The TA Community

These sites are main attractors for the people forming the TA community. Besides the online TA game services they actually define the community by providing the message boards needed to make an online community solidify out of the nameless masses on the Internet.

Planet Annihilation

Well, I'm not a big fan of TA sites hosted by companies, I prefer the community hosted sites because this way the web host's interests are not likely to influence the site's content. But as far as I can tell Planet Annihilation content never showed any symptoms of being influenced by the interests of their host so go and give this site a try. It surely contains lots of useful information and is always up to date when it comes to TA community related news.

Total Annihilation Demo Recordings on TAU

TADRS is where to find a large online library of recorded TA games (to record games and watch recorded games you need to install the TA Demo Recorder). But it's not just a simple listing of recorded games like on this site, it's designed to handle large amounts of recordings and allows to search the recording database.

TAUniverse

In my opinion TAUniverse is the place to stop by if you want to know what is going on in the TA online community in our days. Just check their message boards and you will find a thread related to almost any TA topic. A lot of other TA sits bite the dust since TA came out in 1997 but TAUniverse was always able to ride the storm. I blame their webmaster Ewok as well as all those nameless staffers who worked behind the scene over all the years for its enduring success.

TA Support Sites

The following sites provide usefull information, mainly related to TA game play. On the other hand some of them focus on more technically related contents like overcomming problems with 3rd party stuff.

GNUGS

If I recall it right the Gnugs suddenly popped up one day at the online game service Total Enterainment Network (TEN) and became known for being highly skilled TA players in no time. Now, the interesting point about the Gnugs is they were the first TA clan I ever noticed having TA skills while always acting friendly and not a bit arrogant. That was completely new and a real exception for clans playing on TEN (and today on other game services).
Besides this nice mix of kindness and skill the Gnugs discovered most of the flaws (still) in the TA game engine and puplished a list of tactics making use of the flaws on their web site. That was new too, since other clans usually kept the knowledge about flaws they discovered so far within their own ranks mainly to gain advantage over other players. It was the Gnugs who brought TA back to the same knowledge level for everyone by publishing this list.
Sadly you won't see many Gnugs around on the TA game services in our days (at least not under their Gnug names) but their site is still up and you should have visited it at least once in your TA live.

Nemir's hints for new TA players

Nemir assembled some valuable advices on his site. Although this stuff was created while Cavedog's online TA game service Boneyards was still alive and the references to it are outdated the site will help new players to avoid the most common mistakes. TA hasn't changed since it came out 1997 so the hints are stille valid even if they have been written down in 1999.

poosticks.net

A nice, clearly structured TA support site providing a lot of usefull hints and a unit database covering most of the official TA units. The unit database takes a quite interesting approach because rather than just stating the sole statistic facts it provides a cost/efficiency based analysis for each unit. This valuable information makes it much easier for players new to TA to decide which units should be build for winning a game and which can be used to have just some fun.

Switeck's TA Bugfix

Switeck's site is mainly of interest for people looking for a kind of TA patch 3.2 that was never released by Cavedog. TA, as it comes with patch version 3.1c is spoiled with a lot of 'soft' bugs, that is bugs in the game data files and not bugs in the code of the game engine. Although your chances to fix game engine bugs without access to the game source code are going towards zero you can fix some of the 'soft' bugs since they are mainly caused by badly scripted units or screwed unit statistics in the according definition files.
And that's where Switeck's TA Bugfix comes in. He put a lot of work into revising the definition files and fixed such famous TA flaws like the advanced CORE construction kbot bug (putting those guys back to work after they stopped excuting their given orders drove more than one CORE Commander crazy already) or the Pelican bug that causes missles to target their feet under the water surface rather their body - which renders missles pretty useless against Pelicans at least as long the Pelicans are in the water.
Also, his work on Bugfix seems to have given Switeck a deep insight into the way TA stores it's configuration data so it's no suprise you will find a lot of usefull hints on how to re-assemble all those configuration files so they need less room and help to load TA faster. On a not so fast computer with few disk space available this information will be very valuable.

One problem with TA Bugfix (and any other MOD) is that you won't find many players online who have it installed. So you need an easy way to switch between the Original TA files and the TA Bugfix MOD. One option is to use the installer and the uninstaller that comes with TA Bugfix.
If you prefer to keep MODs out of your Original TA folder and install TA Bugfix into a seperate folder then you won't be able to use it in games launched over game service without taking additional measures.

3rd Party Stuff Development

You will find sites dedicated to the development of tools like the TA Recorder or new maps and units as well as complete TA conversions, mods and AIs here. You may notice many if not all of the links point directly or indirectly to TAUniverse or UnitUniverse but that's no suprise since these two seem to be the big attractors for the TA community and provide web space for many of the designer groups. And since TAUniverse and UnitUniverse merged it makes not much sense to look at them as two individual sites anyways.

AI Central

If you like skirmish games a lot because you love to play computer opponents but get bored by the standard AI (Artificial Intelligence) shipped with TA after a while because it's not a challange for you any more then you have two choices:

You enhance the maximum number of AI slots to nine and see if that gives you the required kick again. This won't resolve basic issues with the standard AI though since it still won't use certain weapons like for example nukes.
You head over to AI Central and replace the standard AI of TA with one of those bloodthirsty™ Uber-AIs they provide there for download. According reports of players who used them you won't have to worry about how to increase the number of AIs then, you will be glad if you survive long enough against two or three of them.

BSR's UberHack

Brave Sir Robin's Uberhack is a modification for TA in which almost any standard TA unit was revised in order to change game balance. If Slasher/Samson hordes or Vamp swarms annoy the heck out of you because from your point of view they are way to efficient against ground units then you should give this Mod a try.

Complete Annihilation

Unit and map design.

M.A.D. TA

Unit design.

Star Wars:TA

Unit and map design.

Swedish Yankspankers

Although the genius swedes are mainly known for their incredible masterpiece the TA Demo Recorder there is more to find on their web site. Besides the fact the crazy swedes make ultra cool TA tools for free they are skilled TA players too.

TA Designers (formerly Estrella)

Unit, map and AI design.

Unit Review Central (URC)

If you are deep into third party unit development then this site is a must for you. URC's experienced staff provides a very unique service to the TA third party unit development community: they analyze units you upload for review systematically - looking for flaws in the scripts, the graphics, resource balancing etc.
URC reviews are a great way to fine tune your units before you put them up somewhere on the Internet for public download. Nothing will annoy people more than spoiling their TA fun with bugged units and URC can help you to avoid this trap.
Even if your brand new unit gets torn apart (and their reviews are pitiless) then you know at least that the unit isn't ready for broad use yet and you better take it back to the drawing board. URC is always willing to do another analysis of an updated unit later on, giving you the chance to improve your unit step by step.
On the other hand getting top marks for a unit on URC is certainly something you can be proud of since they set such high standards.

Page last updated 2006/02/18 by tcbw@tcbw.net