Allegiance - Another free online shooter

[juckto]

First let me assure you that I'm not some random creating a forum account just to advertise a shitty browser game. I've been playing Trem about 2-3 months, I just have 0 karma on these boards cause I've had nothing worthwhile to say.

I think some of you guys might like Allegiance because it is somewhat similar to Trem, in that it combines FPS with strategic elements. Other than that they pretty much have nothing in common.

Enough blather - what is Allegiance?

Allegiance is a free, online, space combat sim. The game is divided into two teams each led by a single commander who invests in new stations and technologies to help the team to victory. It's a lot like a RTS, where every single unit is piloted by a real human player. And trying to get them to do what you want when you're the commander sometimes feels like it's an RTS where every single unit hates you .

Here's the "official" selling spiel:

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.


Allegiance is a great game to play because:

       1. It's free.
       2. It can run on pretty much any computer, on any connection speed.
       3. No other game out there offers as much diversity, nor is as teamwork orientated as Allegiance. No matter what role you choose to fulfill - whether it be dogfighter, scout, bomber, Commander, or something else entirely - your efforts will make a difference to the outcome of the game.


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.

And here's some final points from me:

• It's Windows only, unfortunately for some.
• It's one of the few, if not the only, Microsoft product to go shared-source.
• It's an old game, originally released in 2000, but several players have made hi-res mods for it to make it look decent.
• The community is very helpful towards newbies, with a really good training program aimed at complete beginners.
• You have to be very quick thinking and adaptable to be a great player at this game, able to change ships and tasks completely at the drop of a hat.
• No one is going to babysit you and explain everything the first time you join. Prepare to be really really confused.
• Don't accept every order that is issued - lots of players spam useless stuff to the entire team.
• The security system is damned good and attempting cheating or hacking will get you tossed out promptly.
• Newbies are given a newbie tag - a number in brackets after their name. When you start playing you should only try and kill them, cause you'll just get dicked on by everyone else.
• In fact you should avoid fighting at all to begin. Get a scout, load it with sensor probes, and go spam the enemy sectors. Or load a nan (a weapon that repairs friendlies) and try and keep your teammates alive. Especially me.
• There are currently 3 servers. One in Texas (Planet), one in Germany (GPZ) and one in Auz (3FL).
• The game was originally developed by MS Research to test network code and minimising bandwidth use. So connection distance and associated lag isn't really a huge issue - for the past 3 years I've been playing on NZ to America and barely noticed.

Links:

• Allegiance article on Wikipedia
  
• Download game
  
• Get Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 - required software (and no, already having .Net 2.0 is not the same)
  
• Create a new gameplay account
  
• Guide for complete beginners
  
• Community home page
  
• Allegiance wiki

Hope to see you in game!
-- juckto@PK

[==Troy==]

Is allegiance so low on newbies now juckto?


I have played the game, and I have to say one thing, be WARNED. The community is ruled by 2 "moderators" who basically have the powers to do anything they want without any real threat.

You also cannot really run your own server, and have to create a server on one of "their" hosts. So your server - your rules will not work. As a result, if you want to play this game online, you are forced to play by their rules, and have no other real option.

Secondly, the game heavily relies on the windows, and is not allowed to run on linux or mac, mostly due to their alternative to "Punkbuster", merely a program that scans the folders and checks if the files are unmodified, and allows the admins to ban you by the hardware ID (which is quite easy to evade by using a VM though). Although its doubtful that mere attempts to obfuscate the code will stop a determined coder to break it imo. So if anyone is interested in some "crackme" exercise, go for it. (allegiance community is lacking good programmers)


On the bright side, if you are not really worried about getting into the community and just want to have fun flying in the space, go for it. The game is quite enjoyable mostly because newbies are well protected by code of conduct. Several clans vary from skill based to friendly based ones. Graphics is a bit worse than tremulous, but still bearable. Do not expect shiny bloom effects.


Edit : Ah and yes I forgot, warning to all of the coders who will get interested, whatever you code/model/create for the allegiance, automatically becomes a property of Microsoft.

Edit 2 : And to actually be able to understand whats going on in game you are strongly encouraged to read 50 pages of the short version of the manual.

[Kaleo]

Looks a bit like the Eternal Silence mod for Source games, which in itself is like Battlefron2-meets-Homeworld2-meets-Freespace2.

[Kaine]

Homeworld... now there's a truly kickass game!

[Thorn]

It doesn't look anything like Eternal Silence. In that respect, Freelancer looks like Nexuiz.

The game doesn't look all that appealing imo.

[Urcscumug]

[..]I just have 0 karma on these boards cause I've had nothing worthwhile to say.

I find it interesting to see that this has been rectified since your post.

[Plague Bringer]

Ah, wow, a fellow Allegiance player! I thought I was the only one. There are very few players, and I probably put in less than twenty hours, but there was this one excellent game where our commander went awol and I organized a mutiny. A very fun game if you find a decently sized server and a turret spot on a bomber.

[juckto]

I find it interesting to see that this has been rectified since your post.

Heh that is pretty funny.