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Total Annihilation Sequel Preview
An anonymous reader writes "Fans of much loved RTS Total Annihilation will be excited to hear that a spiritual successor is in the works under the name Supreme Commander. Information on this title has been scarce until today, when Gamespy released a preview with screenshots galore. The preview contains an overview of the game, the storyline and, coming tommorrow, an interview with Chris Taylor."
The nukes in Total Annihilation were the same. There was also a defensive weapon available to knock nukes out of the sky. Protecting that was vital, if you were to lose it, the nukes would come raining down completely wiping out your base.
Q.
Incorrect. The units were NOT pre-rendered sprites. They were in fact real-time rendered 3D objects, more than likely gourad shaded.
That soundtrack was the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, multitracked. They took the whole orchestra and basically doubled it. That's why it sounds like a Mahler-sized orchestra, because it is.
I certainly hope they do this for SC as well.
Many of the games features were designed to reduce micromanagement, freeing the player's brain (and mouse) for more important things.
For example, you could direct a given airfield to assign a team number to all units produced, and you could use the Shift key and mouse to define a multi-vector patrol route for the aircraft to navigate once built. Assuming you also had a few repair platforms around and activated, the aircraft would automatically assume a patrol along the assigned route, attack anything that came in range, and automagicaly fly off to repair themselves if they were wounded too badly.
You could also queue up a few dozen build orders for a selected number of construction vehicles (nice for putting together some fairly organized defenses), committing those units to that action for a half-hour or more, and then you could set a few more construction units (level 1 construction aircraft were good for this) on patrol in the general area. Not only would the patrolling const a/c automaticaly perform repairs on wounded units as they passed (or harvest enegry or metal if needed), but they would also stop and assist the building units with their tasks, adding their own construction power to the power of the original unit until the given target was completed.
The Shift key could be used to queue almost any type of order, be it builds, attacks, movements, or whatever, and I wish more RTS games would impelement that simple concept...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Rejoice, for it has been confirmed that Jeremy Soule, who composed the music for TA, will be on board for SupCom