I bought Total Annihilation back in late 1997 and have been hosting lanparties since then with TA as one of the featured games. We have a small, dedicated group of about eight TA players.
I enjoy RTS games and have played most of them. Nothing I've seen comes close to the scale and grandeur of TA. In my opinion TA is simply the best. What other game can you have battles with hundreds of units at a time?
The source code should be released so that badly needed features can be added, lingering bugs can be fixed, and maybe the game can be optimized to run better. Anyone who has seen Switek's TA Bug Fix can get a good idea of how buggy the game was when it shipped.
A group called the Swedish Yankspankers wrote a program/modification for TA called TA Demo Recorder. It adds external functionality to the game which dramatically enhances its enjoyment.
With TA Demo Recorder you can:
1. Queue up units in increments of 100 instead of the default 5.
2. Execute multiple chat commands with a single keystroke. For example, execute +shootall, +noshake, +shareradar, +setshareenergy 10000, +setsharemetal 10000 with a single keystroke.
3. Share Line-of-Sight with allies (although covered by Fog of War). You can see what your allies see.
4. Instantly place your commander anywhere on the map at the beginning of a multi-player game. Great for allies who want to build close together without having to walk the Commander all the way across the map.
5. Draw lines of Dragon's Teeth or other structures with visible on-the-fly footprint resizing.
6. View resource production and storage of your allies (a floating bar graph which can be placed anywhere on the screen).
7. Place battlefield markers and attach a short text message. Good for coordinating attacks. Placing markers initiates a beep and spinning pointer to alert allies of the placement and location of the marker.
8. Using a "whiteboard" key players can actually draw on the battlefield using the mouse pointer as a pen.
TA Demo Recorder is the coolest thing I've ever seen for TA. The Swedish Yankspankers deserve high praise for their accomplishment. If you don't have TADR then visit their website and get it. Keep in mind that none of these features came with the game. They accomplished this on their own.
Other various hacks available include:
1. Increasing the unit max per player to 5000 from 500.
2. Multi-directional factories (helpful for players along the sides and bottom of the maps).
Various other features badly needed:
1. The ability to change game resolution from within the game itself rather than only from the menu.
2. Increase in the number of buttons per page in the build menus. Saves having to click through pages of buttons to find the unit you want to build. Also, the game has an internal limit of 8 pages I believe.
3. True Line-of-Sight sharing among allies.
4. Multiple chat macros so players can use a single keystroke to turn on/off resource sharing.
5. Ability to rotate factories in any direction prior to placement and construction so the exit faces whichever direction the player chooses. Since factories all face south it's kind of cumbersome for players along the bottom of the map in multi-player games.
6. Ability to assign units to groups with keys other than the 1 through 9 keys.
Understand that this is just a small fraction of what can and has been done. I'm sure there are many more things unknown to me.
Just some interesting factoids for the curious:
I presently have an Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53Ghz), 512mb DDR. My last PC was a Pentium 1Ghz with 384mb PC133. I play TA in 1280x1024 resolution and never experience slowdown even in huge battles. My old P3-1Ghz could run it in 1024x768 res but no higher without significant slowdown. At my TA lanparties we use the TA Demo Recorder features. I set the max unit limit per player to 1000 which is usually sufficient. We play TA once or twice a month with 4 to 8 people. When I bought TA in 1997 I owned a Pentium 166. Back then played in 640x480 resolution and the unit max per player was 200.
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I bought Total Annihilation back in late 1997 and have been hosting lanparties since then with TA as one of the featured games. We have a small, dedicated group of about eight TA players.
I enjoy RTS games and have played most of them. Nothing I've seen comes close to the scale and grandeur of TA. In my opinion TA is simply the best. What other game can you have battles with hundreds of units at a time?
The source code should be released so that badly needed features can be added, lingering bugs can be fixed, and maybe the game can be optimized to run better. Anyone who has seen Switek's TA Bug Fix can get a good idea of how buggy the game was when it shipped.
A group called the Swedish Yankspankers wrote a program/modification for TA called TA Demo Recorder. It adds external functionality to the game which dramatically enhances its enjoyment.
With TA Demo Recorder you can:
1. Queue up units in increments of 100 instead of the default 5.
2. Execute multiple chat commands with a single keystroke. For example, execute +shootall, +noshake, +shareradar, +setshareenergy 10000, +setsharemetal 10000 with a single keystroke.
3. Share Line-of-Sight with allies (although covered by Fog of War). You can see what your allies see.
4. Instantly place your commander anywhere on the map at the beginning of a multi-player game. Great for allies who want to build close together without having to walk the Commander all the way across the map.
5. Draw lines of Dragon's Teeth or other structures with visible on-the-fly footprint resizing.
6. View resource production and storage of your allies (a floating bar graph which can be placed anywhere on the screen).
7. Place battlefield markers and attach a short text message. Good for coordinating attacks. Placing markers initiates a beep and spinning pointer to alert allies of the placement and location of the marker.
8. Using a "whiteboard" key players can actually draw on the battlefield using the mouse pointer as a pen.
TA Demo Recorder is the coolest thing I've ever seen for TA. The Swedish Yankspankers deserve high praise for their accomplishment. If you don't have TADR then visit their website and get it. Keep in mind that none of these features came with the game. They accomplished this on their own.
Other various hacks available include:
1. Increasing the unit max per player to 5000 from 500.
2. Multi-directional factories (helpful for players along the sides and bottom of the maps).
Various other features badly needed:
1. The ability to change game resolution from within the game itself rather than only from the menu.
2. Increase in the number of buttons per page in the build menus. Saves having to click through pages of buttons to find the unit you want to build. Also, the game has an internal limit of 8 pages I believe.
3. True Line-of-Sight sharing among allies.
4. Multiple chat macros so players can use a single keystroke to turn on/off resource sharing.
5. Ability to rotate factories in any direction prior to placement and construction so the exit faces whichever direction the player chooses. Since factories all face south it's kind of cumbersome for players along the bottom of the map in multi-player games.
6. Ability to assign units to groups with keys other than the 1 through 9 keys.
Understand that this is just a small fraction of what can and has been done. I'm sure there are many more things unknown to me.
Just some interesting factoids for the curious:
I presently have an Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53Ghz), 512mb DDR. My last PC was a Pentium 1Ghz with 384mb PC133. I play TA in 1280x1024 resolution and never experience slowdown even in huge battles. My old P3-1Ghz could run it in 1024x768 res but no higher without significant slowdown. At my TA lanparties we use the TA Demo Recorder features. I set the max unit limit per player to 1000 which is usually sufficient. We play TA once or twice a month with 4 to 8 people. When I bought TA in 1997 I owned a Pentium 166. Back then played in 640x480 resolution and the unit max per player was 200.
Chris Taylor now runs Gas Powered Games and his latest project is Dungeon Siege.