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.
Units could be grouped into squads using Ctrl and 1 thru 9 keys, then be selected using Alt plus the corresponding number.Radar would show enemy units on a map even when covered by fog of war and conversely radar jamming units would prevent the appearance of blips on a minimap.Line of sight could affect ranged unit attacks’ firing distances and ‘hills’ can obstruct unit projectile fire.
Simultaneously, the units of the game were present in actual 3D.