had no melee units. One of the 3rd party units I remember was based off a Protoss Zealot (called the Zlot in-game), but it simulated melee attacks by having a projectile range of only the length of its arms.

TA did have some differentiation in sides, if only in that they favored different strategies with their units. Overall, the Arm units were faster, while the Core units were more heavily armed and armored. Still, as you say, some of this was lost with the units introduced later, the various sides becoming a more homogeneous.

On the subject of all things TA, you might check out the following...
TA Spring is an open source RTS project that largely recreated TA in a better engine, along with deformable terrain and other goodies.
Supreme Commander is Chris Taylor's new baby, a spiritual successor to TA with all kinds of new goodies, 3 different factions, to-scale nukes, and multi-monitor support!

In case you don't feel like waiting for Supreme Commander or played the beta and didn't like it Spring is a good way to get your mass warfare RTS fix. Apply different mods for different results.

Forget virtualisation!

If you want TA updated, try TA Spring, now just Spring. It also has a Linux version for those of you who want it.

Also, Supreme Commander. Same game, different name, more units, better graphics, bigger maps :D

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/

Based on Total Annihilation, but is way ahead of its originator in many ways (some say it has better features than the upcoming Supreme Commander, eg, deformable terrain).

Open source. Cross platform (doesn't run on Mac yet, though).

Amazing what happens when fanatical open source developers get on top of a cross platform 3d kit.

Or TA Spring, for that matter.

I'll never forget Total Annihilation and the countless hours I spent playing it with my family. Nor will I forget that only *ONE COPY* of the game was required for everyone to play. Good times.

Minor correction: TA required one CD per 3 players (but ten players still required only 3 CDs). It came out in the transition phase between 1 CD per player and 1 CD per match games when games allowed a certain number of players per CD in multiplayer (I remember other games implementing such a system as well). Starcraft required only one CD per match IIRC.

Interestingly that movement got reversed at some point when games started demanding one CD per player again and soon started demanding even unique keys in LAN games (Hi there, EA Games!). I guess some idiot thought that would make people buy the game when they want to play it at a LAN. Yeah, except it ends up with "screw that, let's just play Counterstrike instead". Seriously, someone playing a game the first time at a LAN is probably the best introduction he can get (since many games are loads more fun with friends in multiplayer), allowing him to do so with little hassle but making his installation useless after the LAN would be the most effective sales strategy. Arena Wars got that right, one CD for LAN play but the installation would act as a demo version without the CD. If you demand that each player owns the game on a LAN you can forget about it being spread to others and most likely won't see it being played. People will just keep playing the games everyone has like Counterstrike or Diablo 2.

Of course TA Spring doesn't need any CDs and runs on Linux...

Sounds like you should look into Spring. It brings Total Annihilation up to modern standards.

True 3D environment, deformable terrain, Multiplayer internet lobby.

The internet lobby sets up games for you. It will ensure that you have the map and whatever mods required (which are all provided as downloads within the lobby).

As an added bonus, multiple players can control a single faction (i.e. one person can make sure things are being built while another fights the war.

For the more immediate TA fix there's Spring which adds many new features like better GUI, full mod support, full 3d, opensourciness and Linux-support. SupCom may be better but it's still so far away...

When I see a selection limit in an RTS I immediately conclude that whoever designed that interface was a retard. I mean, WHY? Command and fucking Conquer allowed selecting as many units as you want, why do modern RTSes want to restrict that? Want to turn it into a game of who-can-click-faster or what?

Any game with an interface worse than Spring needs to have its GUI developers put through a collective beating.

And in fact, recently went to a true 3d environment ("Spring").

The Spring project is a gpl engine in the style of Total Annihilation but in true 3D. This engine has a lot of mods developed for it, some of them pretty mature. They have a linux version and provide debian and ubuntu packages. Linux players can't play multiplayer against win32 players yet but that's about to be fixed opening a nice community and game to linux users. The Spring project is free software and it welcomes your help.

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/

I welcome it too, as i play it and its half the reason i boot into windows sometimes.

TA allowed ten players. Maybe you were thinking of Starcraft or C&C, those are limited to 8 IIRC.

Battlefield has commander+underlings gameplay, it focusses mostly on the underlings to make sure everyone's having fun, not just the commander.

By the way, the opensource TA remake allows users to control units directly.

What does an open source engine bring to the package?

The ability to add or have added features in the engine that would greatly benefit your mod. The freedom to do with the engine what the hell you like without being bound by EULAs that may limit your choices.

I'm making a mod for TA Spring and I'm making heavy use of features that are in Spring but not Total Annihilation.

For those who love RTS and TA

TA Spring

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/

It even runs on Linux (under wine - they are working on a port though...)

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/

Spring is an open source RTS Engine, created by fans of Total Annihilation. There is actually an active gaming community, and mods based on the engine, like Star Wars : Spring, based on the SW:TA mod.

There was "TA: Kingdoms," which Cavedog made after the first TA, and which I loved.

Unfortunately, Kingdoms never caught on. There were a few reasons for that. When it was released, the hardware requirements were obscene. I was lucky in that I'd just gotten a new computer, and, for the time, it was a beast: PIII 550, 256 MB RAM, TNT2 -- it cost $3k back in the day, and it's still plenty fast enough for everything my family does, six years later. Most people who tried to run the game, unlike me, saw a slideshow in the late game when there were tons of units. That doesn't make for an enjoyable gameplay experience, so, naturally, other people who weren't lucky enough to have top-of-the-line hardware didn't like the game.

Although I didn't realize it at the time because the game ran perfectly for me, TA:K was also rather buggy. That same PIII 550, now running XP instead of 98FE, and now with new drivers for everything, doesn't play the game right anymore. Choppy, garbled sound; graphical anomalies; incorrectly-rendered text. If that's how the game had looked when I first started to play it, I'd have quickly lost interest. For some people, that's how it always looked.

But plenty of games come out that need tons of patches, and plenty of games come out that need to wait for the hardware to catch up. So what really killed TA:K was that support dried up for it. It was the day Cavedog died.

Cavedog went under when a few key developers left for competing companies. Cavedog got bought out by something inappropriate -- Hasbro, or Brady Games, I think -- and, though there were rumors of a Total Annihilation 3, which was to be the sci-fi sequal to Original TA, it never panned out.

Cavedog is dead. Bungie is in chains. Blizzard ran off with an MMORPG. Who will rise up to take their place?

Reality Pump? Earth 2150 was wonderfully ambitious (and is still a favorite; it has naval units, aircraft, customizable units... even underground tunnels!), and 2160 is the most creative RTS I've seen in a while (nevermind the so-bad-it-makes-you-cringe voice-acting and single-player campaign). What other developers are carrying the torch and pushing forward the genre?

Well, there's the Open Source community. TA:Spring is incredible. It's unpolished, but quite pretty on good hardware (or so I am led to believe by screenshots; I've only got a Dell laptop), and the engine is undergoing constant refinement. Right now it's mainly a nostalgic ode to a past classic, but mods do add new gameplay types and units. Will TA:Spring ever become a great classic in its own right?

You should try spring TA Spring

• TA in 3d using a custom graphics engine
• has all the original units
• checkout the movies

• TA in 3d using an unreal graphics engine
• has all the original units
• checkout the pictures.

You should definitely try the original! There's an excellent remake of it at http://taspring.clan-sy.com/.

I love it, and I absolutely HATE RTS'S!

Total Annihilation was easily the most fun I've ever had playing an RTS. Warcraft III and Command & Conquer just don't give you the same rush as building 50 wasps and sending them simultaneously to swarm your enemy.

I recently revisted the game (after finding the original 2 disc installation) and noticed how poor the graphics were. The units were 3d and the terrain was 2d. It worked for back then, but nowadays we need everything 3d. The Ta-Spring project has been doing great in their recreation and enhancement of the original game. It features full 3d environments and even first person combat control. Some of the new weapons such as the plasma deflector are simply amazing and make the TA experience much better.

On the whole, TA-Spring has brought new life into TA without completely changing the game. It looks almost exactly similar to its original, except for the better graphics and advanced features.

I can only hope this sequel, Supreme Commander, will be better than the FIRST sequel, TA: Kingdoms. Futuristic combat just makes more sense given the view and nature of an RTS. One thing is for sure, the concept art and map design look out of this world - a theme that went well with the first TA.

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/

I still don't see why everyone thinks WC is some kind of RTS benchmark. Don't get me wrong. It is fun, but limited. Warlords Battlecry is a superior fantasy RTS. Check out the latest release here. Believe me, if you give it a try you won't go back to WC.

I just hope this team can "pull it off".

I do belive this is a Krogoth Experimental Assault Kbot.

Ah, memories...

I remember the halcyon days of my youth, stomping across the countryside, totally annihilating things in this baby. I never thought I see her again, but there she is in all her OpenGL glory!

For those that would like to see some great TA games - more than just newbie vs. newbie on an all metal map - you might want to check out the excellent fan-created Demo Recorder. Then, you'll probably want to download some TA game recordings.

I bought Total Annihilation back in late 1997 and have been hosting lanparties since then with TA as one of the featured games. We have a small, dedicated group of about eight TA players.

I enjoy RTS games and have played most of them. Nothing I've seen comes close to the scale and grandeur of TA. In my opinion TA is simply the best. What other game can you have battles with hundreds of units at a time?

The source code should be released so that badly needed features can be added, lingering bugs can be fixed, and maybe the game can be optimized to run better. Anyone who has seen Switek's TA Bug Fix can get a good idea of how buggy the game was when it shipped.

A group called the Swedish Yankspankers wrote a program/modification for TA called TA Demo Recorder. It adds external functionality to the game which dramatically enhances its enjoyment.

With TA Demo Recorder you can:

1. Queue up units in increments of 100 instead of the default 5.
2. Execute multiple chat commands with a single keystroke. For example, execute +shootall, +noshake, +shareradar, +setshareenergy 10000, +setsharemetal 10000 with a single keystroke.
3. Share Line-of-Sight with allies (although covered by Fog of War). You can see what your allies see.
4. Instantly place your commander anywhere on the map at the beginning of a multi-player game. Great for allies who want to build close together without having to walk the Commander all the way across the map.
5. Draw lines of Dragon's Teeth or other structures with visible on-the-fly footprint resizing.
6. View resource production and storage of your allies (a floating bar graph which can be placed anywhere on the screen).
7. Place battlefield markers and attach a short text message. Good for coordinating attacks. Placing markers initiates a beep and spinning pointer to alert allies of the placement and location of the marker.
8. Using a "whiteboard" key players can actually draw on the battlefield using the mouse pointer as a pen.

TA Demo Recorder is the coolest thing I've ever seen for TA. The Swedish Yankspankers deserve high praise for their accomplishment. If you don't have TADR then visit their website and get it. Keep in mind that none of these features came with the game. They accomplished this on their own.

Other various hacks available include:

1. Increasing the unit max per player to 5000 from 500.
2. Multi-directional factories (helpful for players along the sides and bottom of the maps).

Various other features badly needed:

1. The ability to change game resolution from within the game itself rather than only from the menu.
2. Increase in the number of buttons per page in the build menus. Saves having to click through pages of buttons to find the unit you want to build. Also, the game has an internal limit of 8 pages I believe.
3. True Line-of-Sight sharing among allies.
4. Multiple chat macros so players can use a single keystroke to turn on/off resource sharing.
5. Ability to rotate factories in any direction prior to placement and construction so the exit faces whichever direction the player chooses. Since factories all face south it's kind of cumbersome for players along the bottom of the map in multi-player games.
6. Ability to assign units to groups with keys other than the 1 through 9 keys.

Understand that this is just a small fraction of what can and has been done. I'm sure there are many more things unknown to me.

Just some interesting factoids for the curious:

I presently have an Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53Ghz), 512mb DDR. My last PC was a Pentium 1Ghz with 384mb PC133. I play TA in 1280x1024 resolution and never experience slowdown even in huge battles. My old P3-1Ghz could run it in 1024x768 res but no higher without significant slowdown. At my TA lanparties we use the TA Demo Recorder features. I set the max unit limit per player to 1000 which is usually sufficient. We play TA once or twice a month with 4 to 8 people. When I bought TA in 1997 I owned a Pentium 166. Back then played in 640x480 resolution and the unit max per player was 200.

Chris Taylor now runs Gas Powered Games and his latest project is Dungeon Siege.

I bought Total Annihilation back in late 1997 and have been hosting lanparties since then with TA as one of the featured games. We have a small, dedicated group of about eight TA players.

I enjoy RTS games and have played most of them. Nothing I've seen comes close to the scale and grandeur of TA. In my opinion TA is simply the best. What other game can you have battles with hundreds of units at a time?

The source code should be released so that badly needed features can be added, lingering bugs can be fixed, and maybe the game can be optimized to run better. Anyone who has seen Switek's TA Bug Fix can get a good idea of how buggy the game was when it shipped.

A group called the Swedish Yankspankers wrote a program/modification for TA called TA Demo Recorder. It adds external functionality to the game which dramatically enhances its enjoyment.

With TA Demo Recorder you can:

1. Queue up units in increments of 100 instead of the default 5.
2. Execute multiple chat commands with a single keystroke. For example, execute +shootall, +noshake, +shareradar, +setshareenergy 10000, +setsharemetal 10000 with a single keystroke.
3. Share Line-of-Sight with allies (although covered by Fog of War). You can see what your allies see.
4. Instantly place your commander anywhere on the map at the beginning of a multi-player game. Great for allies who want to build close together without having to walk the Commander all the way across the map.
5. Draw lines of Dragon's Teeth or other structures with visible on-the-fly footprint resizing.
6. View resource production and storage of your allies (a floating bar graph which can be placed anywhere on the screen).
7. Place battlefield markers and attach a short text message. Good for coordinating attacks. Placing markers initiates a beep and spinning pointer to alert allies of the placement and location of the marker.
8. Using a "whiteboard" key players can actually draw on the battlefield using the mouse pointer as a pen.

TA Demo Recorder is the coolest thing I've ever seen for TA. The Swedish Yankspankers deserve high praise for their accomplishment. If you don't have TADR then visit their website and get it. Keep in mind that none of these features came with the game. They accomplished this on their own.

Other various hacks available include:

1. Increasing the unit max per player to 5000 from 500.
2. Multi-directional factories (helpful for players along the sides and bottom of the maps).

Various other features badly needed:

1. The ability to change game resolution from within the game itself rather than only from the menu.
2. Increase in the number of buttons per page in the build menus. Saves having to click through pages of buttons to find the unit you want to build. Also, the game has an internal limit of 8 pages I believe.
3. True Line-of-Sight sharing among allies.
4. Multiple chat macros so players can use a single keystroke to turn on/off resource sharing.
5. Ability to rotate factories in any direction prior to placement and construction so the exit faces whichever direction the player chooses. Since factories all face south it's kind of cumbersome for players along the bottom of the map in multi-player games.
6. Ability to assign units to groups with keys other than the 1 through 9 keys.

Understand that this is just a small fraction of what can and has been done. I'm sure there are many more things unknown to me.

Just some interesting factoids for the curious:

I presently have an Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53Ghz), 512mb DDR. My last PC was a Pentium 1Ghz with 384mb PC133. I play TA in 1280x1024 resolution and never experience slowdown even in huge battles. My old P3-1Ghz could run it in 1024x768 res but no higher without significant slowdown. At my TA lanparties we use the TA Demo Recorder features. I set the max unit limit per player to 1000 which is usually sufficient. We play TA once or twice a month with 4 to 8 people. When I bought TA in 1997 I owned a Pentium 166. Back then played in 640x480 resolution and the unit max per player was 200.

Chris Taylor now runs Gas Powered Games and his latest project is Dungeon Siege.