[REL-FA] SC:TA -- [1/08/10] Beginnings of an AI

"What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination. Both sides, now crippled beyond repair. The remnants of their armies continue to battle on ravaged planets; their hatred fueled by over four thousand years of total war. This is a fight to the death. For each side the only acceptable outcome is the complete elimination of the other."
An epic introduction to an epic game. A game over 10 years old and still played and loved by many. It's time for the war to continue.
This mod seeks to re-create TA in it's original form inside supreme commander, without any style/artistic adjustments.
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PROGRESS:
192 Units Completed
- 76 ARM Original TA units
- 75 CORE Original TA units
- 38 ARM Core Contingency units
- 3 CORE Core Contingency units
- 2 ARM Add-on units
- 1 CORE Add-on unit

RECENT CHANGES:
[01-08-2010] - Beginnings of an AI
[20-07-2010] - Version 0.7 of SCTA has been released.
[14-07-2010] - Update #30, New OTA/CC Progress Sheets
[17-06-2010] - Update #29, New OTA/CC Progress Sheets
[12-06-2010] - Update #28, New OTA/CC Progress Sheets
[06-06-2010] - Once more under development
[01-12-2008] - SC:TA Slideshow available (below), created by Manimal
[16-11-2008] - Update #27, New OTA/CC Progress Sheets, v0.58 Released
[08-11-2008] - Update #26
[03-11-2008] - Update #25
[12-10-2008] - SCTA Launcher now available
[16-06-2008] - FA update Now Available
[15-06-2008] - New OTA Progress Sheet, Updated v0.57 Beta Progress Notes
[14-06-2008] - Preview of New Balance Mod released (see page 14 for download link)
[01-05-2008] - New OTA Progress Sheet, Updated v0.57 Beta Progress Notes
[09-04-2008] - v0.57 wip version released
[30-03-2008] - New OTA Progress Sheet, Updated v0.57 Beta Progress Notes
DOWNLOADS:
SC:TA v0.7 (11.5 MB, zip)
Latest Forged Alliance only version. Extract to your Forged Alliance installation directory, and run the SCTA shortcut to play.
SC:TA v0.58 (7.83 MB, exe installer)
Last version that worked for Supreme Commander. Use the included SCTA-Launcher application to run the mod.
SC:TA Slideshow (3.52 MB, wmv)
A short slideshow with screenshots of this mod, backed by original TA music, created by Manimal.
TA Music (Thread)
A UI side Mod that when enabled substitutes the Supreme Commander music for the Total Annihilation Music, Created by Armoured Fish.
TA Colors (810 Bytes)
If you just want the TA colors, this small mod replaces the Supreme Commander ones with the TA ones:Blue, Red, White, Green, Navy Blue, Purple, Yellow, Black, Light Blue and Tan. Simply place the file in your gamedata directory. This comes included with SC:TA, this seperate download is just if you want to use it without the main mod.
SC:TA MapPack (Thread)
This thread has more info on the Map Pack, as well as download links.
Progress Sheet (439KB, pdf) [14/07/2010]
Contains the progress information for all the original Total Annihilation Units
Progress Sheet - Core Contingency (478KB, pdf) [14/07/2010]
Contains the progress information for all the Core Contingency Units
SCREENSHOTS:


MISCELLANEOUS:
For the history of the development of TA, see this blog:
Ton-of-clay (Blogspot): TA-ncient History
For the "Revolva" TA project, visit here|||FEATURES
(Updated shortly)|||It would really be worth at least making the models more detailed\higher poly and smoothing out some of those icky sharp edges.|||Nope; not going there , for a few reasons: One, It's a pretty big ask to edit each unit (atm importing units takes only a few hours, including textures), and still make them look completely TA; and two, performance: It will run smoother and should allow higher unit counts than conventional SupCom. Who hasn't wanted to play a 1000 units per player game of TA?



Personally I think they are great as is. Big, blocky and machine like. It really brings back memories using them in-game |||PheonixIV|||The flares only last for around 1/10th of a second; i had to slow the game to -10 to get that screenshot, so don't worry.|||Not to be an total *** or something but maybe you should merge with the The Total Annihilation TC project Cause when you guy's cooperate i just know the progress on it will sky rocket! Only thing up to you is to just polish up the units.|||Yeah, such a straight conversion makes sense :). Remodelling every unit to look nicer would be a very, very high effort.



But i think the scale is too much out of proportion... i mean a small LLT three times the height of a tree? |||Dark|||There is a reason these projects are seperate: As i stated inthe first post, this mod uses the original models, whereas the Total Annihilation TC ("Revolva") uses new models based off TA units. He is also planning on adding many new things; such as Experimentals ("Prototypes") etc. There wouldn't actually be a whole lot to gain by joining together - I'm not a hugely good modeller, i'm just importing and adding back missing underside faces, then texturing them.



As far as the scale goes, read the notes section. It may look huge but it's in proportion



EDIT: Spooky beat me too it |||*Shrug* it's your call. I'd at least add some particles to those muzzle flashes though, even if i didn't smooth the edges off a bit. But that's just me.|||I wouldn't directly transfer the square sizes from TA to SupCom. Buildings like the T1 PD, wall or T1 AA aren't even as big as one square in SupCom.|||Here's a comparison shot (old) of TA vs SC on the same map, at roughly the same height; you'll see what i mean about the scale being ok. Basically Sup Com's trees make everything look huge, but if you compare it to just the terrain it matches.



Also I have to transfer the square sizes directly, as otherwise the buildings wont be scaled correctly to one another. TA has 2x2 square buildings, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5 etc. You can't do 1/2 squares in sup com so that is what i'm stuck with. It's not a big deal since it works anyway.|||You can keep the build footprint the same size, and still scale the buildings for appearance's sake - uniformscale(I think?) uses decimal places into the triple digits.|||Edit: Just re-read what you said; There isn't any reason to make the models smaller, since the models are the right size compared to the footprints. If i scaled the models i'd have 2 choices:



a) keep the collision boxes the same as the footprints; would match TA gameplay but look weird (both with units colliding with gaps, and with units not appearing as close to each other as they are in TA)

b) scale the collision boxes with the unit; visually make more sense, but then would change gameplay (dragon's teeth for instance would no longer create a solid wall)



Neither of these both looks and acts the same as TA; in game it only looks overly big compared to Sup Com units, which is irrelevant since they are not made to play with each other (though the results are interesting ). When compared to the map the scale looks right.



Quote:|||True, it wouldn't be the same as TA - you'd had two choices. Either have buildings block everything in their footprint, as they do in TA (Remember the AI blocking their base in with factories on that metal/water mazelike map?) or you can scale things a bit smaller than their footprint and give units room to move even when buildings are crammed toe-to-toe.



In my opinon, this is one change from TA that I'm not going to miss.



And if you ask me, TA and SupCom just don't scale - look at the two screenshots - TA trees are just bigger. Sumpcom seems to be on a larger scale. Finding the right scale to match the terrain to the units, then doing a search across multiple files (try editpad or notepad++, or something of that nature) and simply dividing by a number that produces the right ratios isn't too tall an order.|||Compare it to the land, not the trees, otherwise the TA units would need to be tiny. The land in the two screenshots is roughly the same size (the maps aren't exactly the same, but close enough), and you'll see that the units take up the same amount of room in both pictures. I know the trees are too small in sup com, but they are not a huge concern. I'm scaling based on the map because that has the biggest effect, in terms of distances.



First priority with this mod is replicating the original TA; your free to mod this mod later, if you want anything changed |||You might want to use a different shader, the one in that picture looks like poo.



You should probably consider that the TA units -should- be tiny. SupCom's scale is several powers greater than that of TA, by making them the same size you're acutally making them bigger in terms of exact scale.



Drop the Dragon's Teeth size buildings to 1 square and you'll hit a scale which works much better.|||Yeah, even compared to the land, they look far too big.|||Raevn|||seriously while i love TA, you have to reconsider the sizes, the main reason all the units int TA are pretty much the same size(or close to it) was due to engine limits and the tech of the day when the game was made. in supcom LLTs are t1 PD, Big Berthas should be close to the size of t3 arty and ect...|||Lt_hawkeye|||I dug around a bit and did some more research; the end result is 1 square in TA is exactly equal to 1 square in SupCom.



The Math:



Lava Highground:

Sup Com: 5km x 5km, 256 x 256 squares

TA: 8 x 8 screens, 256 x 256 squares

(1 screen = 512 pixels, 16 pixels per square)



Ok, so heres the main points so far:

*I can't shrink the units footprints without altering the scale between units, which would make the units different from TA



*All the units have a universalscale of 0.16, so changing that in future would be very simple. For now, then, i'll keep the units as hey are, since it will be trivial for me (or anyone else) to change them later if they wish.



*One problem I realised when shrinking the models: Mobile units. The buildings can keep their hit boxes and still look mostly ok when they are hit, but the units will look a little dumb when a bullet explodes next to them and it is taken as a direct hit. If the hit boxes are shrunk, then alot of things balance wise would change, as it relies on certain unit sizes in some cases (The Flash being an example, it's firing randomness doesn't go too well targetting Sup Com units, which are small)



*Props: The reason I am not worried about map details is that they can be changed arbitrarily; since unit sizes cant (when taking footprint into account), I've put unit to unit consistancy above consistancy with features. Alot of the maps in the TA map pack also don't have trees (Comet Catcher, Lava highground, lava & two hills, Cluster Freak, Dark Side, Painted Desert when it gets released) so the difference wont be so noticeable for now|||I think, again, using map sizes as comparison is arbitrary - a 256x256 SC map is supposed to be much larger in scale than a 256x256 TA map.



I understand that with TA using 2x2, and 3x3 footprints, you can't shrink footprints further while keeping build areas comparable - but do you think, for the sake of argument, that an LLT deserves to be nearly the same size as a Big Bertha? I'm all for bringing TA to the SC Engine, but let's not take the engine and modeling/rendering limitations with it.



I perfectly understand if you want to get it in-game and working before you start fiddling with footprint and UniformScale values, but I also think that if you begin planning for it now, taking notes as you import each unit, you'll save a lot of trouble in the future.|||The LLT is the building with the smallest footprint in TA, it makes sense to me to make it have the smallest footprin in SupCom as well. Not only does it scale much better, but when you look at it in game you'll get a much better feel of size.



In fact, i think the only units in TA who had a footprint smaller than the LLT were the crawling bombs.