I agree. Except TA multiplayer *SUCKED*.

Get back with me on what the most popular RTS of all time is after you understand that. (Something Sins could learn from).

Its great that your promoting TA (my favorite game of all time) but saying it isn't "true 3d" because it had a fixed camera is false. TA was one of the first RTSs (possibly the first, but I'm not 100% sure)to be 3d. All units and terrain are in 3d and it affects the game play. TA springs does give the true 3d "experience" by unfixing the camera. I haven't gotten around to trying it yet but TA Springs does look awesome.

On a more positive note, great job giving TA a proper memoriam. If the pres. hasn't declared this a national holiday as you have he should soon! (Awesome Speech!)

I never could get TAspring to run properly

Well minus battle.net, TA multiplayer was no more or less sucky than any other multiplayer matchmaking at the time.

Meh. People love this game, and I've tried to get into it, but I just can't.

I don't know why, but it just doesn't do it for me.

TA actually usess sprites, does it not? The terrain, though, was always in 3d. It was due to PC limitations at the time.

Nope. As stated on the cd case "Over 150 run-time generated true 3d units". All of the units, environments, weapons, and trajectories are in true 3d. The only limitation is the fixed camera.

I thought it was. Oh well, what's more important is that it's the most awesome game ever.

Jeremy Soule makes great game soundtracks.

I hear this, over and over, so I pull out my copy, install it, and play.

And then I never even make it past the second level. Usually not even the first.

I wish I could get into it. I just don't. I usually exit out, fire up Unreal Tournament - yeah, the first one (the real most awesome game ever, heh heh) and kill stuff.

Kill it DEAD. With my flak cannon.

I could have sworn it was also. I knew the weapons calculations were 3d and the units collision areas may have been; but what little I looked at modding seemed to suggest the units where graphically represented by sets of sprites, not 3d models.

you guys have it backwards. It was 2D terrain with 3D units. That's why you can't pan the camera.

The purpose of this was specifically to allow units to run and gun. Chris Taylor said this in an interview at one point (back in the Cavedog days).

Another advantage to the polygonal units was that they were faster to create. Thus, this allowed Cavedog to put out a new unit every week (was I the only one downloading them?)

TASpring is a very good game based on Total Annihilation. Their are
a few mods that stand out. I prefer BA for Spring and then XTA when
playing on the net.

It's worth the download, so good and get it ....

I used to play TA, but I play entirely Spring now.

Mmm... getting warmer... the units were fully 3D, the terrain was "quasi-3D". It's a flat texture put in place to represent a real heightmap... and the heightmap is real 3D, ie, units rock as they go over bumps, shots get blocked, etc.

Since I'm an attention whore I'll point out where you can download Absolute Annihilation v6.0, the final version of my TA mod. It features about 450 units, but unlike unit packs like TAUIP and UTASP, every unit has a unique function, they aren't all just there so the modder can say "I'VE GOT 512 UNITS!!!". The focus is strictly on balance, and AA6 is one of the most-downloaded TA mods ever.

You can get it here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ta-aa/AA60.zip?modtime=1127737496&big_mirror=0

The mod is designed strictly for skirmish/multiplayer. It has an enhanced but reasonably fair AI. I've heard the mod works for the Campaign but I can't say since I've never played it with AA... TA's campaign was not the game's selling point.

You can also find the official AA map packs here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ta-aa/AAMaps551.zip?modtime=1123408943&big_mirror=0
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=113294&package_id=156287
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ta-aa/NUGGENMAPSv2.zip?modtime=1147295462&big_mirror=0

We're both right.

Height maps are basically just an extension of collision zones/masks. It's just a cheat to give the appearance of 3D.

However, they incorporated the height map into their physics equation so that for all intents and purposes, it played as if it was 3D.

So, from an animation/rendering/engineering standpoint (where I am coming from), the terrain is not 3D.

From a game perspective, you can achieve most "3d terrain benefits" by simply using a height map. Thus, in that case, it could be considered as 3D.