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:
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.
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.
I did love that game, still got my copy sitting around in the shed somewhere.
Cool project, well done for having completed it!