Planetary Annihilation- The (Spiritual) Sequel to Total Annihilation!

[Sinitron]

http://planetaryannihilation.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts

TA was basically the FIRST COMPUTER GAME I ever played to death when I got my dad's old shitty computer like 15 years ago. Chugging along at 5 fps, it rendered the then-beautiful graphics as best it could. TA was far ahead of its time in terms of user interface and graphics, but was sadly released not long before the original StarCraft and was largely overshadowed by Blizzard's title, falling into semi-obscurity as the developer, Cavedog Entertainment (with the best logo ever I assure you) eventually went bankrupt and faded away. In later years, Chris Taylor, of the driving forces behind TA (sometimes called Chris Taylor's Total Annihilation), created the Supreme Commander series.

Now, from another team, comes the closest thing to a true sequel, Planetary Annihilation (maybe named after the old Planet Annihilation community website?), a massive-scale inter-planetary RTS like many hoped Spore would be, with a style reminiscient of the old-school brick robots of TA (the first RTS with 3D units!) yet spruced up with a lovely and lively palette of colours.

The Endless War rages on, 15 years after it was first introduced to the home computer.

[Crabarms]

Seems pretty interesting.

[psi43]

how is "planetary" better than "total". "Total" would include more than "planetary" does.

either way, I never played TA but heard good things about it, especially in regards of its modability (if I am thinking of the right game here).

[Sinitron]

yeah people made countless new units, maps, tilesets, factions and even whole campaigns for it

[rtil]

i'm confused..they haven't made the game yet, but this cinematic is extremely complex and would probably be using in-game assets.. so they've had to have made something? i guess they need the money for the engine and programming aspects? the art is pretty much done.

[Sinitron]

They've made something, they're just not done making it. It's a mock-up of what they want it to be.

[rtil]

i'd be surprised if they spent all the time and money making that for just a video - i'm betting some of the stuff made for that will be recycled as assets. you don't make an expensive video like that just for show

[Sinitron]

That's kind of what I mean, though, they've made something and used what they have to put this together, yet it's still all WIP components and not necessarily representative of what the finished game will be or even look like - a mock-up of what they want it to be. What I really hope is that they can pull off making an engine from scratch with great amounts of modding potential and a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface with a good game flow, which was what I think made the original TA so good. The balance was so so, it usually devolved into the infamous Flash rushes online, but hey it was still cool.

Also, one of the original units was named "The Can".