Total Annihilation, rebuilt for modern computers
An AI-assisted “clean-room” remake of the classic RTS Total Annihilation, built on a modern Go-based engine, is drawing both excitement from fans of large-scale strategy games and skepticism over its heavy use of LLMs for decompilation, documentation, and marketing copy. Commenters compare it to existing open-source successors like Beyond All Reason, Zero‑K, and Supreme Commander mods, debating gameplay feel, performance, community onboarding, and whether a faithful port adds value beyond more evolved derivatives. The project also raises legal and aesthetic concerns around AI-generated code and homogenized “AI slop” web design, highlighting broader unease about how modern tools are reshaping fan remasters and intellectual property norms.
Project and scope
- Thread centers on a “clean-room” Total Annihilation (TA) reimplementation that runs on modern hardware, uses original assets, and tweaks rendering (lighting, bloom, higher resolution).
- Some like the faithfulness to original TA and its campaign, units, and “feel”; others prefer more modern successors.
Comparison to other TA-lineage games
- Beyond All Reason (BAR), Zero-K, Balanced Annihilation, and the Spring/Recoil engines are frequently cited as existing spiritual successors and open-source alternatives.
- Opinions split: some say BAR/Zero-K are mechanically superior and best-in-class RTS today; others feel they are “arcadey,” cartoony, too fast-paced, or lack TA/SupCom’s sense of scale and commander mechanics.
- Supreme Commander / Forged Alliance (FAF) discussed as TA’s true successor; multiple people want a similar engine rewrite for it, and one developer mentions actively working on a SupCom engine replacement with massive performance gains.
Gameplay, campaigns, and design
- TA’s campaign, music, and minimal but evocative lore are praised; some find it more compelling than later RTS campaigns, others the opposite.
- Several contrast StarCraft’s micro-heavy, esports-optimized design and “fluff” with TA/SupCom’s large-scale, macro- and QoL-focused control systems.
- BAR currently lacks a full story campaign; scenarios and AI skirmishes partially fill the gap, with a commercial single-player campaign reportedly planned.
Technical aspects
- New TA port is in Go using Ebiten; people find that choice interesting.
- Prior projects like Spring/BAR struggled with deterministic lockstep netcode while using floats and fast-math, causing cross-platform desyncs.
- SupCom’s historic issues: poor threading, late-game slowdown, crashes on huge maps; claimed engine rewrite aims to fix these and support enormous battles with high FPS.
AI-generated website, copy, and “slop”
- Strong criticism of the project site’s AI-generated marketing prose: seen as homogenous, repetitive, “LinkedIn-speak,” and exhausting to read.
- Some are indifferent or positive about the visuals but dislike the writing style far more.
- A minority argue these patterns are simply high-converting modern UX/marketing tropes, not inherently bad.
Legal and IP questions
- Debate over whether an LLM-assisted decompile plus rewrite truly counts as “clean room.”
- Comparisons drawn to historical BIOS/UNIX clean-room efforts; some think it’s legally gray but unlikely to reach court, especially for an old game.
- Broader philosophical thread on intellectual property: if rights-holders under-exploit old games, some feel motivated fans “deserve” to revive them, though this remains legally unresolved.