Most incredible GPLed game ever - Total Annihilation. New and improved!

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#1

This is about one of my favorite games of all time - Total Annihilation. In 1997 I got my first PC and this was one of the first games I bought and it was incredible. Loads of beautiful land, sea and air units with no unit cap and cinematic visuals and music. Awesome.

Unfortunately, Cavedog (the company that made the game) went bust. That was the end of that - or so I thought.

Of course some of you will have heard of Supreme Commander, the “spiritual successor” to TA. http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=Supreme+Commander. It is the first RTS I have been looking forward to in years but it seemed the days of Total Annihilation were really over…

I was wrong. Last night I discovered TA springs - a project that is so much more than a GPLed clone of the original. It is fully 3D for instance and there is no unit cap. When I discovered the site, I thought I had stumbled upon an alpha project that was all but dead. Opening the multiplayer I saw no one. Empty. I fiddled one last time and tried again.

The list sprung to life. The multiplayer lobby was throbbing with activity. Dozens of mods and dozens of maps and loads of players. If you are an RTS fan or an old Total Annihilation fan you really do owe it to yourself to check this out:

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/

In many respects it beats the crap out of any RTS on the market right now. Look at the size of this battle for example:

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/screenshots/screen79.jpg

And graphically it may not be top notch anymore, some features (eg the water) are very impressive. Check out Movie 18 on this page:

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/download.php

The only thing that is missing is the original soundtrack. Insert some dramatic classical music into your CD drive and immerse yourself!

Koba

#2

I believe a GNU/Linux port is in the works, too.

#3

wow, awesome.

i haven’t played TA in quite some time, i will be sure to check this out later when i get home. thanks!

screenshots O_O: http://taspring.clan-sy.com/screenshots.php

#4

I play TA spring all the time. I host. My name on there is Clone_Dad.

#5

I actually have tried TA springs for a few moments but then I played the original TA again for quite a while a few months ago. I’ll defenitely try TAS again :stuck_out_tongue:

#6

thanks for the tip. I have been obsessed with Company of Heroes for the PC - it’s a WWII RTS (not too many good ones out there) based on the warhammer 40k engine and HEAVY on the strategy. no tank rushes win here… it is now one of my favorite games of all time. incredibly realistic (apart from the resource gathering) units, amazing AI (your own troops use all available cover, flank units, flawless path-finding etc). not to mention the destructable havok physics means you march into an undamaged city and leave it a flaming wreck. awesome.

#7

Heh, it should really be the other way around. I mean being the focus point of the entire Open Source community, Linux should be the first to support any Open Source game, and windows should have to wait for a port.

Talk about irony.

#8

Social - remember that TA was made for Windows. While some people may have played the original and switched to linux, it isn’t too unreasonable to start with a Windows version on the basis that many people who played TA will still be using that OS.

Koba

#9

Aah, taht game brings back memories. As the screenshots show, you can start incredible big battles.

I remember when I played it on my 166mhz pentium 16 mbRam. I ofthen made an incredible big army and when I thought: ‘I own them with this’ I went into battle. And using my commander as backup I blow everything into pieces, whooow how much I liked that.
The power of the commander is just amazing, since it can blow up a straight line of factories or robots. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m defently going to try this out when I got back home. :smiley:

#10

It looks very impresive… I will definitly have to try this later… my friend got me into rts games from age of empires…

Aaron

#11

Usually that is what happens with FOSS.