Total Annihilation supports GameRanger, at long last

Since MacSoft published Total Annihilation Gold more than a year ago, online play has been a thorn in the side of many Mac gamers. Without PC to Mac game support (thanks to the PC version’s use of DirectPlay, the Mac-hostile Microsoft API) and without GameRanger support, finding another Total Annihilation player to compete with online was often frustrating. Thanks to the efforts of Mac game conversion company Westlake Interactive, that problem has come to an end: Total Annihilation now supports GameRanger.

Total Annihilation Gold is the Macintosh conversion of the popular real time strategy game originally created for the PC by Cavedog Entertainment. Players can take control of either the Arm or the Core as they build kBots, tanks, ships, and aircraft in dozens of challenging missions. MacSoft’s Total Annihilation Gold Edition combines the original Total Annihilation game, along with two expansion packs: The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics. If you’re a fan of games like Command & Conquer, Warcraft or StarCraft and this title somehow flew under your radar, now may be a good time to take a look.

Westlake today announced the release of a new patch to Total Annihilation, which has been released as a public beta version. The new version number is 3.1.2b6.

“Over the past 6 months, we’ve been working on and off on a new patch for Total Annihilation. The TA software has been through many internal revisions during that time; we think we’ve now got it to a point that’s worthy of testing,” said Westlake Interactive. “However, with all the projects Westlake is currently working on, we don’t have the staff to give it a complete Beta cycle. So with the permission of MacSoft, we’re making the latest TA patch available as a Public Beta.”

Changes in the new version of Total Annihilation are extensive, but the most significant change is the inclusion of support for GameRanger. This enables Total Annihilation Gold owners to join and host online games using the popular, free, Mac-only gaming service, which features more than 40,000 users and supports more than 60 games.

Here’s the list of improvements to Total Annihilation Gold 3.1.2b6:

GameRanger 2.1 support added.

DrawSprocket support is now more robust.

Mission load times have been decreased.

Some minor code optimizations have been added.

Out of memory alerts have been added.

Networking code has been tweaked.

Fixed numerous problems with music not working under Mac OS 9 and later.

Fixed a problem with the music repeat system.

Music CDs may now be swapped in via “CMD-E” during missions.

Fixed dialog palette problems and most of the white screen flashes under Mac OS 9.1.

Transparent scoring overlay bug in Skirmish and Multiplayer modes corrected.

Minor cosmetic changes to some alerts and dialogs have been made.

Software now requires 20MB of free hard disk space at startup for save games.

6 downloadable units from http://www.totalannihilation.com have been added.

As an unsupported feature, MaxUnits may be increased up to 1000 for Skirmish and Multiplayer games. Do this by holding down “CMD” while launching the game.

More information about Total Annihilation Gold can be found at MacSoft’s Web site. If you’re already a Total Annihilation owner and you’d like to learn more about the update, use the links below. Make sure to read the documentation included with the download before applying the patch.

More info || Download Total Annihilation 3.1.2b6 [1MB]