Total Annihilation Links
While some of the major fan sites have collapsed - the latest being GameSpy's Planet Annihilation ceasing active updates - the remaining ones have become more concentrated and focused. The maps and unit downloads for TA are as good as they've
ever been.
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General TA Links
Major or essential TA sites that cover all aspects of the game, or are general support and resource sites.
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Cavedog Entertainment's home page (Wayback Machine Link): the developer of Total Annihilation had some good info, patches and downloads even though they are long since lost to this world, existing pretty much in name only. This Eurogamer article concisely sums up their brief existence and ultimate fate. The old site is also mirrored at TAUniverse. |
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Atari: Good heavens! Back from the dead? Well, no - this is still the large publisher formerly known as Infogrames, trying to be something other than Infogrames. The REAL Atari was actually this one. Infogrames purchased Cavedog recently via the acquisition of the now thoroughly digested GT Interactive, who owned Humongous Entertainment, a kiddie software developer. Humongous created Cavedog in order to produce some heavy hitting PC games, such as Total Annihilation back in 1997. Unfortunately, apart from TA (which was mostly the brainchild of hot games designer Chris Taylor) Cavedog never really went anywhere. Keen TA fans burn candles and make many offering to Chris's image in the hope that his new company, Gas Powered Games, will produce the next great RTS. Got all that? There'll be a short test after.
Speaking of which...
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Great God - is was true! And it does look exceedingly spiffy and exactly what we were all hoping for! Chris Taylor, creator of Total Annihilation is about to unleash upon the world Total Annihilation's "spiritual successor": Supreme Commander! TA was quite possibly the only PC game that never had any clones ripped off it (with one or two exceptions) but, finally, those years of patient waiting are coming to a close. Supreme Commander promises titanic wargaming on a vast scale, offering scope above and beyond the pokey, limited worlds offered by the endless parade of small minded, micro-heavy WarCraft clones, and is slated for a 2006 release. Now all it has to do is actually be good, and all will be well with this world... This definitely looks like the RTSC game for 2007! More info here. |
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TA Universe is one of the last great bastions of Total Annihilation left on the web. Hosting its own forums, File Universe, Unit Universe, a mirror of the original Cavedog TA site, the TA Wikipedia, and a cornucopia of TA related game resources, hosted design and modding sites. I usually start here first: its the first point of call for any TA related news, and most Total Annihilation fan sites are hosted here now. TAU in the past has suffered a few technical hiccups. |
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If you felt Total
Annihilation was somehow disappearing off the web, think again. Go
to www.d-gun.com
for everything you need - this is a simple one stop support page with
links and files that'll get you up and running and even sourcing Online
Total Annihilation games. Short, sharp and to the point - just the
way we like it. |
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GameSpy's Strategy Planet web site devoted to Total Annihilation. Planet Annihilation was the biggest TA site out there, but in late 2005 support for it ceased and it became a mausoleum instead. It's the second great TA bastion left on Earth, and there's still a swag of hosted sites there, still largely unaffected by the closure. Some are starting to migrate across to PA's old rival, TAUniverse. Almost everything you might want to know about the game can be found here. The Planet Annihilation Warguide is an excellent source if you want to read up on how to really play the game, and the forums weren't too shabby, either but they're focusing on Supreme Commander these days.. |
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Spring (or TA Spring) is the result of what happened when the Swedish YankSpankers finally got serious and began to build their own RTS with its own fully fledged 3D engine. So far, they're starting with Total Annihilation units to get things off the ground, but the ultimate goal is to completely build their own game. Its rapidly becoming the It-Girl of TA fandom: around four or five mods are now actively developing for it, it has a rapidly growing online subculture and... well, for a homegrown project its impressive. More details. |
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TA
Designers: Formerly known as Estrella.
This is the third great bastion and major protal for Total Annihilation
modifications and mapping: the Estrella network
includes a number of busy TA sites and offers a wealth of great downloads.
This is home to the naval themed SEAL Pack,
the space themed Final Frontier TC,
the modern war TC World Domination,
Raven TA, not to mention a great many
other custom mods, total conversions, maps, tilesets, units, AI's,
forums, utilities and tutorials on just about every aspect of modifying
the game. Its an excellent resource. |
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Total Annihilation Map Evaluation Centre: a monster resource site with over a thousand maps, most of which have been reviewed, rated, sorted and commented on. If you never bother with customs, or AI's, at least look at the maps! TAMEC includes downloadable tilesets, map editors, utilities, news and a whole lot more. This is version 2 of the TAMEC website: its not quite what it used to be, and interested speleologist may explore the old version here. |
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AI Central is the all-in-one, you'll-probably-find-it-here site for any Total Annihilation computer AI's. Make this your first port of call for improving your struggling computer's playing skills. This has specialised home grown AI's for the original game, the expansion and many custom mods in a wide variety of forms. |
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Ahh, its those hard core Scandinavians, the famous Swedish YankSpankers! (Who spank Yanks rather well, all things being told) Typical of these snowed in Europeans, winter seems to encourage many indoors pursuits - in particular (when they're not partying hard no doubt) hard core, low level coding that's a.) utterly astonishing and b.) almost incomprehensible to most normal human beings. Many of the custom patches found floating on downloads pages on many TA fan sites have originated from here. These lads developed:
TA Demo Recording System (TADRS) which records your TA games and plays them back. This includes a 3D viewer that lets you roam the camera around in proper 3D space during playback! See also the TADRS web site.
XTA, a nifty retune and "improvement" bugfix / custom mod
The 5000 Unit Patch
The EMG Silencers, small .ufo files that silence Arm's high speed energy machine gun weapon sounds, thus sparing netgamers considerable game lag.
...and Spring, an astonishing home-grown game engine for TA with a full, three dimensional environment. The TA Spring Project is pretty much where its at these days.
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Total Annihilation Evaluation Centre: Solid but old TA site but with no new updates since 2002. T.A.E.C. was closely involved with the development of the ÜberHack mod, and is most notable for storing every version of this mod that was ever produced. Dozens of them. There's also a sizeable selection of useful utilities, files and even the TAUIP mod - but only available via the nefarious File Planet.
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TA Forever: enthusiastic and bilingual French TA fan site (it also comes in English) with the usual maps, mods, utils, units and artwork. TAF is home to the TA Source Petition, a campaign lobbying Infogrames to release Total Annihilation's original source code to the general public. Check out the latest in Parisian unit fashion!
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The TA Link Centre is simply just that: a site that connects you up with other Total Annihilation sites. Works best in IE. |
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Online Gaming Links
A variety of online gaming sites for TA.
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Boneyards (FileUniverse Mirror): Now long defunct, Boneyards was Cavedog's excellent online gaming service, staged games using a metagame system, where all netgames were part of a galactic power struggle between Arm and Core forces. People could play casually or competitively and still affect the result without feeling the need to become online fanatics. Each netgame's outcome determined the progress of the the game plot's Galactic War. It was all very nifty. Luckily, the fans rallied and produced some excellent substitutes. |
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eWarZone |
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Formerly the Warzone. Lately the MSN Zone (Microsoft's official gaming network) has been dropping older games from its roster. eWarZone has been picking up the lost games and building its own online gaming alternative. It requires its own client, and has a thriving little community. Total Annihilation, of course has a prominent presence there. You'll need the Warzone client to participate - its pretty straightforward, with no commerical baggage. It offers a few vital tools, such as checking your Ports before you get started. |
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The Gaming Battle League, or GBL. A fan built multiplayer gaming system for TA that reproduced much of what was in Boneyards. GBL was getting pretty advanced, but alas, it got to version is 2.4.6 beta before it was lost to this world.
Fortunately, its seeing a new lease of life, but I'm not sure if its up and running yet.
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LFJR Total Annihilation: This looks like an online French TA tournament site. |
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MSN Zone |
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This was one of the few remaining hotspots for Total Annihilation multiplayer online, but alas, the Microsoft Network's Gaming Zone stopped supporting Total Annihilation and a selection of other games late 2005. |
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Phoenix Worx: Another fan built online gaming service for Total Annihilation that emulates Boneyards, and the popular galaxy metagame concept of the original. This, like GB, is pretty slick, coming with its own auto-updater and inviting PayPal donations. And its still going, which is also a plus... |
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TA Zone is an example of the new generation of TA resource sites popping up these days, trying to keep the game's momentum going. TA Zone specialises for players using the MSN Zone. It offers a quick one stop shop for most of the files you'll need to quickly set yourself up. You get the major patches and downloads, the most commonly played multiplayer maps, some game recordings, and a few other support pages. |
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The UTASP mod
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