While his name would later shine bright in its attachment to TA, other brilliant people like Ron Gilbert, Jon Mavor, and Dave Grossman would be responsible for bringing the game to life. Make no mistake, Chris Taylor as a designer was responsible for this genius classic, but he was not alone.
Similar to the movies, though, the directors of projects are not always the genius minds we necessarily think of them to be. Like the world of movies, many games are now attached to big names (just use the prime example of Chris Roberts of Wing Commander / Star Citizen fame). Later, the game’s lead designer was, of course, none other than Chris Taylor. Chris Taylor would later be under a magnifying glass when he would return in a big way to the game design world upon the release of Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander, and other games. The nostalgia is extreme to this day, and even now, in the year 2016: TA is simply a great game. During the prime time of the 28.8 and 56k modem era: I played hours and hours of multiplayer games with my brother. Countless different game maps, mods, and custom units have been created over time.įor me, Total Annihilation was one of the seminal games that generated my love for the real time strategy genre and since my teens has inspired me to learn the skills necessary to create games. A community still surrounds the game today at TA Universe, and even spawned the creation of the open source Spring RTS engine. TA managed to introduce many to the world of military tactics and strategy games. This was particularly useful in, for example, selecting all ground units on a squad number to move to a certain position, then selecting a group of air units to provide support. Unlike Age of Empires released the same year, this hotkey system allowed greater tactical control of unit groups, allowing players to quickly toggle the selection of units after assigning squad numbers.
#Total annihilation maps and units plus#
#Total annihilation maps and units full#
A unique graphical engine using two dimensional tiles but creating the illusion of full 3D through height maps.“High ground” tactical advantage – units at a higher elevation do more damage.Ī small list of the things that other RTS games were not doing at the time that TA brought about: But when it came to literally inventing some of the mainstay mechanics of RTS, we should look to no other place than TA. Starcraft made its debut shortly after in the following year and arguably made Blizzard Entertainment its first fortune. Sure, there was stuff like Dune 2, and maybe Age of Empires that same year. Back then, real time strategy (RTS) was still relatively new and widely unknown to most gamers. However, in 1997 – few games were tackling such a subject matter in the way Total Annihilation did. You might think this sounds like a simplistic, cliche sort of storyline, and in some ways it is. Humanity has become entirely extinct and in its place: self-replicating machines continue to vie for domination where the “only acceptable outcome is the complete elimination” of the other side. The game tells the story of a relentless, multi-millennium intergalactic war between two factions: the all powerful Core, and the rebel Arm. Once upon a time, a studio that likely would have been considered “indie” by today’s standards called Cavedog Entertainment created a real time strategy game called Total Annihilation.