Total Annihilation's Spiritual/Actual Sequel Planned? 67
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.
Finally! (Score:4, Interesting)
Being an earth shattering game in the first installment, hopefully the second installment will raise the bar again for RTS games.
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, Commander Rushing, that was a bit unbalanced. But it was extremely risky as well.
Re:Finally! (Score:2)
Re:Finally! (Score:1)
TA was great but a sequel? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:4, Informative)
Galactic civilization develops the ability to pattern thought into computer memory. Development polarizes society. Half leave to form rival civilization (Arm), while the rest are converted into digital form (Core). War ensues. Both sides nearly annihilate each other.
In the expansion, the Arm have won. But a single Core Commander that lay hidden on a remote world (thus "Core Contingency") activates. Core seeks to destroy the galaxy by some kind of doomsday machine, save the remaining Commander at ground zero; the Commander would then manually rebuild the whole galaxy. Don't know what happens after this. Anybody played Battle Tactics?
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:2)
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:3, Funny)
They were scum in my opinion. Too feeble minded to grasp the concept of universal immortality. Too attatched to their feeble bodies to witness the ascention of humanity. Fools, every last one of them.
Core forever!
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:1)
The thing I always loved about the storyline was that, the humans (Arm) were vehemently against the idea of transferring their consciousnesses into machines, like the Core did. They thought it was unnatural. However, they were perfectly OK w
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:2)
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:2)
Somebody else that loves Close Combat? Wow! Not many people seem to play that game...
Just out of curiosity, anyone manage to get Close Combat (any of them) running under any version of WINE? I've come close, and even sat down once to try implementing some missing code, but never finished.
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:2)
That's because Chris Taylor had long already left the company.
Make no mistake - TA *IS* Chris Taylor's game, just as DOOM is Carmack's or Grim Fandango is Schaefer's.
The story (Score:5, Funny)
Humans in robot suits vs. Robots with human brains.
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, TA wasn't perfect here, though it compares well to what other computer RTSes can do.
True 3D terrain and the use of it. Make hills and valleys important
TA does this. Probably to an unrealistic extent (are future engagements even likely to use artillery?) but it really is more fun with a lot of emphasis placed on terrain.
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.
True, true. TA does this. It'd be interesting to see what it'd be like with even *longer* range weapons. The ranges in TA are *much* larger than in most other RTSes (how many games have weapons that can shoot at things seven screens away?), but it's still, frankly, relative small-scale compared to what a real game would be like. And is there some reason that buildings need to be scaled down? From a gameplay standpoint, it seems like accurately-sized buildings are feasible.
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.
Agreed. I think TA came closest in terms of overarching orders, but I'd still like more. "Defend this area" "Ambush anyone coming through this area", "repair any damaged units in this group when not in combat", "attempt to fall back from any enemy units at 80% health", etc.
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.
Hmm. I agree, but while not realistic, it may be good for gameplay. Conventionally, it is pretty difficult to maintain the integrity fixed positions, if both sides have advanced weaponry. Buildings are pretty much sitting ducks. Tanks can chew buildings to shreds. TA let bases be *built* and construction occur, which is not realistic for the immediate vicinity of battle, but which is traditional for the RTS genre. Ensuring that buildings are a bit tougher to wipe out than in real life is pretty much necessary -- you wouldn't have your aircraft factory half a mile away from enemy ground units supported by aircraft in real life (or if you did, you wouldn't for long), but TA tries to allow you to do so.
Yeah, Close Combat is fun too. Man, I wish Blizzard had never started the whole micromanagement dumbed-down-gameplay kick. I'd like a slower-moving but more complicated game, closer to a traditional strategy game.
Re:TA was great but a sequel? (Score:1)
Unfortunately DR is almost completely unplayable on modern computers, while TA remains very playable. DR2 was an interesting attempt at bringing RTS to 3D, but had a nasty camera. DR also had many of the unit behaviors people are still looking for in modern RTS games, such as support units actually supporting a group of units they're travelling w
Brawlers (Score:4, Interesting)
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..
Re:Brawlers (Score:5, Informative)
But since this Phantagram deal fell through... well, if GPG can get onboard with Atari, i'm sure both parties would be more than happy to strike a deal.
Total Annihilation (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re:Total Annihilation (Score:2)
I am only mentioning this because the game is no longer being sold, but isohunt.com is your friend. I had to regrab TA again just a few days ago, because I can't find my legit CDs. Seriously - bought it at release...anyone else remember those awesome magazine ads? Completely sold me on the (great) game, though I still don't think it is as perfect as many of its fans say.
Re:Total Annihilation (Score:2)
I went back and played it through (single-player) last month. It's still a blast to play, though I *do* wish they'd update the graphics.
Re:Total Annihilation (Score:2)
Fun game, but not as cool interface-wise as I remembered. I am finding it really hard to play through again.
Re:Total Annihilation (Score:2)
Select the unit - then press ctrl+z and you get all of that one kind of unit. I think ctrl+s also let you select all units on a single screen, which was a wonderful feature if you had your different factories moving finished bots/vehicles to the same area. I kind of prefer the ctrl pressing to double clicking since I might accidently double click sometime and not want all of them select
Re:Total Annihilation (Score:2)
Thanks for the tip though. I think I will dig up a FAQ or whatever on the hotkeys, print it out, and maybe give it another go.
Re:Total Annihilation (Score:2)
untimely demise (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:untimely demise (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:untimely demise (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:untimely demise (Score:4, Insightful)
* First, the original game featured characters that were mechanical. They had flat surfaces. They were easy to model well with few polygons. TA:Kingdoms did not, and *nobody* had a computer that could run it well at the time of release (I didn't even *remotely* come close and couldn't even try to play it.J)
* Secondly, nobody seemed to get excited about the game. It's hard to describe. TA matches had someone screaming and laughing at the same time "you *bastard*" as someone pulled off a slick tactical manuver. The people I watched playing TA:Kingdoms just kind of sat there and mechanically clicked away.
The vast unit count, as you pointed out, may have been an issue. The control of sizeable forces was a neat part of TA.
I don't think Starcraft's story was an issue. TA did well, and had little story. It didn't have fleshed out characters, and it didn't have Kerrigan's sultry voice or lots of character art. All the TA production resources went into gameplay-relevant things. The only potential exception was the fantastic John Williamsesque music that got much more frantic and rapid during battles -- but it had so much impact on the mood of players that I'd still call it significant to the in-game enjoyment.
Re:untimely demise (Score:1)
i ran it just fine on a 266mhz k6 w/ 32mb of ram and a 4meg ati. played about halfway thru till it became unplayable. and loved it also. i finished it later on when i upgraded.
nothing is really impossible if u dont overdo it.
Re:untimely demise (Score:1)
I've never owned a computer that slow personally (used some at work) and while TA:Kingdoms played on my home computer at the time, it did not play well.
One interesting point about Kingdoms, though, is that they included a system through which it would drop animation frames if your system was slowing down to try to keep up the framerate. Unfortunately, this backfired on them as many people saw this as jerky animation rather than a slowdown, a
Well, I can tell you why I didn't buy it.. (Score:2)
Re:untimely demise (Score:1)
I think what prevented this in TA was good artillery. Plain
only rts game i ever liked (Score:4, Insightful)
TA Links (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Absolute Annihilation (Score:4, Informative)
Much improved AI, many more (diverse) units, and best of all, it's still maintained. They made a new release yesterday.
Re:Absolute Annihilation (Score:1)
TA has not been matched. No one's even tried. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:TA has not been matched. No one's even tried. (Score:1)
All that micromanagement makes it Tactics. Strategy involves long term planning with macroplacement of troops.
So, TA is mixed RTS/RTT, StarCraft is singularly RTT.
Re:TA has not been matched. No one's even tried. (Score:2)
Traditionally, the game world doesn't distinguish much between "strategy" and "tactics" (and it gets confused further, as people now associate "tactics" with games like Final Fantasy Tactics).
Right not to flame of troll but... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Right not to flame of troll but... (Score:3, Insightful)
After all these, TA was and still is the most fun. People who bash it
Re:Right not to flame of troll but... (Score:2)
Not a troll, but have you tried C&C:Generals and/or Zero Hour? In these games it is definitely possible to do what you mention.
Re:Alas... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Alas... (Score:1)
all the units had a fuckton of moving parts. remember how the annihilator opened? the transport ships? all the factories? everything. it was not bland at all. everything was very hi-techish. robots. all metal. and some color to distinguish the teams.
everything was beyond amazing. a single unit was more complex than a dozen of othe
Re:Alas... (Score:1)
The *craft series is for people who like to click around like a maniac, TA was for people who liked to use their brains to handle strategic and tactical problems.
I mean, Blizzard even admitted that they limited the building queue sizes and the amount of units you can select at one time on purpose, because it would make the game more "intense" ! I've never forgiven them for making SC a click
What a great day! (Score:2)
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??
Second that -- this is fantastic (Score:2)
Problem is, chances of them doing a Linux release are nil. Sigh...
Re:Second that -- this is fantastic (Score:2)
Re:Second that -- this is fantastic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Second that -- this is fantastic (Score:2)
Re:Second that -- this is fantastic (Score:2)
And Ground Control didn't even come close to the greatness that was TA :)
Re:Second that -- this is fantastic (Score:2)
I can still remember him crying in frustration when I grabbed his commander with an atlas, and self-destructed the atlas.
Re:Second that -- this is fantastic (Score:2)
I really miss TA. I hope it gets a true sequel, with modern graphics ... that would kick so much ass!
Re:Second that -- this is fantastic (Score:1)
Best Game ever for robot warfare (Score:4, Interesting)
This site [planetannihilation.com] 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 hope this doesn't happen (Score:2)
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.....
This just reminds me that Generals sucks... (Score:2)
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 t