My brothers and I opened up one of the very first LAN gaming sites in the USA back in 1996, which we trademarked as the ‘Matrix’, before shutting it all down right before a certain movie came out years later… Anyway, we got heavily into real-time strategy gaming via Command & Conquer, that first year, when we started reading about this new ‘3D’ game in PC Magazine called Total Annihilation. With games like Quake and Magic Carpet, 3D was really in vogue as the Next Big Thing back then. TA looked cool, but at first it did not really seem all the much different than Dark Reign and some of the other next gen RTS titles on the horizon. That changed in the fall of ’97 when we first started up TA though. We had these 'ginormous' 20” CRTs (you could play games on these for an extra $2.50 an hour) running TA at 800x600. My first memory of the game is playing on ‘Rock Alley’ as Core (color red, of course) looking at the massive Goliath tanks pushing northward toward my Arm enemy (blue, naturally). The depth, both map terrain and the amount of units was jaw dropping. I’d be lying if I said that is what hooked me on TA though – the real grab came a bit later when we found we were able to make maps after the release of Total Annihilation: Core Contingency. The seemingly endless creative potential as much as the playability is what really struck me about TA and it has remained that way ever since.
The road to Escalation was quite a long and winding one on my side. I started out making maps and was really into the TAMEC scene early on. My younger brother introduced me to 3rd party units and I was again smitten with the concept of realizing one’s own vision for the ideal game. Like anyone else, I started out patching together different units into a collection to fill out the game. It was fun, but they were not my units and many others were doing it better, especially Uberhack and Brave Sir Robin. I really started to cut my teeth into learning about modding with Uberhack along with running a community of like-minded players and would-be modders by participating there. NJ_Thug was also a huge help and taught me 3D texturing in Rhino. C_A_P taught me the conversion process for adding Total Annihilation: Kingdoms tilesets and features into TA (I did the Creon, Zhon, and Aramon conversions that many still use today). I did a lot of small collaborations with Genghis Khan X, Caer, Silencer, Chinahook, VanTheMan, Sinclaire, Immerman, and many others before meeting this guy who was working on a new race called The Talon… It was not until two years later though, and after working on my own popular mod (with help from Boogalizer and Warlord), that TheRegisteredOne, The Talon’s founder - and I realized that we could do something really special for TA. In a nutshell, merge the production quality standards of TheRegisteredOne's brilliant work with the popular concepts and scope presented in my project into the ‘Ultimate TA Mod’ - Total Annihilation: Escalation.
Until recently, the end result was really nowhere in sight – just churning out new ideas and concepts in line with all the new hacks and tweaks made available through the hard work of guys like Xon, Zwzsg, xpoy, and Admiral_94 and many others. Escalation certainly evolved with these new capabilities as we often forged them into unexpected and new units and concepts for the game. So many fresh ideas bore fruit early on that we soon realized that The Talon would likely have to be mothballed in favor of a more 'fleshed-out' Arm and Core. This resulted in completing a true Level-3 tier and even larger Tier-4 units. Collaborations also continued to help round out the overall game with help from Archdragon, N72, R1ME, Keeper, Idec, Zodius, MattyWS+, Nightmare, and others. Now, years later, the answer is clear at least for me: Wrap up Tier-3 development, finish the Tier-4 ‘mini-tier’, and re-introduce The Talon in some form.
I’d say yes being a bit selfish in that regard, and in a way that has already happened. Over the years we worked with so many talented, but different folks (both players and creators), such that the net effect has become greater than the sum of its parts. If you go online where TA is still played most (GameRanger), far more people play Escalation than OTA and that has been the case for quite a while now. Many of the former professional TA player ranks have gravitated toward the mod and have contributed also. However, Escalation is still 'locked' within the TA ecosystem given that its assets are derived conceptually somewhat from TA itself. Personally, I’d love to see Escalation go beyond the TA engine, but unless that engine supports the core essence of TA (Robot War Engine being the best possibility!), it likely won’t happen anytime soon. The best possibility for any TA mod to outgrow the venerable TA engine though really lies with Total Annihilation: Zero in my opinion – it is truly a remarkable and fantastic achievement by Vohvelieläin!
As for all the so called 'spiritual successors', the problem in my mind is that they fail to follow the very basics of what made TA so great! That starts with the left mouse click functions (why do all ‘modern’ games shy away from this!?). To all Devs out there: If it is not left-mouse click, it is not TA no matter how it looks, so start here with your next 'spiritual successor'. Next, is the infamous ‘strategic zoom’ (aka Icon Wars). While, in principle, this is a really cool feature in new games, the creators of Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation forgot something very important: the more you zoom out, the less detail you should have on your own and your opponent’s forces. Namely not having icons that tell you exactly what type and level the unit is, along with full control of said icons such that zooming back in is unnecessary or even detrimental to winning a completive. Keep the action where it is – the tactical layer. Finally, I’d add the immersive-ness of that close up action as an important factor along with a rich variety of units. I found SupCom’s units to be ‘holographic’ often lacking mass and feel, made worse by the very soft weapon and explosion sounds. Planetary Annihilation was hamstrung by round planets (kudos for trying something different, but…), a single race, and the strangely unnatural, natural 'flow field' pathing mechanics. Ashes Of The Singularity suffered from a lack of essential unit basics like mechs and tanks and also stealing our color schema and name in their sequel!
Aside from the goals mentioned earlier (wrap up T3 development, finish the T4 ‘mini-tier’, and re-introduce The Talon in some form), it will be great to finally have a polished installer (KmKickle and Draken have started), a finished AI (TaFan97 & Fortitude are on this), and cleaned up Windows 10 support (Thaldren's Project Valkyrie). As for the Escalation community and our future, FN202 has our growing player base in great hands with the Total Annihilation Demo Archive and the new competitive gameplay ladder - with a 'locked' in Total Annihilation: Escalation, we're poised for an even richer asset of games and hopefully some big tournaments again! I would really like to sit back and enjoy the game as a player for once while taking on less demanding projects like revisiting the possibility of Escalation based missions (hopefully with Warlord) and sunset things with getting back to where it all began – map making. I think there is still untapped potential with maps and tilesets in TA - both making larger maps playable online and in creating some awe-inspiring masterpieces. I am actually surprised that this has not happened already on a larger scale given the tools out there. MattyWS+ has started some incredible work here, but there are still many new worlds yet be explored.