Posted August 18, 2010
TA is a tremendously fun game that still looks great and and plays very well. It was also the biggest innovator in RTS's and well ahead of its time for many years.
For one thing, it was 3D when games were still using sprites, including Starcraft. Vehicles ran over obstacles and you could see their undersides when they had to negotiate an odd bit of turf. Jet fighters did not just change their heading in a way that looked like a jerky version of an umbrella spining from above, but turned over in flight to make sharp turns. These units looked like units, not cartoon pictures of units.
Projectiles shot further depending on the height of the placement of guns, and trajectories were calculated in a 3D world. Projectiles varied the time they took to hit, rather than hitting instantly because, unlike the code in games of its time, the code did not tell them that a shot fired is a shot that hits and hits immediately.
Best of all -- and this was what made Starcraft the biggest retreat to the past after a game like TA had come along -- was that the realistic physics model meant that there are are no hard counters. There is no table that tells you that certain projectiles or units can't hit you because the game simply decides to disallow it. If the trajectory and speed work, you get hit! So you can't hover over someone and expect not to be hit by any bullets or missiles just because they don't have the one hard counter the designers have allowed you to use. You still have a chance of getting hit, as long as the physics work out. It is possible to counter any unit with (enough of) any other one.
This makes fights more than a race to the uberunit or hard counter. So you can fight in a way that makes sense rather than follows some lame rule book or wins with one and only one unit.
And that lets you pursue very unconventional strategies, and make very unlikely comebacks. One of the best things about TA is that coming from behind to win is extremely possible and indeed happens all the time. That makes TA a game to continue to play to the bitter but still at least faintly hopeful end, with some real gut-busting tenacity, instead of quitting out from when your enemy gets his superunit before you get the only unit that will counter it.
One of the things you will not read talked about now, but was also huge when TA came out, is the incredibly usefulness and fluidity of the user interface. All others were VERY cumbersome and limited in comparison. TA's was lean in all the right ways, but you could still do quite complex things very rapidly. TA let you queue up factories to build units in orders as complex as you liked, and to cancel or partially cancel them with equal finesse. It let you manage units in small or large groups, and even assign single units to more than one group without losing the previous group assignment. You could set precise paths for all your units, whether on patrol or as part of the process of their being made in the factory, . You could set their responses on those patrols, from repairing and building to fighting and chasing, fighting without chasing, etc. There were key assignments for every kind of the many different sorts of vehicles, so moving and fighting orders of (and generally still unmatched) complexity were possible.
FInally, interesting things were done by the mod community, from units to great maps to my favorite, the recorder. The recorder was a plug-in that let you record games and play them back later for fun and study. It made a fantastic way to study your own weaknesses and learn from others' strategies. There are still hundreds if not thousands of games out there to watch that reveal all sorts of strategic ideas and map-specific strategies, or are just like an incredible action movie with all the boring parts taken out.
I can't mention everything good about the game in this already long review, but I must mention the sound and soundtrack. I still remembered clearly some of the jarring thuds and crushing recoil sounds of the game's guns. Absolutely incredible and it made battles very exciting! And composer Jeremy Soule's soundtrack was fantastic. Never omnipresent or overbearing, the full orchestral sound was rousing and beautiful; it seemed, frankly, far too good for a video game!
Finally, check these out for great help with the game:
Forums: http://tauniverse.com/forum/
Maps: http://www.ratpacker.com/Maps/Maps.html
Commands: http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38037&highlight=metal+heck
Great 3rd party site: http://www.tauniverse.com/
wiki campaign strat guide: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Total_Annihilation
wind and tides chart (for energy): http://it-is-law.com/dump/TA/TA%20Map%20Wind%20&%20Tides.htm
Game replayer: http://www.clan-sy.com/frame.html
Recorded games: http://tadrs.tauniverse.com/
For one thing, it was 3D when games were still using sprites, including Starcraft. Vehicles ran over obstacles and you could see their undersides when they had to negotiate an odd bit of turf. Jet fighters did not just change their heading in a way that looked like a jerky version of an umbrella spining from above, but turned over in flight to make sharp turns. These units looked like units, not cartoon pictures of units.
Projectiles shot further depending on the height of the placement of guns, and trajectories were calculated in a 3D world. Projectiles varied the time they took to hit, rather than hitting instantly because, unlike the code in games of its time, the code did not tell them that a shot fired is a shot that hits and hits immediately.
Best of all -- and this was what made Starcraft the biggest retreat to the past after a game like TA had come along -- was that the realistic physics model meant that there are are no hard counters. There is no table that tells you that certain projectiles or units can't hit you because the game simply decides to disallow it. If the trajectory and speed work, you get hit! So you can't hover over someone and expect not to be hit by any bullets or missiles just because they don't have the one hard counter the designers have allowed you to use. You still have a chance of getting hit, as long as the physics work out. It is possible to counter any unit with (enough of) any other one.
This makes fights more than a race to the uberunit or hard counter. So you can fight in a way that makes sense rather than follows some lame rule book or wins with one and only one unit.
And that lets you pursue very unconventional strategies, and make very unlikely comebacks. One of the best things about TA is that coming from behind to win is extremely possible and indeed happens all the time. That makes TA a game to continue to play to the bitter but still at least faintly hopeful end, with some real gut-busting tenacity, instead of quitting out from when your enemy gets his superunit before you get the only unit that will counter it.
One of the things you will not read talked about now, but was also huge when TA came out, is the incredibly usefulness and fluidity of the user interface. All others were VERY cumbersome and limited in comparison. TA's was lean in all the right ways, but you could still do quite complex things very rapidly. TA let you queue up factories to build units in orders as complex as you liked, and to cancel or partially cancel them with equal finesse. It let you manage units in small or large groups, and even assign single units to more than one group without losing the previous group assignment. You could set precise paths for all your units, whether on patrol or as part of the process of their being made in the factory, . You could set their responses on those patrols, from repairing and building to fighting and chasing, fighting without chasing, etc. There were key assignments for every kind of the many different sorts of vehicles, so moving and fighting orders of (and generally still unmatched) complexity were possible.
FInally, interesting things were done by the mod community, from units to great maps to my favorite, the recorder. The recorder was a plug-in that let you record games and play them back later for fun and study. It made a fantastic way to study your own weaknesses and learn from others' strategies. There are still hundreds if not thousands of games out there to watch that reveal all sorts of strategic ideas and map-specific strategies, or are just like an incredible action movie with all the boring parts taken out.
I can't mention everything good about the game in this already long review, but I must mention the sound and soundtrack. I still remembered clearly some of the jarring thuds and crushing recoil sounds of the game's guns. Absolutely incredible and it made battles very exciting! And composer Jeremy Soule's soundtrack was fantastic. Never omnipresent or overbearing, the full orchestral sound was rousing and beautiful; it seemed, frankly, far too good for a video game!
Finally, check these out for great help with the game:
Forums: http://tauniverse.com/forum/
Maps: http://www.ratpacker.com/Maps/Maps.html
Commands: http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38037&highlight=metal+heck
Great 3rd party site: http://www.tauniverse.com/
wiki campaign strat guide: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Total_Annihilation
wind and tides chart (for energy): http://it-is-law.com/dump/TA/TA%20Map%20Wind%20&%20Tides.htm
Game replayer: http://www.clan-sy.com/frame.html
Recorded games: http://tadrs.tauniverse.com/