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Total Annihilation's Spiritual/Actual Sequel Planned?
Thanks to IGN PC for its article discussing hints from Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games regarding a possible follow-up to seminal RTS Total Annihilation. Apparently, at a recent gaming career day, Taylor, the original designer of TA, informally confirmed "...that Gas Powered Games was working on 'an RTS follow-up to Total Annihilation'", but IGN note "it's not exactly clear yet [from his brief comment] on whether or not the game will be a true sequel... or simply a new RTS in the vein of Total Annihilation." Although Gas Powered Games are currently working on a sequel to Dungeon Siege for Microsoft, their jobs page confirms they're also looking for RTS genre artists, and an earlier GameSpy interview discusses this long-under-wraps strategy title. Taylor also mentioned the publisher of this new title is "a big one... one that doesn't also publish operating systems [like Microsoft]" - it seems Atari own the rights to Total Annihilation 2, and previously asked Korean developers Phantagram to develop a sequel before that deal allegedly fell through, though Taylor's game could still be a sequel in concept only.
This is quite exciting. TA was by far the best RTS to come out of the 90's. Being (practically) abandonware now, a sequel is the holy grail for many gamers who enjoyed the original.
Being an earth shattering game in the first installment, hopefully the second installment will raise the bar again for RTS games.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
Best thing about the game was that it had a huge selection of different weapons meaning you didn't have the rock-siccors-paper style gameplay of the Command & Conquer series. Add larger maps, better use of 3D terrain and you had a very enjoyable game. The only one where you could actually fight an airwar against a land army.
Lets just hope it is not like the original "sequel" eh? The magic version? Boy did that one bomb.
Here my wish list for the perfect RTS game.
Oh who am I kidding. Judging by the sales of Command and Conquer vs Close Combat I think it is clear were the money is. It ain't with me. Sigh.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As long as they incorporate the "open-endedness" that TA first gave us, then I will be glad to play their RTS.
I've played using nothing but planes, commander duels, 10+ bases, huge maps that would make even the best among us lose track of where we set those 100 annihilators.
So many strategies, man I hope they use the same philosophy on the new game.
It wont be TA, Cavedog still owns most of the rights. Now a purchase, that would be interesting..
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Posting Anon, cause I just rambled on..
http://www.gamespy.com/top10/february04/r ts/index11.shtml
If the link doesn't work, (by inserting some spaces or something) there's a link to the top ten list right at Gamespy.com
Cavedog simply wasn't big enough to absorb the loss from the (horribly) failed TA:Kingdoms. It's sad, really, because TA given a decent multiplayer server browser, more modern UI, and a couple touchups would be grand. Cavedog really never got the chance to make it happen.
TA was the only RTS game i have EVER liked. I really hate RTS style games, but TA just totally rocked. i especially loved it after the core contengency pack and with 3rd party units from a group called TADD. It would be awesome if someone could come out with an RTS worth of the TA legacy.
Total Annihilation at Mobygames (lists places to buy)9 04/
s screatio ns/sections/ta/units/
h p?s=2 9cb49943e6051bf7685211d17398bf7&threadid=18855
http://mobygames.com/game/sheet/p,3/gameId,
TAUniverse (long-living TA news site)
http://tauniverse.com/
TAMEC (lots of extra maps)
http://www.planetannihilation.com/tamec/
TADD (some of the best 3rd party units)
http://www.planetdungeonsiege.com/mercile
Uberhack (popular total conversion with altered unit stats and better AI)
http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.p
Everyone churns out simple rock-paper-scissors RTS games a la StarCraft (not that there's anything wrong with those - they can be great fun - but they're much simpler and smaller). Nobody has had the balls to even take a stab at TA's epic scope, open-ended nature, and complex play mechanics.
Those of us that played TA a bunch back in the day were often wow'd by some of the strange and off-the-wall strategies we would see. Thanks to the Commander unit, "home base" was wherever you wanted it to be. Wanna go set up somewhere else? Leave. You leave the buildings behind, but can very quickly set up camp elsewhere.
TA also had a VERY unique gameplay feature, in that after a certain period of time, all sides in the game would have enough firepower to level a small planet. The game then ceased to be an arms race, and turned into a cat-and-mouse game of finding a way to get one's firepower around the other's and put it to use. The typical RTS strategy of pounding away on the outskirts and eventually trying to break through enemy lines was often ineffective, or would at least take hours to complete.
Maybe you try and build nukes, but your opponent may be building missile defense (probably is). But does he have complete coverage of his base? Maybe you can hit the outskirts. Or maybe you can build more missiles than he builds anti-nukes, and overrun his missile defenses. But that takes a lot of resources, and becomes a high-stakes guessing game. Maybe you'll fly a plane out to a nearby island and build a plasma cannon that can shell his base. But that's a lot of resources too, especially if you try to defend it. Maybe you leave it undefended. Make those first few shots count. How's your intel? Got radar coverage of his base? Fly some scout planes in to get visual targets to go along with those radar blips, but you may need to send 10 of them in just to have 1 make it deep enough into his base to locate that fusion reactor that will EXPLODE if you hit it. Try a strategic bombing run on the power plant? Your bombers will get shredded by those cheap-to-build missile towers. Maybe pound away at them with gunships? Dude, figure out what you're doing already. And HEY, he's attacking you too!
No other RTS game comes even close.
Where are the real RTS players. TA barly was a blink in RTS's players minds. The only ones who remember it fondly are the non-RTS players. Read all the comments and you will find comments like "TA was the only RTS I liked". As a true RTs player I'd have to say Ta was mediochre. Not greta. Not horrible. Good but short of the goal. Compared to it's compatriots, C&C: Red alert, Startcraft, Age of empires; TA had no personality. It was bland, the games were longs (3h battles due to the insane power of Defence). It sold about as well as C&C:95 the updated version of C&C made a year or two after. IT was a minor blip. Not some legendary game. Tell me Starcraft is havign a sequel and real RTS gamer will rejoice. Tell us Age of Empires III is coming and REal RTS gamers will rejoice,Tell us Dune III is coming and has nothign to do with EA and we'll rejoiceit, Tell us C&C: Red Alert 3 is comign and we'll hoep to god EA has nothignt o do with it. Tell us TA 2 is coming and you'll get a collective "Meh" from all of us.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
TA and C&C are different beasts. Anyone who played both can tell you this. The ones you like are rock-paper-scissors games with very limited strategic capabilities.
TA gave you big enough maps to really do a two pronged assault. It gave you effective air power without making your ground army totally defenceless. I played battles with only a few token ground units and an armada of bombers I also played battles with not a single air unit. C&C never gave me this choice.
The AI in TA was also a lot better. You complain about the defence. Well yes. I prefer an opponent who can hold their own and is not destroyed by a mere tank rush. TA forced you to knock a hole in the defence then be ready to commit a follow up attack.
But really there are three different camps of RTS games. C&C heavy on story, few units, rock-paper-scissor unit dependency, TA huge maps, loads of units many of them multi-use, no story. Finally there is Close Combat. Ultra realistic, very good AI including units wich actually act on their own but difficult as hell and slooooooow.
None of these type of games are less then another. Just different.
So you go Meh, a real TA fan will go yippie and me the close combat fan will hope that TA2 is closer to CC then C&C.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
On Thursday I saw his name on the presenters list in that room. Unfortunately, he was talking to the freshman, and I'm a sophomore. I brought Core Contingency to get it signed, but just missed him, but this DEFINETLY makes up for it.
;)
Now I'm going to reinstall the game and try to convince my roommates to play it. Any tips to get them to play a 7-year-old title??
I'm sure you'll get better explanations, but it boiled down to this:
Humans in robot suits vs. Robots with human brains.
Demo some of the controls. God, that game has an awesome command interface I went back and played through it last month. It's *still* a blast to play.
Problem is, chances of them doing a Linux release are nil. Sigh...
May we never see th
I still play the Absolute Annihilation hack atleast once a week.
Much improved AI, many more (diverse) units, and best of all, it's still maintained. They made a new release yesterday.
Rod Taylor
I still bought Total Annhilation in 1997 and I still play it regularly. The game was great out of the box. The game was genuinely improved with the expansion packs. Cavedog made a great move in releasing its map development tools early. After Cavedog went under the gaming community did great work in improving the game in all the little ways that a version 2 should have. Releasing a true sequel will require a bit of innovation and a lot of commitment to quality to impress the many still rabid fans.
This site has a great community created expansion pack for TA that I highly recommend. It includes a patch that improves key board short cuts, adds a lot of weapons and units, improves unit strength balance, increases the power of the top end units, and adds higher levels of difficulty for the AI. The high end units are super rocking: If you remember the Krogoth as the most powerful unit then you are out of date. There are units in this expansion pack that can eat 10 Krogoths, and the new bigs don't sacrafice play balance!
TA2 should learn from these expansion packs and try to incorporate these features:
- map creation tools, of course.
- super large maps. If the high powered big bertha artilary cannons can fire a mile, then the maps should be able to reach several miles across. Modern processors can handle it.
- At least 500 units per side should be available in TA2. In fact, there should be no hard limit - just a setting somewhere. When first released TA1's limit of 200 units per side made 133mhz processors of the time crawl. But over the years even 500 per side and 10 sides is handled quite easily by my 2 ghz processor.
- Fully rendored 3d units rocked then. They rock now.
- The music from TA1 could be reused. The score was awesome. Keep it or improve it; just do not give it up.
- Smarter, larger, multi-functional factories. Maybe even make them mobile. Of course, fancier factories should be more expensive in resources and time.
- Allow for more elevations. TA1 allowed for about 4 elevations: Flying, raised ground, normal ground / floating, and underwater. The game used real trajectory calculations to determine hits. Keep that, but do so from even more elevation possibilities. Flying units could occupy the same space and not collide - that might be an improvement area too.
- Definitely keep the mutliple weapon types, even add some! Again see the community expansion packs for excellent ideas.
- Release unit creation tools. Make creating home grown units even easier! Let the user select a walking kbot, or rolling tank, or flying, or floating, hovercraft, or even amphibious. Let the user select the weapon types, and how many weapons. Let the user select the number of guns, the unit size, and how much armor it has. Allow special functions to be added such as sonar, radar, cloaking, self repair, others repair, unit capture, reincarnation, etc. Then to keep the game balanced make the unit cost in resources what the requested features should require. Very Excellent!
- Make the environment even more destructable. TA1 allowed for burning forests and that was cool at the time. Make the ground shaking weapons really deform the ground, and thereby potentially change the strategy of the map during game play. It is kind of annoying when a nuclear blast only leaves a black mark on the ground instead of creating a rough crater. Also, there should be units that allow strategic shaping of the envirnonment - Examples: build hills for cannons, extend coasts, or make smooth roads.
- Make the game work well for a quick 30 minute skirmish or for a 9 hour megawar (not underheard of). TA1 did a good job of this.
- Create a game mode where each side gets to pick a set number of unit types to play with (instead of making all units available all the time). Sometimes having hunderds of unit choices is Excellent (super war) and sometimes annoying (quick skirmish). Let the players pick. This feaure
I'm finally managing to get some housework done, walls painted, I'm even thinking about putting down wood floors...
And now I have to get news like this. I swear, if they release this and I become addicted like I was to TA1, I'm going to shoot somebo...
Mmm... Berthas.....
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
The download links are currently inactive. It would be nice to be able to get a copy of this mod.
Ah, sweet TA. Is there any finer RTS?
It makes me sad though... because I look at Generals. I look at Emperor: Battle for Dune. I look at Ground Control. And they all suck compared to TA. Seriously - I mean, I have/had all of these and they all blow.
Generals is the worst of all. The buildings take up a quarter of the screen, and you can't zoom out far enough to make any tactical decisions. The performance is appalling even on a fast system. The maps are tiny. The units are unbalanced and there are so few to choose from that the whole game is just Russian roulette. I have seen a single guy with a rocket launcher beat a large tank (note to EA: TANK SHELLS KILL PEOPLE EVEN FASTER THAN THEY KILL OTHER TANKS). The interface is unintuitive and cluttered beyond belief. The command structure is weak and single layered.
Now if only we could have more TA... build that, that, ten of those, set that to guard this, set that to patrol here, put this behind that to protect it... aaahhh....
Some of my favourite features:
- queuing up the building of buildings
- the ability to get construction vehicles to guard each other or to guard factories and thereby increase the speed of production
- the ability to set patrol routes (why is this so hard, EA?)
- the ability to get units to guard other units (again... EA?)
- the cool ships (EA???)
- the little seperately animated guns on all the units
Read Pynchon.