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!"

Comments

For your perusal

[ObviousGuy]

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

Re:For your perusal

[sardiax]

the license could be better, particularly the part about them being granted back the rights to any modifications, but its nice to see microsoft releasing the source for anything at this point. :)

Re:For your perusal

[Anonymous Coward]

Not one but two instances of content-free karma whoring! Amazing.

If you're not in a hurry to just download the archive (warning: this is fucking huge, specifically 511MB), let's take a closer look at some of the pertinent points of that licence:

• "You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose, subject to the restrictions in this License." In other words, no commercial use, which means no inclusion in Linux distributions and such. The only way they want anyone to be able to fetch Allegiance's source code is through their clickwrap licence.
• "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." Too bad if you want to examine the binary data (graphics, audio, maps...) in order to, say, figure out the formats and make your own.
• "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." In other words, all your changes are belong to them, and they're thoughtfully granting themselves distribution of your code without the licensing restrictions which you get hammered with!
• "If you breach this MSR-SSLA or if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software or anyone's use of the Software, your license to the Software ends automatically and you shall destroy all of your copies of the Software immediately. Section 5 of this MSR-SSLA [the self-granting of unlimited distribution rights, just quoted] shall survive any termination of this license." In other words, if they decide in their infinite wisdom that you're breaking their licence, you have to send all your work into the crapper.

My opinion (for all the piddling amount that an anonymous coward's opinion counts for)? Fuck this and find a Sourceforge or Freshmeat project to chip in on.

Re:For your perusal

[polyp2000]

What would happen, if a small portion of the code got used in another game under a license for example the GPL. Microsoft would come down on them like a ton of bricks.

With more and more things like this being released into the public domain, with such restrictive licensing, Open Source developers are going to have to be more and more savvy to these licensing programs. It is an ideal way for microsoft to battle against the GPL. Release source code, but with very restrictive terms... Wait for some random GPL project to insert microsoft code... come down on project like a ton of bricks, discrediting GPL in the process.

Now consider what might happen if Microsoft were to release the source code to Windows in such a restrictive manner... Its going to be very tempting isnt it...

All I am saying is, we need to be really damn careful about stuff like this. Although it is nice that Microsoft are being a little more Open about things, beware of the beast.

Re:For your perusal

[Zenin]

http://www.freeallegiance.org/

We (fan community) run our own Lobby (MS gave us the Lobby server a couple years ago) and our own servers. No pay-to-play anymore. Come back and enjoy! :-)

Re:For your perusal

[Zenin]

*yawn*, whatever

For any commercial software company to do this much is amazing, doubly so for a game company, and a hundred fold over for MS to do it. So this doesn't help you make a million bucks with "your" brand new video game or further the agenda of the misnamed FSF. So what? This release does exactly what it was intended to do and it does it extremely well: It allows those of us who love the game and have been working hard to improve it for years a huge new arsenal with which to go about said improvements.

If you want to make a brand new space sim free to the public, go right ahead; it lets you do that too.

But really, boo-*&^$!ing-hoo that perhaps you can't throw yet another app into a KitchenSink(tm) Linux install. Who cares? FreeBSD solved such simple issues very cleanly nearly a decade ago now with the ports system, why can't Linux?

Re:For your perusal

[Trelane]

Ummm ... hate to break this to you Trelane, but if it were under the GPL you aren't allowed to sell any derivatives either as anything you make is GPL!

Umm, wow. You're gonna have to "hate to break it to" SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat, Sun, Lindows, and a host of others, 'cause they're selling GPLed code right now!!

Seriously, though. GPL doesn't prevent selling.

Re:For your perusal

[Anonymous Coward]

Your UID clearly shows that you are Satan.

Suggesting Microsoft would do something nice just adds to my hypothesis of you being Lucifer.

Anyone care to say that I am wrong?

Nintendo Releases Virtual Boy Game Source Code

[pudge_lightyear]

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..."

Re:Linux Port?

[Zenin]

Allegiance came from MS Research Games, not MS Games, and infact was built to be a testing ground for Direct* pieces at the time (in particular DirectPlay was completely forged in Allegance). The fact it turned into a commercial game at all was a bit of happenstance, not original intention.

So yes, it's heavily Direct biased, likely including "beta" versions of some DirectX pieces that won't map directly to any real DirectX release. If this makes it harder to port (unknown/never published DirectX features) or easier (above are in the Allegiance code and thus come with it), we don't know yet.