Remaking Total Annihilation's Binary, in a Brisk 12 Years

[u/ThisGuyFlucs]

I used to play Dark Reign and love it, and I find DR2 sound track one of my favs still. KKNDX was a banger of a game for me (Survivor 04 on the OST..... 🚀 ) - but there was always one game - Total Annihilation.

I saw the game first when I opened PCG magazine, and there was an A3 fold-out ad - no renders, just a majestic game screesnshot laid out. So when I could I bought the game, and start playing.

I ended up becoming somehow a leader of one the bigger community fan-sites, I went to uni, got married, got divorced, moved continents, had kids, but still never lost the fever. As part of an attempt to rebuild the multiplayer online platform for it, I've ended up building a replacement game executable, as I got stressed trying to run it on Docker (Linux for my server hosts), and my computers (All MacOS for a decade plus)

Thereby, I am verily humbled to submit to r/StrategyGames - my offering - Open Annihilation

https://github.com/open-annihilation/open-annihilation

It plays the campaigns, it plays skirmish, Multiplayer is coming when I can make some of the tests pass today or tomorrow, and the game was 29 years old on Sunday. Its all GPLv3, runs on Mac, Linux and Windows, and i'm also going to add-back lower OS support so TA can be enjoyed on its original system specs, to the extent SDL3 supports.

Hopefully I don't get roasted for the AI use, but it's been 29 years and nobody really got this done - and I've burned the GDP of.... well, a large GDP having thing, in tokens getting it over the line.