After a long time of slow development and silently releasing test builds on the forums, version Alpha 4b of Total Annihilation Zero is finally here! During this time the changelog has grown to a gigantic size. Taking a close look at the version history and unit guides of Arm, Core, and GoK is now truly recommended.
On top of several years worth of balancing adjustments and new units for all factions, Alpha 4b also delivers a complete overhaul of all unit scripts and weapon firing animations. Complex units should no longer run risk of dropping any parts of their script when moving, firing, and taking hits all at the same time, commanders and field engineers now handle much better in combat situations, and there is a wide variety of other improvements to scripts and animations all around. Sparks fly and fireballs animate smoothly when cannons fire, missile launchers have jets of flame shooting out from the rear, plasma cannons have crackling halos when they fire, railguns shoot out shockwaves, energy weapons emit pulses and leave trails of sparks, and distort cannons cause brief vortexes when hurling away their otherworldly projectiles. Laying down suppressive fire on the enemy forces has never been as satisfying!
Alpha 4b also brings some fixes and improvements to the venerable TA engine. Several old issues, such as reclaim sound looping and self repair of units that are under construction, have been fixed, and the old self repair code has been upgraded to support a wide range of values. As result, all construction units now have reasonable self repair rates and all Core units now have atleast rudimentary self repair ability as their factional specialty.
In addition to expanded ground warfare, the first tier 2 air units are here! Every faction can now build their own tier 2 air factory and gunship.
Download TA Zero Alpha 4b here, and visit the official discussion thread.
The hotfix, for those who need it, is included within TA Zero Alpha 4b patch archive in a separate folder. The hotfix for Alpha 4 should not be used with Alpha 4b.
Huzzah! At long last! :D
So the latest file is only 40 megs…the A4 Installer is 115? What do I need to play the game from a fresh install of TA?
Is it compatible with the Steam version?
How about taking a look at http://zero.tauniverse.com/installation/ page? Even the download page has basic instructions.
If you already have Alpha 4 installed, you need to only get Alpha 4b patch, unzip it into your TA Zero folder, and replace old files.
If you don’t have Alpha 4 already, get the Alpha 4 Installer, let it do its thing (will update TA with the community patch), and then add Alpha 4b on top of it.
Alternatively get TA Zero Base (contains a half-ready Zero folder), and then add OTA files, Map Pack, and Alpha 4b on it.
two things, i have the alpha 4b hotfix for alpha 4 installed, you said the hotfix 4b and version 4b(god, wouldnt it have been better just to call it 4c or call the hotfix 4.5? at least??) were incompatible, do i really have to delete zero, reinstall 4, and then get 4b, disregarding 4’s hotfix??
secondly, you said “In addition to expanded ground warfare, the first tier 2 air units are here! Every faction can now build their own tier 2 air factory and gunship.” yet i got those units from 4’s 4b(holy shit the negativity of calling them both 4b is showing) hotfix. i dont see why anyone wouldnt have downloaded the hotfix, and saying “now” is adding to the confusion.
All I understood from that garbled mess of a text is that you’re really confused about things. Let me try to break it all down…
Biggest issue seems to be that you are mixing up concepts “hotfix” and “test build“. Those two don’t have much to do with each other.
“Hotfix” refers to modified TAZero.ini and zdraw.dll that are only needed if the game does not run due to certain technical issues. If you can launch the game, DO NOT USE the hotfix. Quote from the readme below…
“It has been discovered that the game might not launch when using certain graphics cards, usually AMD/ATI (with any OS), or when using Windows 8 (with any graphics card). Until this issue is fully resolved, you can install this preliminary hotfix (copy files to your TA Zero folder). This fix should allow your game to launch, but you may encounter unsatisfactory frame rates or hangs on the megamap (if it hangs, just roll the mouse wheel up and wait for the game to zoom back in). However, the regular game view should be fine. Please DO NOT install this fix if you are not affected by the game launch crashing issue (most Nvidia users on Windows 7 or earlier) as it may break your game.“
Hotfix of Alpha 4 should not be used with Alpha 4b due to changes in player color selection. This means that a few lines of text that set the colors of markers in game are different in the TAZero.ini, but other than that they are the same.
“Test builds” then were the preliminary Alpha 4b releases that I occasionally posted on TAU. Along other things, T2 air factories and gunships were included in these a long time ago. Now that I finally did the official Alpha 4b release, what has happened in the test builds is ignored, and news post and changelog are written like Alpha 4b was the first release since Alpha 4.
You still have plans for this, Voh? How are things going?
Still gonna be on the backburner for awhile?
Yes, there is a plan. Things just progress in random bursts of activity.
Doesn’t work on Steam version, don’t waste your time.
As far as I know, Steam has not changed any of the original TA game data, and as such TA Zero mod should work just fine.
The problem here is that you most likely tried to use the Alpha 4 installer, which then failed to automatically locate your Steam based TA folder and copy needed files to TA Zero folder.
Rather than using the old Alpha 4 installer, you should start from the TA Zero Base .zip file, and copy needed original TA files manually according to the instructions in readme.txt.