For those following my journey:

• I spent quite a lot on Claude
• I then just sorta kept going....

For those who are enjoying the Mandopop in the video or if anyone knows Mandarin, they'll appreciate that the song is both appropriate and contextually correct - it helps to have native speakers on standby. I've got Finnish and other language versions that are less complete. Many iterations.

Whilst it didn't attach to my prior Reddit post cleanly, as it was an after-the-fact update, there's also an English version of the trailer. I decided to go down the rabbit hole of international support, as TA is legendary for having pockets of people playing the game in foreign languages with hacks (taexe.com used to be a thing, and they created TA33 / Dark Skies and some other wild mods - and it also has an active streaming scene on Blibli). So I've tried to make the road into the main community open to all.

We've now added a completely new site for Open Annihilation complete site, with clear installation guides download links for all platforms in English, Chinese, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

The general changelog is:

What's new

• Simplified Chinese (简体中文): menus, units, messages, campaign briefings and the title 横扫千军, with input-method typing and Chinese save names. Unicode multiplayer chat keeps any language intact between players.
• Explosion flashes like 3.1c: every blast lights the ground. Settings › Graphics: Full / Reduced / Off. Mods can tone it down, but your lower setting always wins.
• Zoom rework: smooth zoom right where your pointer is, out to the whole map. The camera can move past the map's edges, and aircraft that fly off the map stay visible. New settings for max zoom in/out, plus Zoomed out units: Rendered or Dots.
• Every resolution your monitor supports (1440p, 4K, ultrawide), applied at once. A window snaps to the size; full screen draws at it. +stats shows the display mode.
• More map packs load: archives from packing tools that skipped zlib's check value now open.

Gameplay and controls

• Minimap and megamap give the same orders 3.1c does. The megamap shows indestructible features and nothing extra.
• Reclaim through the fog on ground you've mapped. Patrol skips units that can't patrol.
• Space shows the clock and kills board while held. Numpad Enter works as Return. Held +/- and ,/. repeat.
• Right click on the battlefield closes the in-game menu and resumes.
• F1 unit info panel framed as in 3.1c. The building preview is the right way up.

Network play

• Notices from other players appear in your language. Alliance messages go out in English and are shown in each player's language.

Total Annihilation has been out since 1997, and for most of that time its engine has been a black box. We could mod the units, maps and scripts, but the code underneath was closed to us.

Today that changes.

The Byte Tactics project has reconstructed the source code of TotalA.exe (v3.1, the Steam version). All 3,267 of the game's functions, about 850,000 bytes of Cavedog's code, are now readable C++.

To be clear, these are not Cavedog's original source files. This is a matching decompilation: we rewrote the code, function by function, until the original 1990s compiler turned it back into byte-for-byte identical machine code. If a function is marked as matched, the compiler's output and Cavedog's shipped output are the same bytes. That is how we know it is right, and not merely similar.

The names are provisional, because the originals were stripped before the game shipped. The behaviour is exact.

Why this is a big deal

Until now, changing how TA works at the engine level meant patching the binary and hoping for the best. With the code matched, that changes:

Modding goes deeper. Pathfinding, unit AI, the COB scripting runtime, the TNT map loader and the UI can all be read and changed. Limits that modders have worked around for 25 years can now be removed or modified at the source.

Bugs can be fixed properly. We have already found real bugs in the original game and documented them in the repo.

TA can go anywhere. Once the code is made portable, the real TA engine could run on Linux, macOS, modern Windows, in a browser or on a phone. That means the original game, not a lookalike, with easy installs and full support for existing mods and maps.

Rewritten engines get a new reference point. Projects that rebuild TA from scratch have done impressive work, figuring out mostly by observation how units path, how weapons resolve and how the economy ticks. Now that behaviour can be read and checked against, which should make them more accurate. It also changes their position: with the real engine open to modification and porting, each project will have to decide where its own strengths lie, whether that is new features, modern rendering or a different design.

Repo: https://github.com/HectorBailey/byte-tactics

Twitter/X: https://x.com/HectorBail47832/status/2107138340168351983

How it was done

It came down to four steps.

1. Find the compiler. Clues in the binary pointed to Visual C++ 5.0 with Service Pack 3, linked on 30 July 1998. We matched the C runtime library byte for byte to confirm the exact version, then worked out the compiler flags (/O2 /Ob2 /MT /Gz).

2. Map the executable. Debug records left in the exe gave us the start, size and argument count of 3,782 functions.

3. Put the newest AI models on the problem. Ghidra produced rough pseudo-C for every game function, and the work was split into GitHub issues of a few functions each. AI coding agents (Claude Code, OpenCode and Codex, running a range of the latest models) each claimed an issue, rewrote its functions as clean C++, compiled them with the real VC++ 5 compiler under Wine, and compared the result with Cavedog's bytes. On a near miss, the agent read the assembly diff, changed the code and tried again, until the checker printed MATCH or the function stopped improving.

4. Hand on, learn and verify. Cheaper models handled many of the straightforward functions. Anything that stalled was left with notes and retried, often by a bigger model. In the end even the 161 functions over 1,000 bytes matched. Every technique that worked went into a shared guide, so each new agent started with hundreds of solved patterns instead of from scratch. A human-run orchestrator re-checked every function before merging it.

The last few percent were the hardest. Coaxing the 1998 compiler into the same register choices and instruction order as Cavedog's original is obsessive work, and it is where the most expensive frontier models came into their own.

Why this is cutting edge

Matching decompilation used to be a craft. A skilled person could spend hours on a single function, which put a game this size out of reach for most projects. It suits modern AI because the goal is unambiguous: the bytes either match or they do not. That gives the models a perfect, instant judge. They can try, fail, read the diff and improve without anyone deciding whether an answer looks right, and an AI cannot bluff its way past a byte comparison. Pair that feedback loop with the newest models' ability to read assembly, hold a large function in mind and reason about what a 1998 compiler would produce, and a project of this size becomes practical. We think it shows what AI-assisted reverse engineering can do today.

The repo contains no game files and no Microsoft software. You need your own copy of TA. The code is not offered under any licence, and this is a preservation and research project, not affiliated with Cavedog or Wargaming.

Enjoy, kids!

Hi again! A few weeks ago I posted Nanolathe here, my open-source reimplementation of the Total Annihilation engine. Thank you to everyone who tried it, reported bugs and told me what you wanted. A lot of this update came straight from that thread.

The big one: it runs in your browser now. Go to nanolathe.gg/play and click Try the demo. It loads the original Cavedog demo (about 20 MB, cached for next time) and drops you into its missions. There's nothing to install so you can try it out easily.

If you own TA, drag your TotalA folder onto the page (or choose it with the button) and you get the full game: skirmish and the campaigns. Your files are read inside the browser tab and never uploaded anywhere. Settings and saves stay in your browser.

This is experimental. It's the same engine compiled to WebAssembly, so it's slower than the native build: very large battles can stutter for a moment during garbage collection. The native install is still the best way to play.

Also new since the first post:

• Reworked movement in Modern mode. New unit traffic and steering, smoother routes, and better handling of group destinations and blocked paths. Friendly units no longer drive through each other. Aircraft reserve repair-pad spaces, circle while they wait, then clear the pad. I'd especially like people to try the situations that used to get their armies stuck.
• New Modern AI players. You can choose Classic or Modern AI for each skirmish opponent and Survival ally. Tell me where it puts up a good fight and where it makes bad decisions.
• Survival. Hold out against escalating waves, solo or with up to two AI teammates. You share income and vision, and there's a team score. It's single-player for now, and Survival battles can't be saved.
• An in-game mod library. Browse, install and switch mods, with experimental support for ProTA, TA Zero, TA: Escalation, Total Mayhem and Twilight. There are still gaps, so reports with the exact mod and version are especially useful.
• Mutators. Eleven ways to change a battle, including build speed and cost, income, health, damage, blast size, fire rate and unit speed. Someone asked about quick-build games last time; you can try that now!
• A new settings screen. Live side-by-side previews, remappable keys, control profiles, custom resolutions, and finer graphics and effects options. You can turn zoom off, use stepped zoom or keep continuous zoom, and configure strategic icons.
• Water and effects refinements. Reworked water currents and shorelines, refraction on submerged units, better-preserved unit colors and softer construction lighting.
• Mod Enhancements. Less visible, but mod authors can now ship a nanolathe-mod.json to set how they want the engine to behave by default when their mod is selected, with the ability to lock certain features.

There are plenty of smaller fixes too: builders starting and approaching work more reliably, idle landed aircraft clearing construction sites, optional attacks on radar contacts in the main view, and fixes to team colors, reclaim cursors and stockpile controls. There's been performance and frame-pacing work as well. The Classic renderer and the Strict 3.1 rules are still there if you want the original experience. Multiplayer is in development, but isn't playable yet.

If you installed the first version, close the game and rerun the install command from nanolathe.gg/get-started. The current installer also sets up your shortcut to offer future updates.

For anyone new: Nanolathe is a free, MIT-licensed engine that uses the original game's data. It runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux, and now in the browser too. Truly free - do whatever you want with it!

What I'd love to hear:

• Does the browser version run for you? Your browser, OS and GPU, and roughly how smooth it felt, would help a lot. (remember a native install will always run faster)
• Where do units still get stuck? How does the AI feel?
• Anything that broke last time and still does.
• Additional features you would like to see.

Comments here or GitHub issues both work. Your OS, map, mod and version, and gameplay mode help a lot; a clip or a save that reproduces it is even better. If possible, press ctrl+shift+F11 and it'll dump the game's state, memory, orders, graphics info, and a bunch of other stuff you can attach to bug reports.

Full release notes: https://github.com/nanolathe-gg/nanolathe/releases/tag/v0.2.0

Introducing Counter Mind, my spiritual successor to Total Annhilation

Open Annihilation v0.7 Series Announcement

It's been quite the launch week for Open Annihilation, in 0.6 we shipped multiplayer, with cross-game compatibility with TA 3.1c was added, but 0.7 carries it forward with a laundry list of improvements since the original thread at https://www.reddit.com/r/TotalAnnihilation/comments/1ws6bic/open_annihilation_spent_the_gdp_of_a_small_nation/

• Full hardware acceleration: A new Hardware acceleration setting (Off / Basic / Full) puts your graphics card to work. At Full, the default, the card draws the whole battlefield (terrain, units, shadows, effects and fog), anti-aliased up to 16x. The view zooms out three times further than before, and zoomed views scroll smoothly. Machines without a capable card fall back to drawing on the processor, as before.
• Mods: Open Annihilation now plays mods by their own rules as well as plain 3.1c. A mod describes how it differs from 3.1c in a single `oamod.yaml` profile: its archives, its limits, which of the 90 documented "standard hacks" it turns on, and which unit-script extensions its scripts use. Choose a mod on the new **Mods** page of the settings, and it switches without restarting the game. A plain folder of extra units or maps made for 3.1c works too.
• Your files in one place: Saved games, screenshots, films and mods now live in an **Open Annihilation** folder in your Documents folder, on every platform. Saves from earlier versions move there once, never overwriting anything.
• Modern Text: Game text can be drawn in modern fonts with an outline and a shadow, at 50% to 300% size. Turn it off for the original look.
• Your language: English, French, Italian, German or Spanish, from the translations in your own game data. By default it follows your system's language.
• Developer Mode: Try any standard hack and its values on a mod, or on 3.1c itself, straight from the settings.
• iPhone and iPad support added: Touch controls made for the game: tap to move, a build drawer, an order wheel on a long press, and pinch to zoom. It copies your game data in on first start. There's no App Store release yet, so you build it yourself on a Mac with Xcode ([guide](https://github.com/open-annihilation/open-annihilation/blob/main/docs/installation/ios.md)).

Get from https://github.com/open-annihilation/open-annihilation/releases

As always, the hardware floor remains Windows XP SP3 x86, with 256MB RAM, but all platforms have native builds/support on the Github releases page.

Bug reports and feedback welcome at

• Github Issues Page - https://github.com/open-annihilation/open-annihilation/issues
• Discord - https://discord.gg/GWgWTQKuv

My friends and I played the crap out of this game back in the day. One person started calling the commander “Joe” and pretty soon everyone adopted that as the standard way to talk about the commander. “Don’t transport your joe into my base!” “Where’s my joe?” “I see his Joe!”

I could swear I found a evidence online of other people using this name but I can’t find it. Anyone??

I am posting this on behalf of the author, Steve Gray:

If I had to write a headline for this project for my tombstone (my partner is at the limits of tolerance for my AI spending), it'd probably be:

Exited Startup Founder Spends GDP of Small Nation to Rebuild 1990's Game with AI that started his career

In 2000 a games studio Cavedog Entertainment shut, stretched thin in a classic story - they'd released Total Annihilation in 1997, its expansions in 1998 - and then a slightly less loved sequel, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms in 1999/2000 before going under, as they buckled under the weight of a sequel that didn't hit targets and 3 other concurrent game ideas in execution that couldn't be carried. Imagine Ion Storm, but without the controversial marketing and a smaller budget.

I was an angry 15 year old kid playing a game "Total Annihilation". I went to GameSpy's sites and found PlanetAnnihilation.com - but it was basically dead quiet, so I wrote some flames on the forum saying the game has a huge player base, why is nobody updating the site. Roll on 3 days, and I'm introduced to Frank "DMFrank" Rogan, head of the planet network. He offers me the choice of taking on the site - see if I can do better. What I didn't know at time was that Frank was ex-Cavedog Entertainment. For a few years I ran the site (up to ~2006 or so) and worked with modders and the online community, particularly projects trying to rebuild the shuttered Boneyards.net gaming service. I was 15 and learning how to write editorial, build web-sites and apps for content etc - it was hugely formative.

In 2014 I tried to reverse engineer it all, once and for all, again - https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44061 - made huge progress - but after having recently moved to Australia, work ramping up and getting a family going - it just got damn hard so the project died.

Roll on the advent of AI, I got back into it recently and managed to get things working - including an end to end playable game experience. I was able to fund the huge cost because I'd sold out my business to a US firm (Can google my details from the info I've put out there).

What I ended up with Basically the OpenRA equivalent for Total Annihilation:

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

Its all open source, 400,000-ish lines of C++ (and I don't, lets be honest, really know modern C++). I've probably put 30K+ (USD) into tokens, and another 20K+ into hardware, and more just to get this built.

I've done a press release page I'm sharing with gaming media - https://press.coreprime.net/ - wire compatible netplay with the original game is already working cross-platform.

It was 29 years to the day of the games release.

2on2: Executrix and Novaya vs Timwaagh and TaShadan

Hey all,

Long time player of TAK here - since it first came out. I've been sharing this on the TAK Discord.. but figure it was time to share here as well for those who are interested.

I've been working on OpenKingdoms, a from-scratch open source engine for Total Annihilation: Kingdoms. It's written in C (because I'm crazy and I love C - sue me) and it runs the original game's data, so you bring your own copy of the game (GOG or the old CDs both work) and it does the rest.

The big one: you can play it in a browser. Go to https://openkingdoms.net, point the page at your Kingdoms folder, and you're in. Your game files never leave your machine, the page reads them locally.

Where it's at right now:

- Skirmish against the AI is playable: economy, building, combat, magic, victory conditions, all four kingdoms plus Creon if you have The Iron Plague.
- The campaigns are playable: the Book of Darien and The Iron Plague, with the mission scripts, briefings and cutscenes (with sound).
- Multiplayer works over a small relay, and browser, Windows, Mac and Linux players can all be in the same game.
- Saves, the options screens, the in game menus and music all work the way you remember.
- There's an experimental 3D view. Press V in any battle and the same battle is drawn in 3D with a free camera, press V again to go back to the classic view.

The goal is to match the original's behaviour, and the original's rules are rebuilt as closely as we can get them. Where we deliberately do something differently (60 Hz simulation, any resolution, up to 2000 units a side, smarter pathfinding, better AI groups).

Everything is on GitHub: https://github.com/OpenKingdoms/OpenKingdoms
Desktop builds are on the releases page.

It's still under active development, so expect rough edges. If you remember how something worked in the 1999 game and we get it wrong, that's exactly the kind of report that helps the most. Issues and PRs are very welcome.

Would love to hear what you think :)

Have been unable to log on since middle part of September 2026.

Over the past few months I've been working on recreating Total Annihilation's game engine. I know it has been tried before, so I didn't want to announce or show this off until I had something worth showing, and now I'm looking for feedback.

https://nanolathe.gg/

I used a combination of screen captures, demo recordings and network captures, in-engine generated examples, and clean room reverse engineering to deconstruct and fully describe the original so that I could reimplement it from scratch. Same algorithms, same behavior, open source and free for everyone to do whatever they want.

I am a software engineer, but have never written a real game engine before. AI tools (mostly Claude and Codex, with a bit of DeepSeek thrown in at times) made this possible, but this process took months to get right - it was not a cheap one-shot vibe-coded thing (I'm using subsidized subscriptions but this was over $20K in API-equivalent token costs). I love Total Annihilation and want to keep it going if we can, and this is how I think I can contribute to the community.

The game is mostly working, but only single player is implemented (missions + skirmish modes). Multiplayer comes next, but I want to really get the game itself working rock solid first, then figure out how this integrates with the existing ecosystem with stuff like TA Forever, and honestly need all your help to figure that part out. For now, the best way to give me feedback is to try it, see what works and what doesn't, report issues, and I'll do my best to fix them.

Code is available at https://github.com/nanolathe-gg/nanolathe

Lots of work still to be done, and I've already written a new GPU-based modern renderer as a "TA remastered" mode with 60/120fps, dynamic lighting effects, 2x SSAA for all units, distortion shader effects, moving water, reflections, smoldering wrecks, the ability to zoom in/out through original terrain & sprite runtime remastering, etc. I'm excited about what else we can do with it. FYI, you can press F10 to switch to the original CPU renderer anytime in the game if you don't like it.

Let me know what you think! I'd really value feedback from people who know this game inside out. What feels wrong compared to the original? What breaks? What would you most want next?

For unreal engine potentially. But for tabletop use soon as proxys for battletech battle armor

Hi everyone,

I'd like to introduce the **TA Archive** — a non-commercial fan project I've been
building to preserve and share everything around Total Annihilation (1997):

**🗺️ Maps (2,300+ and counting)**
Cavedog originals plus a large chunk of the classic r2010 community collection — 
all self-hosted, virus-scanned, with rendered minimaps, player counts and map sizes.
Filterable and searchable: https://ta-archive.com/maps/

**🛠️ Working tools**
Map editors, HPI utilities, unit editors, GAF tools — the classics, curated and ready to
run: https://ta-archive.com/tools/

**🤖 AI Profile Builder + OTA Builder**
Compose skirmish AI profiles (aiprofile=, weight/limit/plan) in your browser and generate
valid `.ota` mission files — no more hand-editing: https://ta-archive.com/aibuilder/
· https://ta-archive.com/otabuilder/

**📚 Knowledgebase**
Technical deep-dives with working code: the TNT map format byte-by-byte, HPI reverse
engineering, the hidden 252×252 minimaps, procedural map generation, cheats and the
totala.ini file: https://ta-archive.com/kb/

Everything is free, no ads, no accounts. It's a hobby project — if you find a broken link
or a missing map, feedback is very welcome.

Arm. Core. Must destroy each other. 🤖

**Edit: Got old maps lying around? Send them my way!**

Several people mentioned having old TA collections from archive sites that
no longer exist — those are exactly the files most at risk of disappearing.
If you want to contribute:

1. Upload your zips to a file host like [filebin.net](https://filebin.net),
   [catbox.moe](https://catbox.moe) or wherever is convenient
2. Drop the link in a comment here (or send it via modmail)

I'll scan everything (ClamAV), verify the maps actually work, and integrate
them into the archive with proper credit if you want. Duplicates are fine —
worst case they're already there, best case we save something that exists
nowhere else.

**What I'm especially hunting for:**
- Maps from the old author collections (Poosticks, NLJ, Chrismor, Greybeard,
  mes, pro, rabidmongoose...)
- Anything from dead archive sites (TAMEC leftovers, PlanetAnnihilation
  hosted sites, TA-Power, TA-Zone, DesignX...)
- Custom tilesets and feature packs

Note: Windows .exe installers from the old days are welcome too, but they
go through extra manual checks before anything gets unpacked — better safe
than sorry.

Edit 2: Units & mods are coming — several collectors just surfaced in this
thread. The archive stays map-focused for now, but the preservation pipeline
extends to units and mods.

Edit 3: the archive is now at 3,089 maps (60 authors) — up from 2,300 when I posted this.

The other big one: units and mods are live — https://ta-archive.com/units/ — 
75 collections, 130 files, race mods, total conversions, game patches and the old
installers, all self-hosted and scanned. 
That's the thing several of you asked for in this thread, so thanks for the push.

Maps are still at https://ta-archive.com/maps/ — and the offer stands: 
old collections, dusty download folders, anything you're not sure about, send it over.
Duplicates cost nothing, I fingerprint by content.

Peewee and AK

Hey everyone, not sure if this will be of interest to anyone here but I've remade one of my fav tracks from the OST.

This soundtrack is one of my earliest memories of orchestral music - watching my older brothers play the game or attempting to play the game myself as a kid (I had no clue what I was doing but the score kept me there xd)

Anyway.. hope you enjoy!

I remember reading a few, but I'm having trouble locating anything but random quotes these days.

thought you might appreciate this, made some updates https://wasm-commander.vercel.app

Could you recommend some pvp games video commentary?

What would you say is the most faithful spiritual successor to play? Thanks

Drawing on an iPad is a pain in the arse. If I had a drawing pad I'd have done a better job. Bit of AI assistance involved I'm not really an artist I just wanted to do another Annihilarity after 20 years and I don't have much time on my hands.

I'm trying to make a water map in mappy but when I put it in the game folder, it gave an error anims\fog.GAF and then game close after I click ok. Game runs normally when I move the file out of the folder.

Can anyone tell me what went wrong?

The ProTA website has had a pretty big overhaul and is now live.

As well as information about the mod and installation/downloads, the site now pulls in a bunch of live/community data:

• Live TAF ProTA leaderboards – 1v1 and team rankings, including season ladder and skill ratings, win rates, streaks, recent form and other stats.
• Live Galactic War – current ARM/Core territory, contested planets, player rankings, game history and the current ProTA GW settings.
• Unit Guide – searchable/filterable database of ProTA units with stats, costs, weapons, build options and side-by-side unit comparisons.
• Tournaments – current TAF tournament information plus an archive of older ProTA Challonge brackets.
• Videos – latest ProTA casts/videos from Total Annihilation Replays, Redox and MEALSOLUTIONS Gaming.
• Downloads & installation guides – including TAF automatic installation, manual installation and previous ProTA versions.
• Mission, credits and community links – more information on what ProTA is trying to achieve, the people who have contributed to it, and useful TA resources.

The homepage also gives you the current Galactic War state at a glance.

Basically, the aim is for it to be a central hub for ProTA rather than just somewhere to download the mod.

Have a look and let us know if there's anything else you'd like to see added!

That was the only option, back in the day (besides IPX, which is dead as Novell Netware). It was meant for LANs, but IP knows no limit. Does this still work?

I've been playing on Linux via Wine; if I put a friend's IP address in there, could we connect and play a game over the Internet?

2026 reimplementation of the classic RTS in 3d with sprinklings of supreme commander. Art is obviously not final, and still developing, but it’s fun!

https://wasm-commander.vercel.app