Allegiance (video game)

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Allegiance
Developer(s)	Microsoft Research
Publisher(s)	Microsoft
Distributor(s)	Microsoft
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows[1]
Release date(s)	March 16, 2000
Genre(s)	Space simulation/Real-time strategy/Action
Mode(s)	Multiplayer only
Media	Free Download
System requirements	See Development
Input methods	keyboard and either mouse or joystick

Allegiance is a multiplayer online game providing a mix of real-time strategy and player piloted space combat gameplay. Initially developed by Microsoft Research, the game was later released under a shared source license^[2] in 2002 and is now maintained and developed by volunteers^[3].

The story in which the game is set takes place circa 2150, shortly after the destruction of Earth by an asteroid^[4][5]. This cataclysm forced the remnants of humanity to the stars in search of new land and resources. Humanity quickly fractures into four main factions:

• The militaristic Iron Coalition, descendants of a United Nations-sanctioned peacekeeping force^[6].
• GigaCorp, a transplanetary corporation bent on controlling all natural resources^[7].
• Belters, a motley collection of traders, freedom fighters and pirates.
• and the Bios, a mysterious off shoot of genetically engineered humans with their own agenda for "stalegenes".

In the midst of the ensuing civil war, humans discover the alien Rixian Unity. An ancient and advanced race, the Rixians seek to "enlighten" heathen races (such as the human race) and convert them to their religion.^[8].

Allegiance was first released for multiplayer on the Microsoft Zone under the name Allegiance Zone^[9] . This was a paid subscription service but free play was available on the Free Zone (which had fewer features). The game never achieved commercial success however, selling a mere 29000 units in the first year of release^[10] 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 discontinuation of support for Allegiance. Players created their own utilities to enable them to connect to LAN-hosted game servers and continued to play.

Further 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.

[edit] Background storyline

In 2008 Emmet Longstreet founded GigaCorp, allegedly through a series of shady dealings involving the consolidation of many powerful aerospace companies (as well as other technical industries). Their aim was to colonize and exploit the resources of near-Earth space.

In 2033 the ALEXANDER project was begun by GeneFlex, a subsidiary of GigaCorp. Their aim was to create genetically engineered humans better suited for space operations. Cloning and genetic engineering are outlawed on Earth however, so GeneFlex keeps their operations secret. The result of the project a group of improved humans called "BIOS", who view Longstreet as their messiah.

During 2057 another GigaCorp project, MIDAS, discovers Helium-3 deposits in the asteroid belt. Experiments reveal that He3 would be a highly useful fuel for nuclear fusion^[5].

Due to unrestricted space operations ongoing since the birth of GigaCorp, the political situation off-world is highly volatile. In 2071 an incident called "The Siege of Leonov" involving a Helium-3 dispute precipitates United Nations peacekeeping involvement. With a surprise strike, the UN forces end the siege with military action and take over the rich He3 deposits in Leonov Crater. In the wake of this incident, attempts to claim He3 deposits become increasingly violent leading to a series of minor conflicts involving the UN Coalition forces, independent prospectors and GigaCorp.

In 2074, Gigacorp CEO unveiled the Mass Conveyor system, which transports Helium-3 rich asteroids from the Asteroid Belt to Lunar orbit for capture and mining. This technology is wildly successful, and within two years Gigacorp begins licensing it to other corporations. By 2079, scores of asteroids arrive daily in Lunar orbit, but the lack of a central traffic control system causes problems.

Faster-than-light travel had previously been impossible, but in 2125 the first "Aleph" is discovered by the Crimson Group, a rival of Gigacorp. While their origin is unknown, Alephs are stable wormholes that connect far-flung regions of the galaxy. Soon all of humanity learns of the existence of alephs, which are the sole source of FTL travel in the Allegiance universe. Factions begin vying for control over alephs as fiercely as they battled for control over Helium-3 deposits^[5].

In 2140, a malfunction in the Mass Conveyor system ends with a large asteroid colliding with Earth, cracking the mantle, and killing roughly 95 percent of the Earth's population instantaneously. As the remnants of the Earth's population die in the aftermath, the Solar System plunges into chaos. The four strongest factions rise to seize power over the remnants of humanity. These are the Iron Coalition, GigaCorp, the Belter Armada and the BIOS.

The game proper begins in 2150, with BIOS aggression initiating widespread warfare between the factions.^[11]

[edit] Gameplay

Allegiance is an online multiplayer real time strategy/space simulation game. Players pilot spacecraft (from small one-man vessels to large capital ships), flying in a team with other players and trying to gain victory through various means, such as destroying or capturing all enemy bases, or eliminating the enemy's will to fight. Teams are led by a single Commander who makes tactical decisions and invests in technology and bases. Flight and combat is done in either a first or third person view in a 3D environment, with a real-time, top-down "Command View" of your immediate surroundings also available.^[12][13]

Flying a ship is unlike other space sims as Allegiance uses a non-Newtonian flight model. It is unlike air combat sims too, as drag is diminished and inertia plays a greater role in how ships handle. In fact, the ships handle as if the entire game were set underwater, not in space. Although this makes the game unrealistic it maintains game balance, and allows the furious close dogfighting which typifies first person shooters.

A Technoflux Heavy Interceptor destroys an enemy bomber. Bombers are used to destroy bases whereas Interceptors excel at defending them.

Gameplay involves expanding from one's starting Garrison in order to secure mining areas, and then either destroying your enemy's bases or destroying his capacity to fight (through economic warfare), much like a conventional Real time strategy game. However, due to Allegiance's combination of RTS and space sim elements, some reviewers classify Allegiance in a genre of its own ^[14][15]. Like an RTS, there is a commander who builds bases and miners, controls the team's cash and develops the team's plan for victory. On the other hand, individual units are controlled by other human players instead of a computer AI which faithfully carries out the commander's orders.

All teams start with a single Garrison base, a single miner, a set amount of cash and access to a couple of starting ships. One of those starting ships is always the scout. One of the most important ships in Allegiance, the scout is responsible for "finding" all of a map's sectors and alephs at the beginning of the game. It is also capable of repairing friendly ships under attack, deploying probes to detect enemy movements, deploying minefields which destroy or delay enemy ships, and assisting more powerful ships by spotting enemy targets.

Teams earn money in Allegiance through the use of miners, drone craft which harvest Helium-3 from special asteroids. As miners are a team's principal source of income, commanders frequently buy as many miners as possible, and gameplay frequently revolves around defending friendly miners and destroying enemy ones.

When the funds are available, Commanders can build new bases by purchasing a constructor drone. Once the constructor is ready, the commander orders it to a specific asteroid in a specific sector. It travels from sector to sector using Alephs, wormhole like structures floating in space. Once it arrives at the target sector, it travels to the designated asteroid and builds the base. Constructors are vulnerable until the base is built, so teams frequently focus on protecting their constructors and destroying hostile ones. The bases created by constructors range from simple outposts, used for offensive strikes and territory control, to advanced Technology Bases which allow development of new ships, weapons, and upgrades.

There are three principle technology paths in Allegiance, each relying on a specialized base. The Tactical path allows the team to fly stealth fighters, which excel at destroying drones such as miners and constructors. The Expansion path creates interceptors, tough, maneuverable craft specializing in defense and short-range dogfights. With a Supremacy Center, the commander can research fighters, versatile ships capable of teleporting to special bases around the map.

Most games in Allegiance end with the destruction or capture of all one team's major bases, and each techpath has tools to accomplish that goal. Both the Supremacy and Tactical techpath rely on some variation of the Bomber, a base destroying ship originally researched at the team's Garrison. The Expansion techpath uses a special Heavy Troop Transport which captures bases. Additionally, teams can build a special Shipyard base, capable of producing expensive, base-destroying capital ships.

A typical game lasts between thirty and forty-five minutes, although games of more than two hours in length are not uncommon.

Allegiance has a reputation for not being an easy game to learn^[10][13], even with its simplified flight model. It has a complex control scheme^[16] and a heavy focus on teamwork, tactics and player co-ordination. One must know your ordinance and, more importantly, know where to be and what one should be doing there (aka Situational Awareness). Given the enormous amount of factors to reckon with, it takes the average player somewhere between three and six months to firmly grasp the game.

[edit] Community

[edit] Games

There are, on average, about 10-60 players online at any time with more during night time Eastern Standard Time on Weekdays, though the number may rise to over 120 during Sunday Squad Games^[17].

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 "Squads^[18]" (analogous to "Clans" in other games) that schedule weekly games and annual tournaments against each other.

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

[edit] Players

The fan base is focused around the FreeAllegiance 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

A screenshot from early development showing the command view and the Commander investing credits into a new base.

Early concept art of a Gigacorp bomber.

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Modifications and player development

Since Microsoft stopped supporting the game the playerbase has been active in creating "Cores^[19]" - which are essentially mods for the game which redefine the gameplay in terms of what ships and weapons are available and how powerful they are - and creating new factions like the Dreghklar Empire^[20], Technoflux^[21] and the Ga'Taraan Federation^[22].

As well as game content the community has a volunteer development team (known as the FAZ team) who work on isolating and solving bugs and adding new features in order to improve the game. The FAZ development team is currently (July 2008) focusing on developing a new graphics engine for Allegiance which will utilize DirectX 9, allowing for smoother movement and sharper graphics, as well as greater compatibility with newer computers. The DirectX 9 Graphics engine is currently in its Alpha stage of development.

When Microsoft dropped support for the game and eliminated the Allegiance Zone servers a player named VenCain created a program called SOVRoute which allowed 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 by an uninterested Microsoft. SOVLogin was produced which introduced authentication and detected user tampering (i.e. hacking) of game data. Later, this functionality was assumed by a program called ASGS (Allegiance Secure Gameplay System) which is still in use today.

When the source code was released as shared source in 2002 the community quickly organized 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 unnecessary 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 Change Log

The first release (FAZ R1) of FAZ was completed on March 1, 2006. This release updated the code to modern compilers; 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^[23]. 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.

FAZ 5 is currently under work. It will add support for team alliances and full support for the upcoming new ranking system based on Microsoft's TrueSkill, called "AllegSkill". The most important differences with the XBox implementation of TrueSkill and AllegSkill is that non autobalanced games count towards ranks.

The change log may be viewed here [1].

[edit] Reception

Allegiance was well received when it was released, even claiming Gamespot's award for "Best Game No One Played"^[10], but evidently it did not sell as well as Microsoft had hoped. Even with good reviews and a loyal playerbase, the game's steep learning curve^[16] made it unattractive to the average gamer.

After Microsoft dropped support for Allegiance, the game has continued to be developed and the game has received additional praise and recognition^[9][12], but the playerbase has not substantially increased.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Alto Trek (the origin of Allegiance)

[edit] External links

• FreeAllegiance.org - Official site: Downloads, forums, news and more.
• FreeAllegiance.net - Un-Official site: Downloads, and DataNet.
• Screenshots
• Allegiance Academy - Gameplay information, guides and tutorials.
• Allegiance Wiki - Community run, covering technical issues and newbie questions.
• Allegiance DataNet - Allegiance Datanet.
• Release announcement - A message from the Allegiance development team, and the source code link.