[HN Gopher] Beyond All Reason: Open-source RTS reimagining Total...
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Beyond All Reason: Open-source RTS reimagining Total Annihilation
Author : mcbuilder
Score : 139 points
Date : 2021-08-16 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.beyondallreason.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.beyondallreason.info)
| ra33o wrote:
| I've tried BAR and my experience was: - 150 fps when starting. -
| Under 50 fps when quitting (after 1 hour or so). I hope they can
| manage to improve the performance. - Air-units was only able to
| attack ground or air. Not both. With so "many" air units, that
| felt a bit too old school for me. - The AI needs some work. - BAF
| is still miles away from SUPCOM 1/2.
|
| But I love the RTS genre and I am always excited when I find new
| titles.
|
| I do hope they will develop this game further. Mods can hopefully
| fix the rest.
| Teifion wrote:
| With the 50fps issue, was that in the lobby or during a large
| battle? Secondly, how long ago was this. There have been some
| improvements which may have resolved this issue.
|
| As for the AI, depending on how long ago it was we've either
| made lots of improvements or a few small ones. Unfortunately
| it's one of the areas we have fewer devs.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| For me, this was after ~2 hours on a medium-sized map, this
| January. The game started out with about 20-30 fps, and ended
| as an unplayable slideshow, <10fps.
|
| For comparison, I have never experienced such low frame rates
| on Zero-K regardless of unit count or map size, and the other
| player didn't complain either.
| Teifion wrote:
| How many units did you have at that stage? We're finding
| games with 8 or more players a side can slow down after an
| hour; though this is because of the number of units present
| (often in excess of 4000).
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| I would have been very surprised if we exceeded 500,
| although I was getting my ass kicked, so I might be
| underestimating.
| Teifion wrote:
| If you decide to try it again and get a similar slowdown,
| please report it on the discord and we'll look into it.
| glial wrote:
| Does anyone know of a way to interact with BAR or another of the
| TA clones via an API or in some other way? I'd love to have a go
| at building a game AI.
| Teifion wrote:
| I'd try the BAR Discord, AI channel -
| https://discord.gg/uNDxk5MX
| hangonhn wrote:
| I was just playing Total Annihilation last night! It's kind of
| amazing coming back to this game after so many years. A lot of
| the aspect of the game actually aged really well. I was able to
| bump up the resolution to fit a modern wide screen monitor using
| a few registry changes. The game still looks great and on a
| modern CPU it absolutely flies even with 1,500 units per player.
|
| The scale of the game has never been replicated by any other
| game/series as far as I know. There is so little micromanagement.
| It's almost half economy planning and half strategy. Once you
| have enough energy production and MOHO metal makers, the economy
| can basically scale infinitely. I basically just queue up my
| factories with the different unit types and automate their orders
| to patrol certain areas and watch the mini-map to see how the
| front line is shifting.
| cheese_van wrote:
| What system were you using? I've been waiting AGES for this to
| come to Steam but for linux.
|
| I think I might be willing to buy a Windows box just for this
| as I've waited long enough. I haven't had a Windows box in 20
| years but for TA, yeah. Any recommendations?
|
| TA was a marvel when it first appeared. The gameplay was very
| much, for me, a revolution.
| Teifion wrote:
| BAR supports Linux natively, I'm running it on Mint right
| now. We're hoping for a steam release "some time in the
| future".
| hangonhn wrote:
| I'm on a Windows box. I'm in a similar boat as you and
| basically caved when it came to gaming and built a Windows
| box. I don't love Windows but I mostly just use Steam
| anyways.
|
| At one point I used the version sold by gog.com
|
| That version worked on OSX for a while but it doesn't look
| like that's the case anymore:
| https://www.gog.com/game/total_anihilation_commander_pack
|
| BTW: I've run TA on a VM before. I think I used VMware
| Fusion. You'll still need a Windows license but at least you
| won't need extra hardware.
| Gremlin123 wrote:
| If you want to play something similar to Total annihilation with
| better graphics and balance check
| https://balancedannihilation.com
| skytreader wrote:
| First of all, interesting how there's a lot of (seemingly)
| massive and feature-rich open source games, very specifically
| today on HN's homepage (two by my count, which is a lot!). Open
| source games have come a long way since the last decade.
|
| Second of all, nostalgia time! I didn't play TA, rather TA:
| Kingdoms, the medieval-fantasy version. I think today it might
| qualify as a re-skin but don't quote me on that (edit: I just
| checked Wikipedia, and no, it isn't a "re-skin" by any means). I
| started for the story mode but eventually I found myself drawn to
| the RTS mode. It's my very first RTS and, without aid of the
| internet, I independently developed tactics and strategy,
| identifying map choke points and which "kingdom" is best suited
| for which terrain.
|
| With the traditional human faction, the best result I managed was
| this stalemate of a scenario in a labyrinthine map. I only ever
| managed to win with the dark/evil faction. I didn't like how they
| looked or their back story but their stats and abilities suited
| my style.
|
| Good times! I didn't really keep up with the RTS genre but maybe
| I'll give these games a spin when I have the time.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| The original TA had a thriving modding community with 100's of
| custom units for download, scenarios and many other modes.
| midasuni wrote:
| Annihilated.com was one of the first sites I frequented on a
| regular basis
| PAPPPmAc wrote:
| It looks like it's a clever double-bacronym, since BAR is also
| "Balanced Annihilation Reloaded" which is what this project
| started as. Balanced Annihilation being the most influential and
| TA-like of the several games built on top of the Spring (
| https://springrts.com/ ) engine... which was originally made for
| TAlikes though there are several other projects on the engine
| now. Zero-K is also a popular Balanced Annihilation-derived
| Spring engine game, but is less TA-like.
|
| I think the original Balanced Annihilation had the
| feature/problem that it used a bunch of a original Cavedog models
| and Reloaded is carefully avoiding that in addition to visual and
| gameplay improvements.
|
| I played a ton of Balanced Annihilation like a decade ago and it
| was already a "better TA" than TA or SupCom in many ways.
| Teifion wrote:
| That's accurate. BAR's roots are indeed with BA but split in
| part due to this copyright concern. We've since implemented a
| number of improvements and a huge amount of remodelling.
| Mac675 wrote:
| There is an active BA community. Check discord
| https://discord.gg/GkvfDMZA or BA site
| https://balancedannihilation.com.
| egypturnash wrote:
| For those of us who are not into RTS games, which of the features
| listed on this front page are ones that Total Annihilation was
| known for (and which other RTS games presumably failed to follow
| up on), and which ones are further innovations this game is
| making atop TA's take on the genre?
| GasPoweredMaker wrote:
| Two key characteristics of TA/SupCom that set it apart were
| economic.
|
| First, map resources (metal patches) were not depletable. So,
| the game would see massive economic growth as every metal patch
| would give resource indefinitely. Big econ ramp up, and a
| marked ability to come back due to non-exhausting resource
| patches.
|
| The second characteristic is the flow-based economy that worked
| with build queuing. A player could queue up as many units or
| structures to be built as desired, as opposed to "buy and
| build" where you must currently have the resources necessary to
| build something.
|
| "Queue" may be an imprecise word here, as the player could, for
| example, have ten factories all attempting to produce a series
| of units simultaneously (and similarly, have a swam of engineer
| units all attempting to build a number of structures
| simultaneously). That is, it was simultaneous building that
| would consume resources on the fly as they came in that was the
| core of this model.
|
| The flow economy model meant that a player tracked resource
| income and resource usage: kept positive, all the queued up
| units or structures could be built. Go into the negative,
| however, and the resource buffer would be eaten into and the
| player would see all currently-building units/structures slow
| down in their rate of build progress, awaiting resources to
| come in.
|
| The last bit was disabled in SupCom 2, out of concern that
| newer players often bottomed out their economy and had a bad
| time. However, after fan outcry, the flow-model and infinite
| queuing was re-enabled as an option.
| GrumpyYoungMan wrote:
| Total Annihilation was the first to have projectile physics for
| artillery and other weapons. One could actually have, for
| example, an artillery projectile in mid-flight accidentally
| collide with an aircraft.
|
| [EDIT] Not mentioned on the BAR front page but also pioneered
| in TA was wreckage. Destroyed units left wreckage behind that
| had to be navigated around or fired upon to clear a path.
| Wreckage could also be scavenged to recover the material used
| to construct them, allowing the construction of more units. In
| the race to build enough infrastructure to overwhelm the enemy,
| this could be the difference between life and death.
| astine wrote:
| In addition to what majormajor said, there TA had a bigger
| sense of scale than Starcraft or Command and Conquer. There was
| a greater discrepancy between the size of large and small units
| and the size of the units had a bigger impact on the movement
| speed and how much room on the map the unit took up. This went
| a long towards making the game _feel_ bigger in scope whereas
| SC and C &C always felt more tight and controlled.
| Karunamon wrote:
| One thing TA and _all_ of its successors kept was the ability
| to have units assist in construction. For instance, you have
| your commander plunk down a factory, then order the commander
| to assist with anything the factory is doing. Early on, this
| will be creating engineers (builders) and your first defensive
| units. Then you have your commander and engineers build
| /upgrade your level 2 factory.. rinse and repeat. It turns into
| a virtuous cycle.
|
| The upshot of this is that it creates opportunities for
| prioritization (and opportunities for blowing past your income
| if you're not careful).
| majormajor wrote:
| Oh, yeah, THIS was a huge one. As well as just how
| construction/payment worked in general. This thing costs you
| X metal, and this factory can deliver metal at a rate of
| x/sec... but if you throw in all these helper units, you can
| up that. Very interesting and unique twist.
|
| You also didn't have to pay up front when queuing things,
| like you say with the opportunity to blow past your income,
| so your cash flow was the counter-balancing production speed
| limiter, but not in a way where you had to be constantly
| watching that bank account dollar amount before clicking
| "build."
| majormajor wrote:
| Unit count and "planning" were the two things that separated TA
| from others for me.
|
| You could build more units and you could command larger groups
| of them compared to something like SC where you couldn't group
| more than 12 per hotkey. The sheer number of units you could
| crank out also had interesting strategic effects if, say, your
| opponent had a balanced defense but not quite enough flak
| cannons, say, to hold up to a giant swarm of air units. I
| remember having to worry more about the specifics of what they
| were building than in games where there was a unit cap that
| increased the relative value of fortifications and defensive
| structures.
|
| Sequencing was great too. Tell your commander to build a
| factory, then another factory, then a solar plant, etc, with
| seemingly no queue size limit. Queue up dozens of things in
| each of those factories too. Etc.
|
| It always felt less "clicks per minute" dominated because of
| these things for me - though I was not a high level player or
| anything, just playing for fun - while the industry went the
| opposite, way into the Micro side and turned into things like
| Warcraft 3 and then LoL.
|
| (I forget the name of Cavedog's TA sequel set in a fantasy
| world, but even that, IIRC, backed away from the giant armies
| thing.)
| tomc1985 wrote:
| In its successor, Supreme Commander, you could completely
| automate your base construction using those assist features
| and looping build queues
| vosper wrote:
| They don't seem to mention the thing I most remember TA for:
| the soundtrack
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljDyp__ejco
| blunte wrote:
| Same. Although I do remember the graphics and number of
| simultanously visible independent units as being
| impressive...
|
| But the music was magnificent orchestral work. It was also so
| depressing [ https://youtu.be/ljDyp__ejco?t=995 ] that I
| decided to play the game without music after a while. It's
| gorgeous, but too emotive.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I found the non-combat music in TA strikes a very
| compelling balance between emotion and tranquility without
| becoming monotonous, but I definitely agree that the in-
| combat music is a bit too bombastic for its own good
| blunte wrote:
| Another great game with a soundtrack that was a delight: Re-
| Volt. https://youtu.be/_83cPS87tYM
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Well that brings back memories! Beautiful. First game I
| played where the music dynamically changed with the action.
| mcbuilder wrote:
| The BAR music is really good, in the same theme done by a
| professional composer. It's not a full orchestra on the level
| of the TA soundtrack, which is simply one of the best of all
| time, but it excellent on its own and captures much of the
| essence.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I really hope its better than Zero-K's music, their
| "professional" composer produced some of the most eye-
| rollingly awful syntesized orchestral music I've ever heard
| mcbuilder wrote:
| It's here if you'd like to judge for yourself.
|
| https://soundcloud.com/ryankrause94/sets/beyond-all-
| reason-f...
| beprogrammed wrote:
| A contender appears for FAF(Forged alliance forever), looks very
| good.
| Svperstar wrote:
| For a time after its launch in I think 1997 people were calling
| Total Annihilation the greatest RTS and maybe the greatest game
| of all time. I wish the RTS community wouldn't shit so hard on
| any game that isn't StarCraft.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| It's very much a taste thing. TA-likes are a whole different
| kind of RTS and demand a different type of skill. SCs reward
| quick thinking whereas TAs seem to much more reward
| overwhelming scale. I can usually counter my way out of a
| problem in SC, but in Planetary Annihilation if I've committed
| in the wrong direction or just not made as many mines as my
| opponent, I'm sunk.
|
| Also there is the number of units. Over three hundred in this
| game! TAs tend to have lots and lots of units whereas the other
| shall we say branch of RTS design tends to have far fewer.
| torhorway wrote:
| If you're into this style of RTS, I've found Zero-K to be a very
| good free similar game.
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/334920/ZeroK/
| dTal wrote:
| Both this and Zero-K use the same engine (SpringRTS).
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The scale on Zero-K is much smaller, sadly. My favorite aspect
| of TA was thousands of units on thousand-square kilometer maps
| willis936 wrote:
| Then perhaps look at Planetary Annihilation, if you haven't
| already. It has a very high skill cap.
| bsder wrote:
| While I love Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, I
| never took to Planetary Annihilation.
|
| I think the problem was that they worried too much about
| making it Twitch-friendly and forgot to, you know, create a
| fun game.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Twitch and eSports have ruined a lot of the fun in gaming
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I've played that. Unfortunately I don't think the spherical
| planetoid map concept works... navigating from one place to
| another is a huge PITA, and even the largest planetoids are
| still too small
|
| I can't quite put my finger on why I don't like PA, but
| something about it just feels off. Which is a shame, I
| really want to like it, and the planet-smashing aspect of
| it seems like it would be a lot of fun.
| hangonhn wrote:
| 100%!
|
| It's the first and probably only RTS game where I don't even
| care about my individual units and just send them en mass to
| the front line automatically. I literally count on the
| wreckage of the dead units to clog up the spaces where I am
| defending. In some sense the game is not tactical at all but
| really more about strategy and economy planning. There is
| very little micromanagement on my part and I love it.
| senjin wrote:
| It's not open source but Planetary Annihilation is a lot of fun
| and developed by some of the original TA team.
| garmaine wrote:
| I played Total Annihilation back in the day. One thing that I
| remember standing out about it was the ability to automate
| production and tactics to a significant degree. I had factories
| pumping out drone ships with preprogrammed flight paths, which
| would engage any hostiles they encounter then resume flights.
| Then so long as I kept factories supplied with metals, I ensured
| air superiority and was able to focus on moving land forces, or
| other things.
|
| Whereas most RTS devolve into micromanagement matches, TA seemed
| to be more about high-level strategy since automation really let
| you focus on theatre management.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > pumping out drone ships with preprogrammed flight paths,
| which would engage any hostiles they encounter then resume
| flights.
|
| I love the idea of being able to program a collection of
| routines which you can change the parameters of, or swap in and
| out, depending on how the battle is progressing.
|
| There's probably a danger, though, that by making the
| programming language/runtime too capable, the game ends up
| being "solved" or at least ends up only leaving boring work for
| the human to do.
| Teifion wrote:
| These mechanics are very much present in BAR. Micro can
| certainly play a role but it's typically in the context of the
| macro.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I'd love to see an RTS explore single sovereignty multiplayer.
| One player might be the industrial minister and another the
| military minister. You could imagine letting the tree deepen to
| allow more players. Bob runs the navy, Alice does resource
| acquisition, etc. Would lend itself to team games that solves the
| problem of defeated player boredom.
| robbmorganf wrote:
| Alternatively, maybe the navy minister could beat the army
| minister if there are more sailors than soldiers. It would be
| interesting to simulate/play the dysfunction of bureaucratic
| militaries...
| Teifion wrote:
| You are able to play with multiple players controlling one team
| (Archon mode in SC2 I think). I've used it once or twice for
| coaching and it works pretty well.
|
| In a team game you can gift units to allies so if one ally gets
| knocked out but the game isn't over then you'll often find them
| being given units to rebuild with.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| This is really cool! I found Zero-K very good in some areas and
| very disappointing in others, particularly the scale (or lack
| thereof).
|
| SupCom is great, but it has its own issues....
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Uh, why is scale an issue with ZK? Some Maps are way larger
| then the biggest in TA ever were. The 1vs1 maps are generally
| pretty small, but that's just because players generally prefer
| shorter games.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| All the maps I played and saw in the map selector were really
| small. The couple of single player campaign missions I played
| through seemed to be a couple of large hills and nothing
| more.
|
| And scale is an issue because I hate the tacticality of
| small-scale RTS games. I find tactical-scale gameplay
| incredibly boring. That is my biggest
| complaint/disappointment with Starcraft, Dawn of War, C&C,
| etc, and why TA and SupCom are #1 in my book.
|
| Besides, micromanagement turns these games into actions-per-
| second showdowns, and that misses the point of RTS games
| entirely. I much prefer a more relaxed pace and being able to
| focus on strategy.
|
| Can you recommend a couple of large scale maps that support
| multiple factions duking it out with hundreds or thousands of
| units per side?
| smnscu wrote:
| I was curious to see it in action, here's a random Twitch video
| https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1118988304
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