FAZ

An acronym for Free Allegiance Zone, it is the name given to the community-maintained version of Microsoft Allegiance. It stands for "Free Allegiance Zone" which is a joining of two terms originally used to segregate this community under Microsoft's rule: "Free Zone" and "Allegiance Zone". The term is used to describe a new version of Allegiance which is being developed by the community.

Until now, everyone has been playing with the Allegiance game written and compiled by Microsoft 5 years ago. Since then, no changes have been made to the game. Two years ago, Microsoft released the sourcecode to our community which allowed us to finally start modifying the game however we wanted...unfortunately this code was still written to use a 1999 compiler, and did not offer an easy way to work with it in modern development environments. The code was almost useless to us in its state. Even if we wanted to modify the game, we couldn't because we weren't even able to reproduce regular Allegiance let alone create an enhanced Allegiance.

Since then, the Dev team has worked on changing Microsoft's sourcecode to compile with todays compilers under today's development environments. It's pretty much done now, and we're finally able to create our own stable build of Allegiance. This allows us to finally start adding features that have been requested for the last 5 years, and correct bugs/errors that have been plaguing us.

The first release from the Dev team (R1) did not change much from Microsoft's original. Its purpose was to duplicate the original functionality without introducing new bugs or problems. However, a few simple changes were made to increase stability and add small much-needed enhancements. The second release (R2) made many more changes to Allegiance. A full listing of all changes made to Allegiance since Microsoft released the sourcecode is listed below.

Changes made in FAZ

R1 (Release date: March 1st, 2006)

• Allegiance is built against a modern compiler, offering slightly increased speeds and better interfaces with modern hardware. Sounds may sound clearer, and visuals may seem crisper depending on your hardware and drivers.
• SOVLogin has been removed from the login sequence, and its core functions have been written into Allegiance Secure Gameplay System (ASGS). (This program secures your callsign with a password, preventing others from spoofing your identity. It also denies game entry for banned players and Allegiance itself)
• Chat Logging has been written into Allegiance itself via the LogChat String Registry Key. Set its value to "1" to enable chat logging, (This is handled automatically by "ASGS" using the "Log Chat To Disk" option)
• When marking yourself as AFK, you will no longer be marked as "back" after a game has ended
• When logging in with "ASGS", you no longer have the ability to modify your name ingame. Your callsign is typed into ASGS and allows you access to the game. Your callsign is separate from your forum username/password within Allegiance, which used to cause "Authentication=2" errors.
• The in-base Ship Loadout screen no longer requires 800x600 resolution. When docking/launching, your monitor's resolution will no longer switch
• Missing "Game Information" was added to the Game Info screen (Esc, I)
• The Teleport Probe's 1-in-6 chance of "Random destruction" has been removed. All teleport probes will always work, and no longer have any chance of detonating
• Additional events are fired behind the scenes, allowing more detailed gamelogs to be captured for historical and game-balancing purposes
• The "Help" screen has been rewritten to include up-to-date help information

Changes made in Release 2

R2 (Release date: August 1st, 2006)

• Ranks are now shown in the Rank column.
• Allegiance's "ShipKilled" messages now match the ingame stats. As a result, the RecentGames webpage should now always match the ingame LastGameStats.
• Allegiance now automatically sets you AFK if it detects no inactivity for 5 minutes.
• AFK is now unset when joining teams.
• Giving command to someone else now keeps you on Command Wing instead of dropping you to attack.
• You can no longer chat to enemy constructorss/miners/drones.
• Quickchat keystrokes are no longer affected by the mouse unless the mouse is moved.
• The game now auto-sorts all games by #players.
• Game stats now default-sort to points instead of players.
• "NOAT" now shows up as a team in the F6 screen so you can see who's in NOAT
• "NOAT" now has its own teamchat just like any other team in the Lobby
• You can now PM players from NOAT by clicking their name in the team lists to select them. Click them again to de-select them and once again chat to "all".
• Player restrictions on original maps have been removed.
• Investors can now partially invest 10% increments into developments by right-clicking them. Partial-investing will always leave 1cr unpaid to avoid finishing the investment. You must use the original "Invest" button to complete it as usual.
• Investors can now fully invest in a development by doubleclicking it.
• Chat Messages now have a length restriction of 255 characters. Attempting to chat more will no longer crash the client.
• Removed dependancy on EULA.dll since Allegiance's EULA is now accepted during install.
• Custom resolutions set via registry keys are no longer overwritten at random.
• Virtual Joystick now works during launch animations.
• Drone status and other info is now relayed to 3 wings in addition to the "Command" wing: Charlie, Delta, and Echo
• Drones can no longer "see" targets after the targets are no longer spotted.
• Ingame Help screens (F1) can now include hyperlinks.
• + and ? tokened players can join rank restricted servers
• Chat logs can now be accessed by external processes while Allegiance is running

Changes made in Release 3

R3 (Release Date: December 14th, 2006)

• Underlying networking code rewritten using DirectPlay8, allowing users to connect through NAT boundaries without problem. (College students can now play!)
• Entire codebase ported to Visual C++ 2005 (VC8).
• Sound engine upgraded to DirectSound8 with new changes. This should fix "crackles" and "static". You can still choose the old sound engine by selecting its menu in the "Sound Settings" section of the Esc menu.
• Up to 8 mouse buttons can now be mapped within Allegiance.
• Unspotted enemy miners no longer cause mining 'lightning bolts' or mining sounds. You must spot a miner to hear/see its activities.
• Users attempting to defect now see "No defections are allowed" instead of "You have been banned."
• Allegiance can now play ogg files natively. If no .wav files are present, Allegiance will play .ogg files with the same name.
• Collision damage bugfix (Hull/Shield hitpoints were tabulated incorrectly, resulting in incorrect amounts of damage being applied after collisions)
• Commanders can now enable Auto-Accept while ingame. Commanders can type #autoaccept to toggle it on/off.
• On the Map Keys and Controls screen, the "Drop Mine" action has been renamed to "Drop Mine or Probe" to be more clear.
• A new "Imbalance=Auto" setting has been added to enforce balancing by rank. Clicking Randomize will balance players evenly across all teams when this setting is chosen.
• The "Stats Count" checkbox once again works, and forces Imbalance=Auto.
• Newbies with a rank of (0) will count as a rank (1) when tabulating team RankSums.
• The "Force-Launch button still visible after players leave" bug has been fixed.
  
• A FAZ menu has been added at the top of the Esc menu to make it easy to check build#s
• You can now take screenshots!! You can now bind "Take a Screenshot" to any key. By default, this will be mapped to the PrtScn key when R3 is deployed.
• Screenshots will be saved as a 24-bit bmp file in Allegiance.exe's folder with the format:2006.09.29_3.15.03.456.bmp
• Unmounting/mounting a part while inflight now reloads that part. Eg: If you had 4 missiles loaded and fired 2 there would be two left in your missile slot...
• Previously, re-mounting missiles would load 2 missiles into your missile slot.
• Now, re-mounting cargo will load 4 missiles into your missile slot.
• You can now right-click users in the lobby to perform actions on them (make leader, boot, etc).
• Game Commanders can no longer launch the game when another Team Commander is looking at the game settings.
• High-Res textures can now be seen by enabling the "High Res" menu.
• You will need to install high-res textures into your artwork\textures folder in order for them to work. See "Artwork Development" forum.
• Skill Level restrictions are now reset on the game server when there is no more Game Commander.
• The F1 Help has been updated.
• AFK is now automatically set after 90s of inactivity for players on NOAT. Players on a team still have an inactivity timer of 180s.

Changes made in R4

Release date: November 1st, 2007

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed resolution checking logic, this should resolve the problem of the game intermittently resetting to 800x600 mode. (AEM)
• Fixed a bug where you could turn off all teams. (KGJV)
• Graphics Engine transparency fix for 3D models. (KGJV)
• LAN games have been upgraded to DPlay8, fixing them after they broke in R3. (radar)
• LAN mode should no longer crash. (KGJV)
• Allegiance logfiles now open up properly in Notepad.exe. (Windows CRLFs are used instead of unix CRs) (Dogbones)
• Energy can no longer go negative when using cloaking devices with negative recharge rates. (Dogbones)
• Autobalance has been tweaked. You can now only join the team with the lower TeamRankSum. (Dogbones)
• A bug introduced in R3 where PMs sent via the new "Click-PM" feature in the game lobby disappeared after joining teams has been fixed. Chat messages no longer disappear. (Avalanche)
• Games that are locked open no longer reset rank restrictions when the last player leaves. (Dogbones)
• The way maps/sectors/etc are sent to clients has changed, hopefully fixing "big game" drops. (w0dk4)
• Player ranks are no longer shown in game names. (KGJV)
• The F3 grid is no longer "cut" on Z axis. (KGJV)
• The problem which prevented allsrv from reconnecting to the lobby has been resolved. (KGJV)
• Issuing a GoTo order in F3 sector view above or below the plane will no longer select the rock/object underneath the mouse cursor. (AEM)
• Fixed the crashes due to long debug messages. (Avalanche)
• Fixes in font.cpp for clipped characters. (KGJV)
• Fixed rendering glitches in the minimap. (KGJV)
• Fixed draw order of solar flare. Objects now obstruct the solar flare. (YP)

Features Added

• The AZ's old "Create Game" feature has been restored, with a new dialog box for you to specify which server and core you'd like to play. (KGJV, Zapper)
• The Game Settings screen has been updated to include several new game settings including (KGJV, Artwork: madpeople, Zapper):

  * Map Preview feature: This lets you see what the selected map looks like before launching
  * Allow Supremacy / Allow Expansion / Allow Tactical settings: These let you enable/disable techpaths making those stations unavailable.
  * Allow Empty Teams: This allows you to play 1 vs 0 game so you can explore tech easily.

• New Training mission 7 is now a Nanning Training Mission. (bahdohday with improvements by AEM and TheBored)
• Player ranks and TeamRankSums are now shown on the F6 Player pane. (Your_Persona)
• Added a #list command which will list all #chat commands to your private chat. (#draw | #resign | #autoaccept | #autobalance [1|2|a|n] | #ban | #mutiny) (Dogbones)
• You can now chat while waiting to join a team. (KGJV)
• Allegiance's chat logs are now saved with a more intuitive naming format under the "logs" subfolder: logs\chat_YY-MM-DD-Seconds.txt. (Dogbones)
• When un-researched tech is brought back to base, a message is now announced to all teammates. (KGJV)
• There are now three lines of "status text" shown at the bottom of the screen instead of only one. (Your_Persona)
• Players who successfully #mutiny are now given the team's cash. (Avalanche)
• Players who leave a team and then return are no longer placed on their old teams automatically, but go to NOAT instead. (Avalanche)
• Server name and core name are now shown in the game lobby. (KGJV)
• Server name and core name are now shown in Esc -> i info pane. (KGJV)
• More "bad words" were added to the word censor. (logic Your_Persona, words BV)
• Redesigned ESC menu.
• New Esc -> p menu lists ping times for all players in the same game/server. (w0dk4)
• Players using the "Mute Lobby" option can now choose to receive PMs or not. (TheBored)
• Server is now shown in Lobby screen to indicate on which server a game is running. (KGJV)
• Team Faction name is now shown underneath the team name in the game lobby. (KGJV)
• Allegiance can now be restored to a window on desktops with 32bit color depths. (Graphics are now rendered with DirectX 7) (KGJV)
• Multiple artwork formats (JPG, PNG, etc) can now be rendered by Allegiance instead of only bmps. (KGJV)
• Allow administrators to bypass most of the checks when joining a game. (Avalanche)

  * Added @HQ to PrivilegedUsers. (Dogbones)
  * Added @Zone to PrivilegedUsers. (TheBored)

• Added MonoOff registry key. If there and set to 1 (true), the ToMono calls are skipped over. (AEM)
• Miners hull can be slightly damaged when deciding to run on not. (YP)
• Added a "save" button to gameoverscreen and code to save scores to a XML file. (KGJV)
• Changed boot message text to 'booted' versus 'banned' when booted.(Dogbones)
• Update to new wingman repair AI. Separated it from the attack AI to make it much smarter with a couple small changes. (AEM)
• Drones/miners now exit a base when given a direct order. (YP, Dogbones)
• "Unknown Chat" no longer appears in the chat. (TheBored)
• Commanders can now force their players to stop/resume donations. The "Stop Donating" button is now pressable by commanders only. (KGJV)
• Added #mutiny command to propose an overthrow of the commander by the player who typed the command. Commanders do not see the vote, and automatically vote "no." (KGJV)
• Drones no longer attempt to dodge friendly craft when "entering". This applies to constructors planting in rocks and miners/cons/carriers docking at stations.
• Rotation rates have been limited for ships with high mass, removing the capship "spin of death". (Your_Persona)

Experimental Changes

• Drones now check to see if a sector is hostile before entering. This can be overridden by issuing a manual order. (Your_Persona)
• Drones now "enter" at a faster speed. This applies to constructors planting in rocks and miners/cons/carriers docking at stations. (Your_Persona)