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And I'll put in a word for Total Mayhem helping hold that "best games" status. Many additional units, much tougher AI for the longtime player.

BTW, this is the sort of hacking success I was talking about. There's also this thread that discusses the DLL mod known as "TA 4.0", which includes breaking the weapon and unit cap barriers (IIRC).

BTW, this is the sort of hacking success I was talking about. There's also this thread that discusses the DLL mod known as "TA 4.0", which includes breaking the weapon and unit cap barriers (IIRC).

BTW, TA is still being played online through several services and is still being actively modded.

• 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.

My kids and I are gamers. We've seen games come and go with a few that remain fun for a decent amount of time. But TA? I bought the game in 1997 by recommendation from a friend, and it is still played to this day.

The original with the Core Contingency and Battle Tactics was great. Loved it. I don't know about you TA games out there, but I think my favorite unit was the Brawler (or bee as I liked to call it). The AI was terrific, the units looked great, the multiplayer gameplay was a lot of fun. In 2001 or so, I introduced it to my kids (6 and 7 at the time) who immediately were hooked. No killing people or anything. Units. My kids would play head to head with me all of the time. Now they can kick my ass in it (which really sucks!).

Later - some mods were independently released. New units, some cheats & stuff, etc. etc.. Then more - huge units bigger than the Krogoths.. some for the Arm (man am I a TA geek or what). It just kept getting better. Mods and TA sites are still in action today:

http://www.planetannihilation.com
http://www.tauniverse.com
http://www.tafansite.com
http://www.tadesigners.com
http://www.fileuniverse.com (for some files)

Examples of great mods (my son asked me to list these!!):

UTASP
Absolute Annihilation
Uberhack
a Starwars mod
etc. etc...

There's even a program called TA: Mutation which allows you to switch between the many mods, change AI's, change units, etc. etc..

If you have TA still - you must check out the mods. They completely renew the game, which you may be able to still buy in bargain bins for $5 - $10.

So - my point is - which has nothing really to do with Stardock with a Sims + TA game - is that TA was probably one of the best games that came along in a LONG time. A computer game that people still play after 8 years?!?!? Name me another one that is that good.

And now - my kids have both taken to modifying the units themselves - messing with the build times, unit speed, etc. etc...

Check it out again!!!

Normally I don't reply to trolls. But in this case I will make an exception. :P

GameCube has a pretty powerful GPU, and it CAN do hardware effects. Rebel Strike uses it to great advantage, and does a lot of stuff on hardware. The CPU is used for one HELL of a lot of AI, physics, and all that sort of jazz.
I wasn't aware that i had said, or even implied, that it isnt.

I don't know why you would think that all the things Xbox does in hardware would have to be done on software on the GCN.

I don't. I'm simply saying that in Rebel Strike, the resources that could be allocated to effects are instead allocated to raw polycounts. Your post seemed to imply that on top of the polys, the GC could easily add all the effects, and that the Xbox just couldnt cut it with halo 2's polycounts, ignoring all of the effects.

I am not saying that the Xbox can't run Rebel Strike, I am saying that it would push the hardware just as much as it does on GameCube.

I seriously doubt that. While it would push the hardware, it would not push it as much as a gamecube (imo, the gamecube actually as a pretty easy time with it, though, i don't see it 'pushing' the gamecube at all. Facts are facts, and the Xbox *does* have more power than the Gamecube, ask any professional/dev/journalist. Hell, go look at Splinter Cell for all three platforms -- while not much, the gamecube version WAS toned down a bit, because the gamecube DID have a slightly harder time with it.

Unified memory also means unified bandwidth. Something that I know developers would appreciate more of on the Xbox.

In this case, the advantages strongly outweigh the disadvantages. I've seen many quots from Xbox devs citing the unified memory as one of its strongest advantages. (sorry, i googled them but can't find them atm... i'll try and find them)

Nintendo is second place worldwide. This is a fact.
Got the figures, a link? Yes, the GC has better sales in Asia, South America, and parts of Europe, but the Xbox dominates it in NA, and most of the rest of Europe. The NPD figures i've seen in the past 7-8 months are always strongly in conflict -- Gamecube had a huge burst of sales when they had their ingenius 'price drop' (quadrupled sales!) and the Xbox had its recently, when it dropped to 149$US and the Halo bundle came out. -- the Xbox now outsells the PS2 in the US, even.


And I don't see PS2 lacking much western support.


Check again. Practically the only Western games coming to the PS2 outside of SCEA's own games, are all multiplatform. Go ahead, i'll wait.

I'm not trying to be a fanboy, I'm looking at facts here. And the facts are:
- Xbox is more powerful than the Gamecube. period.
- Unified memory is actually considered a huge advantage by most developers.
- Xbox has much more western support, and therefore can garner much more western sales, than the PS2 and Gamecube, which still both rely mostly on Japanese games and franchises.

I'm not fighting against you, Ninja, I'm on your side. I just hate it when people twist facts. Go read the Tauniverse Console forum, and you'll see that I'm very often quite pro-Gamecube.

Well, I've been an active member of Total Annihilation Universe for a while now, and have been keeping tabs on this project for quite some time. I'm very happy that it has come this far, and want to congratulate the UA team for making such a cool mod, and a job well done. (If partially) Make sure to drop by irc.gamesurge.net @ channel #UnrealAnnihilation on IRC and give some kudos to the UA team. And because we all know this is Slashdot, TAU is gonna have some big bills to pay at the end of the month. If you wouldn't mind, go to the ads page and click on a couple ads to help keep our server alive. Our admins: Nexus and Hanni don't have much money as it is, and any help would be nice.

With Natural Selection, Uskaarj, Unreal Annihilation, Warcraft III FPS mod, and Empires all blending or totally converting between game genres and/or engines, there seems to be an interesting trend of "breaking the rules" or using a game very differently than it was originally intended. Is this a gimmick, first notably commercialized by Savage or do you think it will keep its place on the game-store shelves?

The point is to show that you can make vastly differing games with the same "engine." You don't need to make a Quake clone only because you use the Quake engine. Some people use open engines to make games that are very different from the games the engine was originally developed for, like Unreal Annihilation, Total Annihilation (a Real-Time Strategy game) reimplemented with the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine.

This is a good opportunity to mention that Unreal Annihilation will be officially released on April 20th.

Unreal Annihilation is a mod based on Total Annihilation, a game which i'm sure many people here are highly familiar with. It actually takes the Unreal Engine and converts it to a real-time strategy game, no small feat. go check out their site, the screenshots look fantastic:

http://ua.tauniverse.com/

They are planning to enter the mod in the make something unreal competition once it gets to a certain stage, so yes mods, this is on-topic.

This is a good opportunity to mention that Unreal Annihilation will be officially released on April 20th.

Unreal Annihilation is a mod based on Total Annihilation, a game which i'm sure many people here are highly familiar with. It actually takes the Unreal Engine and converts it to a real-time strategy game, no small feat. go check out their site, the screenshots look fantastic:

http://ua.tauniverse.com/

They are planning to enter the mod in the make something unreal competition once it gets to a certain stage, so yes mods, this is on-topic.

its called Unreal Annihilation

and just fyi, Atari/Infogrames sold/leased the TA license to Phantagram Interactive, so the sequel in name is coming very soon.

Chris Taylor (the original designer) is also working on a spiritual successor, but that will come after Dungeon Siege 2 is released.

People *have* been doing that since the game's file formats were cracked about (about 3 months after it was released/0. They've made new units, new AI, and even a couple of new races. There was an open source version of the engine written in OpenGL (iirc). Don't know what happened to it, but if you poke around the TA Universe website you should be able to find something. And this isn't the first time this has been tried. A group got together a few years ago to try to buy the source from Infogames. they didn't get very far.