Utilities
SOVLogin Retired.
SOVLog Retired.
SOVRoute Allows you to reach a private stand-alone server ('LAN game') across the internet.
SOVShowCG Retired.
SOVGuard Retired.

Visit FreeAllegiance to download and play the greatest game ever created.  This highly addictive game was originated by Microsoft and is now in the care of the Allegiance community that play the game, via availability of the source code.

Allegiance suffered from many life-threatening problems, yet continues to endure.  My first impression of the game was that although it was righteous to play it there was a horrible lack of documentation, making it seem as though it was released before it was completed.  My second opinion was that it was the most poorly marketed product I'd ever encountered.  The third item was that it crashed at the most inconvenient of times.  Allegiance ran under a debugger known as Crash Guard (aka CG) which was a little like Dr. Watson and a little like XP's debug reporter.  It allowed crash reports to be phoned home to Microsoft Research.  CGs happened more often than I liked, usually when I was in a bomber turret (my fave thing to do) closing in on a base.

Much of the documentation and control criteria was in the form of text files which could be easily modified.  One of the more interesting features of this game was that it had voice chats (VC) which were also implemented as a text file.  VCs allow you to hit a key combo and cause other players to hear a particular wav file.  Unfortunately, since it was so easy to modify people started playing with it and discovered that if you sent an unimplemented code (a disabled VC)  it would cause the recipient to CG.  You could send a bad private VC to a particular person, such as when they were closing in for a kill, and knock them out of the game.  Malicious folks soon took advantage of this, crashing others willy nilly.  However, you couldn't distinguish between a 'valid' CG (one due to an Allegiance bug) and being a victim of someone else modding their VC files.  However, it was happening so frequently that VCs were always blamed.  Soon, all players on both the AZ and FZ were all killed outright rendering the game unplayable.

I wanted to play Allegiance, so I created a utility called SOVShowCG that would analyze the CG report and tell whether it was due to a disabled voice chat.  I could play and I was happy.  SOVShowCG helped to isolate one of the current players to being a malicious VC exploiter.

SOVShowCG is simply a program to give you a high-level view of your crashguard file and tell you whether or not someone crashed you using a "disabled quickchat hack".  It modifies absolutely nothing in your system; this is not a hack and violates no warranties.  The creator of this program is in no way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.  Allegiance is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.


As time went by Microsoft lost interest in Allegiance and frequently left the AZ down for extended times, and people from there would revert to the FZ servers (where I played, aka "mah house").  While you had to pay for the AZ you didn't for the FZ and, as a result, people made quick, easy and free bogus IDs in order to join and CG people.  It got really bad.

I wanted to play Allegiance, so I created a utility called SOVGuard which attached to Allegiance as a debugger, keying in on the section of code attending to VC reception.  I could play and I was happy.
SOVGuard is a program that monitors Microsoft® AllegianceTM and reacts whenever a chat message is generated.  It inspects the message and if it is found to be outside of the bounds allowed by Allegiance it is modified to an acceptible value; the value chosen is that for “Found Lava”, one which should never appear during the course of a game.  The creator of this program is in no way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.  Allegiance is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

I later improved SOVGuard into SOVLog:
SOVLog is a program that monitors Microsoft® AllegianceTM and reacts whenever new users are identified or chat messages generated.  If a user's name is found to contain color codes then it removes them making it possible to private message the person.  SOVLog is built upon the core of the retired SOVGuard program, assuming its ability to capture and log chat messages and easily take screen shots.  The creator of this program is in no way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.  Allegiance is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

Since it was seriously marketed Allegiance was no money maker and therefore suffered from inattention from the Zone admins, thus why the AZ was down more and more.  It soon spilled over to the FZ and those servers started coming down.  I called them many times, whenever it was down, usually resulting it them bringing it back up.  As time went by it sometimes took a couple of days to come back.  Finally, it didn't at all.  The AZ and FZ stayed down and Allegiance was dead.  I particularly recall fewer and fewer people being in the Allegiance zone room (a chat area used for staging) with each passing day.

I wanted to play Allegiance, so I created a utility called SOVRoute which would extend LAN games (Allegiance came with a server program allowing you to create a server either for the FZ or for a private LAN game with your buddies) across the internet (originally you could choose to play AZ, FZ or LAN):

SOVRoute is a program that listens for Microsoft® AllegianceTM to attempt a LAN connection and, when it does, forward routes that request to servers of your choice.  It modifies absolutely nothing in your system; this is not a hack and violates no warranties.  The creator of this program is in no way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.  Allegiance is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.


I discerned how Allegiance clients discovered clients and SOVRoute would forward connection broadcasts directly to a particular server instead of limiting itself to its local subnet.  After I created this tool I went to the Allegiance zone room and asked for someone to help me test my program.  After plenty of scepticism I finally got a TC_ player to run the program (at that time a command line app).  It worked and I released it to the Allegiance community.  We finally started getting peoplr back into the game.  Folks dedicated to Allegiance hung around in the Allegiance zone room to tell others how to join in the fun.  I could play and I was happy.  You would typically run SOVRoute along with SOVLog.

There were two people that were worse than anyone else regarding the VC exploits and I don't intend to credit them here by mentioning their names.  Unfortunately, they joined into our SOVRoute games and kept up their efforts to ruin the game.  They wound up hacking the cores affecting game play.  Suddenly ships could travel across a sector in mere moments and your bases were capped or destroyed a second after receiving a warning.  The game was again in jeopardy.  Around this same time Microsoft Research released the lobby server to which people could connect their stand alone servers.

I wanted to play Allegiance, so I created utilities called SOVLogin and SOVLobby (a combo client (Allegiance) and server (lobby server) model) requiring the user to log in before they could play.  The client side did a lot of under-the-covers work such as transmitting to the login server whether the client had any modifications, eliminating the latest round of hacks:
SOVLogin is a program that connects into the lobby server and monitors Microsoft® AllegianceTM to provide authentication.  It facilitates ensuring that each person running Allegiance isn’t cheating.

SOVLogin is built upon the cores of SOVLog and SOVGuard, assuming their ability to capture and log chat messages and easily take screen shots.  The creator of this program is in no way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.  Allegiance is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation

...

Time went by and I found I was too addicted to Allegiance and had to set it aside but I come back to play a game every now and then.

So why were these utilities developed?  The only reason is I wanted to play Allegiance, plain and simple. 

I've never been a particularly good player (OK, I suck) but if you see me in the lobby (either SOV_VenCain or VenCain), trying to join your team, please let me!  All I want is to play Allegiance on rare occasions.  (That said, I'm usually three sheets to the wind when I decide to spark it up, so please forgive me when I launch in a stealth fighter instead of an interceptor to defend the base...)

By the way, what does SOV stands for?  Sons Of Vitches works for me, but ask DeBuke or Logan5.  They might tell you another story.

-VenCain