First I used to be writing about TorilMUD including new options, now I’m writing about one of many huge 90s RTS titles, Complete Annihilation. I really feel like I must boot Civ II as much as full the 25+ yr previous set… and with Civ VII popping out subsequent month, perhaps I’ll!
Complete Annihilation – Commander’s Pack at GoG.com
Complete Annihilation (TA) is a kind of titles that’s too unusual to dwell and too good to die. Broadly praised as being distinctive when launched, it had its share of flaws, not the least of which was being advanced, no less than by way of items, not strictly properly balanced between the 2 factions (ARM vs CORE… through which ARM is healthier by most measures), and missing in a lot of the way in which of story.
I imply certain, there IS a marketing campaign with a narrative in there someplace, however in comparison with its contemporaries like Warcraft, Command & Conquer, and Age of Empires, the story is fairly skinny, The CORE, AI enhanced cyber beings… Ray Kurzweil’s singularity occurs on this timeline I suppose… have been preventing the bio-humanist ARM for 1000’s of years, have just about wrecked the galaxy, and now remnants of the 2 sides stay locked of their everlasting wrestle on varied moons and planet… now go battle in a marketing campaign that may be a collection of discreet aims on completely different planets in numerous terrain, from desolate low gravity moons, to wrecked cityscapes and pock marked terrain, to the all metallic CORE worlds… although why they dwell in an all metallic surroundings or discover that pleasurable isn’t defined.
The attention-grabbing bits about TA are the way in which it handles what one would now take into account the tropes of the RTS style.
Sources are easy, you want metallic and energy. Metallic is mined from the bottom… so metallic planets are fairly simple on that entrance… harvested from the terrain or wrecked items, or as you advance up the tech tree, created from the appliance of plenty of energy.
Energy begins off being generated by photo voltaic, wind, thermal, or tidal motion… how environmentally pleasant… and progresses to raised variations of these in addition to fusion turbines.
Each metallic and energy are simply out there to all development items, so when you’ve got plenty of parallel constructing occurring, the drain is excessive and also you would possibly outrun your provide and find yourself with all development stalled. That offer additionally runs unit manufacturing factories, so you need to get out in entrance of that in the event you don’t need to end up abruptly in a panic construct to defend your self and unable to get items out quick sufficient.
Then there are the items. There isn’t any provide system that limits your unit depend, save for a tough cap set for the match. You begin with one unit, the Commander, who may be very highly effective however sluggish and restricted. It could one-shot any unit and builds issues in a short time, however solely has some very basic items it may possibly construct. Killing the Commander is the default victory situation for skirmish mode in opposition to different gamers.
The commander can construct factories to supply items which may, in flip, produce development items that may construct superior factories that may construct the most effective items within the recreation, together with superior development automobiles that may construct very highly effective buildings, just like the fusion reactor, the auto concentrating on unit, lengthy vary radar, and the Large Bertha, an extended vary mounted artillery piece that may dominate a bit of the map. Large Bertha + lengthy vary radar + auto concentrating on unit + the fusion reactors = critical wrecking potential because the gun will search out any goal in vary.
Models are car, plane, naval items, and kbots, that are mainly mechs which have significantly better terrain crossing capabilities than automobiles, which every having good assault items in addition to items to counter the opposite sorts.
And all of this takes place on 3D worlds the place you may conceal behind terrain in order that Large Bertha ranging out to hit you might be thwarted in the event you’re within the lee of a hill or some construction.
Anyway, it’s/was/stays fairly cool and by about this level you’re in all probability going “Cool story bro, however why are you banging on about this now almost 28 yr previous PC recreation in a style that folks stopped caring about no less than a decade again?”
Largely as a result of I are likely to overlook concerning the recreation and am then startled when I’m reminded that it nonetheless exists and is on the market for buy and obtain as a result of it nonetheless works. This time round, on the finish of the vacation gross sales, I noticed it over at GoG.com the place it was listed for simply 99 cents. What a deal!
Granted, not the BEST deal on TA I’ve seen or purchased into, that honor belongs to a Steam Winter sale again in 2015, however nonetheless good worth for the sport.
Greatest Deal Evah!
This in all probability marks the fourth or fifth copy of the sport I’ve bought within the final 28 years. Someplace I’ve a few variations on CD, the expansions, then the digital variations from GoG.com, Steam, and apparently Stardock again in 2010, which places it up there with perhaps Diablo II and Darkish Aspect of the Moon in terms of works I’ve bought repeatedly as codecs and media developed.
The sport itself… properly, I’m not even certain who owns it actually. It’s previous has been sophisticated. At one level no matter firm was attempting to reanimate the useless physique of Atari as soon as once more owned it, and even slapped the Atari emblem on the splash display in a little bit of sacrilege.
Complete Annihilation marred by Atari
Nonetheless, someplace alongside the road that model of Atari fell aside, as they inevitably do, and I suppose Wargaming.internet, the makers of World of Tanks and World of Warships, picked it up and it’s out there on Steam and GoG.com nonetheless… so good. The Atari emblem was cleaned off the splash display sooner or later… although so was the “Windowed Sport Mode” possibility as properly. It appears to be like completely different. Stardock had in all probability labored on a launcher for it, then that went away when Wargaming.internet ended up with the sport.
Complete Annihilation again once more
I purchased it, put in it, and launched it… and it ran. Not solely did it run, it ran full display on the large 3440×1440 monitor. That was cool, an indication of any individual implementing decision choices that labored going ahead, the way in which Civ II works on my huge display as properly regardless of being from 1996.
The draw back was, after all, that every little thing was very tiny. I needed to go in and make a half scale decision simply to make issues large enough for me to see fairly, which concerned me going into the nVidia instrument and creating a brand new decision for the monitor. That will get learn by the system and the sport simply believes regardless of the OS tells it in terms of out there resolutions.
Making 1720 x 720 a factor!
I evaluate this in opposition to another video games of a barely later period that locked themselves into the default resolutions of the day and which both merely can’t scale up… Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri was a kind of… which will get actually bent because of the display not being both 4:3 or 16:9. As I recall SMAC had a set max decision of 1280×1024, which was huge for the 90s however kinda tiny for at the moment.
So I bought that up and working and even went out and located a few of the traditional consumer made map packs that used to make the rounds again within the day. All in all it was simpler to get working that it was again once I had the bottom recreation CD and the 2 enlargement CDs and the comply with on patches and the patch that elevated the max variety of items and the maps and all that… all of which was made further tough as Cavedog, the unique developer, went out of enterprise a recreation later. Discovering the map pack in that historic .ufo file format introduced again some recollections of assembling an updated set up. Now all of it is available in one installer.
And I bought in some good matches on previous maps I remembered. The issue is that the AI… or the pc managed gamers, as a result of we have now clearly been throwing the time period “AI” round manner too loosely for 30+ years now… isn’t superb. On a non-metal planet it tends to starve itself of assets and on a metallic planet it turns into chaotic to take care of because it simply throws waves of items at you and you find yourself having to construct nukes to hit the Commander.
I appear to recall that there have been upgraded laptop opponent algorithms again within the day. I’d must look into that.
However it has been an attention-grabbing dive again right into a recreation that feels fairly rudimentary by at the moment’s UI requirements. Nonetheless, no person has ever actually captured the essence of the sport, and there have been makes an attempt to take action. Supreme Commander, Supreme Commander 2, Planetary Annihilation, Spring Engine, and some others have tried, however they’ve by no means fairly gotten there for me. The devs all the time needed to each seize a few of the unique whereas transferring past and making one thing new… which is comprehensible… however which additionally by no means left me glad.
Nonetheless, I can nonetheless play the unique.
