Developer Journal: Allegiance, Chapter 1 - February 16, 2000

Joel Dehlin, Executive Producer of Allegiance, tells us what it is and how it happened.

by IGN Staff

February 16, 2000 - Over the coming months, we'll be bringing you exclusive designer diaries from the team that's currently working on Microsoft's multiplayer space combat sim, Allegiance. The game is currently in open beta status and is proving to be quite popular even in its early stages. Players logging on to the MSN Zone can fly with hundreds of other pilots as part of three factions. Additional players can act as commanders and direct the action from a strategic level.

In the first designer diary, Executive Producer Joel Dehlin outlines the basic history of the development process and gives us a little insight into how he assembled his design team. He admits to some naivete when he first began work on the game. Despite his eventual loss of innocence in the face of the usual design frustrations, Joel's enthusiasm remains high.

For more details on Allegiance, check out our preview and then head on over to Allegiance Vault. If after all that, you're as excited about the game as you ought to be, go ahead and download the demo.

As a side note, Joel told us that his turn-ons include chats by a warm fire, romantic walks on the beach and those big 128-ounce Coke Slurpees. And now ladies and gentlemen...Joel Dehlin.

Chapter 1: Game Development Virgins

We're game development virgins. So what? Big deal? We can write code, right? We love to play games, right? It couldn't be that hard, and plus it will be fun. You know...just playing games all day. And, well, you know, making up cool stuff. And playing games.

So we rolled up our sleeves and decided to give it a go.

And when we woke up, it was initially a painful realization.

If you've ever actually developed and shipped a game, you're laughing uproariously at our gall right now; probably you were that way once. Developing games is like developing Excel -- except when you're a game developer, you can tell your significant other that you're "staying late to check out the competition" and actually be telling the truth. Otherwise, it's a similar deal. Specs. Schedules. Meetings. Politics. Budgets. Constraints. Late nights. Cool t-shirts. The whole potato.

Some day -- when it's over -- we'll do a heck of a post-mortem. But for now, what was it all about?

Allegiance? So what?

Imagine flying around in a beautiful space shooter with nebulae and 3d sound and beautifully rendered, high-poly ship and station models where all of the enemies (and friendlies) actually have brains and can do unpredictable things. Imagine being in space with 30 or even 100 of these other players and duking it out with tons of variable loadout choices. That's Allegiance: Beautiful graphics and large-scale multiplayer space action. Simple as that.

Well, except for the squadron part. Allegiance was built for squadrons from the ground up. Pre-recorded quick comms. Strategic commands. Wings. Squadrons. Wingman commands. We did all of that stuff and more to really make it advantageous, nay, necessary to be successful as a team. So that's Allegiance: Large-scale, beautiful space action game for squadrons. And that's really it.

Well, except for the strategy part. You may have heard me say it before (and Rob mocks me unmercifully), but I'll say it again for those who weren't paying attention. Imagine playing a game of Age of Empires or Starcraft where YOU are one of the units. Ain't that just a cool concept? So squadrons take on a new twist because you have a group of other warm bodies that you're working with to accomplish a team objective (Conquest, Prosperity, Artifacts, CTF, Deathmatch). Several on your squadron might form the Alpha wing that harasses the other team's miners. Others form the Delta wing, which defends your miners and buildings. Still others form the Foxtrot wing which acts as a quick strike force and can mobilize to help one of the other two wings when needed. And one guy becomes commander and spends the whole time managing investments, choosing the technology path for the team (to get you better stuff) and commanding the battles from the 3rd person, RTS view of the game. OK. So that's Allegiance: "Beautiful, squadron-based, large-scale multiplayer Space Action game, where you're one of the units in an RTS." We coined an acronym for the game type and genre: BSBLSMSAGWYOOTUIARTS. We're hoping it will catch on.

So that was the vision, anyway. Whether we've delivered remains to be seen. The beta testers seem to enjoy it, but they may be telling us nice things in hopes of getting free stuff. As my mother always said, "the proof is in whether or not people buy the freakin' game." Well she said something like that, anyway.

"Why MS Research?" I hear you cry. Now, that's another story.

Why Microsoft Research Games

Some of you may have heard of Rick Rashid. You know, my boss, the inventor of the Mach kernel, the Vice President in charge of MS Research worldwide, co-designer and developer for Alto-Trek, probably the first network game. Never heard of Alto-Trek, you say? Well...

Twenty years ago, Rick Rashid and Gene Ball (while at the University of Rochester) developed a game for the experimental Xerox Parc Alto and its experimental network code: Ethernet. The game started to garner quite a following and formed the basis for what later became NetTrek, a cult classic.

Though Rick loved developing games, he set his sites on more frivolous and less noteworthy pursuits like inventing the Mach kernel, leading the Computer Science department at Carnegie Mellon and then eventually becoming a Microsoft VP. Sheesh, what some people will do.

Still, the promise of untold glory in games development came back to haunt our hero. Rick was trying to learn DirectX and ported the old Alto-Trek code, more to learn the interfaces then anything else. What he came up with was a pretty interesting demo. He and Ed Fries (General Manager of the Microsoft games group) thought it would be interesting to have MS Research develop a real game internally. Enter Robert Girling, a stalwart and much ballyhooed designer from "Office" who was trying to break into game design. Ed introduced Rick and Rob. Rick hired David Pugh to help Rick with the development. Then Rick hired yours truly to manage the team. The first thing I did was hire the best developer I knew, Curt Carpenter. There ya go. Rob, the designer. Rick the VP and part-time coder. David, the PhD. Curt, the server dude. And me, the manager.

Six months later, we had a design created and a team built. That was a little over two years ago. It's been a long row, but wow, we're almost there!

So would I do it again?

Well, if you've read this far, you're either my mother (hi, Nan!) or a masochist. Given that a really large percentage of you are not the former, I'll continue to bore you and answer the question, "would I do this again?"

Good question. It's been so much tougher than I thought it would be. I expected I'd play other people's games a lot more. I didn't think I'd be gone from home so much. I had no idea how hard it would be to reconcile the design ideas of 50 million different interested parties. I didn't realize the fine line we'd have to walk between setting the design in stone from the beginning and being flexible with the design throughout the process -- and how much trouble you could get in going too far in either direction. I had no idea how long it would take to get the scale and stability issued solved in a client/server game. It's been taxing, to be honest.

But man, you cannot imagine how fulfilling it is to have people play your game and tell you they love it. It's incredibly exhilarating. You log in during the beta at 3:00am to check if the servers are still up and there are hundreds of people still playing, arguing about which faction is better. Not to sound cliché, but it really makes the whole thing worth it.

Maybe we'll sell three zillion copies. Maybe we'll sell 4. But no matter how successful we are, I'd absolutely do it again. It's been worth every bump and bruise along the way. So thanks for listening. Next week, Rob will be taking the pulpit. Until then, see you in space!

-- Joel Dehlin "Solap", Executive Producer for and one of the designers of Allegiance