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Microsoft Releases Allegiance Game Source
Zenin writes "Microsoft has graciously released the source code to Allegiance for free on their site. Allegiance was released back in 2000, and rated the 'Best Game No One Played' by GameSpot - this little- known multiplayer space-combat/team-RTS was pretty innovative, yet never took off in the mainstream. Nevertheless it quickly developed a fanatical following - a dedicated community who reverse engineered the game to enable complete mods, expand server power, and much more. A million thanks to Joel 'solap' Dehlin and the rest of the Allegiance development team for making this happen!"
The license agreement:
This Microsoft Research Shared Source license agreement ("MSR-SSLA") is a legal
agreement between you and Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft" or "we") for the software
or data identified above, which may include source code, and any associated materials,
text or speech files, associated media and "online" or electronic documentation (together,
the "Software").
By installing, copying, or otherwise using this Software, found at
http://research.microsoft.com/downloads, you agree to be bound by the terms of this
MSR-SSLA. If you do not agree, do not install copy or use the Software. The Software is
protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws and is licensed, not sold.
SCOPE OF RIGHTS:
You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose, subject to the restrictions in
this License. Some purposes which can be non-commercial are teaching, academic
research, public demonstrations and personal experimentation. You may also distribute
this Software with books or other teaching materials, or publish the Software on
websites, that are intended to teach the use of the Software for academic or other non-
commercial purposes.
You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works in any form for
commercial purposes. Examples of commercial purposes would be running business
operations, licensing, leasing, or selling the Software, distributing the Software for use
with commercial products or any other activity which purpose is to procure a commercial
gain to you or others.
If the Software includes source code or data, you may modify such portions of the
Software and distribute the modified Software for non-commercial purposes, as provided
herein.
You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the
Software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's
copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information.
In return, we simply require that you agree:
1. That you will not remove any copyright or other notices from the Software.
2. That if any of the Software is in binary format, you will not attempt to modify such
portions of the Software, or to reverse engineer or decompile them, except and
only to the extent authorized by law.
3. That if you distribute the Software or any derivative works of the Software, you
will distribute them under a verbatim copy of this License, and you will not grant
rights to the Software or derivative works that are broader than those provided by
this License. For example, you may not distribute modifications of the Software
under terms that would permit commercial use, or under terms that purport to
require the Software or such derivative works to be sublicensed to others.
4. That if you have modified the Software or created derivative works, and distribute
such modifications or derivative works, you will cause the modified files to carry
prominent notices so that recipients know that they are not receiving the original
Software. Such notices must state: (i) that you have changed the Software; and
(ii) the date of any changes.
5. That Microsoft is granted back, without any limitations and on a royalty free basis,
the rights to reproduce, install, use, modify, distribute and transfer your
modifications to the Software source code or data.
6. That any feedback about the Software provided by you to us is voluntarily given,
and Microsoft shall be free to use the feedback as it sees fit without obligation or
restriction of any kind, even if the feedback is designated by you as confidential.
7. THAT THE SOFTWARE COMES "AS IS", WITH NO WARRANTIES. THIS
MEANS NO EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WARRANTY, INCLUDING
WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ANY WARRANTY AGAINST
INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE SOFTWARE OR ANY
WA
I have been pwned because my
Damn, we both posted the Licence at the same time.
Sorry for the dupe, mod down if you like!
My Stack Overflow user
It didn't work.
I installed on all the machines in the house. The only thing we could figure out that we were doing wrong was that we didn't have one permanently open port at our firewall, and we were unwilling to do that for a game.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
The Allegiance Demo is available here.
The ______ Agenda
Oh I remember reading about this game ... It seemed like a totally wonderful idea. Except for costing money to suscribe to (I'm not making that one up, right?), and me being on a nice and slow modem connection ... I imagine it would stand much more of a chance being released today.
... Perhaps I should make a large download someday soon, when someone's got things set up nicely for non-compiler-savy people like me ...
Um, and coincidentally it's just had its source released
First off, why is this article not on the front page?
Second, I don't see anything denying the ability to create a Linux port. Is this right? I must admit I'm very surprised to hear this. I've never heard of this game, but I'm intrigued by the fact that Microsoft is releasing source code to the public!
Is this some sort of trick? I find it ironic that microsoft is giving allegiance to open source. Sure, it's not free (as in liberated), but it's a step in the right direction.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
Nintendo today, released to the open source community the source code for the virtual boy smash hit "Panic Bomber".
From Nintendo VP of Open Source, "We feel that we're doing the world a service by releasing such a popular game to the masses for their free consumption and alteration."
Linus Torvalds says, "The open source community has a new friend in Nintendo. Of course, releasing a free dev kit for the gamecube would be nice, but this... this is even better. We can now program for the virtual boy."
Slashdot user TechBoy880 had this to say, "My life is now complete... I can now mod my favorite game of all time. Now we just need to press Nintendo to release the hardware specs and a dev kit to go along with this..."
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
This source code is going to have a lot of useful information for the transgaming guys.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I appluad MS for doing this. (-1 Troll i know)
I would like to see it happen much more often.
They can't be making money off this game anymore, so why not give back to the community.
Let those who love the game make it better, or atlest better to them.
Relic recently released the source to HomeWorld 1, and i know many people (including myself to a small extent) have been pouring through it to implement the features that we thought should be in the game. Right click movement, better combat, simpler camera control, better UI, ect.
The multiplayer nature of Allegaince may make it less friendly to such changes, but i do look forward to seeing the creativity of the community at work. (and who knows, an allegiance single player campaign may come from this)
I must say I'm impressed! I've been playing this game with said community for months now, and on the alleg.net forums, people have actually discussed trying to buy the source code from MS. Now that it's out there, I really can't wait to see what kind of mods the community will come out with.
My respect for MS just jumped up a notch... Still negative, but closer to zero.
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
"Microsoft" and "released the source code" in one sentence! Never though this was possible 8)
Somebody check hell for ice.
And only 511 MB of source too! Guess they weren't such clueless MS 'first-timers' after all!
No, this license is decidedly unlike the GPL. This license is somewhat akin to the Mozilla Public License (which was dropped due to people complaining). Basically, Microsoft and Microsoft alone gets rights roughly equivalent (though slightly more in their favor) than the BSD license. They get royalty-free rights to do anything they want to with your code.
On the other hand, the rights granted to *non*-Microsoft entities are much more restrictive -- non-commercial only.
Effectively, this makes you a free coder for Microsoft -- the only company that can ever financially benefit from the code you produce is Microsoft.
This is *not* a turnaround for Microsoft (other than the fact that they are opening some of their own code, which is a change). From a commercial standpoint, they are giving up zero IP (they do not allow you to use copyrighted or patented information, which may be present in their release. This is very different from the GPL, where copyrighted data must be available for commercial use, and you *cannot* have patents on methods used in the software. Microsoft has previously promoted BSD-like licenses that would allow them profit. This license is notable in that it is GPL-incompatible.
From a strategic point of view, there is little Microsoft stands to risk here. The program is, as others have pointed out, written in DirectX, and would be difficult to port to anything other than Windows (well, perhaps other than the X-Box). It might assist a small amount in improving WINE, but that's about it.
I'm not sure whether this includes a data file release -- this is the only thing that weirds me out, as doing so would be extremely unusual. I would expect not, but ~600 MB seems excessive for source code alone. Perhaps if someone could check this out?
That being said, I'm certainly not going to complain -- I see very few ways in which we are worse off after this release. This is a clear win for former fans and players of the game. Microsoft *has* done a few notable things that I would not have expected of them. They have not placed legal restrictions on porting, though there may be a practical limitation. I suppose one could argue that Microsoft is hoping to start a trend of companies doing open-source releases chosing not to use the GPL, but that seems a bit conspiracy theory-oriented even for Slashdot.
The only concern I can think of is Microsoft's worries about PR with this move. It may not be much of an issue -- recently, there has been a good amount of business hyping of "open source". Microsoft hasn't been bashing "open source" much in the past year or so -- just the GPL. It's a reasonable supposition that this has been intentional from a strategic standpoint.
Another weird thing is that Microsoft Research is the organization doing the release. That's very, very odd. I strongly suspect that Microsoft Research is *not* where the entertainment division is located (Bungie isn't a subdivision of Microsoft Reesearch), so unless they are responsible for old software, I can't see why they're involved. Could be that they're a bit more academia-oriented, and that there's some scientist pushing for open-sourcing something that doesn't have significant IP value to Microsoft any more.
If Microsoft wants to test the waters for non-GPL open source possibilities, this is a very good, safe way for them to do so. This game still has active users. Game technology moves so quickly that a four-year-old-game has little that folks might steal from them -- and in any case, Microsoft is not releasing any of their previous IP.
I *really* wish Microsoft would open-source the Close Combat series (they probably don't own copyright on it, but it's a nice thought). Microsoft or no, I'd be willing to buy copies of all of the series if I could get an open source Linux-compatible copy -- that series is phenomenal.
May we never see th
Ooops -- I meant the Netscape Public License, not the Mozilla Public License. Heh.
May we never see th
... is that this is the most complete source opening of any commercial computer game I have ever heard of. Artwork, server tools, dev tools, etc.
For those of us who spent hours trying to mod alleg working on getting KGJV's tools to know what they were doing this is a great win. For Joel Dehlin, the creator of allegiance and all around great guy this is a great win, as his pet project will continue to grow. For the players who never gave up on the best game never supported, this is a great win.
And for me, a mac switcher who misses this game, this is a fucking awesome win.
Sleep is for the weak.
Microsoft Research Games created Allegiance. You are very correct that they have little direct connection with the "entertainment division" (Microsoft Games).
Allegiance was created as a testing ground for new game technologies, in particular DirectPlay. The fact it grew into a commercial product at all is more luck/evolution then design. It's also one of the reasons why it had such bad marketing (say what else you will, MS Games has a fantastic marketing group...which sadly didn't touch Allegiance).
The developer participation and feedback during and after the beta was unlike any I've ever seen before or since in a game beta. A great many player ideas ended up in the game. The devs all played the game often with specially marked call signs so the players all knew who they were. Very open, very easy to talk to. The Allegiance beta has generally been considered by all that were in it to be one if not the most enjoyable and productive game betas ever. Allegiance at the start of the beta wasn't anything remotely close to Allegiance at the end. -For one thing, the game went from one faction (barely) to three during the beta.
Most of the dev team moved on to other parts of MS that weren't game related, but the leads have often expressed how much they appreciated the unusually strong community and were amazed at how much had been done over the years with basically nothing to work with.
My
This game was the most perfect, ever, in the execution of achieving what it wanted to do. In terms of fulfilling a tremendous diversity of player desires, in terms of graphical beauty, in terms of growing intensity, in terms of fostering teamwork....
In this game, you could:[ul] [li] Command 20 individuals from an isometric view point and move your bases and mining ships through galaxies while charting a research path. [li] Choose your space craft and modify it as you saw fit - load it with missiles, load it with mines. Your call. [li] Dogfight in one of the best zero-G environments. [li] Choose the role of a bomber pilot, a bomber gunner, a stealth ship launching missles from a distance, a utility ship deploying probes to detect stealth ships, a massive destroyer/dreadnaught ship pilot, or a troop transport pilot. And if you weren't careful, you would be a life pod pilot - at least until someone decided to blow your life pod up! [li]Form a clan and display your clan's stats on the in-game leader board for all to see! [li]Sit in the role of observer, and watch the battle unfold. Would one team try a bomber rush? Or expand to all systems to try and get the most resources? [li]Would you play as the credit-generating race? The military race? The science driven race? Or maybe as an alien race with unique technologies?
I was so sad to see this game fail. I was willing to pay the $10 a month, but that fee, along with poor publicity on behalf of Microsoft Research Games (this was their first game) killed what *could* have been the next Counter Strike.
I'm not terribly optimistic about it's future. The best I can hope for is that it catches on and MS decides to develop a sequel.
In order to play Allegiance, I would had either had to hook my box up outside the wall and leave a port open on it, or leave a port open on the firewall.
I may misunderstand you, but in order to play any game as the server, you need to leave a port open on a firewall.
This Rent-a-Coder Project makes me wonder if he's read the license, or just an incredibly dedicated fan.
To make a great PC game these days, developers need to master five elements: Graphics, gameplay, design depth, artificial intelligence and sound effects. But the most valuable facet of truly successful games remains human interaction. With the maturing of the Internet and the advent of broadband access, Microsoft Research has subtly made human interaction, both cooperative and competitive, the brightest light in the starry sky of its inaugural title, Allegiance. After the destruction of Earth in the future, the remaining "factions" struggle for control of resources and the remaining human population. In each game, you can choose to join the corporate-minded Gigacorp, the genetically enhanced Bios or the Iron Coalition militia. You and your team then face off against enemy factions as you struggle to build bases, develop new technologies and harvest resources.
Teamwork is critical, but segmented, offering different roles for you to fill. As a team commander, you direct mining operations, construct new bases and deploy defenses. You can also command other players, or pilots, to attack and defend (whether they obey or not is up to them.) Playing a pilot puts you in the seat of one of several combat craft to dogfight your foe. The larger capital ships need pilots, but also have turret seats where you can focus on gunning down anyone brave enough to get in range. While the commander usually holds the responsibility, a separate investor can allocate money for new bases and technologies.
Since Pong, games have emphasized the competitive side of human interaction in computer games. But cooperative games have been typically ignored. Not so in Allegiance. No matter how great a team may be in dog fighting, general strategy and tactics, they will fail when faced with a team that can better coordinate and play off of its members' strengths and talents.
The fundamentals of the game are benchmark quality, too. The ships are beautifully rendered and fit the character of their respective factions. They're even more impressive when they're blown up, as the sweet beauty of the explosions can cause tooth decay. The sound effects are intensely real, especially if you take advantage of the three-dimension capabilities. The layout of the screen, from either the command view or the cockpit view, is incredibly well thought out, giving you a massive amount of details in a single glance.
Even the player-initiated "taunts" are not nearly as annoying as they could be after hearing them for the hundredth time. As a bonus, they also service a purpose, letting you quickly communicate useful information to your teammates about who to attack and who to defend. The most and least popular: "I need gunners in my turrets, neeeeeow." (Hint: Since they are all .wav files, you can re-record your own sounds in place of the existing ones.)
Strategically, Allegiance invites extreme creativity. In addition to a tech tree that encourages early dedication to a technology path (you can focus on tactical stealth ships, capital ships or general enhancements, among other choices) each of the factions has their own ships and specialties - Gigacorp can set up cash generating stations, Bios can use teleport receivers on their escape pods (making it easier to get back to base), and the Iron Coalition's weapons do additional damage.
The game's played on the Zone (though you can set up a private server) - and if you never want to pay a penny beyond the retail price, you don't have to. However, for a $10 monthly charge, there are added benefits. And if you choose to play on a regular team, they could be worth the extra expenditure. In addition to keeping both individual and team scores, the pay subscription lets you participate in the story line by making theme-based maps that reflect battles going on in the Allegiance universe. Also, additional factions will become available for play, the first being the rebellious frontier-type Belters.
The game
Handy fact: Australian law authorises us to reverse engineer stuff completely, and there's no American law against us importing the reverse-engineered pieces back into DubyaLand, as long as we do it as per the terms of Microsoft's licence.
That said, if Allegience was a DirectX testbed then porting it to OpenGL ain't for the faint of heart.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Done, and without the licence restrictions on the code.
The artwork, however, is still a different matter. If I ever get rich I'll set up a well-connected ranch somewhere and fill it with digital art geeks tasked with polishing FOSS projects.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Read the license again. They own their piece of code, and grant you the right to non-commercially distribute it. If you agree to the licence, they also own any modifications you may make to it, but this ownership is not exclusive of yours. You can still do what you like with your mods, but so can they also do what they like with your mods. If you don't agree to their licence, you can't distribute their code, which is fair and fine.
If I do any work on this, I will not distribute a modified form of the original, I'll distribute a GPLed patch and the original. Both the GPL and this licence would allow you to distribute the original and patch on the same medium, but once you had applied the patch to the original there would be no legal avenue for distributing the result, or for Microsoft using it. Someone else who applied my patch would not have legal authority to transfer ownership of my work to Microsoft, and nor could they distribute the patched version without breaking the terms of Microsoft's agreement.
However, there would be nothing to stop a third party producing a diff containing my GPLed patch, their modifications (necessarily GPLed where they cross mine, else they could distribute a separate patch of just their mods, further complicating matters) but none of Microsoft's code (or mine if they didn't want to GPL theirs). You couldn't distribute a context diff (because that would contain fragments of the original) unless it squeaked in through fair-use rules.
BTW, this whole thing looks like it's riding on the goodwill of Microsoft towards the original gaming community running the current Lobby server. Well done, people!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing