Tech Annihilation and other thoughts

[klapmongool]

yawn.
top players know to tweak all a game's settings.
top player turn off music.
you are not top player.
most of spring is not top tier players.
top players turn off music.
did I mention the part where top players tweak the shit out of their game? They do.

What has this to do with the earlier remarks? Nothing, right. You are just trying to turn this into some shit topic. The music in ZK was (is?) bad. Anything after this is just your flaming. Go insult someone else, preferably somewhere else.

[KaiserJ]

can you take it to pm? thanks. next flame or negative subjective opinion gets a warn. klapmongool / smoth please stop replying to each-other here, thanks. this thread is not about whether ZK is good or not so PLEASE don't force me to read about it anymore.

[Google_Frog]

ZKL deploys configs with negative scroll speed because that is the standard scroll behaviour for the majority of games. Spring's defaults are backwards.

klapmongool it would be useful to know what you wanted to remove but I am not really that worried. We're not aiming at Spring players because the players that hang around Spring (as opposed to any particular game) are invariably those that prefer customisation over user friendliness. There are a lot more potential players to be gained with user friendliness.

[smoth]

We're not aiming at Spring players because the players that hang around Spring (as opposed to any particular game) are invariably those that prefer customization over user friendliness.

IMO you guys favor casual players with the initial setup, so I wouldn't say it is that bad. The customization/userfriendlyness feels like you meant to say something else?

His main complaint about the music can be over-ridden/disabled. This is normal for games. I do not know of any professional modern game that doesn't have music. This is pretty standard.

[ContiX]

So, ZeroK is not worth playing because of Toy store graphics, reversed scroll, and it has music.

BA is for elitists who think they're true gamers.

Tech annihilation is a rip-off for some reason.

So, anything positive about them? Does anyone play TechAnni besides me? :)

[smoth]

So, ZeroK is not worth playing because of Toy store graphics, reversed scroll, and it has music.

Zk has planetwars, unit unlocks commanders you can customize

BA is for elitists who think they're true gamers.

Slow bu steady development model preferred by most non-casual gamers.

Tech annihilation is a rip-off for some reason.

Dunno, lots of units is a positive, I don't play techA to offer anything meaninful

So, anything positive about them? Does anyone play TechAnni besides me? :)

Welcome to playing a game that is marginalized. There are tons of threads about makign a marginalized game more popular. So far none of them have worked. The common knee jerk reaction advice is "well advertise on the server to try and get others to join your match." this has minimal short lived rewards. One way is to ask a few people in a match if they are willing to give techA a go, then play some matches with them. If they like it hey great. The best way is to have a group of people you like playing with and like playing with you, and play the game together. Even if they don't *really* like techA they are playing it with you and since you guys in theory enjoy playing games together, well there you go.

[klapmongool]

So, anything positive about them? Does anyone play TechAnni besides me? :)

I do, occasionally.

[ContiX]

I do, occasionally.

Ever play Progressive Annihilation? If so, what's comparative/different?

[klapmongool]

I do, occasionally.

Ever play Progressive Annihilation? If so, what's comparative/different?

No, so i wouldnt know. I do know (and you too) that the descriptions given of tech anni in this thread are nowhere near accurate though. Anyway, i still think you are wasting your time writing this stuff. And I bet you will agree in a years time. You must be the 10th person starting this, and you prolly wont finish.

[ContiX]

What, writing a list of active games?

[smoth]

yeah, we have had a lot of guys wanting

DOCUMENT ALL THE PROJECTS

what all the projects?

ALL THE PROJECTS

I have not read a single real description of any project in this thread. Ultimately descriptions fail because people compare one project to another creating a situation when one project updates the other's description is invalidated. Most old timers that do non-*A, this sometimes even includes me, dismissively call *A projects the product of some moron hacking away in notepad on unit defs. To be clear that isn't really the case all of the time but is just the indifference felt by many people who do work on projects. On top of that there has always been a culture of my *A is better than the *A you play etc. It is dumb and counterproductive but people like to be red team vs blue team fighting for butter side up.

So essentially, if you learn enough to do a write up of one game over another, you will invariably have bias and deride one over another. Lets assume your detailed write up IS fair. It then will be invalidated by the next version of techA which adds flying waffle ships.

Any *A project list has to be living and fairly detailed without reference the projects listed within. Many of the projects when described will sound VERY VERY similar if not the same as all subtlety is often lost in the process of detailing an *A game's gameplay or features. detailing what *A has what unit or not etc.

Just a hard road to walk. Add to it if you don't glorify someones favorite *A game JUST RIGHT expect to see some vitriolic hatred from random people who you have never met.

[ContiX]

"Vitrolic hatred?" -> ZEROK HAS MUSIC ZOMG :D

[Forboding Angel]

Gundam and evo had music long before they did

Iirc, evo had music first, then quite a bit later SA. But that just means music packaged with the game. The ability to play music via a widget has been around a good long time.

[LulzTyphon]

frankly ZK is the only mod left

past year BA has been declining a lot while ZK getting more popular

every good player left BA and now they play DSD revolutions all day which is sinking even lower than before if that were possible

so it's safe to call BA dead imo

[Karl]

*Sigh* No Mega Annihilation is not dead!
It is just now maintained by Razorblade under MA Escalation
on and off

also there was also Johnny5alive Total Annihilation
With T3 units and such dead aswell but IIRC he pops up sometimes here.

Always those forum discussion and * Annihilation stuff blah

[LulzTyphon]

wtf is mega annihilation

edit: no wait don't tell me, I don't care

[smoth]

Are you sheep?

[Jools]

I am not an expert, but here is a quick write-up to give you an idea of what is going on with these:

Red = Dead

Tech Annihilation - You already tried this, like BA but with additional units and teching mechanic
Balanced Annihilation - Easily the most popular *A game, and can probably be considered the 'vanilla' TA-based game
Balanced Annihilation - Remake - BA with new unit models; this one is work in progress still
Rebalanced Annihilation - another BA fork that never caught on
Progressive Annihilation - Kind of like Tech Annihilation, based on BA with some additional units and small balance changes, by Juzza
Red Annihilation - BA with economy changes based on Red Alert economy, maintained by zerver I think
Mega Annihilation - dead
Supreme Annihilation - done by Gota and attempted to bring something more like TA, with some new models and effects, but is no longer maintained
Final Annihilation - presumably dead, especially given the terrible name
NOTA - Epic scale similar to Supcom 1 (boats are huge compared to tanks), and more centralized bases, as commanders are replaced with stationary towers. Gameplay tends to be focused less on unit micro and more about amassing armies and large-scale attacks.
XTA - Even older than BA, this tends to be play the opposite direction from NOTA, with much more of a focus on micro, especially on the powerful commanders.
Advanced Balanced Annihilation - another BA fork that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere
Basically OTA - probably dead; this was by Quanto and he hasn't been around in ages
Simple XTA - dead; (looks like this was just xta t1)
Absolute Annihilation - dead; this was the predecessor to BA
TA: Excess II - dead; looks like this was never fully ported
Very Supreme Annihilation - dead; troll game?
Impatient Annihilation - dead since forever
Paced Annihilation - also dead since forever?
Eternal Annihilation - was supposed to be kind of like the 'test' version of BA where the dev had more freedom to play around more, but didn't catch on (like every other BA fork)
Hardcore Annihilation -dead since forever; was originally supposed to replicate OTA behavior as much as possible
Maximum Annihilation - yet another BA fork, that was actually prominent enough at once point to get some youtube videos, but is now long dead
Tired Annihilation - dead since forever
Zexy Annihilation - another noraus mod I think; also dead since forever
Sky Annihilation - dead because it hasn't been touched in ages; doesn't look like it was much of anything anyway
Complete Annihilation - dead; was the predecessor to Zero-K
Universal Annihilation - never heard of this; probably not maintained
JoeAnnihilation - dead; also doesn't seem to have been much
Research Annihilation - interesting little game by Noraus with some nice effects, but is not maintained and probably not compatible still
TA: World Domination - dead
Total Annihilation - dead (so much emphasis on capitalizing on the TA brand means it was probably terrible anyway)
Gay Annihilation - dead; was nothing but a troll game presumably

That's a pretty good write-up, except maybe that BA shouldn't be considered some kind of vanilla TA. It has one big change from OTA, and that's that AA units can not fire at ground.

Speaking of vanilla OTA, the best one is probably BOTA. It almost works on spring 96, has some lua errors because of changed and deprecated tags. Would anyone be interested in a joint effort of fixing it up and making it work? Quanto did some nice work with this mod and I really liked to play it when it worked. I mean, the whole reason for the existance of spring is OTA, all mods have originated from it, so it is kind of weird that there is no mod trying to be like OTA, but with a more modern engine.

Btw, anyone has a link to gay annihilation? It sounds like a troll name but I'm curious...

[FLOZi]

It has one big change from OTA, and that's that AA units can not fire at ground.

A property of the original UberHack (by Brave Sir Robin) propagated through UH -> AA -> BA

AA was originally just UH with a barf load of 3rd party units thrown in (Even one of mine at one point, I think?!).

[Jools]

Yes, that's the reason. However, not all mods/games have evolved from UH. There was also a mod called BF (TA Bugfix, which didn't add any units), for instance.