Total Annihilation (abbr. TA) is a futuristic RTS (real-time strategy) PC game, created by Chris Taylor and Cavedog Entertainment and released on September 30, 1997^[1] by GT Interactive. It was the first RTS to feature 3D units and terrain, a significant achievement in the days before graphics cards with hardware-based 3D acceleration became commonplace. Two expansion packs were released, The Core Contingency on April 30, 1998^[2] and Battle Tactics on June 30, 1998.^[3] The game was highly praised by critics and players, and won numerous awards, including GameSpot's Game of the Year Award for 1997.^[4] TA is considered to be one of the best RTS games of all time and is still played actively today, over 10 years after its release.^[5][6][7] This image was downloaded from Amazon. ... A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates video games. ... Cavedog Entertainment, or Cavedog, was a computer game developer based in Bothell, Washington. ... GT Interactive was an American video game developer founded in 1993 and headquartered in New York City. ... A game designer is a person who designs games. ... Chris Taylor in front of a Dungeon Siege poster. ... is the 273rd day of the year (274th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the band, see 1997 (band). ... Video games are categorized into genres based on their gameplay. ... A real-time strategy (RTS) video game is one that is distinctly not turn-based. ... In computer games and video games, single-player refers to the variant of a particular game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. ... Online gaming redirects here. ... The ESRBs logo. ... In computing, a platform describes some sort of framework, either in hardware or software, which allows software to run. ... “Windows” redirects here. ... The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ... The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up RAM, Ram, ram in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up RAM, Ram, ram in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A 104-key PC US English QWERTY keyboard layout The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout A standard Hebrew keyboard showing both Hebrew and QWERTY. A computer keyboard is a peripheral partially modelled after the typewriter keyboard. ... A contemporary computer mouse, with the most common standard features: two buttons and a scroll wheel. ... A real-time strategy (RTS) video game is one that is distinctly not turn-based. ... IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC, XT, or AT internal design, facilitated by various manufacturers... Computer and video games redirects here. ... Chris Taylor in front of a Dungeon Siege poster. ... Cavedog Entertainment, or Cavedog, was a computer game developer based in Bothell, Washington. ... is the 273rd day of the year (274th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the band, see 1997 (band). ... GT Interactive was an American video game developer founded in 1993 and headquartered in New York City. ... This article is about process of creating 3D computer graphics. ... A graphics/video/display card/board/adapter is a computer component designed to convert the logical representation of visual information into a signal that can be used as input for a display medium. ... The rewrite of this article is being devised at Talk:3D computer graphics/Temp. ... is the 120th day of the year (121st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ... is the 181st day of the year (182nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ... The Total Annihilation computer game has won numerous awards, the list of which follows: The number one Real-Time Strategy Game of all time (top 10 list), Gamespy 2004 Best Game of All Time, PC Games 1998 Gamers Choice Award, Best Real-Time Strategy Game, PC Gamer 1998 Blister... GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. ...

A remake of the game with a completely 3D graphics engine (lacking any fixated camera angle), named Spring, is being worked on by the Swedish Yankspankers. Total Annihilation creator Chris Taylor has also recently created the game Supreme Commander through Gas Powered Games, which bears many similarities with Total Annihilation, and has been popularly considered its "spiritual successor".^[8] Spring (formerly known as TA Spring or Total Annihilation: Spring), is a full 3D open source RTS engine originally created by the Swedish Yankspankers,[1] intended to bring the gameplay experience of Total Annihilation into three dimensions. ... Supreme Commander - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Gas Powered Games is a computer game developer located in the Seattle, Washington area. ...

Features

The game features three-dimensional rendering technology from one fixated camera angle, true Newtonian physics, and customizable units. Screen resolution as well as the limit of maximum units per player are customizable, depending only on the quality of computer hardware. The default unit limit was originally 200, which was changed to 250 in Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency—by modifying the totala.ini file in the game folder, users can increase this limit up to 500. With a binary modification of the program file and sufficient hardware, the unit limit can be increased to 6400 per team.^{[citation needed]} This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Classical mechanics is a model of the physics of forces acting upon bodies. ... Display standards comparison The display resolution of a digital television or computer display typically refers to the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. ... Computer hardware is the physical part of a computer, including the digital circuitry, as distinguished from the computer software that executes within the hardware. ...

Interface

The interface is designed to minimize micromanagement by automating many of the routine tasks. Micromanagement (often abbreviated to micro) is a term used in strategy computer games to describe a facet of gameplay. ...

The player can queue unit actions by holding down the shift key. This allows a plethora of management possibilities, such as the establishment of patrol routes to be automatically assigned to units as they emerge from factories, the commanding of construction units to autonomously repair groups of buildings or assist with nearby construction, or the instant mapping of an entire base's or outpost's blueprints. Unlike numerous other strategy games produced during the 1990s, as well as even some games of today’s times, armed units automatically attack equally armed enemies, even if moving and not directly assigned the action (unless specifically commanded to hold fire), allowing players to micromanage less and concentrate more on cumulative efforts of grand strategy. For the band, see 1990s (band). ... Grand strategy is military strategy considered at the level of the movement and use of an entire nation state or empires resources. ...

In the traditional style of the majority of the first early RTSs, mouse functions in Total Annihilation are primarily based on the left-click; units are selected and commanded using left-click, and all negative functions, such as the deselecting of units or the cancellation of building projects, are effected solely by right-clicking. Players can also assign units to multiple groups.

Units

An in-game screenshot of a Core base.

Although the game originally shipped with 150 discrete units, the expansion packs The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics allow players to choose from 230 units, and over 6,000 units are available after 3rd-party installations from Total Annihilation's many different fansites (although only 511 units can be installed on any one copy due to engine limitations). The two factions were balanced by giving both sides similar, well-rounded selections of units which filled all possible roles. These include aircraft, tanks, ships and legged vehicles known as KBOTs (Kinetic Bio In-Organic Technology). All aircraft are VTOL and have unlimited fuel, which allows them to hover or endlessly patrol as well as land on slightly uneven terrain. Except for nuclear missile silos which must construct their missiles, all units have unlimited ammunition and fuel, although many laser weapons derive their power from the player’s energy resource (as explained later below regarding economic management) and cannot fire without sufficient energy. Download high resolution version (896x704, 372 KB) This work is copyrighted. ... Download high resolution version (896x704, 372 KB) This work is copyrighted. ... The Hawker Harrier, one of the famous examples of a plane with VTOL capability. ...

The Core Contingency expansion pack further diversifies both sides' arsenals by providing both races various units bearing features that the opposing side’s own units lacked—a general discrepancy among the two factions is also represented through their overall structure, with the Arm’s units tending to be faster but weaker and the Core’s heavier but stronger. A major component of the expansion pack is the inclusion of hovercraft. Underwater construction, as well as increased support for amphibious units, is also greatly expanded upon in The Core Contingency. A Hovercraft, or Air-Cushion Vehicle (ACV), is an amphibious vehicle or craft, designed to travel over any sufficiently smooth surface - land or water - supported by a cushion of slowly moving, low-pressure air, ejected downwards against the surface close below it. ...

After The Core Contingency, Cavedog released several units online, free for download, which further broadened the Arm and Core: the Arm Flea (the smallest, puniest scout Kbot in the game), the Core Necro (a slow, unarmed Kbot capable of restoring the wreckage of destroyed units to functionality), the Arm FARK (the "Fast Assist and Repair Kbot" for battlefield deployment), the Core Immolator (a short-range plasma tower), and the Arm Scarab & Core Hedgehog (mobile anti-nuclear missile vehicles). These units, like any other added-on units placed within the game folders, are only accessible in multiplayer if all participants possess the corresponding files.

Utilities have also been produced by the fan community, with varying support by the game's authors, for creating freely downloadable third-party units. Many thousands of such units have been produced, in some cases being packaged as total conversions for complete replacement of the original units. Fans have even created their own races to join or replace the game's two original factions.

Ultimately, there are 236 official Cavedog units, with well over 6,000 third-party units available online.

Total Annihilation's Conceptual Revolution

An aspect of Total Annihilation's units (and thus the game’s quickly ensuing initial popularity), which no other real-time strategy game of its time was capable of realizing (and even most RTSs today), is its hierarchical proportionality. In most RTSs, one unit is quickly prone to destruction from multiple other types, such as, in the Command & Conquer series, a general rocket trooper’s utter uselessness against other infantry. All units in TA are scaled proportionally; a higher-technology unit which requires more resources to produce, with some exceptions, is generally able to successfully destroy any type of lesser unit beneath it in ranking if pitted together in combat. Players do not need to use any specific "destroyer" unit to quickly defeat a particular type of enemy; lower-technology units are almost absolutely weaker than and can be proportionally destroyed by anything of higher technological ranking. Also unlike any other RTS ever made, units are not elementally restricted on a fundamental level; all units can attack, or at least attempt to attack, any enemies within their general range, regardless of type (such as aircraft or naval units). This concept is also represented in Supreme Commander. Command & Conquer is the original title in Westwood Studios Command & Conquer franchise of real-time strategy video games. ... Supreme Commander - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...

AI and physics

The default computer player artificial intelligence is fairly simplistic; the computer player, for instance, cannot detect on its own what types of units would be feasible for a given map, and will generally produce as many land and sea units as can fit into any available space, which often results in humorous scenarios, such as small islands congested with tanks and infantry, or small ponds full of battleships. This can be overcome by carefully rewriting the AI and adjusting weights {the probability that a certain unit type will be built} & limits {maximum number of units of a specific type, to be calculated as a percentage of the max. unit count}. Normally, adjusting the difficulty will only increase the rate at which enemy units are built and the frequency of attack attempts, and has no effect on the computer's strategy, which is only to produce more units. However, manually rewriting the AI will allow multiple AI profiles on a single map, albeit at only a single difficulty level. The default computer AI will only use construction units' reclamation ability (see Resources) to supply itself with resources, and does not know how to clear paths. This can give players an advantage on maps strewn with reclaimable material, like houses, urban areas, trees, or boulders. This can also be upgraded manually by modifying the AI. It should be noted that individual unit pathfinding and combat AI is considered very decent with respect to contemporary titles. AI redirects here. ... Total Annihilation (abbr. ...

The physics engine supports true trajectories, inertia, momentum, thrust, and collateral damage. The game's terrain is a two-dimensional rendering with a matrix of height values mapped over it. All objects in the game interact with it as though it were fully, illusorily three-dimensional—hills obstruct artillery fire, and, if line-of-sight is set to "true", height enhances units' visual and firing ranges. If terrain is steep and jagged, units tilt and turn to meet the face of the ground. Bases can be built on steep terrain to protect them from artillery fire and to create choke points. Artillery shells are affected by gravity, which is variable on different planets in the Total Annihilation universe. Particularly on lower-gravity moons, some artillery units can strike targets 10 or more screens away. In military strategy, a choke point (or chokepoint) is a geographical feature (such as a valley or defile) which forces an army to go into a narrower formation (greatly decreasing combat power) in order to pass through it. ... For other uses, see Artillery (disambiguation). ...

A particular feature to note especially of long-range plasma cannons, which are meant to steadily bombard enemies from multiple screens, is their illusion of adaptation—the first projectile they fire usually misses, but if the target to strike is stationary, the cannons seem to readjust their aim and are exponentially more accurate with successive rounds.

Multiplayer

Total Annihilation allows total control and customization of unit numbers within multiplayer games. Using the in-game interface, it is possible to stipulate the exact number of any particular unit that a player may build—for example, so that only a limited amount of more powerful units can be present at any moment in time.

Up to 10 players can play simultaneously in a multiplayer match. Unfortunately, all of the original TA servers have since disbanded or no longer host TA, such as Boneyards and MPlayer, which were shut down in 2000. The Macintosh game server "Gameranger" still allows for games of Total Annihilation, although there are very few players nowadays. Some TA players still meet at WarZone (a server set up by the Axis & Allies community), the Phoenix Worx Server, at Gamespy, and on Internet Relay Chat [IRC] at irc.gnug.org on the #tauniverse and #gnug channels. There are also some active clans and ladders at these sources. The TAUniverse IRC Help Page is available for assistance with partaking in IRC. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... MPlayer logo For the free media player, see mplayer. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ...

Help for setting up TA for internet play via TCP/IP can be found on TCBW's TA Page. The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols that implement the protocol stack on which the Internet runs. ...

Extensibility

Data files containing game information can be placed within the game directory, whose contents would then be incorporated into the game. Units, weapons, AI tweaks, missions, races, and new map tilesets can be added, as well as a wide range of modifications and total conversions. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Apart from official enhancements released by Cavedog for free, including units and patches, there is large community support with thousands of third-party add-ons and utilities. A prime example is the Uberhack modification, which modifies all of the existing units and adds several additional ones, in the attempt to balance the game and create unique roles for each of the wide variety of units. Cavedog Entertainment, or Cavedog, was a video game developer based in Seattle, Washington. ...

Soundtrack

The game has an original orchestral soundtrack composed by Jeremy Soule and performed by the 96-piece Northwest Sinfonia orchestra. The music changes according to events: during a battle, louder and more frenetic music plays alongside; during post-war damage reparations or idle construction, a more ambient and mysterious track is played. The soundtrack is in CD-audio format and can be listened to with ordinary CD players. An ordinary music CD can be inserted once the game is under way and can replace the original game music with its own tracks. It is even possible to program such custom CD tracks to the various battlefield situations (conflict, construction, defeat, etc) like the default set. Jeremy Soule is an award-winning American composer prominent in game music scores. ...

General strategy

An in-game screenshot using custom units.

Structures build relatively quickly in the game to compensate for nimble, heavily armed aircraft and long-range artillery. Nuclear weapons are relatively cheap, powerful, and quick to build. Several warheads can be stockpiled for devastating bombardments. This can lead to the creation of large, sprawling bases as opposed to tightly clustered districts, to limit the damage of a nuclear attack, airstrike, or artillery barrage. Download high resolution version (1018x858, 210 KB)Total Annihilation screenshot. ... Download high resolution version (1018x858, 210 KB)Total Annihilation screenshot. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 kilometers (11 mi) above the hypocenter A nuclear weapon derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions of fusion or fission. ...

Total Annihilation uses two resources to regulate production: energy and metal. Either of these resources is unlimited with regards to generation, but the rate at which a player accumulates or restores resources depends on the amount of resource-gathering structures/units. Unit production is otherwise only limited by micromanagement speed and the number of production units/factories. There is a limit on the maximum number of total producible units, but this can easily be raised to a higher amount through the editing of a game file (see above). This makes offensive strikes a necessity, as a purely defensive strategy will never curtail the enemy's capacity to produce more units (however, note that, in playing against AI, the units produced will be a random mix; hence, as offensive units are destroyed, the AI player is left with a weak amount of low-offensive-value static units).

The presence of infinite resources can often lead to very long drawn-out games that last anywhere from 1 to 4-5 hours; sometimes an almost incorrigible stalemate may develop. The only other discerning factor from other RTS games is the existence of the Commander: the most powerful unit in the game. The one unit that players start off with in multiplayer matches, the Commander is the fastest solo constructionist and also bears the most powerful weapon, the Disintegrator gun (abbr. "D-gun"), a short-range, manually targeted one-shot-kill weapon. It is also armed with a moderately powerful auto-fire laser (useless against aircraft or deep-water naval units), as well as an energy-draining cloaking device. Additionally, the Commander is one of few amphibious units and is capable of building both land and naval structures. If the Commander is destroyed at an early stage, the resource capacity of the corresponding player becomes severely limited. The game options may be (and usually are) set so that victory is achieved by simply assassinating the enemy Commander, although, the spirit of the game usually automatically assumes the end of the match after the death of a Commander, particularly if it is killed within the player's base as it causes a nuclear explosion upon death. A Klingon Bird of Prey from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country fires while using a cloaking device In several science fiction universes, a cloaking device is an advanced stealth system which causes a spaceship or individual to be invisible and extremely difficult to detect with normal sensors. ...

Resource management

One of the defining aspects of Total Annihilation is that both resources, energy and metal, are of unlimited supply. Structures which generate these resources collect them on a per-second basis (at the default game speed). A buffer is used to allow for variations in the speed at which these resources are consumed. Excess resources are placed in this buffer until it is full, at which point further supply is wasted. Storage structures can be built to increase the maximum amount the buffer can hold of either resource. If the player's production is exceeded by usage (mainly due to construction and, for laser weapons, frequent energy use), construction is slowed to the ratio between income and expenditure. The Commander and other construction units (as opposed to non-resource buildings) continuously produce a small amount of energy and metal, so a player is never completely bereft unless all construction units have been destroyed.

Both resources are vital to all aspects of construction. In addition, energy is continuously required to maintain functionality in many structures, including metal-production structures (which use energy in order to generate metal), and are intermittently required to operate laser weaponry. Structures which generate energy can be built anywhere given that there are no obstructions (such as wreckage or hilly, uneven landscape) and that it is in the correct type of area (i.e., land or sea), excepting special geothermal power plants (which must be constructed over vents). However, metal generation structures can only be built efficiently on metal deposits. Secure control of these deposits vastly increases maximum production and provides exponentially greater efficiency than the creation of metal through energy-converters. One exception is the Core’s home world, Core Prime, which is composed entirely of metal; on maps that take place on such a planet, metal extractors will always yield the highest amount of metal possible regardless of where they are placed. Resource-production structures vastly increase in effectiveness as the technological advancement of the player progresses. The most advanced energy and metal production structures are significantly more effective than the most basic, with a 50x and 10x increase in output, respectively.

Energy supply is only limited by the player's foresight to build more plants before production is virtually halted by energy shortages. As metal can be produced (albeit very inefficiently) through energy-converters, it is hence possible to construct a base anywhere on the map, as no resource locations are absolutely necessary, although regions with metal deposits are perceptibly favorable. The fastest method of gaining resources early in the game is by 'reclaiming' existing structures and objects such as vegetation and wreckages. These resources are, however, inherently finite and are infrequently used to gather resources later on in the game, as the micromanagement of reclamation requires a lot of time.

Such a resource system allows for many strategies in production. The player can choose to build units at a rate that matches or falls below the production rate so that storage reserves are not touched, and the player can also simply store enough resources prior to construction so that there will still be usable resources after construction is completed. In either case, many construction units can simultaneously assist in building a unit or structure to complete it in the shortest time possible.

Criticism

The pathfinding AI for naval units is problematic—assembling a group of warships and giving them collective orders to move to a new location often results in the ships colliding with and grinding against each other for the majority of their route.^{[citation needed]}

The AI for computer-controlled armies is quite weak and relatively easy to defeat, even on the Hard difficulty setting, which has led to the development of a variety of fan-made modifications to make the AI more aggressive.

The most critical flaw of the computer AI regards anti-nuclear defense. Computer AI will construct anti-missile silos that are capable of stopping opponents’ incoming missiles, but they fail to actually build the anti-missiles inside the silos themselves; the computer AI thus constructs empty silos, leaving itself completely vulnerable to nuclear missile attack. Unfortunately, this programming was hard-coded into the game itself and cannot be changed with any 3rd-party AI tweak.

From some players’ perspectives, Total Annihilation encourages "spamming" or "rushing" large masses of one particular, generally effective unit (such as the Arm Flash tank) in order to win. This was perceived to cut down on the number of actually viable strategies in favor of simply amassing one's units, although some argue that skilled players can defeat single-unit spammers easily, pointing to how Total Annihilation is unique in the real-time strategy genre in its variety of cheap, fixed defenses. It has been suggested that Spam (Team Fortress) be merged into this article or section. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Fan support

Cavedog's Total Annihilation release was one of the first to truly embrace the fansite paradigm. Cavedog provided graphics and a full license to use trademark materials for the benefit of the game's community. The first known fansite can be found, archived, at Archive.org.

Platforms

• Microsoft Windows: 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, XP x64, Server 2003, Vista (may not work correctly)
• Macintosh (PowerPC)
• Works very well on recent versions of Wine (details).
• Works almost perfectly in Cedega.

“Windows” redirects here. ... Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. ... Windows 98 (codenamed Memphis) is a graphical operating system released on June 25, 1998 by Microsoft and the successor to Windows 95. ... Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (IPA pronunciation: [miː], [ɛm iː]), is a hybrid 16-bit/32-bit graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft. ... Windows NT 4. ... Windows 2000 (also referred to as Win2K) is a preemptive, interruptible, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. ... Windows XP is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on general-purpose computer systems, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, and media centers. ... Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition released on April 25, 2005 by Microsoft is a variation of the typical 32-bit Windows XP operating system for x86 personal computers. ... Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft. ... Windows Vista is a line of graphical operating systems used on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, Tablet PCs, and media centers. ... The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ... PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ... Wine is a project which aims to allow a PC with an x86 architecture processor running a Unix-like operating system and the X Window System to execute programs that were originally written for Microsoft Windows. ... Cedega (formerly known as WineX) is TransGaming Technologies proprietary fork of Wine (from when the license of Wine wasnt the LGPL but the X11 license), which is designed specifically for running games written for Microsoft Windows under Linux. ...

See also

• Gas Powered Games
• List of awards received by Total Annihilation
• Supreme Commander (the "spiritual successor" to Total Annihilation, as developed by Chris Taylor through Gas Powered Games)
• Spring, an open-source game similar to TA, which also runs on multiple platforms
• Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency
• Total Annihilation: Kingdoms

Gas Powered Games is a computer game developer located in the Seattle, Washington area. ... The Total Annihilation computer game has won numerous awards, the list of which follows: The number one Real-Time Strategy Game of all time (top 10 list), Gamespy 2004 Best Game of All Time, PC Games 1998 Gamers Choice Award, Best Real-Time Strategy Game, PC Gamer 1998 Blister... Supreme Commander - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Chris Taylor in front of a Dungeon Siege poster. ... Gas Powered Games is a computer game developer located in the Seattle, Washington area. ... Spring (formerly known as TA Spring or Total Annihilation: Spring), is a full 3D open source RTS engine originally created by the Swedish Yankspankers,[1] intended to bring the gameplay experience of Total Annihilation into three dimensions. ... Open source software is computer software which source code is available under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that meets the Open_source_definition. ... Total Annihilation: Kingdoms is a medieval fantasy real time strategy game created by Clayton Kauzlaric and released by Cavedog Entertainment in 1999. ...

References

1. ^ ^{a b} GameSpot Total Annihilation page
2. ^ GameSpot Core Contingency page
3. ^ GameSpot Battle Tactics page
4. ^ Total Annihilation Reviews at metacritic.com
5. ^ Top Ten Real-Time Strategy Games of All Time at gamespy.com (2004)
6. ^ History of Real-time Strategy Games: 1989-1998 - the Second Generation at gamespot.com (2000)
7. ^ [http://www.rakrent.com/rtsc/rtsc_totala.htm RTSC Total Annihilation Page] at rakrent.com (2006)
8. ^ Supreme Commander Q&A at gamespot.com (2005)

External links

• A mirror of Cavedog Entertainment's official Total Annihilation website.
• Total Annihilation Intro @ YouTube
• TA3D is an open-source 3D remake of Total Annihilation's engine which uses TA data files (maps, units, weapons, ...)
• Total Annihilation: Twilight The most balanced and one of the only Total Annihilation mods still being worked on to date. The amount of balance changes are incredible. Last patch out in late September.
• TABA Another TA Mod still actively being worked on. Includes very unique features such as upgrading and new balance changes.
• Spring is an open-source 3D RTS inspired by Total Annihilation which can make use of TA's data files.
• FileUniverse contains over 3000 mods, races, maps, utilities and tutorials for TA, TA:Kingdoms, and Spring
• UnitUniverse An archive of over 5,000 downloadable first- and third-party units
• TA-Zone: The Ultimate TA Resource site, with a TA 1v1 Ladder, TA Replays and forums
• D-Gun provides links to information and files for playing Total Annihilation online
• Total Annihilation at MobyGames
• TA Wiki, by TA Universe
• Total Annihilation guide at StrategyWiki
• RTSC TA Pages: an introduction to Total Annihilation
• Switeck's Junkdrawer has many useful TA files, such as the TA Bugfix and AI Guide
• Galactic War Briefings: Galactic War Battle Reports, as cached by WebArchive
• Epic Class Productions has a large collection of gigantic 63x63-screen "Epic Maps" by James Beatty