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.

Comments

Finally!

[iq in binary]

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.

TA was great but a sequel?

[SmallFurryCreature]

I can't even remember the story. Something about robots and space and fighting someone else with robots.

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.

• Great AI that can actually defend itself a bit. Meaning not stand there and get hammered by artitarrly or soldiers attacking tanks and thanks attacking soldiers.
• True 3D terrain and the use of it. Make hills and valleys important
• Large maps. You know I can hardly think of any military engagements in wich it took the soldiers a few minutes to run from one end of the battle field to another.
• Frontlines. Call me silly but it is usual practive to have rings of defence around the homebase. I want to be able to make a line on the map that troops will defend.
• Proper artilary. Strange as it may sound artilarry does not target tanks. It targets an area. TA allowed this and it was devastating against the computer as it would constantly march its troops accross the same line and you could just pound any assault with a few guns.
• Great AI.

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.

Re:TA was great but a sequel?

[MachDelta]

AFAIK Battle Tactics never expanded on the storyline, it was just a big mess of multiplayer maps and some units.

It would be cool to see how a sequel would fit into the story though. Did the core contingency work? Or did the Arm stop the Core commander in time? Personally I think it'd be the case where the Core win... you never actually see what happens after the artifact is set off. IIRC you just see a blinding flash of light and thats it. Something tells me the machine didn't actually work as planned (eg: collapsing the entire universe into a single event, and then reexpanding in another big-bang). It was an "ancient alien artifact" after all - and lord knows those things NEVER work like they're supposed to ;)
The other case, where the Arm win, just doesn't leave enough loose strings to form a conflict laden future. Unless of course, they do the old prequel thing. Which would be kinda cool in and of itself - remember that TA actually took place AFTER galactic armageddon. They were pathetic, shattered remenants of a once mighty empire. The thousand unit slaughterfests in TA would be micro-skirmishes compared to the utter mayhem of the 'real' war.
Then again, I did kind of enjoy the blind rage of the post-armageddon TA atmosphere. You fought not for land or power or even your own survival. You fought for the sole purpose of destroying each and every single one of your enemies, and neither side would stop or surrender until every last trace of the enemy was eliminated. Like the announcer said: the only acceptable outcome was Total Annihilation.

Brawlers

[Anonymous Coward]

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..

--
Posting Anon, cause I just rambled on..

Total Annihilation

[Sloppyjoes7]

It was only about a week ago that Gamespy named Total Annihilation the best Real Time Strategy ever. That's quite a claim. I really wanted this when it came out, but didn't have the money, and my computer wouldn't have played it anyway.

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

untimely demise

[SurgeryByNumbers]

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.

Re:untimely demise

[n.wegner]

I don't understand how Kingdoms failed. Its models were more detailed, and its terain was beautiful. Its story was a lot more interesting than TA's, because the missions had more plot, and the missions for each side were mixed in with missions from the others. Each side had very different units, unlike TA, and Zhon in particular had very unique production methods, unlike almost every other RTS out there. The only bad thing I can say is that it is fairly slow (but fast enough on newer computers), and it doesn't allow you to have as many units as the original. For what reason did it fail? Was it because it didn't allow huge armies and 100s of different units per side? Or did Starcraft's better story do it in?

Re:untimely demise

[DeadScreenSky]

In my experience was that it just couldn't run well enough in multiplayer. My friends and I tried it on a network a few times, and we never got satisfactory performance on any of our machines. They had really upped the polycounts on the units, far more than the average computers of that era could handle well. I am curious if it would play a lot better on a modern computer.

I also recall the game design itself being rather flawed, but it has been so long now that I couldn't share any details on it.

TA has not been matched. No one's even tried.

[AvantLegion]

TA is not only the best RTS game perhaps ever, but its style of gameplay hasn't even been attempted again.

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.

Right not to flame of troll but...

[SmallFurryCreature]

Would you possibly consider the idea that WE are the real RTS fans and you are the non-RTS player?

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.

Best Game ever for robot warfare

[Mr_Blank]

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