The Developers of TA: Kingdoms

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms was the last game that Cavedog Entertainment developed. It was released on 25 June 1999. Clayton Kauzlaric, the art lead on Total Annihilation, was its lead designer, with Brian Brown as lead programmer and Ron Gilbert as producer.

Cavedog Entertainment

Cavedog was a division of Humongous Entertainment, a maker of children's games that Ron Gilbert and Shelley Day founded in 1992. Humongous created Cavedog in 1995 to make games for a general audience. GT Interactive bought Humongous in 1996, and GT Interactive published Kingdoms.

Cavedog's first game was Total Annihilation in 1997. Its designer, Chris Taylor, left Cavedog in March 1998 to found Gas Powered Games. He is not in the Kingdoms credits. Many of the Total Annihilation team did work on Kingdoms, often in new roles.

A fall in game sales hurt GT Interactive, which went into debt. By January 2000, Cavedog's 3 other unfinished games had been cancelled: Amen: The Awakening, Elysium and Good & Evil. Infogrames then bought GT Interactive, and Cavedog closed. Sources date the closure between late 1999 and February 2000. Its remaining staff moved to Humongous.

The names and roles below are printed exactly as in the credits of the UK edition of the manual. The US manual, The Chronicles of Darien, has no credits page. People with several credits appear once, in the group of their main role.

Design and Story

Name Role on the game What they did
Clayton Kauzlaric Lead Designer; Story; Illustration (packaging) Led the design of the game, wrote the story with Brian Brown and Ron Gilbert, and illustrated the box. In 2000 he founded Beep Industries, which made Voodoo Vince (2003).
Patrick Hoynes Mission Design Built the campaign missions.
Dirk Hunter Mission Design Built the campaign missions. He had tested Total Annihilation and worked on its manual.
Michael Tom Mission Design Built the campaign missions.
Ken Melville Script Writers Co-wrote the script for The Book of Darien, the campaign of the base game.
Noah Falstien Script Writers Co-wrote the script for The Book of Darien. Wikipedia lists Noah Falstein as a writer on Kingdoms. He had co-designed Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992) at LucasArts.
Mark DiGiacomo Director and Editor; Interface; Book of Darien Illustrators Directed and edited The Book of Darien, and also made interface art and illustrations.

Brian Brown and Ron Gilbert are also credited for the story. They are listed under Programming and Production.

Programming

Name Role on the game What they did
Brian Brown Lead Programmer; Story Led the programming team and helped write the story. He had programmed Total Annihilation, where he was credited as Brian W. Brown.
Matt Setzer Senior Engineer Was the senior engineer on the programming team.
Frank Hollander A.I. Programmed the computer opponents.
Paul Haugerud Interface/Front End Programmed the game interface and the menu and setup screens.
Kevin Smith Interface/Front End Programmed the game interface and the menu and setup screens, as he had on Total Annihilation.
Steve Miale Tools Built the tools used to make the game.
James Loe Tools Built the tools used to make the game.
Shane Hendrix Unit Scripters Wrote the scripts that animate and control the units.
Joe Mullenix Unit Scripters Wrote the scripts that animate and control the units.

Art

Name Role on the game What they did
John Gronquist Unit Art; Unit Textures; Effects Animation; Book of Darien Illustrators Made unit models and textures, animated effects, and drew illustrations for The Book of Darien.
Paul Wesberry Unit Art; Effects Animation Made unit art and animated effects.
Kevin Chung Unit Textures; Background Art Painted unit textures and background art for the maps.
Peter Fries Background Art; Book of Darien Illustrators Painted background art for the maps and drew illustrations for The Book of Darien.
Corey Dangel Interface; Art Lead (Boneyards) Made interface art and led the art for the Boneyards online service.
Jarrett Holderby Book of Darien Illustrators Drew illustrations for The Book of Darien. He had painted the mission artwork for Total Annihilation.

Also credited for art:

  • Unit Art: Dan Cole, Robert Koshi, Jim Millar, Rebecca Rettenmund, Nicole Waller
  • Unit Textures: Dane Egenes
  • Background Art: John Baron, Mark D. West
  • Surface Feature Art: Mike Denlinger, Colin Tennery
  • Interface: Eric Nava, Brad Rebh, Adrian Bourne, Nick Heitzman
  • Book of Darien Illustrators: Don Barnett, Michael Gibson, Stephen King, Eric Klogstad, David Stevenson, Doug Williams
  • Cavedog Logo Movie: Rebecca Coffman, MaryAnn Flaherty, Jens Johnson

Audio and Music

Name Role on the game What they did
Frank Bry Sound Design Created the sound effects, as he had for Total Annihilation. He later ran The Recordist, an independent sound effects company.
Kari McGee Narrator Voiced the narration.

Also credited for voices:

  • Voice Actors: Ken Boynton, Stephan Weyte, David White, Henry Dardene, Heidi Turner
  • Unit Voices: Jock Blaney, Ken Boynton, Kymberlie Colbourne, Mike McAuliffe, David Povall, Gern Svenson, Heidi Turner, Stephan Weyte, David White

The printed credits do not name a composer. Wikipedia lists Jeremy Soule, who scored Total Annihilation, as the composer of Kingdoms. He later scored Icewind Dale (2000) and 3 Elder Scrolls games: Morrowind (2002), Oblivion (2006) and Skyrim (2011).

Production

Name Role on the game What they did
Ron Gilbert Producer; Story Produced the game and helped write the story. Before Humongous, he worked at Lucasfilm Games on Maniac Mansion (1987) and The Secret of Monkey Island (1990). He later made Thimbleweed Park (2017) and Return to Monkey Island (2022).
Garrett Link Project Coordinator Coordinated the project. He had tested Total Annihilation and made the Coremageddon map for Battle Tactics.

Also credited for production:

  • Production Assistance: Steve Kuo, Bryan MacDonald, TJ Wright

Testing and Support

Name Role on the game What they did
Zenon Thornton QA Manager; Test Leads Managed the quality assurance team and was one of the 2 test leads.
Todd Clausen Test Leads Led testing with Zenon Thornton. He had also tested Total Annihilation.

Also credited for testing:

  • Testers: Kyle Casperson, Eric Fjellanger, Eric Helbig, Miene Lee, Bryan MacDonald, Brian Moore, Phil Nelson, Randy Ochs, Daniel Prigg, Eric Rosko, Matt Schroeder, Matt Skau, Eric Snyder, TJ Wright

Others

Boneyards Online Service

Boneyards was Cavedog's free online service for finding opponents and playing multiplayer games. The credits list a separate team for it.

Name Role on the game What they did
Rick Lambright Director of Online Technology Led the technology behind Boneyards. He had worked on the network code of Total Annihilation.
Corey Dangel Art Lead Led the Boneyards art. Also listed under Art.
  • Artists: Brad Rebh, Eric Nava
  • Map Designers: JC Connors, Brandon Franklin
  • Boneyards Programmers: Stephen Clarke-Wilson, David Satnik, Tim Royal, Andrew Berg, Jeff Evertt, Jay Patterson
  • Boneyards QA: Jason Blackthorne, Eric Elders, Brad Lyons, David Nixon

Web Atlas, Localisation and Release

The credits name a team for the Darien Web Atlas. The game installs an atlas of the four kingdoms as a set of HTML pages. The other credits here cover translation, the box and marketing.

  • Darien Web Atlas: Frank Rogan, Adam Ketola, Max Holechek, Michael Felicetty
  • Localization: Ingrid Berendt
  • Packaging, Art Direction: Marci Knutsen
  • Packaging, Project Management: Marci Knutsen; Allison Clarke, Imagio
  • Packaging, Design: Lisa Dunnavant, Imagio; Eric Boston
  • Packaging, Illustration: Clayton Kauzlaric, Greg Call
  • Packaging, Product Production: Angela Tuite, Nikki Gilchrist
  • Marketing Manager: Mark Polcyn
  • Communications Manager: Brandon Smith

The credits end with Scott Wallin, credited "as The Beaver".

The Iron Plague

The Iron Plague expansion was released on 6 March 2000, around the time Cavedog closed. It was published by Infogrames under the GT Interactive name, and it added a new campaign. Its readme has no credits, and the manuals list only the team of the base game, so no Iron Plague team is listed here.

Sources