Allegiance (video game)

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Allegiance

Developer(s) Microsoft Research
Publisher(s) Microsoft
Distributor(s) Microsoft
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release date(s) March 16, 2000
Genre(s) Space simulation/Real-time strategy/Action
Mode(s) Multiplayer only
Media Free Download
Input methods keyboard and either mouse or joystick

Allegiance is an online game providing a mix of real-time strategy and player piloted space combat. Initially developed by Microsoft Research, the game was later released under a shared source license[1] in 2002 and is now maintained/developed by volunteers.

The game never achieved commercial success and the official servers closed in 2002. During its brief retail life Allegiance had drawn a dedicated following that continued to play beyond Microsoft's axing of Allegiance. Players created their own utilities to enable them to connect to LAN-hosted game servers and continued to play.

Developments made by the fans since Allegiance was released as shared source have rendered the retail version unusable online however a working version is available free of cost at freeallegiance.org. The community also runs its own wiki page with installation and troubleshooting guides, newbie training resources, and their own history which is available here.

Contents

[edit] Gameplay overview

Allegiance is a free, online, multi-player space simulation game. You pilot spacecraft, flying in a team with other players, defending and attacking sectors in space. Your team is led by a Commander who makes tactical decisions and invests in technology and bases. Flight and combat is done in first person view in a 3D environment, with a real-time, top-down 'Command view' of your immediate surroundings also available.

While this sounds simple enough Allegiance is anything but an easy game to learn, even with its relatively basic control scheme and its simplified flight model. Allegiance is about tactics and coordination; knowing your ordnance and, most importantly, knowing where to be and what you should be doing there. Given the enormous amount of factors to reckon with, it takes the average player somewhere between 3 and 6 months to firmly grasp the basics.

On the plus side, Allegiance is full of interesting ways to turn spaceships into debris. Depending on the technology path your Commander has chosen you might fly stealthcraft, hiding and sniping at your unsuspecting enemies from far away. You might fly the interceptor, the king of short-range dogfights. Perhaps you might pilot a bomber, with other players manning the anti-fighter turrets on your ship. Or you could be the infinitely useful scout that spots enemy movements, repairs friendly vessels, and can even deploy minefields to devastate an enemy attack.

There are, on average, about thirty people participating in a game of Allegiance (15 per team). A typical game lasts between thirty and forty-five minutes, although games of more than 2 hours in length are not uncommon. The most commonly played server currently has eight different factions - each of which has at least five different techpaths the Commander can choose from - and over 40 playable maps. No two games are ever the same.

[edit] Current events

[edit] Games

Most games played are “pick up games” where users join an online server and play with whoever is logged in at the time. Commanders are chosen from whoever feels up to the challenge and teamwork is often mediocre due to players being unfamiliar with each other.

For better games the players have formed a number of semi-permaneant “Squads” that schedule weekly games and annual tournaments against each other.

There are also “Zone games”, open-invite games with custom maps, held every fortnight that attract over 100 players. The outcome of these games affect the ongoing storyline set in the Allegiance universe.

[edit] Development

The FAZ development team (see below) is currently (July 2008) focussing on developing a new graphics engine for Allegiance which will utilise DirectX9, allowing for smoother movement and sharper graphics. The Graphics engine is currently in its Alpha stage of development.

[edit] Community

The fan base is focused around the free allegiance forums. Its volunteer administration is divided into a number of zones (development, documentation, enforcement, events, technical support, training, and game balance) each with its own Zone Leader.

In addition to providing a discussion forum, the community has written an online academy to provide training, and their own Wikipedia site to provide technical support and other non-gameplay related information.

For more info see external links below.

[edit] Development history

Microsoft dropped support for the game and eliminated the zone servers, after which a player named VenCain created a program called SOVRoute allowing the community to continue playing by forwarding LAN games across the internet to hosted servers. Shortly thereafter cheating became prolific when certain malicious players exploited bugs they knew would never get fixed. SOVLogin was produced which introduced authentication and detected user tampering (i.e. hacking) of game data. Later, this functionality was assumed by ASGS.

When the source code was released the community quickly organised a Free Allegiance Zone development team to begin upgrading the game. The name came from Microsoft’s original servers: Allegiance Zone (pay to play) and Free Zone. Their first goal was to update the network code – it was found that the source code used in Allegiance was obsolete, and didn’t work with modern client-to-server software. Without a modern compiler any work done would be difficult to achieve and ultimately pointless.

With the first release they rendered SOVLogin and its associated port forwarding unenesscary and hence made it vastly easier for new players to install the game. This caused a massive, continuing, influx of new players which has stimulated all other areas of the community, from training guides to enforcement measures.

[edit] FAZ changelog

The first release (FAZ R1) of FAZ was completed on March 1, 2006. This release updated the code to modern compliers; as such it was as similar to the last release from Microsoft as possible, without emphasis on fixing bugs. Subsequent FAZ releases are more frequent than the original due to more productive development environments.

The second release (FAZ R2) of FAZ was released on August 1, 2006. It added ranks back into the game, like during the old Microsoft Allegiance Zone and some other game relevant changes.

The third release (FAZ R3) of FAZ went gold on December 14, 2006. It ports the code to Visual C++ 2005 (VC8), adds DirectPlay8 calls to allow players to connect through NAT boundaries (that is, manually configuring routers to allow gameplay is no longer required), upgrades the sound engine to DirectSound8, and adds an automatic balancing feature based on the ranking system. Besides considerable bugfixes, the release also adds support for hi-resolution textures and a new help system.

The fourth release (FAZ R4) of FAZ was released on November 1, 2007 and is the current release[2]. There are a number of bug fixes included in this release, such as the reintroduction of the ability to run a local LAN game, as well as some new features. There are now more options on the game settings screen allowing players to turn off any of the tech paths and preview the map that the game will be played on. There is also an 'Experimental Game Mode' with enhanced drone AI that allows non-player ships to dock faster and avoid enemy held sectors.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://research.microsoft.com/allegiance/ MSR Allegiance source code
  2. ^ http://www.german-borg.de/?p=12 German-Borg.de: FAZ R4 goes gold!

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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