Sep 24, 2004 The 3.1 Patch for Total Annihilation The 3.1 Patch adds many new features to Total Annihilation and will upgrade any previous version of Total Annihilation. I got it to start up but it still says 3.1 on the main. Once you have the patchs installed run the game with Total Annihilation.exe. Download: patch 3.
This fix was buried in the unofficial patch thread, and it worked for me. All you do is copy everything from that file into your TA file, with the unofficial patch, and replace whatever comes up.
This is directly from the post:
Everyone who had issues launching the game and had to set vsync off try the test fix below. xpoy is working on the issue so hopefully we'll get this fixed in the next few days. Unzip the test fix files to your game folder after the patch is installed.
There is a new 'UseVideoMemory=TRUE;' option in TA.ini that is set to TRUE by default (if the field is missing). The vsync option no longer controls this setting.
So, set vsync back to 01 in the registry, then try running the game with the UseVideoMemory setting set to both TRUE and FALSE.
Probably this is what will happen (with vsync turn on for each scenario):
On Win7 with an Nvidia card or older ATI card, TRUE will crash the game and FALSE will work perfect.
Total Annihilation 3.1 Patch Download
On Win7 with a newer AMD/ATI card, FALSE will crash the game and TRUE will work... but what we want to know is if the lag is fixed, and if the megamap lags.
On Win8 with any video card, FALSE will crash the game and TRUE will work, but again we want to know if it lags and if the megamap works fine.
You can also try vsync off with the new test fix, but most likely it will just make your game lag, compared to vsync on.
If you want to use these test files with the mods, you need to rename the tdraw.dll (zdraw for Zero, edraw for Esc, mdraw for Mayhem) and manually add the 'UseVideoMemory=TRUE;' line to the mod's .ini file (without the quotes).
This worked 100% for me.
Total Annihilation 3.1 Patch Download
EDIT: Added the full post.