Slashdot Mirror

I can't answer the question either, but yet another game that has been open sourced that's missing from the Wikipedia list is Allegiance. http://www.freeallegiance.org/
The game was originally published by none other than Microsoft. Shocking, I know, but way back in prehistory (1999), Microsoft actually released some complete open source software. A game.

I'll pause while our older members grab their portable defibrillators....

Yes, Allegiance is open source and has enjoyed ongoing software development as well as a community-contributed texture "face-lift" to improve the look of the game. It has not made its way onto Linux because it was originally implemented with Microsoft's orphaned DirectPlay, and no one has been interested in replacing the entire network implementation. Its anti-cheat system, which was community-developed, is also dependent on Microsoft libraries unavailable on Linux. (Though possibly Mono has advanced far enough that's no longer true. Regardless, it's anti-cheat geared for Windows, so it's not especially portable.)

For those interested, it's an arcade-style space combat game (think Wing Commander, or the original X-Wing and Tie Fighter games) where two teams fight to control the arena. The added wrinkle is the addition of RTS elements, including a single human commander for each side who plays in RTS mode. Yes, it's that holy grail of games, an RTS/FPS hybrid. As it turns out, RTS/FPS is a hard game to learn and a hard game to play, so it has never enjoyed great popularity (contrary to the popular opinion of a million vocal wannabe game-designers on the forums of the Internet).

As with most small, insular Internet communities, the players tend to be snobbish and stand-offish to newcomers. Goes with the territory.

It was a very long time ago, in the year two-oh-oh-oh. Humanity had just survived the Apocalypse, only to be confronted with a new one. No, not because it was the year of the Linux desktop, though that was seen as worse than the end of the world in the dark aisles of Microborg. Still, in a low level PSYOPs training facility, a group of fresh fish were dreaming past all and every doomsday, planning to create the ultimate space combat simulator, which would allow them to recruit an elite squadron to take over the world. Needless to say, the Borg didn't look at the results with good eyes, what with it being only interested in massive scale armies, so the ultimate space combat simulator was thrown down the drain... ...where it was of course picked up by the e-cophreeks, which never let a bone go by. One borg's recycle bin is another entity's best bytes, and all that. They lovingly patched up the scratches with whatever materials they had available, going as far as covering the thing in dotmeth --which they got, of course, from another trash can-- to quickly ease its pain. And so, it thrived, rooting itself in the shadows of the drain system, spawning new life forms and technologies, maintained by a hardened core of elite pilots, biding its time for the day it can finally unleash the ultimate squadron upon the world (and thanks to SpaceX and friends, that might just happen before the next Apocalypse!).

Enter Allegiance. Small but dedicated community (40-60 players in the main server most of the day), lots of teamwork, many races and tech trees give it plenty of variety, the RTS elements --perhaps inspired in Starsiege Tribes-- give it a complete new dimension, the radar system makes for very satisfactory mouse and cat encounters, games have this nice crescendo of intensity, first exploring, researching and setting the stage, then using better ships to hunt down enemy miners and cripple their economy, while defending your own, and finally launching all-out killer blows against the enemy's tech bases, with bomber runs escorted by swarms of repair scouts to buy the bomber a few more precious meters to be in firing range, the turret gunners screaming GEROOONIMO for as long as the ammo clips will last; or stealth ships coming out of nowhere and smoking a base before you can even teleport to it; or huge and clunky capital ships smashing their way through every sector, attack waves succeeding one another until one side is finally overpowered, left to limp back to their main base in their escape pods, and launch for one final, futile defense. Yes, it's old, rickety and damn hard to pick up, even if you are used to blowing up imperial destroyers in a single pass. It's also the most fun you'll ever have in space.

Space combat can be made different from air combat and still fun by just making a few changes from realistic. Free Allegiance http://www.freeallegiance.org/ adds simple drag to space combat but keeps side thrusters and momentum to give an effect that feels like moving underwater and produces challenging dog fighting to go along with the complex strategic elements of the game.

This game was way ahead of its time for 1999 and died way too soon. Curse you Microsoft for killing it!

But it's still around! Check out Free Allegiance.

Microsoft Research released the source code in 2004 (some kind of shared source license) and a small but determined community of players and developers enjoys and keeps improving the gameplay (the R6 client is currently in beta).

Have you tried Microsoft Allegiance (now open source!)?

http://www.freeallegiance.org/

MS did give away a pretty good game for free. Here is the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiance_(video_game). It is now community maintained. You can download and play it now. You can get the game at http://www.freeallegiance.org/

While by no means new, Allegiance is newer than most of the games you mentioned. It is also unusual in being a studio game that was released commercially, then later open-sourced. It is still receiving development and improvements today. While its graphics will probably always look severely dated to modern players, the gameplay is quite engaging and the engine is fairly advanced - the game runs fine on modern systems, supports high resolutions and a variety of input devices (all remappable - and note how joysticks seem to have gone out of style too), and the physics are actually quite cool (mass matters including stuff in your cargo, pushing slower ships like bombers from behind is a common tactic to get them into range of an enemy base faster, and you have to lead your shots based on how far the enemy is, how fast your projectiles fly, and how fast they're going in what direction).

The game is also very different from most in terms of gameplay - it's almost a "Team Fortress" type of game but with an even stronger emphasis on teamwork, longer games with more strategic goals, and RTS elements involving mining resources (via NPC ships), building bases, and researching technologies. Basically, you select a ship (many are free, but some require money that could go into base building or research instead), select a loadout (again, certain modules may add cost though most are free), and undock for to fight. Combat is very dogfighting-style, with guns and missiles, shields and armor and chaff, mines you can lure enemies onto and stationary turrets you can use to guard strategic points, nanite guns that repair allied ships' armor, asteroids you can hide behind and cloaking devices that conceal you from enemy sensors, afterburners that trade agility and stealth for raw speed, teleport systems to get you in or out of a fight at the risk of a couple seconds of flying straight, and more. Ships range from short-range interceptors through long-range scouts with good sensors and fighters with good weapons, to bombers with anti-base missiles and anti-fighter turrets manned by other players and capital ships with heavy defenses and weapons capable of engaging a small fleet successfully. You also have specialized ships, like stealth fighters that mount cloaking devices and sneak into the enemy territory to kill their pilots with long-range missiles or their miners and builders with special anti-utility cannon, or troop transports that mount no traditional weaponry but are capable of capturing an enemy base intact.

The community is fairly small but I found it to be welcoming of newcomers, and there are both training missions against NPCs and extensive online tutorials to help people get started. It's free to download and play. Check out the website, at least.

http://freeallegiance.org/

Another game that featured this idea to an extent is/was Allegiance. Teams of players (20 or more per side wasn't uncommon) with one commander for each team. The individual players flew ships (not much like the EVE ships; it's space-based combat flight sim with dogfighting and minefields and such) and would attempt to carry out tasks (hopefully) as the team needed them. The commander meanwhile spent his or her time in a top-down view of explored space, ordering NPC miners or mobile repair carriers, purchasing technologies, building stations and defensive batteries, and issuing orders (which were usually more of an objective, such as "get in bombers and repair ships, we're going to take out their garrison station"). The commander could join the fight directly (and in small games often does) but in a large game there may be enough to keep track of that the commander delegates the investor role (buying technologies and ships) to another player, to focus on command.

For those interested, the game was originally released by Microsoft, didn't do well commercially (possibly because Internet connections were typically not really good enough at the time), and was eventually discontinued, then open-sourced. The community picked up the game, took over maintenance on the codebase, set up their own servers, and provide it for free today. A quick warning: the game is complex and has a substantial learning curve, although the community is very welcoming of newbies. http://freeallegiance.org/

Wow. Preview Fail. Here is the Allegiance link http://www.freeallegiance.org/

This was also done with , which is still under active development, though gameplay has many of the same issues as you pointed out in Natural Selection -- you needed a good commander. Additionally, you also need good teammates who will do what the commander asks (and doesn't).

Nothing is more frustrating (for a player and a commander) than to see a team disintegrate simply because half of the team wants run around and shoot things rather than work together to accomplish a goal.

Don't know if any remember Allegiance. It was a space 3d combat game with resources and objectives and building units and the like, but one player was designated the commander, and he viewed the entire battle from a tactical perspective, ordering units to go do objectives much like in an RTS.... the players would get the orders he gave them as objective way points and the like, but it was up to them to actually pursue them (or not). And the commander could assign better resources (ships, missiles, etc) to people who carried out his orders better (or just on whatever criteria he wanted). It was not a persistent game in terms of continuing combat (though there was some kind of overall campaign scoreboard based on which factions won), but the RTS/Personal dual nature described here reminded me of that. I played and enjoyed it for awhile but moved on at some point. The game had a fairly steep learning curve and for new players to jump into the thick of it against people who had mastered the basics was intimidating. I gather it wasn't a financial success for Microsoft, who developed it, and some time back they open sourced the entire thing. There are still that support it, though haven't checked on it in a long time...

Another free game with good production values is Allegiance. It's a multiplayer space simulation with quite deep gameplay and focused on teamplay.

From Wikipedia:

Allegiance is an 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 in 2002 and is now maintained and developed by volunteers.

When I played Jumpgate in the beta (oh, so long ago now...) while there were Jumpgate between sectors, you still had to cross each sector to get to the next gate in the line: There were no short cut gates.

Many sectors took 45+ mins at max speed of a very upgraded ship to cross. 45 mins of going in a single straight line pointed at the next jumpgate. And often you'd have to cross a dozen of such sectors (no joke) to get where you needed to go. That's double digit hours of real world "game" time, all while listening to hypnotic techo music that's incredibly sleep inducing.

And you couldn't AFK that 45 mins: If you hit a rock in the middle and blew up, it could cost you *days* of real world time to fully recover. And even in sectors where you knew you had a clear path, if you were off target on the next jumpgate you could run into it and blow up (and some were 90 degrees from where you were coming from, forcing you to make an S turn at the end anyway).

If you didn't hit a rock, and didn't hit the next jumpgate, you could still get attacked by other players or some of the hostile NPC "space creatures" around. And crashing in Jumpgate was *HUGELY* expensive to recover from.

---------

Thank god for worm hole theory and non-realistic gameplay: It saved the space sim.

---------

BTW, shameless plug:

Allegiance, the best game you've never played. And yes, it has "alephs" to jump though (thank the gods!)

Allegiance might be what you're looking for. It was abandoned by Microsoft a long time ago but a small part of the community kept it alive long enough that the developers noticed and decided to release the source code. It's a lot closer to Battlefield than EVE, with non-persistent matches making two teams face off. The main problem with it that I've seen is that the community is tiny so there's only one active game at a time and a lot of drama can flare up.

Out of curiosity, have you tried Allegiance? It's primarily an online cockpit-view (though there are other camera views) space dogfighting game. It also has some fun strategic elements. Joystick is supported and by far the best way (I used a Force Feedback Pro, which was fantastic).

The game was originally a commercial product out of Microsoft Research, but didn't really go anywhere. MSR open-sourced the game, and it is now community supported, with the client available for free download.

http://freeallegiance.org/

As a suggestion for a game where ramming matters (and which in some ways is similar to how Jumpgate looks, but with real cockpit view) try Allegiance. It was a commercial game out of MS Research that didn't really go anywhere, so they open sourced it (no joke) and it is now community supported. Great joystick support, fun gameplay, an interesting mix of dogfighting and strategic play. 2000-era graphics will run fine on any system, though they look a little boxy.

http://freeallegiance.org/

Also, ramming is a big part of EVE. It doesn't do damage but it sure knocks stuff around...

It so happens that Windows Vista isn't fully compatible with the game -- .net SP3 borks the authentication system. Its dev promptly looked for the problem, and of course the problem was found in the third-party obfuscation tool. He submitted a ticket and the community is waiting for a fix.

It's been 40+ days since this issue has been found, targeted and reported, but Nothing Happens(TM). We're still waiting for the fix. The admins do not obviously want to release a non-obfuscated version of the .net authentication tool, nor they want to switch over another obfuscation company (and pay for another license). So people using Vista are currently forced to work around the problem by blocking updates and using .net uninstallers.

Even Microsoft Research has contacted us with details regarding the trouble, but again there is nothing we can do to address it.

Our community is having a 40+ days [partial] downtime, and there's nothing we can do, but wait and publish workarounds for a problem we didn't create.

Not the kind of stuff that makes you all warm and fuzzy on relying on third parties, huh?

It so happens that Windows Vista isn't fully compatible with the game -- .net SP3 borks the authentication system. Its dev promptly looked for the problem, and of course the problem was found in the third-party obfuscation tool. He submitted a ticket and the community is waiting for a fix.

It's been 40+ days since this issue has been found, targeted and reported, but Nothing Happens(TM). We're still waiting for the fix. The admins do not obviously want to release a non-obfuscated version of the .net authentication tool, nor they want to switch over another obfuscation company (and pay for another license). So people using Vista are currently forced to work around the problem by blocking updates and using .net uninstallers.

Even Microsoft Research has contacted us with details regarding the trouble, but again there is nothing we can do to address it.

Our community is having a 40+ days [partial] downtime, and there's nothing we can do, but wait and publish workarounds for a problem we didn't create.

Not the kind of stuff that makes you all warm and fuzzy on relying on third parties, huh?

One of the oldies but goodies has been released as open source by Microsoft and salvaged by fans. Try Allegiance at http://www.freeallegiance.org/

I recently came across a rather odd game called (Free) Allegiance:

http://www.freeallegiance.org/

It's odd because it has a strange history to it in that it was originally a Microsoft game that was later open sourced. Seems to have a pretty dedicated, though small community, still running servers and improving the code base 7 years later. It's claim to fame seems to be an interesting mix of RTS and space combat, with separate interfaces for command and ship piloting. Anyone have any experience with this game?

Quoting: "It seems like I've always wanted a game where players work together for multiple goals before achieving victory. I guess someone else thought the same."

Yup. Microsoft did. But they didn't make any money on Allegiance and it became http://www.freeallegiance.org/. It's worth a look. 3D RTS/FPS space sim with low system req's. Games last anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the skills (or lack thereof) of your team.

2000, the year Allegiance was created.
Unfortunately by MS Research :-)

I think one of the best examples of this was surprisingly enough by Microsoft Research. After abandoning Allegiance (a game truly ahead of its time), the game was continually run by the community, with them modding the game. Years after the fact, Microsoft Research thought the community's efforts were so great, they finally decided to release the source code for the game. What Allegiance is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiance_(computer_ game) Where the community is/get the game: http://www.freeallegiance.org/ Definitely a fun game if you can get by the learning curve. One of the best team-work based games I've played. When you have 20+ pilots scramble to a single sector for base defense against an equally large enemy bombing convoy, it is a thing of beauty. (yes, the game theoretically supports 100 vs. 100; though the last time that happened was only in beta testing in 1999)

It's at http://www.freeallegiance.org/

Microsoft's Allegiance is the most replayable game I have ever played.

Released in 2000, this game's still got a strong following at http://www.freeallegiance.org/
It's a space-combat RTS... Picture "Starcraft meets Xwing vs TIE Fighter", and add in strong teamplay and you've got Allegiance.

When Microsoft stopped supporting it, diehard fans got together and kept it playable. It's now available 100% free for everyone.

It's got a steep learning curve but once you've climbed it, it's the best game ever.

--TE

Another severely underrated game that I am surprised has yet to receive mention is Allegiance. Allegiance is probably the only really good game to ever come out of Microsoft (Starlancer and Freelancer werent bad either). It is also one of the most complex games ever conceived. PLayers take the role of a space pilot and wage interstellar wars against teams of other players. However, there is a strong RTS element to the game, as each team has a commander, who is in charge of researching new technologies, and directing the AI controlled constructor and miner ships on where to build new bases and where to mine for resources. There is a wide variety of bases, some unlock certain technologies, others serve as a teleportation hub that ships can immediately jump to. There is also an extensive array of ships available to the players. Fighters and Interceptors are used for ship-to-ship combat. Bombers and Troop Transports can destroy or capture enemy bases. Capital ships such as corvettes or destroyers are present, also, and tend to dominate whatever battlefield they are on.

Allegiance requires any player who hopes to stay alive in any of the non-newbie servers to know all the inner workings of the game, as most players have the exact numercal range in meters of how far certain ships scanners can detect ships, how many bombs it will take to destroy a certain type of base, etc. Its not that the players of this game are all obsessive compulsive, but Allegiance is actually that deep of a game, where knowing every little detail that you can will give you a definite advantage over the enemy.

Fallout can be purchased, usually in a 2-pack with Fallout 2 for $10 at some Wal-Marts, but with Interplay out of business, its kinda hard to snag a copy in retail.

Allegiance is free, and can be downloaded at www.freeallegiance.org.

Free Allegiance

Even Microsoft does it! The superfansastic MMO-tactical space shooter Allegiance, developed by Microsoft Research, is released with source. It seems to still have a large following, and I've been meaning to pick it personally. It gives me sort of the same feeling I got from reading about the "Battle Room" in Ender's Game.

Check it out at: http://www.freeallegiance.org/

Beware, it's a very complex game and it will take you some time to learn if you should decide to start playing. And considering that the current crop of players probably has 3+ years of experience, I think you'll find the competition a little better than your average AI. ;)

All in all, it's my favorite PC game of all time, next to Shiny's excellent Sacrifice.

Allegiance is not dead!

The 3rd person view would be essential, IMHO.

A game that lends itself well to this is the Best Game No One Played, Microsoft Allegiance.

It's a RTS + FPS/Flightsim requiring team effort to win. Combining a StarCraft-esque viewpoint and econ management for the commanders and a Wing Commander space combat feel for pilots, Allegiance appeals to a wide potential audience.

When you switch from 1st person to 3rd person mode in Allegiance, the camera seemlessly pulls out of your ship and swoops upward into the space above the sector horizontal plane, until the entire sector is in view. Really helps set your perspective on where you are in relation to everything else going on.

However, let's keep one thing in mind. Even so-called reality TV is heavily edited. Regardless of the viewpoint, post-production editing and voiceover would make or break the show in the U.S.A.; think Iron Chef!

If you want to see what Allegiance looks like after editing up, take a look at the first video project some fans created.

The 3rd person view would be essential, IMHO.

A game that lends itself well to this is the Best Game No One Played, Microsoft Allegiance.

It's a RTS + FPS/Flightsim requiring team effort to win. Combining a StarCraft-esque viewpoint and econ management for the commanders and a Wing Commander space combat feel for pilots, Allegiance appeals to a wide potential audience.

When you switch from 1st person to 3rd person mode in Allegiance, the camera seemlessly pulls out of your ship and swoops upward into the space above the sector horizontal plane, until the entire sector is in view. Really helps set your perspective on where you are in relation to everything else going on.

However, let's keep one thing in mind. Even so-called reality TV is heavily edited. Regardless of the viewpoint, post-production editing and voiceover would make or break the show in the U.S.A.; think Iron Chef!

If you want to see what Allegiance looks like after editing up, take a look at the first video project some fans created.

Looks like it moved there : http://www.freeallegiance.org/