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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.
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.
I'm sure you'll get better explanations, but it boiled down to this:
Humans in robot suits vs. Robots with human brains.
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.
If your definition of "real RTS players" is "group of people who read Blizzard marketing output like fiends", then you are correct.
There were a *lot* of fans of TA. I know not a single person who I have in person mentioned TA to and not recieved a positive "yeah, that was a great game". (Note that this does not apply to the much, much less good TA:Kingdoms.)
TA had no personality.
Not really any way I can argue with that, since that's a pretty contentless argument.
It didn't have Blizzard-style "heroes" if that is what you meant. It was closer to a traditional strategy game, with less focus on cinematics. The sort of people that like Close Combat are the sort of people that liked TA -- the ability to give overarching commands. Blizzard made micromanagement and the ability to micromanage large numbers of units the key skill in their RTSes (and designed an interface that deliberately made it difficult to do so). Tactics, other than straight rock-paper-scissors, were much more limited in Blizzard titles.
It was bland, the games were longs (3h battles due to the insane power of Defence).
If what you mean is that tank rushes didn't work very well in TA...yeah, you might have a point. I suspect that most players viewed that as a good thing.
Tell us TA 2 is coming and you'll get a collective "Meh" from all of us.
I see more fond memories of TA on Slashdot than I do of Starcraft, frankly. TA was significantly more evolved in terms of engine sophistication. Starcraft made height and cover matter very little (simply a straight set of probability modifiers to hit). TA modeled arcs of shots, and required intelligent deployment and construction of bases. The landscape played a more significant role in TA. Games never devolved into simple "I grabbed one more resource at the start than you have, so I've won" matches.
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
You'll be happy to know that TA works on XP just fine for me. :)