The Byte Tactics project has reconstructed the source code of Total Annihilation’s TotalA.exe (v3.1) as a matching decompilation: every one of the 3,267 functions compiles back to byte-identical machine code. That makes it the first authority that outranks editor source and corpus inference — it is the engine. We cross-checked our format documentation against it and against 611 real maps from the archive’s corpus:
- TNT header: the two fields historically called “tile anims” are the map’s feature-name table (count and pointer, 132-byte name records) — the game resolves attribute feature indices against exactly this table. The minimap flag at
0x2Cis bit 0, and0xFFFEin the attributes is no longer unknown: it marks cells covered by a multi-cell feature. - What is not in the TNT: wind, gravity, tidal strength and surface metal are OTA mission fields, not terrain data. The only water value in the TNT is the sea level.
- Map Editor: the feature layer is live — place trees, rocks and wrecks (multi-cell footprints included) and scatter them with density/radius controls; the exported TNT carries the feature table exactly the way the game’s loader reads it.
- COB bytecode: corrected one opcode (
0x10035000is bitwise AND, not mod), pinned the units (speeds per second,sleepin milliseconds, 65,536 BAM per revolution), and documented what the engine really passes to unit scripts — including the extractor and wind-generator hooks used by animated units.
Updated pages: TNT Map Format, COB Bytecode and Reverse Engineering (header field 9 re-identified as the feature-name-table pointer, tilemap padding shown to be rare section layout, minimap-presence question closed).