Dang, I just got that from Impulse a little while ago. I love GoG, but I don’t need to triple dip.
Is it worth it for someone who has never played it? Or will I have gotten everything out of it that I’m going to get (and more) if I’ve played Supreme Commander already?
Total Annihilation is awesome and well worth 6 bucks.
Damn it. That doesn’t answer my question. Fine. Bought. Downloading. I have to admit, I’m dying to know which parts of Supreme Commander were already in place back in the TA days and which parts were new. It’s worth it just for that, even if it doesn’t hold up to go backwards.
Wow, I’m already digging the soundtrack, which I downloaded first from GoG, while the game is downloading.
The soundtrack is like a lovechild of a Western and Star Wars. Definitely sounds a lot like John Williams.
I can’t picture playing an RTS while listening to this though. Isn’t it highly distracting? Or is something this dramatic always happening in Total Annihilation?
In Total Annihilation there’s basically two types of music, the epic, grandiose music that plays during combat, and then the slower paced, more soothing music outside of combat. They would switch back and forth depending on what was happening in the game. It worked surprisingly well, and is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time.
Nothing quite like this playing while you have a huge pack of mavericks dishing out carnage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CBTZqO83WQ
It depends how GoG did it, but in the original the CD would change the track playing depending on whether you were in battle or not. It was the soundtrack which made Jeremy Soule so well known.
BTW, get a better AI for it ;)
Yeah, sorry, I didn’t have much time last night to go into more detail why I think it’s awesome. I figured Wumpus would chime in since he is a fan of the game as well. Part of it’s awesomeness is that it did so many innovative things in regards to UI, unit control, unit behavior and scale of battles at the time it came out, a lot of things that for whatever reason other RTS games did not adopt. Being able to set waypoints by shift clicking, queuing up build orders, actions, patrol paths and guarding units and structures were things no other games were doing back then. Resource management was also different and was unlimited if you played the map right. Units could also avoid fire depending on the circumstances, shooting at something is not guaranteed to hit it. The sheer destruction that the game is capable of was unsurpassed at the time, nuke hits/commander deaths shake the screen and take out large chunks of whatever were in the blast radius. A badly planned base could see a lot of secondary explosions rip through it like a chain of dominoes falling. All that and the concept of the Commander unit being the most powerful single unit (pre Krogoth at least) and also being a huge liability if destroyed amongst your base/armies as noted above. It also was able to make base units, help buildings create units, scout, and be used as a kamikaze if needed depending on victory conditions. Plus the games engines scales in resolution so it’s not locked into 800x600 and doesn’t cause your eyes to bleed as a result. You can even modify the number of units available to a side from the default, I’ve played with 500 per side and there were some epic battles as a result.
The AI out of the box was not the best, though it was improved on a bit with patches plus there are fan made AIs that utilize all the unit abilities you may want to look into.
I’d recommend not doing the campaigns, aside from a few missions that introduce the UI and units. Skirmish and multi player are the best parts of the game.
There were lots of internet wars between TA and Starcraft fans, you might google some of the threads to get a taste of what things were like back then.
I hope you enjoy the game.
It did air units in a unique manner as well (at least for the non-gunship type units), as I recall.
Some of my best gaming moments were AI smashing or epic skirmishes against another player (or two or three) in Total Annihilation. The games can definitely go long too, but fortunately you can up the passage of time, as I had a game that took at least 6 real time hours once and was utterly spectacular. I love SupCom, and it improves on TA in some amazing ways, but it doesn’t have the smaller scale fix TA does, it’s always a bigger thing. Which is great, for that.
TA is smaller feeling and, I think for lack of a better term, grittier. In Shadowrun terms, SupCom is an Arcology raid, TA is a gang war in the 'rens. Both are great, just a different flavor, and both are definitely defense oriented. Set your base up, set decoys, set defenses, etc. Honestly, I think the biggest key to Total Annihilation is intel. You can’t brute force your way into enemy bases, you need to find the weak spots and exploit them instead of zerg rushing, and things can really go back and forth when people dig in.
Keep in mind there’s not really any all-purpose units (to the best of my memory). Some units are flexible, but most are best suited to a role. You’ll learn what’s what fast, because not all offensive units are good for everything. Generally they’re good against other units, against defensive emplacements, or buildings, but not all three. Exception for totally sweet D-guns, naturally.
I’d also suggest that you learn the ropes on Evad River Confluence. It’s a three sided symmetrical map with plenty of space and resources, three triangular islands divided by river. It’s mostly dominated by aerial battles, but naval using naval units to control the river can allow you to prevent enemy bombers from getting near your base, as well as opening the way to get ground units to theirs, which is a general weak spot for players on that map.
Maybe someone here will be able to answer this - is there any way to change the dosbox settings of GoG games? I’d like to record some footage of a couple of my GoG games, apparently to do so with fraps I need to change one of the settings to OpenGL. Since it seems to automatically launch, I’m not sure how/if I can do this.
C:\Program Files\GOG.com*game in question*\dosboxgamename.conf
Open that in Notepad.
Thanks, you’re my hero.
Great news (IMO). GOG just released Age of Wonders. I have very fond memories of this game.
Even better, though, is they have Age of Wonders II: The Wizard’s Throne and AoW II: Shadow Magic on the upcoming list. I never did find a copy of Shadow Magic, but heard many remark that it was a truly great game. Looking forward to some more TBS goodness.
I simply love love love this game… Its easily up there with MoM, but it also borrowes heavily from it, and has admitted it so there is that.
Btw - Steam is supposed to get this as well. I guess they lucked out on the timing.
As soon as AOW:SM is up, I’m all over it. It’ll be like getting Elemental, but far better and for $10. I’d love it if someone got it out today or tomorrow…it’d be the perfect TBS warmup for Civ V.
They need to get Warlords III: Darklords Rising, like yesterday dag nabbit.
2 words: Shadow Watch M’er F’ers
I’m gonna buy all the AoW games as soon as I’m able off of GoG. Love these games. I actually have Shadow Magic on disk, but it’s so good I’ll double dip.
Hell yeah they do, that’s another one I’d double dip on.
Whassat? It’s not ringing any bells.