Why TA was so Grand?

Hello all, first a bit of backroundXD:
My first RTS game was Sup Com 2(Yep the taboo game round here), and i damn well loved itXD(well cept for the OP UEF XP gunships and air) and that game was what got me into the RTS genre. However the small community made it a bit hard to keep playing. Luckily i discovered FAF soon after FA got out on steam and i still play there today and that game is quite awesome. With these 2 games in my belt i had found a great like of the genre so when PA came out i immediately backed and later upgraded to beta after seeing alpha vids. And then here in this community i hear all about this old game called TA that apparently inspired the supcom series i know and love.

However when i did some research of the game and watched some vids, what i saw simply didnt live up to all the hype i hear on these forums about TA and while similar most certainly didnt match FA in awesomeness imho. I also tried the zero k game which some said was similar and great and when i played it it was just eh.maybe i just need to sit down and go theough the game to fully understand or Maybe its the fact that the graphics throw me off a bit too much or something else idk. And this is where the question lies; What made that game so great for you all to inspire all these comments i hear? IM honestly curious

In this thread id like the old TA fans in the community to give me the reason that made TA so great.

For me, better explosions and sound effects.

Total Annihilation was the game of choice at LAN parties for a long time.

Back before everybody had internet, back when it was dialup if you had it anyways, we used to have to lug our computers and heavy as **** CRT monitors into each other's cramped basements to compete with one another.

EDIT: It's really important that you actually play through the game. Videos just don't do it justice. The campaign was pretty rad, too. Get a free CRT off craigslist, if you can, this game was never designed with LCD displays in mind, and probably looks terrible on them heh

I completely disagree with this. CRT monitors not only ruin your eyesight, but also make your eyes physically burn after long periods of time, and can possibly give major headaches.

LCDs do not make TA look worse at all. If anything, that's simply an illusion of the CRT monitor itself. LCDs normally have much much more color depth than CRTs, have much larger displays, and can hold such a larger resolution (like 1080p). The fallback of having such a large resolution is the units tend to be much smaller, thus you don't get to see as much of the detail put into the game. Explosions are smaller, (and on faster computers, don't last as long), so you end up with a result that is MUCH more fluid and much easier to control, but lacking in what you would presume to remember.

This isn't an LCD problem, it's simply a display settings problem. You can set your game to lower colors, set your resolution to a smaller screen, or even a screen size equal to the ratio of screensize you'd get on a CRT.

That being said,
I agree on the fact that you should actually GET TA and play it. No video will ever give you what the game feels like to play. Never will. Play the campaign, play with friends, actually give it time. Going from something like SupCom will make TA seem dated, but, you know, pretty graphics are what really make a game for some people, and it's those souls who won't ever be able to experience the true masterpiece that TA was.

I think its very important to remember that TA was released back in 1997. have a look at other games released around the same time (an example i can think of from the top of my head is "dark reign".

i think the scope of what cavedog did then was immense, and introduced many of the features that are now standards in the RTS genre.

the scale of the battles, unit numbers, Advanced AI (for its time).

I remember when i first bought the Supreme commander games i was bitterly disappointed... was like looking at a shadow. you knew it was never going to be as good.
its hard to put a pin on why that is for me. i still enjoy the odd TA skirmish even now 15 odd years later!

(first post. congrats me!)

If wanna give it a shot :

• Grab a copy on GOG, contains all the add-ons : http://www.gog.com/gamecard/total_anihi ... ander_pack

• Get the community 4.0 patch, this will make it work better on a modern pc : http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42656

You might need to delve a bit into configuration to find a good screen resolution to play but other than that it should run pretty fine still.

For me, it was all about scale at the time.

• Lot of freedom from the UI and simulation side of the game, no hard set paper / cisor rules, no 12 units selected limit, order queuing for both units and production

• First RTS using real 3D rendering, coupled with simulated ballistics, makes it different than anything else, it kind of gave it "hard reality" feel

• Streaming economy and building, when everyone else was still using limited cristal / spice / tiberium harvesting

• Tons of units, roles and variety : tanks, robots, naval, air with realistic flying and bombers that actually behave like ones (carpet bombing).

• Scale, map could be huge and let you field vast armies. You had weapons that could litteraly fire from the other side of the map.

• A nuke worthy of the name, makes Red Alert and Starcraft nukes fireworks in comparison

It now has some age, but it still enjoyable to launch a few battles once in a while. And it is still running without much trouble, tells much about the scalability that it was engineered with at the time.
It was a mix of good things that pushed the genre, took a time to be matched. TA was kind of the same forward pushing than SupCom strategic zoom, the kind of things you hardly live without after trying them.

Now imagine the guys that made both TA and SupCom doing another leap forward with tons of new software tech ?

I think the fact that it was so different and miles ahead of other RTS games in that time period.
3D (although not really..) units and terrain, permanent wreckage, streaming resource system, large scale battles, etc. I was actually always disappointed with other RTS games not having permanent wreckage.

No game after TA really compared to it and myself (like others) were kinda disappointed with SC, although I can’t really explain why (no doubt nostalgia plays a role). PA already feels a lot better and ‘truer’ to the original TA experience while at the same time providing new toys to play with.

This.

TA is now outdated, but in 1997, it was a revolution.

First Full 3D RTS,
Ballistic management
First time a turret in a RTS shot at the other side of the map
So first time radar was really usefull (to shoot without visual contact)
Ground / Air / Naval combat
First time a RTS use a "just in time" economy

Think about that :
Warcraft 2 has been released in 1995/1996.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26QH2_jRjqQ

The streaming economy and huge army sizes did it for me. That, and the gameplay was really good. IMO, experimentals and the T3 kinda watered it in Supcom.

Sound design. Whoever worked on the sound effects was a genius.

The reason?

For me personally the absolute #1 feature of TA was the soundtrack. The music was beautiful and I still listen to it regularly. It is what first got me interested in music as a youngster and kept me playing for hours and hours back before I knew how to pull music files out from the game folder.

However, obviously there is a lot more to it than that.

TA was the first RTS to make a real attempt at huge, macro-focused battles. We're talking armies of HUNDREDS of robots, all under your command, battling it out with visually stunning explosions, having to pick their way through the wreckages of their fallen comrades, with wave after wave crashing up against the enemy's defences. And because of the streaming economy, you could just leave your base on full automated mode so you could take in this glorious battle right in front of you. Then, when you're done, you pan back down to your base and there's a new army waiting to be sent to the slaughter.

As others have said, this was in 1997 - the machines running this were chirping away with a few MB of RAM and sporting Windows 95. If you're going to play it, or watch videos, make sure you view it for what it is - a 15-year-old game, made with the best technology available at the time.

I actually re-downloaded TA last week and played a bit of campaign. I have to say there is definitely a huge nostalgia factor at work - so if you didn't play it as a sprog, you may not have the same connection to it as some here do. But I still get chills every time Brutal Battle cranks into action while my Peewees start dishing out the pain.

I dunno about that. TA is more fun to play than any other RTS that I can think of.

I like it better than SupCom even.

The music was amazing, but I like Attack!!! better. :mrgreen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_SvjZElgno

[Citation Needed]

Totally untrue. CRTs are actually preferred by various professionals for their color balance, contrast, viewing angle, and refresh rate. They also support multiple native resolutions and have the lowest amount of input lag possible (making them a choice of many progamers even in 2013). Cats also enjoy them for their loving warmth :geek:

Oh, and they're totally safe. Please stop spreading this myth.

That said, people are literally giving them away, check craigslist. Your new free CRT monitor could be a simple car ride away!

The sharpness of LCDs is what ruins it, you're missing the whole point :lol:

As far as I'm concerned, TA was great for cooperative comp stomps - we played that for almost a decade and it worked with a lot more different people than other games did.
And while it had some imbalances in PvP, basic house rules & -if necessary- disabling units for certain maps and game sizes could lead to interesting games with various strategies and tactics being successfully used.

SupCom (worse, SupCom 2) has more elements of micromanagement and few viable strategies and tactics for each faction.
Even games vs. AI somehow are less interesting too, but I can't entirely put my finger on why that is so. Maybe partly because it is less likely that overlooking a minor terrain feature or such will matter, maybe it is because there are simply dozens of simple groups of units that if arranged and controlled somewhat adequately, the AI has no effective response to.


Ultimately, I myself still very much prefer Spring (especially Zero-K) to the other games. It has very varied gameplay -even in PvP games of different sizes, a *lot* of tactics and strategies are viable-, and it just has the best controls amongst the bunch of games mentioned.

I always feel like a heretic for liking the squeal more then the original! :lol:

Music, sounds, the fact that it was so simple to get yourself into a complicated situation and magnificent game mechanics for its time.

The game is simple, you got a few basic things and out of that you can create an insane battlefield that accompanied with the sounds and music make this game the best RTS that was ever made to this date.
You just need to put yourself back in 1997 and think about RTS. There was no RTS like this back then.. this game started a genre that is loved by millions all over the world(could be billions).

Also watch me play the game in 1080p of the GOG.com release with the unofficial patch from TAUniverse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flYt7IlQj-o
The game is definitely awesome in HD on an LCD, disregard anyone who says otherwise.

I'm a professional (I'm working in a VFX house at the head of rendering department, working on a feature film currently), and I can tell you that there is not a single CRT left in the whole building.

We actually sold the last batch on eBay for practically nothing (and I'm talking of professional monitor for broadcast, not your usual dell monitor).

My preferred monitor is currently this one :
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-monito ... nmonitors/
but it cost too much to use for anything else than for the color grading department

Do you know anything about CRTs? At all? It stands for Cathode Ray Tube, and yes, it is proven that they do emit radiation, and can cause burning of eyes and headaches thanks to the refresh rates. I can provide related proof of this if needbe. Most people don't have that happen to them unless they're using them over long periods of time. If you strain your eyes on a CRT for long periods of time continuously for days, it can actually reduce your eyesight as well.

I've not only used CRTs in the past, still have CRT for both TVs, one for a third computer tower, and I used to dual screen CRTs for Supreme Commander. It is not a myth, and if you actually had enough experience with them, you would know this.

I will not deny that they tend to be better than LCDs at some things, but monitors are becoming more advanced every day, rivaling CRTs and even outclassing them in some areas. The idea that sharpness of an LCD can "ruin" Total Annihilation boggles my mind, as you can edit the sharpness of an LCD very easily. It's really not difficult.

What I think we can both agree on is that no amount of words here will relate or recreate what Total Annihilation truly is. Irrelevant LCD or CRT, irrelevant gameplay videos or not, the only way to truly experience the game is to actually try it.

*Fix'd

I do find myself liking SupCom2 for some features it has over the original, but it is very over-simplified. The experimentals are still set up as base killers, but I like that aren't nearly unstoppable as their previous counterparts in SupCom1. I never did like that air was even worse at being unstoppable in 2 than in 1, but I did like the new unit ideas and other such functions. The large 3d environment and chasms were very cool too.

I'm sort of 50/50 on the game using the resources instantly, but it feels sort of like Red Alert or Tiberian Sun. It wasn't an alien concept to me, so I was able to adapt quite easily to it. Whether it's fitting in a game like that.. well that's a story for a different time.

Friggin THIS. Don't even get me started. I don't think there exists anything in my lifetime that made me more interested in epic orchestral score that Total Annihilation. The sounds, situation-changing music, epic gameplay, and just.. Are you still reading this? WHY AREN'T YOU PLAYING IT YET?!

If it's not a myth, then please link me to a study that proves these 'health hazards', because you are clearly making things up. :lol:

This chart says LCDs are more likely to cause eye strain. Stop trolling.

The ghosting of an LCD display alone is enough to drive me nuts playing old games, which typically rely on the excellent black levels of CRT displays.

I think you need an electronics lesson. Electromagnetic radiation is literally unavoidable in this modern world. Are you one of those nutters wearing tin foil underwear claiming you're allergic to wifi??

...Are we really arguing about CRT vs. LCD?

That's... Actually a really funny metaphor for arguing about TA vs. SupCom. Haha.