MDMA: A Total Annihilation fan site

Installation guide

A little guide getting you through the hassle-some installation of Total Annihilation.

• Introduction
• Installation
• Optimisation
• Downloads
• Links
• Glossary

The problem

Installing Total Annihilation can be a real pain in the ass, because:

• first, there's the choice between a:
  • normal installation and
  • network-installation
• then there's the two official expansions:
  • The Core Contingency and
  • Battle Tactics
• then there's the 3.1c patch which includes about 20 new units and some maps,
• and there are another 6 units and about 10 maps you can download separately.

And after all of this, you can of course also install custom mods, maps and units. :?. It's complicated.

The solution

Because Total Annihilation can be such a pain to install, here's the correct order and way of doing the installation, if you want a full install of Total Annihilation with expansions and patch. If you just want to install without expansions or patch (not recommended) you can just skip those steps.

1. First, you run the installer from the first CD-rom. Choose the normal installation.
2. Copy the file totala2.hpi from the first CD-rom to the directory in which you installed Total Annihilation.
3. Copy the file totala4.hpi from the second cd-rom to the directory in which you installed Total Annihilation.
4. Copy the files ccmaps.ccx and ccdata.ccx (if you want to play the extra missions then copy over the file ccmiss.ccx as well) from the Core Contingency expansion CD-rom to the directory in which you installed Total Annihilation.
5. Copy the file btmaps.ccx (if you want to play the extra missions then copy over the files tactics1.ccx to tactics8.ccx as well) from the Battle Tactics expansion CD-rom to the directory in which you installed Total Annihilation.
6. If you have them, copy the add-on units and maps to the directory in which you installed Total Annihilation.
7. You should be set to play the best RTS ever ;-). Have fun!
8. You could consider optimizing Total Annihilation's game files to save space, and make the game run faster.

If it still doesn't work:

1. Download the script I wrote for repacking Total Annihilation.
2. Extract the contents to the directory in which you installed Total Annihilation.
3. Edit the batch-file a few times:
   1. the first time to merge the files ccmaps.ccx, ccdata.ccx and ccmiss.ccx together in one file, for example cc.ccx.
   2. If you copied over all the files from the Battle Tactics cd-rom as well, then merge these the same way, in a file like bt.ccx.
   3. Last you merge all the add-ons you downloaded in a file like addons.ccx.
   4. If things don't work now, you can try mailing me for help.

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