Spring RTS Engine

I agree that there should be no reference to BA. It's a new game, needs a new name.

That said, you all must realize that as the time goes by, more and more players are simply unaware of the fact that there was, in the late 90's, a game called total annihilation. So on the other hand, I would agree with the guy upthread that said that not everything related to TA is to be thrown away, starting with unit names.

If I am not mistaken, Zero-K uses some TA names.

As for suggestions, what about ThousandBattles?

ComsWar or BattleComs are good but com sounds like communication for unaware people....

BAR is weak for me, especially if it stands for nothing. The acronym must come AFTER the name is found, not before.

BAR means nothing to you because you aren't being imaginative enough.

It can be:

• One of several automatic weapons
• A steel bar to hit someone over the head with
• A fun place to get drunk
• A goal, think of 'raising the bar'
• To bar, as in barring someone from a pub, to be barred
• Big Angry Robots (little boys and girls everywhere get to do their country proud by piloting peewees on the battlefield)

Battlecom etc sound cheesey and the typical marketing spiel random people think of when they think of names. We might aswell call it Omega Prime, Dark Nitro, or Sub-Ice along with the millions of similar sounding names using buzz words prefixes and suffixes

BAR really is a good name in a sense that it's a good compromise between interests of all target groups (assuming that it doesn't mean Balanced Annihilation Reloaded anymore but something else):

It's a hint for those old BA fan boys that 'hey here's a new ba' and a bait for those old BA haters that 'hey here's something new that possibly ain't just a flawed BA'

And then it's intriguing, non-cliche + adequately humoristic name for totally new comers, which most probably seek something inspiring and challenging, different from mass-markets, something that has personality.

I agree that there should be no reference to BA. It's a new game, needs a new name.

We don't know that yet, it should be waited what the new BA will be like, game wise.
Some models are updated, some things are tweaked - people usually get annoyed at EA if they try to sell such things as a new game.
Maybe during development some new element will pop up, that gives inspiration for the naming.
See Tech Annihilation
Also with a background story, finding names is easier.
Say for a game about the cold war area, you can pick some buzzwords from that time:
-Nuclear Deterrent
-Red Scare
-Berlin Ultimatum
-Arms Race
-Warmonger
-Doomdays Clock
would all make for decent names imo.
I guess zero-K name was chosen after the story was made.

Or the artstyle might go into a specific direction. (not just models but audio, effects etc)
If it is slightly cartoony/cute you can get away with a more funny name.

One remarkable about TA/BA is how there are no humans, most rts games have infantry of some sort. So maybe that could be drawn on:

1)
The war was started by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition
Not just by a faulty circuit but somehow bring in time travel or relativistics effect due to faster-than-light travel (it doesnt have to make sense) and that messed up the computers, tada.
For that story a name could be:
Code Gray http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_code

2
Snake in the box
Sounds lame at first but through the story you learn that
is has to do with hybercubes which is like totally what some new superweapon is based on.

3
Three Laws or The first Law
Based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics robots try to protect their human colony from each others blabla.
Bonus points when humanity is now on some pre-industrial level and has no idea why their huts and horses keep exploding in bright light.
Also would be cool if you would actually get to squish some villagers in the campaign.

To be fair I think we can squish villagers anyway in a campaign but lets not bundle them into the story. Any campaign we build will likely take the form of:

• Get the commander from A to B
• Blow up the enemy given these units with no builders
• Win a skirmish
• Destroy a prebuilt base
• Last X minutes against waves of enemies

With no intermediate goals or stages in a single play, just the one objective

AF wrote:To be fair I think we can squish villagers anyway in a campaign but lets not bundle them into the story. Any campaign we build will likely take the form of:

• Get the commander from A to B
• Blow up the enemy given these units with no builders
• Win a skirmish
• Destroy a prebuilt base
• Last X minutes against waves of enemies

With no intermediate goals or stages in a single play, just the one objective

+1000000

Most names sound stupid until it becomes familiar.

I wouldn't bother renaming units for BAR unless it is a big legal issue. Many of the names are fairly generic anyway. Flash - fast tank, Zeus - thing that shoots lightning. Did Atari sue Blizzard for calling a gunship Banshee?

Banshee is third party iirc. Unit renaming is not something I wish to be done. I think the only name that they could contest is 'Krogoth'.

Also noting that a lot of units in BA have completely different weapons and uses compared to TA thanks to Caydr. E.g. the FARK and Necro were shifted around, lasers are beam weapons, ships firing volleys of EMG rather than the pale gold lasers of TA etc

Or that most of the units in BA weren't present in TA, no banshee, Juno, Wolverine, Bladewing, fatboy, krow etc

If BAR is to be kept, then Big Angry Robots is my favorite...

Manmax wrote:If BAR is to be kept, then Big Angry Robots is my favorite...

+1

Manmax wrote:If BAR is to be kept, then Big Angry Robots is my favorite...

+1

Manmax wrote:If BAR is to be kept, then Big Angry Robots is my favorite...

+1 too but I'd much rather BAR wasn't kept.

mah, BAR is crappy as hell. if we want to promote a well known game, we need a simple, evocative and "musical" name.

"BAR" isn't none of them. Is a name only for us, not for people.

my 2 cents, and now do what you want

knorke wrote: Three Laws or The first Law
Based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics robots try to protect their human colony from each others blabla.
Bonus points when humanity is now on some pre-industrial level and has no idea why their huts and horses keep exploding in bright light.
Also would be cool if you would actually get to squish some villagers in the campaign.

Thats cool! I buy it!

The First Law could work, and I like the tie-in to Asimov

edit: and I would like to add that if we do go the somewhat wacky Big Angry Robots route, we might as well make the story be about the allied robots vs. the space nazis. Nazi robots in space is something that we can never have enough of, imo.

Big Angry Robots is good because it's simple, descriptive, and easily acronym-izable. A game's name ought to be easily explainable, unless it's a nod to the game's story and the game is a story-rich game (See: The Elder Scrolls, Halo, WH40K).

That said, it's just a name -- don't make ZK's mistake and argue about it for months, holding up actual progress.

...Although name-related arguments are so irresistable...

+1 for BAR, and I like both Build Attack Reclaim(as a representative of the actual game) or Big Angry Robots. I've played plenty of games whose names were shallow. Off the top of my head 3 good ones were MDK 1 and 2, and KKnD. All of which had little meaning to there names, hence my vote for BAR - Big Angry Robots.

ok, i don't know the reason of why so many people consider "bar" as a good achronim name, but if "bar" it will be the name, please at least not "Big Angry Robots"..

This name would be fine only if the game will be in "cartoon style" and with a completely different graphic.

The name in a game is VERY important, because it's the entry point for new players. For this reason the name must to be an evocation of the game related, so we have to pay much attention to select and choose it. We can try to choose a name only for nerds who play this game from 6 years, trying to mantain the sperimental and innovative origin of the project "Balanced Annihilation" (been sure that it will be remain only a name/game for us) or we can choose a name for "people", to open this project also out of the world of this little community of fuckers, trying to catching the attention and trying to improve the size (and maybe the quality) of our community.

The game looks fine, it's cool and coompetitive. We need only a SIMPLE and EVOCATIVE name to make known this beautiful game to the people.

How the fuck "BAR" is "SIMPLE"? it's an acronim! lol, it's an acronim decided BEFORE to have a meaning, do you really catch that? O_o"
..And don't tell me that is "EVOCATIVE"! If the ACRONIM's meaning means "big angry robots" a new player expect to try a "cartoon style" game, but it's not. IT'S NOT! XD

it's so difficult to see and understand?

Gigamez wrote: "Big Angry Robots"..

+1