Total Annihilation redesign project
Foreword
This page is a WIP, as usual. I doodle on this project every now and then. TA is a nice game, and I would still play it if I hadn't cracked my skirmish CD. Design wise, I think TA lacks consistency when it comes to the factions and units. It's very gritty to play. It amuses me greatly to try and 'fix' these kind of things.
Notes
Factions design identity
Consistency is important to me, so I've established certain guidelines to keep in mind when I draw the units. Also, units can feature certain components which are shared... hatches, weapons, heads, knobs. Aside from giving a coherent look, it also makes the relative scales easier to read. It's a bit like putting a person/coin/matchbox next to something.
| Faction: | CORE | ARM |
| Color preference: | Red, Silver, Black. | Blue, Gun Metal, Biege. |
| Shape preference: | Curved, Symmetry. | Angular, Asymmetry. |
| Weapon preference: | Lasers, Energy. | EMG, Cannons, Mass. |
Gameplay
I won't rant about this here. Let's just say that I prefer games with... (here comes a fuzzy word) emergence. TA already has that but I would like to take it to the extreme. Also, I like games where I have macro control, and TA had a bit of that too, but again, I think that could be taken further. I want to concentrate on strategy, like, what to build and where to send it, like a general laying out a plan. Maybe the player could have AI micro commanders which he assigns tasks to. Well, this almost turned into a rant anyways. I'll save the rest for later.
Weapons
Something which would increase readability is to have certain fixed types of weapons which can be recognized visually. I've tried to support this by color (and size) coding the lasers and some other stuff. For example, a small red laser would always have the same range, damage and maybe reload time. If you see three green lasers mounted in a gatlin formation, you know that you're dealing with at just a glance [a HLT :)]. Lasers would be accurate things which fly straight and don't do much structural damage. They just stop things from working by destroying internal components, like a malicious surgeon. Like so, they'd be bad at destroying wrecks. Mortars could always be inaccurate, but lightweight since they don't have a long barrel, etc. Basically, all the weapon types could have certain characteristics in which you could trust, and they'd be visually recognizable, and come in certain grades which tell you something about their range and damage.
WIP unit art
Actually, I don't quite like what I've got here so far, art-wise. Some of the detailing is haphazard and non-figurative. However, I do think it's a good idea to design RTS units from the top. They should be like symbols or icons gliding around. The placement of color masses is more important than details when it comes to readability (something which is essential in... well, most games, I think).These re-designs are pretty liberal. I could probably stay a lot closer to the originals without losing... aesthetic flavour. As for modelling and texturing (if that's ever going to happen), I think the texture should do more work than the model. These could almost be a flat 64*64px pictures gliding around and people would never notice unless they move down with the camera to the ground for eye candy shots. Again, I think readability is far more important than detail noise smacked over a 1000 poly model with no distinct features. I'm a failure as a modeller, but I think maybe 100-300 polies would be enough for most things. More polies just means more work to make those damn UV maps, and less units done. Maybe I'll draw some orthos one day.
Sideviews WIP - It's troublesome to try and design stuff from the side when it's going to be viewed from the top. Perspective drawings (35-10 degrees top) would be better, but it's still fun to do side view line-ups every now and then. It's one of those things I enjoyed looking at as a kid (and I'm still a kid). The car and tank are human scale. One thing that's relevant to the TA designs (CORE especially) is that they don't need to house humans, so there's no hatches, doors, windows, etc. Interior tank space would be used for other things, and 'spalling' damage wouldn't be an issue. Aircraft would be able to pull more than 10g, etc. Actually, the ARM might still use pilots, but they're probably superhuman and use neural interfaces to become one with their vehicles.
3D SAM - Much of this information is in the top down drawing, but when doing a 3D version you always realize there are some problems in the design, like the rear wheel guard intersecting with the front roof... and some shapes looking boring and bricky... needing to be nudged a bit. You also realize the possibilities of having some more dynamic angles here and there, but with ARM I think there should be a tendency towards brick and 45 degree angles rather than "stealth fighter" angles, so one has to be careful. Not an excuse to make it a boring brickfest though... unless we're talking about "The Brick" in SupCom which has cool major shapes.
Brawler orthos - Not sure how this works in 3D. I'm trying to put most of the design stuff so it's visible from the top. For examples, barrels are side by side, not over and under. Certain components like the EMG guns would be the same or similar on several units (depending on how it mounts). I have yet to draw a scale meter for these things (I just have some rough cars and people so far). Maybe a 128*128 texture would be enough in most situations, but there's always mip-mapping and all that fancy stuff. I haven't even thought about shaders... normal maps etc. I think, as a RTS game is generally played, the units can be pretty lowres. Adding details is a severe case of diminishing returns.
Story
Needs to be storyboarded [bracketed text]. Everything subject to change. As for compability with the Core Contingency ending. Maybe the Core 'imploded' the galaxy and a strange effect took them to a paralell universe. Or the bomb didn't work. I never played CC so I don't know much about it. Also, my writing is made of cheese.
[A metal floor.]
[Shadow of a flying bug.]
[It lands on a plant sticking out of a crack.]
[Another bug takes off.]
[Camera pulls back to reveal a carpet of lave-grass.]
Over 9000 years have passed since the Arm and the Core assured their mutual destruction.
[Overgrown ruins, partial grass on Core Prime]
Or, so it had seemed.
It would come to pass that the Ext, race of alien (giant) crabs,
[Giant green crabs tinkering with their ship controls and sensors]
[Sensor style jerky zoom in on a dot becoming the commander wreck]
finds the remnants of a Core commander adrift in the bleak vastness of space.
[Ext ship closing in]
The Ext's attempt to restore the commander to use it as a weapon against their enemies would prove catastrophic.
[They're fixing it up, keeping it restrained in a contraption. Actually, it's probably reparing itself.]
[The eye starts to glow fiercly]
(It needs to be better established that the Con is the enemy of the Ext)
The Commander broke free from its prison to once again live the only way it could.
[Commander D-guns his way out through the hull,]
[...leaving the ship to explode/burn as a neat backdrop.]
[A nearby planet (or moon, or dwarf planet...)]
[The commander burns (safely) through the atmosphere, crashing on the surface.]
[The commander gets out of the sizzling crater to set its eyes upon an Ext or Con city]
[Mid story intermission - black out ]
[A small fleet of Core ships leaves (and/or prepares to leave) the now destroyed city...]
[...and the planet's atmosphere.]
After having patiently probed the corners of the galaxy,
[Core ships (including a sensor disc ship) traveling though nebulas...
[...alien star systems,]
[...with a mysterious probe ship(s) (one jammer) following it]
it found was it was hoping not to find.
[Core ships approacing old Arm outpost.]
The last surviving Arm, a small outpost locked in stasis.
[Arm Seed Ziggurath]
This would have been an easy prey if it hadn't been for the Con, a race of tenacious hostile machines.
[Con had followed Core and set an ambush (using large dropship cubes hanging in the sky).]
Appearing out of nowhere, the Con thwarted the plans of the Core, unwittingly freeing the Arm clones from their slumber.
[It appears the Con had gotten inside the building already. Something inside explodes, sending a bunch of Con units flying out.]
And something else, something very familiar.
[The Arm commander appears out of the rubble and smoke]
The CON
It has been speculated that the Con were the result of a rogue Core construction K-Bot which spent most of the 9k years patroling reparing itself and the remaining buildings of its outpost. Maybe it just got tired and wanted to do something else. They don't have a lot of diversity in their arsenal (mostly 'bricks'). The Con are simple minded and completely irresponsible. Maybe a bit wacky, but not in a clowny way.
The EXT
The Ext are a young race who have been forced into war. This means that many of their units are experimental and unconventional. They're inferior to the other factions (not balanced). The Core and Arm have polished their military proficiency for millennia.
- by Niklas Jansson, 2007