As such, battles are accompanied by louder, bombastic tracks, while construction and other calmer moments are surrounded by a more ambient style of music. The music in-game has been programmed to change dynamically, reacting to events in real-time. The score for Total Annihilation was composed by Jeremy Soule, who is today likely best known for his work on The Elder Scrolls series. This gives the gameplay another element the player needs to balance. If they run out, not only will the construction of new units slow down to a crawl, but buildings that require energy will shut down as well. This means that units that are faster at building structures will also deplete resources at a much faster rate, and if the pace of resource usage exceeds the rate at which they are required your resources will begin to deplete. In addition, the various units and buildings construct things at different speeds, with the commander for example being several times faster in this respect compared to the basic construction vehicles. The resources in the game are limitless, and accumulate on a constant steady rate that increases based on the number of corresponding energy/metal gathering buildings the player has constructed. However, the gameplay itself does have a slight twist on the usual resource gathering вЂ“ base building вЂ“ unit construction triangle. The maps also have their own wind, tide and gravity values, changing the battle conditions from map to map. The player can make use of the height differences in the environment to block enemy fire, increase his own units' range by placing them on higher ground, and create choke points. Total Annihilation also featured alternating terrain height values that could impact the gameplay. The player can thus plan his or her strategy around these differences, and with the unit cap eventually going up to 5000 per side the battles can escalate into genuinely gargantuan proportions. In addition, there are differences in the two sides' strengths and weaknesses, Core being stronger at sea while Arm has vastly more nimble units both in the air and on land. There's the usual base building and resource gathering (metal and energy in this case)В that one comes to expect in games like this.В The two warring sides are fairly similar in terms of gameplay at first glance, but their differences become more apparent the more you play the game.ДЄrm in general is the faster of the two sides, while Core's units can on average take more punishment. In contrast to the relatively simple and shallow story, the gameplay in Total Annihilation was, especially for its time, impressively deep. Ultimately, though, the narrative is largely there to facilitate the gameplay, and for the most part remains on the sidelines with very little presence outside of the mission briefings. Total Annihilation's narrative focuses on a conflict of galactic scale, which at the start of the game has already lasted for over four millenia, between the AI controlled machines of the Core and the human rebels of the Arm who use clones to supply their army with soldiers. When it was released in September of 1997 it proved to be just that.

Initially Total Annihilation was just one of many similar looking games in development at the time, but as more and more was revealed of the title it became clear that it was going to be something special. In the latter half of the 1990s the RTS genre was at the peak of its popularity, with countless developers trying their hand at them. This project would soon become known as Total Annihilation. Founded in 1996 by the former LucasArts designer Ron Gilbert, the studio's first project was an ambitious RTS title headed by the then relatively unknown game designer Chris Taylor. One of the developers trying to make its mark in the genre around this time went by the name of Cavedog Entertainment. Most other developers had little to no success in trying to gain a foothold in the genre at the time, although naturally there were a handful of exceptions. Westwood Studios, which had pushed the genre into the mainstream with its Command & Conquer games, and Blizzard, which came along a bit later to provide an alternative with WarCraft and StarCraft. In the mid-to-late 90s the real-time strategy genre was dominated by two companies. By Taneli Palola, posted on 10 April 2018 / 4,922 Views

Games like total annihilation