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Everything you’ll ever need to know about multiplayer games

Menneisyys — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:51:09 GMT

NOTE: Please see Chapter 6, Updates to this article, for more info on how this guide is updated. Current version / last updated: 11/22/2009.

Gaming, despite the lack of hardware buttons and controls (D-pads), has traditionally been one of the strongest sides of the iPhone / iPod touch (iPhone for short - for simplicity, I use 'iPhone' when referring to the iPod touch too) platforms. The iPhone received way more games in the slightly less than one and a half year since the opening of AppStore than any of its smart phone competitor platforms (see for example my dedicated Windows Mobile multiplayer gaming guide HERE - Windows Mobile, during the last about 9 years of existence, received about an order of magnitude less(!) multiplayer-enabled titles), including even Java.

A sizeable part of the iPhone games support wireless multiplayer; that is, letting two (or more) players take part in a game at the same time. The iPhones’ being always-connected and networked, this is pretty much understandable – after all, adding multiplayer features to an existing single-player game may highly increase its popularity and playability. Just a well-known example from the desktop (Windows / Mac OS) world: the single player mode Starcraft becomes very boring for an experienced player after a while – the artificial intelligence (AI) simply isn’t strong enough to beat a good player even in 7v1 games. Not so with multiplayer games where one can meet far better players than the AI.

In the following, after quickly explaining the connection and notification (Push etc.) types iPhone multiplayer games employ, I go over the most popular gaming categories and show you the (currently) best games available for the platform so that you can pick up some decent games without even consulting my huuuuuge main chart containing (almost) all the multiplayer-enabled games ever released for the platform.

1. Connection types

1.1 Strictly local connections

1.1.1 Bluetooth (BT)

Bluetooth is the cleanest solution if you’re next (in the same room) to your friend. Then, you won’t (even) need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi access point or to the internet. This also means you can use Bluetooth where there isn’t any kind of a Wi-Fi access point – on public transport vehicles, in cars etc. In these cases, the (compared to local Wi-Fi) independence of Bluetooth can be a godsend.

Note that, while commuting, you can still have cellular data connections, but

- it requires both parties to have independent access to the Internet via cellular connections (this rules out iPod touch devices)

- the game you plan to play doesn’t necessarily support remote connections (which is particularly the case with action games like Doom Classic where quick response and minimal lag are a must)

- and, if it’s supported at all, the lag may be just too high (effectively, communication packets from the two phones travel through at least the country center, resulting in between 300-500 ms ping / lag times), making games that require fast response / action mandatory unplayable. Also keep this in mind when playing games offering both local and remote multiplayer – whenever possible, try using local connections.

The disadvantages of Bluetooth are as follows:

a. It doesn’t work on 1st generation iPhones or iPod touches (it does between the iPhone 3G, the 3G S and the 2nd-/3rd-generation iPod touch)

b. At times, you may have to disable Wi-Fi for Bluetooth to work better (and vice versa, particularly on the 3G S, where disabling Bluetooth altogether may result in significant Wi-Fi connection speed increase.) This requires a lot of additional tapping (unless you install / use Cydia-only [requiring a jailbreak] shortcut manager like SBSettings). Note that OS version 3.1 is stated to have considerably enhanced the co-existence of Wi-Fi and BT; with the new OS version, it might be not any more required to switch off either to achieve the best performance possible.

c. BT gaming has only been introduced in OS 3. That is, if you don’t want to upgrade your iPhone 3G or iPod touch 2G to OS3, you won’t be able to make use of it at all. (Some iPod touch users refuse the upgrade because it isn’t free.)

1.1.1.1 Using Bluetooth

It’s basically very easy to create a BT connection between two devices. In some games, you just tap the multiplayer Bluetooth icon / menu item on both phones to start discovery; in some other, you need to tap the Host (on one device to "host" the game) and Join (on the other one to "join" the existing game) icons.

Note that, in general, the first BT connection may take a bit more time to build up than subsequent ones. Also, if they remain slow (or unreliable), you might want to completely disable Wi-Fi when using BT for multiplay.

When the two phones find each other, just tap the newly-displayed name of the other phone on one of the phones. After a while, the "Accept" and "Decline" buttons will be displayed on the other phone. Then, just tap "Accept".

An example of all this can be found HERE at around 0:25.

1.1.2 Wi-Fi

Local Wi-Fi connections require the two (or more) of you to be connected to the same Wi-Fi access point. As opposed to the BT approach explained in the previous section, it works on even OS 2.x and on the first-generation iPhones and iPod touches as well. However, it’s way more restricted than BT; for example, if you don’t have a Wi-Fi access point to connect to, you won’t be able to play. This completely rules out playing your friends / buddies in, say, a vehicle, a bus, a train, on a trip etc. Of course, games only supporting local Wi-Fi connectivity won’t work if you only have cellular data connection but not a local Wi-Fi access point, either.

Note that, unlike with some BT games, with Wi-Fi local connections, there must almost always be an originator (host) and a client machine (there may be more of the latter with games allowing more than two local players; an example is Real Racing). This is why with local Wi-Fi games there’s always a "Host" and a "Join" button. You need to tap Host on one of your phones and Join on the other(s).

Note that these explicit icons may completely be missing. For example, with Doom Classic, if you go to the "Multiplayer" (the lower left icon in the main menu) on one of your phones, the other phones running Doom over the same local Wi-Fi network (that is, connecting to the same Wi-Fi access point) will automatically sense a host being started on the network. This is shown HERE. At 0:05, I enter the menu on the iPhone on the left. You can see that the color of the same "Multiplayer" icon on the right device almost immediately lights up (and also displays the iTunes name of the other phone), showing there’s a Doom host on the network. Then, all you need to do is tapping this icon and, after selecting the game type on the left iPhone, just tap "Start game" on the same phone.

The traditional "Host" / "Join" scheme can be seen for example in THIS video.

1.2 Remote connections

So far, I’ve only discussed connections that can only be used on either the same Wi-Fi local area network (connecting to the same Wi-Fi access point) or Bluetooth device.

1.2.1 Direct IP

The approaches explained above involve auto-discovery based on (local) broadcasting. That is, the two (or more) phones (iDevices) magically and automatically find each other. (Physically, this is done by for example using broadcast discovery protocols over Wi-Fi and the inherent discovery mechanisms built into Bluetooth.) Some (VERY few) games, however, also allow you to enter the direct IP of your buddy. (And one of them, namely, Quartz 2, mandates you to do so - there aren't other, discovery-based ways of connection in it.) In these cases, you just enter the IP address (which is always displayed on the other party’s device) of your buddy and off you go.

THIS demo video shows entering direct IP. It’s worth skipping the first 28 seconds to avoid confusion (at first, I messed up creating the network). The left iPhone is started in Host mode. Its IP address (192.168.1.103, which is a local area network address) can be seen at the bottom of the screen. This is what needs to be entered on the client machine (the one on the right); you can see this being done between 0:37 and 0:50.

Direct IP entering, while it does have its problems (manually entering an IP isn’t the easiest thing) has some advantages over the other networking forms: as opposed to local Wi-Fi and BT, you can play your buddy on the other end of the world. All you need to do is telling him/her your IP address (if it’s you that host the game); this can be done via, say, any instant messaging application. Note that this only works if your buddy isn’t behind a firewall or any kind of address translation but has a direct Internet address. Many (but in no way all!) cellular providers hand out direct(ly connectable) addresses.

When compared to the "remote lounge" approach explained below, this approach has both advantages and disadvantages. Let me elaborate on them a bit more. The disadvantages are as follows:

- Manual IP entering (which also involves actually getting this address from your buddy, which, at least on the iPhone, may mean you end up having to give a call to someone or "meeting" him using an instant messenger app)

- Doesn’t work when both phones are behind a firewall. (If at least one of them have a direct IP address, if it’s being used as the host (and not vice versa), the connection will work.)

- Lack of centralized goodies like ladder, high scores, chat with strangers etc. - stuff that can only be implemented when there is a third layer (negotiator), a game lounge between the two phones.

The biggest advantage, on the other hand, is the independence of any server hosted by the developer. This is more important than you think. Developers come and go (out of business); their networks and servers going with them, rendering all the games running on the iPhones of their ex-clients useless in multiplayer. Or, there can "only" be some pauses or temporal breakdowns – as was the case with, for example, iMech by Flying Dino, which had days(!) of pauses, during which the game stopped to operate.

No such problems with direct IP-based solutions – they will work even after 100 years. (Assuming there will be IP-based networks then, of course.)

1.2.2 Lounge

Lounge-based remote play allows you to play anyone from anywhere in the world. The advantages are as follows:

a. If you don’t have a buddy around to play but / or would like to play a stranger (instead), you may want to go for this option. If you use a more popular game with more online players (e.g., Galcon and a lot more), you have a big chance to run into someone to play you.

b. Note that you can play your local buddies too, even if both of you are connected to the same Wi-Fi access point. This needs to be kept in mind when playing a game only offering remote (lounge)-based play but not local Wi-Fi (or Bluetooth) one.

Incidentally, note that, should you want to play your buddy only, I’ve elaborated on whether you can select your buddies to play in the lounge of the games (or, alternatively, invite him/her explicitly, based on his/her nickname). With most titles, manual opponent selection is possible. With the rest (that is, games not offering manual opponent selection but using automatic matching instead), you can still make sure the both of you join the multiplayer server at about the same time to maximize the chances of the server matching the two of you.

The inherent disadvantages of this approach are as follows:

a. As has also been explained with the direct IP scheme: When the lounge server is down, you won’t be able to play. Upon testing, I haven’t ever run into problems like that. This, however, doesn’t mean the case will definitely be the case after three or five years. Developers may exit developing and even supporting their existing games, including running their proprietary servers. That is, don’t take being able to play forever for granted. (This also means you should ask / force game developers adding some kind of local connectivity to their games – preferably BT-based so that it can be played anywhere.)

b. As the connection is generally routed through a lounge server (some games do try to build up a direct, much faster and more reliable connection between the two devices but it’s only a minority of the titles), the lag will be considerably more than with local games. This is why few for example first person shooters or racing games support internet (lounge-based) play – most of them are Wi-Fi (or, lately, BT) only – with them, even 300-400 ms lag can result in a totally unplayable game. (This is why the developers of Doom Classic have completely abandoned going the remote way.) No such problems exist with less demanding game genres like board games (chess and the like).

1.2.2.1 Fooling the iPhone into using cellular connections via 3D Unrestrictor

Some of the games (for example, the great arcade racing game Asphalt 5 by Gameloft) doesn’t work over cellular (GPRS / EDGE / UMTS / HSPA) connections when operating in remote lounge mode. A quick solution to this is explicitly configuring 3D Unrestrictor to make the operating system treat the given title as one that does allow cellular connections.

Please consult THIS for more info.

Note that some titles aren’t hackable. For example, Call of Duty: World At War: Zombies by Activision does support remote (lounge-based) play but only via a Wi-Fi connection. It’s not possible to make it work (at least as of version 1.0.0) over cellular ones.

2. Notification types

When playing remote games (that is, where your opponent isn’t necessarily in the same room as you), you may find it necessary to notify your buddy of your having done your turn (in a board / turn-based strategy game) or invited him/her for a game.

Sure, you can do this via the traditional approaches: IRC and other means of instant messaging, SMS, phonecall, Skype, e-mail etc. - there are several ways of notifying your buddies of their turn. However, the cleanest and most effective way to do this (which also makes sure you don’t have to add your temporary enemy in your IM app or flood your mailbox with mails telling you it’s your turn) is Push notification introduced by OS 3.

If you read my Instant Messaging (IM) bible, you become aware of the brand new and revolutionary feature of the new iPhone OS: Push. It lets you notified of certain events even when the phone is suspended (by, for example, pressing the Power button – this will only work via cellular connections, not Wi-Fi ones; that is, iPod touch push notification won’t work in this state). With IM apps, these can be, among other things, new messages sent to you by your buddies.

Some (unfortunately, not all) multiplayer games also incorporate Push notification. This lets the players send out game requests in real time that will surely be received pretty quickly. This also means you don’t need to use the traditional, manual ways (email, IM, giving a call etc.) of notifying your buddies of your invitation. Much cleaner, it involves much less effort on both (but, particularly, on the person that invites the other – no need to fire up an IM / mail client and enter your invitation etc.) sides and, as opposed to e-mail, it surely gets read by the invited buddy at once (or with some minutes later). That is, the person sending out the invitation can safely stay in the game: if his (her) buddy does want to play, he (she) will see him (her) joining the game in 1-2 minutes at most. The situation on the invited buddy’s side is equally easy: when an invitation arrives, he’ll be notified right away. Then, he (she) only needs to tap "Play" and will be immediately taken to the game. (Unfortunately, for example UNO doesn’t take you to the game started by your buddy – you must search it yourself. Nevertheless, this doesn’t really ruin the easiness and simplicity of the concept.)

Currently, very few games support Push notification: currently, of the tested games (this doesn’t necessarily mean I haven’t missed one or some!) UNO by Gameloft, the excellent musical instrument game Leaf Trombone: World Stage by Smule, the excellent and free poker app "Live Poker", some of the turn-based strategies like UniWar by Xpressed and Mecho Wars by Luc Bernard, board games like Chess Elite by 99Games, Chess / Words with Friends by Newtoy, StarPagga by Funsuma Games, Real Soccer 2010 by Gameloft etc.

An example screenshot of showing the system-level Push configuration dialog under Settings / Notifications:

(Here, "Racing" and "Vampires" are Storm8 titles.)

(BTW, the same screen can be seen at 3:17 in THIS Chess Elite video.)

Hope that, currently now that I’m recommending Push notification for multiplayer game developers, more of them follow suit and implement this functionality.

Let me show you some examples of how this works. First, let’s create a game (in UNO) and tap "Invite":

There, tap the buddies (here: Menne2) to invite. An invitation will be sent out to him; at the same time, on the inviter’s screen, "Waiting for Menne." will be displayed:

Your buddy’s iPhone (assuming it’s not switched entirely off [by pressing and holding the Power button and slide the "Power off?" slider], has cellular coverage and Push isn’t disabled), a new dialog will be shown telling you you’ve been invited for a game:

(Note that, here, "Menne2" should be the inviter instead. I didn’t want to swap iPhones on the sync cable and collect screenshots from two of them – instead of one -; this is why I show you a screenshot of an invitation coming from another iPhone and not the state of it.)

Just tap Play and, then, navigate to online play (again, UNO doesn’t automatically take you to the game created by your buddy – you need to find it manually) and select the game created:

Finally, note that, in order to make a certain UNO instance know of another player, you will be required to send a Friend request to your buddy and approve it from inside the "mailbox" at "Gameloft Live" (accessible from the main menu). These mails aren’t delivered to your regular e-mail address but will only be accessible here. (I don’t think this is the best [read: most newbie-friendly] solution: a regular e-mail with an online activation / "make friends" link would have been much easier.):

THIS video also shows Push notification in action. Note that Chess with Friends (as with the other multiplayer titles of the same developer) has always had a bit of delay (1-2 minutes) with push messages arriving. In this case, on the right phone, I make a move (after making sure I quit the game on the left) at around 0:55; the message only arrives at 4:25 to the left phone.

With regard to the already-linked Chess Elite demo, you can also see Push work. At 2:20, I’ve stopped Chess Elite running on the left iPhone. After making my turn on the right one (which was playing against the left iPhone), the Push message immediately arrived (at 2:27) to the left iPhone. I immediately restarted Chess Elite (on the left phone) and, then, tapped the newly-listed game in the "Your turn" section (there’s also a red "New notification" badge in the menu where it is so you’ll quickly find this from the main menu). At 2:42 it fetched (and displayed) the move that had been made on the right phone. After this, I exit Chess Elite on the right iPhone; nevertheless, for some reason, the Push notification doesn’t arrive on it (this is why I immediately checked System / Notifications in the video to see whether notifications are enabled both globally and in the given game). After realizing there’s some problem with receiving Push notifications on the right phone, I return to sending out Push messages from it instead: restart the game and make my move at 3:38 (exiting the left phone before so that you can see Push works). The left phone does receive the new message almost immediately (at 3:48). Note that the Push problem on the 3G I emphasized above is promised to have been fixed in the 10/8/2009 upgrade (my video was taken a little bit before that date).

I’ve produced another Push demo (see THIS); this time, showing Push working with UniWar, the great turn-based strategy. At 0:44, I exit the game on the left phone; on the right one, at 0:47, I finish my move (and, therefore, notify the left phone on its turn). Then, I suspend the phone to see whether I get Push messages in that state. I did – the UniWar icon received a "1" badge, showing there has been one incoming Push message. The sole reason for not having any audio feedback on the Push message arriving is because UniWar (as opposed to almost all other Push-capable applications and games – the only exception I know of is Rock Band by EA) only supports Badges but no Alerts / Sounds. This is why you’ll only notice you having a turn when you actively take a look at the SpringBoard home screen showing the UniWar startup icon.

3. Some of my favorite titles

First, let’s go over the official genres of Apple – I show you some of the best titles in each. This way, you can save yourself the time needed to take a really thorough look at my chart, which contains (almost) every multiplayer game ever released for the platform - as of 11/22/2009, 198 (!) - yes, almost 200!

3.1 Action

(Note that some common genres – first-person shooters and platformers – not having dedicated categories by Apple are mainly listed here.)

3.1.1 Bomber Online by Eurocenter

Should you not know what the Bomberman genre is all about, please check out THIS. There are a lot of online Bomberman Flash games too (for example THIS one), should you want to get known to the genre before deciding whether you’d like to purchase this game. HERE is a pretty nice, full (!) single-player review of the game.

I’d prefer this Bomberman clone over the other Bomberman clones (e.g., BOMBERMAN TOUCH 2 - Volcano Party by Hudson) because of the much better controls and the much more versatile lounge-based game (with online players always around).

3.1.2 Alive 4-ever by Meridian (iTunes, YouTube.)

This is a top-down (two-dimensional) game, supporting both local Wi-Fi and BT and up to four players, is one of the best shoot’m’up titles around with cooperative play (that is, you work together to eliminate the foes).

A French-language video review is HERE, English-language ones are HERE and HERE; trailer HERE. The probably most visited discussion thread dedicated to the game, the available weapons, strategies etc. is HERE.

3.1.3 Blades of Fury by Gameloft (iTunes, YouTube)

If you loved Street Figher in the nineties on either home computers or consoles, you’ll equally love Blades of Fury, which is quite much a visual feat.

Trailer HERE and HERE. A review HERE (unfortunately, it’s badly underexposed)

3.1.4 First-Person Shooters (FPS)

3.1.4.1 DOOM Classic by id Software (iTunes, Cooperative and Deathmatch YouTube videos)

An undoubtedly "retro" game. Retro also means you won’t really want to check it out it you dislike a game that is exactly the same as the original one – that is, visually not really something the iPhone is capable of. Nevertheless, not taking Call of Duty: World At War: Zombies by Activision and Eliminate into account (the latter is disliked by some people – see THIS if interested in discussions like this), there’re so few multiplayer-enabled First-Person Shooters on the platform (and the available ones – iFPS, Cube etc. – are so much worse) that you will still want to give this title a try.

There’s a single-player video HERE and HERE.

3.1.4.2 Call of Duty: World At War: Zombies by Activision (iTunes, YouTube)

Another great FPS title is COD: World At War: Zombies. If you have latest-generation hardware (but not an older one - it's plain slow on them), you may definitely want to check it out.

3.1.5 Flight Control by Firemint (iTunes, YouTube.)

This is one of the games you absolutely must check out. Basically, you need to control the route of landing airplanes without them crashing into each other. In addition to cooperative multiplayer, it also supports online high scores.

Single-player demo / review videos you might want to check out are HERE. HERE there’s a short one with tons of planes on-screen so that you can have an idea how it looks like when the screen is full of action.

Note that there are quite a few spin-offs of the same genre; for example, Harbor Master by Imangi Studios (which is also multiplayer-enabled; it, as opposed to the Firemint title, is plain parallel only, as opposed to the [better] cooperative approach). I, personally, consider Flight Control the best of the subgenre; that is, it should be the first title you should also check out.

3.1.6 iSamurai Bluetooth by Toy Kite Software (iTunes, YouTube)

This one is a fun accelerometer-based game; offers definitely more than other "simple" accelerator-based multiplayer "games" like Quick Draw Cowboy Gunfight by ACME Mobile Products - here, the accelerometer is not only used to track the quick change from being in a vertical position to horizontal, but also other positions, movements, strikes and blockings.

3.1.7 Hyper Puck by Kieffer Bros. (iTunes, YouTube)

(Note that, by default, this game is categorized in the Entertainment / Family / Arcade category. As I don’t know of any classic arcade game having Shufflepuck or the broader Air hockey, I took the liberty of re-categorizing it to the better-matching Action category.)

A recommended Shufflepuck (which belongs to the (broader) category Air hockey) clone is Hyper Puck.

The trailer / official demo video is HERE; a low-quality singleplayer demo HERE.

3.1.8 iNinja by Geppetto Inc. (iTunes; lite; YouTube)

A very decent Air Hockey / Shufflepuck title, particularly in single player.

Trailer HERE, another one HERE. Both mostly concentrate on single-player gaming; nevertheless, the latter, at 0:55, also shows multiplayer for some seconds. As you can see, in multiplayer, there aren't obstacles; still, it's great fun against a human opponent, just like the comparable Hyper Puck by Kieffer Bros introduced in the previous section.

Note that the free version (iTunes link) is perfectly playable in multiplayer - as opposed to most other titles.

3.1.9 Touch Hockey FS5 by FlipSide5 (iTunes, YouTube)

An excellent Air Hockey title also having a lite version. The only disadvantage of it is the ads displayed for about 10 sec when starting each and every game.

A single-player demo HERE (unfortunately, technically, isn’t of better quality).

3.1.10 DinoSmash Online by Eurocenter (iTunes, YouTube)

This is a strictly online, great 2D platformer game much better than any of the comparable alternatives (WiFi Warfare by Jesse Starks or NanoMechs by Theorian).

An in-game video HERE and HERE.

3.1.11 StarPagga by Funsuma Games (iTunes, YouTube)

A 3D space shooter title. Not recommended if you only have a previous-generation (pre-3G S) phone.

A gameplay video (without commentary) HERE.

3.1.12 MiniSquadron by MrFungFung (iTunes, YouTube)

A great dogfighting game.

3.2 Adventure games

It seems many of the game developers don’t really know what "adventure" really means. Let me cite the Wiki: "An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story that is driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenges such as combat."

Unfortunately, none of the multiplayer games fulfill this definition. (And the ones that do contain some kind of puzzle solving are either traditional Color Matching, Puzzle, Strategy or RPG games. Some are totally miscategorized; for example, iMech by Flying Dino, which is neither a RPG nor an Adventure but more of an Action or Arcade game.) This is why I don’t list any titles here. This, however, doesn’t mean there aren’t any (single-player(!)) adventures for the iPhone. There are; for example, Myst, Secret of the Monkey Island, Transylvania Adventure etc.

3.3 Arcade

As opposed to the previous category (adventure), there are numerous titles really belonging to this category. (In a nutshell (citing Wiki): "An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, typically installed in businesses such as restaurants, public houses, video arcades, and Family Entertainment Centers. Most arcade games are redemption games, merchandisers (such as Claw crane), video games or pinball machines.")

Note that there definitely is an overlap between the Action category (see above) and this one. I definitely consider for example 1942 (Wiki page HERE) clones like Siberian Strike by Gameloft belonging to this category (more than Action) as 1942 is a well-established arcade category.

3.3.1 Siberian Strike by Gameloft (iTunes, YouTube)

This cooperative (you work together with your buddy eliminating your foes on the same screen) multiplayer 1942 clone is definitely worth checking out, particularly at the current price ($1).

Note that while, technically, are definitely better 1942 clones (for example, SkyForce Reloaded by Infinite Dreams (lite version HERE)), this is the only one to have multiplayer.

Trailers HERE and HERE; a review HERE. Note that the latter states the game is very prone to locking up; I haven’t encountered problems like this with the current version(s).

3.3.2 Pong clones

3.3.2.1 Pong - iPhone Edition by Jonah Grant (iTunes, YouTube)

If you’re really into vintage arcade games (and, particularly, Pong – Wiki page HERE), then, this title may be of interest to you, particularly because of the low price tag and the versatile (you can use it anywhere, unlike local Wi-Fi) Bluetooth support.

Single player review HERE.

3.3.2.2 SteamPong by RIVE Entertainment (iTunes, HERE)

It uses a slightly different (almost 2D) approach to Pong, adding some twists like being able to touch the ball more than one times a turn to get bonuses.

3.3.2.3 3-D Vector Ball by Gyrocade (iTunes, YouTube)

Of the 3D Pong clones, I recommend this title the most.

A review HERE.

3.3.3 Office Tanks by ET NETERA (iTunes, YouTube)

Should you like the original (1980) namco title (original video HERE), you will definitely like this reimplementation too.

Note that this title isn’t officially in the Arcade category - only the definitely weaker Tank War - Bluetooth Battle by 6tags.com is. (I, nevertheless, took the liberty to put it in here.) The reason for this is that it involves a lot of strategy too (capturing bases to increase tank production), particularly in games with more than two players, while the 6tags.com game is more of a "just" a plain reimplementation of the original, strategy-less idea.

A quick single-player demo is HERE. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really elaborate on the importance of capturing flags particularly on larger, multiplayer maps.

Quality Apps

Grimstock — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:33:53 GMT

I just got an iPod Touch as a gift and am trying to learn about it. I've been a long time Axim owner and have followed the great advice at Axim/Mobility Site to find brilliant applications from SBSH, Ilium, SoftMaker, PhatWare, Resco, and other software sources. They have made my Axim a brilliant device I use all day long.

As I try out the iPod Touch, I'm finding a number of entertaining applications that are useful diversions, but only a handful of serious applications. A couple I can find from those vendors I already know who make Windows Mobile software, but I get lost in the host of titles at the Apple App store when I search for others. Most of what I see seems fairly light and of very limited use. All the weather applications, for example, come nowhere near what SBSH Pocket Weather can do; and I see nothing even close to SoftMaker Office.

The exceptions I've found so far are a couple of wallet apps from Ilium and SBSH; Pocket Informant; NPR News; and the Oxford dictionaries.

I'd appreciate hearing from the experienced Apple users who could point me to their favorite, significant applications that can make the iPod Touch (or iPhone) an indispensable working device.

TUTORIAL: listen to Commodore 64 (SID) music on your iPhone!

Menneisyys — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:36:10 GMT

So far, I didn’t want to write a full article on listening to the music clips (SID files) of the legendary Commodore 64 home computer (dedicated Wiki page HERE). Now that the latest, just-released (brand new) version of the dedicated player, Sid Player Pro has greatly (!!!) reduced the power consumption and become pretty much usable on previous-generation iDevices (iPhone 2G/3G and iPod Touch G1/G2) as well, I find it necessary to, at last, dedicate a full article to the question.

There are several ways of listening to C64 music on the iPhone. Your choice should depend on the following factors:
- Do you want to pay for the music or the player? If you don’t, then, go with either the radio streaming approach (with a free client like FStream) and/or manually downloading MP3 files and importing them to iTunes.
- Do you want the music to be played back in background even on a non-jailbroken (read: no Backgrounder to put execution in background) iPhones? Then, you’ll need to use either standalone, pre-recorded MP3 files or a radio streamer app that is able to pass playback to the built-in iPod (currently, only ooTunes and Pocket Tunes Radio support the latter).
- Do you want absolutely the best battery life? Then, stay away from both streaming radio apps. If, in addition, you only have a previous-generation iPhone or iPod touch, you’ll want to stay away from Sid Player Pro too. (The latter isn’t really an issue on the latest-generation Apple models – while SID Player Pro still consumes considerably more power than the iPod application while playing back pre-recorded MP3 files, it no longer chews through the battery.)

Let’s take a closer look at the given choices.

1. Using a radio streamer application

Should you want to stick with a free solution (and you have the necessary bandwidth / battery life isn’t a concern), you might want to look at some radio streamer application.

For example, the great and free (!) FStream has the station “Radio 6581” in (official homepage HERE). It’s one of the best radios. In addition to “real” 6581 tunes, it often has reworked versions of original 6581 tunes; for example, just now (11/7/2009 11:16 PM CET), Joined Forces - Last Ninja 1, Part 1 and Thomas Detert - The Space are being broadcast, both great to listen to.

There are a lot of other SID radio streaming stations; the SHOUTcast listing is HERE. Please do consult my radio app bible for more info on how you can add these links to your favorite radio app, should its built-in station directory lack them.

2. Pre-recorded songs for purely offline playback

Without doubt the most battery-friendly way of playing back original C64 music is getting them as MP3 / AAC files. These are not only strictly offline (no need to download / stream anything in realtime), but also can be played back in the built-in iPod application – unlike the other ways of playing back C64 music. (Except for streamed contents in MP3 / AAC when a player is used that supports passing these streams to the iPod app for playback.)

Two kinds of pre-recorded music are available: original and enhanced version (the latter played on “real” instruments). Let’s start with the former.

2.1 Music played back on original gear and recorded into MP3’s

Probably the biggest archive (currently, with 51491 songs) of pre-recorded (mp3) music is HERE. Just click the any of the R2/R4/R5 links on the left to download an MP3.

Note that there are quite a lot of other archives but, AFAIK, none of them are as wide as the above; for example, THIS.

Should you need demo music instead of game music, take a look at HERE. Currently, this site has about 380 MP3’s.

2.2 Enhanced music played back using more advanced instruments (or computers)

There are quite a few reworked C64 music titles. For example,

- C64 Orchestra (video, for example,

HERE

); their CD is also available in iTunes (see THIS).

- Chris H�lsbeck’s CD’s

etc.

3. Playing back original SID files

Should you want to
- avoid the hassle of having to download pre-recorded MP3 files one-by-one and you don’t need their advantages (lower battery usage and background playback without having to jailbreak),
- avoid using any radio streaming app and
- avoid purchasing e.g. the C64 Orchestra CD from iTunes,

you’ll want to go for SIDPlayer Pro (iTunes link HERE). It only costs $2 (up from the intro price of $1).

While the previous versions were hard to recommend if battery life or device responsiveness when running in the background is a concern, the brand new, just-relased version of SIDPlayer Pro indeed delivers, battery life-wise. On the 3G S, I’ve run a three-hour-long test to find out the power consumption when suspended (and the oscilloscope not enabled). It’s pretty low: about 6.5%/hour. On the 3G, I “only” measured CPU usage (with the AppStore app “Benchmark” and running the player in background, while, in the foreground, running Benchmark). With the previous version, the free CPU time was around 35%; with the new one, about 55% (and, with visualization enabled, about 52%). This is pretty great an improvement!

(the official update page of the just-released version of the app)

It also frees you from having to download MP3 files by hand – and it has access to the world’s biggest and greatest (native) SID collection, the High Voltage SID Collection. Note that the latest version also added support for the All-Time Top C64 Game Tunes (Skytopia Top64.)

A bit of warning: as of the current (2.1.49) of Sid Player Pro, it "only" supports version 49 of the HVSC compilation, while the most current one is v51. As you can see in the v51 release notes, you won't have access to some 900+ songs added in about the last half a year. If your favourite ones are among them, consider getting them from somewhere else (e.g., as MP3 files).

Major breakthrough: decent (!) radio stream recording added to Pocket Tunes + sale!

Menneisyys — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:56:57 GMT

(NOTE: I dedicate a full, separate article to the new version to gain as much attention as possible as 1. It has really groundbreaking features 2. the sale will end soon. Note that you may still want to read my all-in-one roundup Everything you'll ever need to know about listening to radio on the iPhone.)

So far, no radio program (except for the free and, otherwise, pretty limited FStream) could record radio streams. With the just-released version 5.4 of Pocket Tunes this has changed: now, you can record your stuff. What is more, in the original (highly compressed) format – unlike FStream, which uses CD-quality recording without any compression, taking up about 500-600 Mbytes an hour.

(the official AppStore “what’s changed” screen)

(recording a 128 kbps WMA stream)

1. Differences between FStream and Pocket Tunes

1.1 Recording format

Most importantly, Pocket Tunes records the files in their original format (AAC(+), MP3 and WMA). There isn’t any metadata recorded in addition to the pure audio, though.

1.2 Finding the recorded files

Unfortunately, Pocket Tunes (as with FStream - or, for that matter, the great Web browser iCab Mobile when it comes to the downloaded files it saves) stores its files in the home directory (under “Documents”), which can’t be directly accessed on a non-jailbroken phone – as opposed to some other apps like YourTube, which puts them under Media/Downloads/YourTube. Unlike FStream (or iCab Mobile) where you can access the files from a separate computer via the built-in Web server (accessible via More / Web : Web Management / Server Activation: Activated in FStream and [Settings icon / ] Export / Import / Start Server in iCab Mobile), you can’t access the recordings via Wi-Fi either, should you want to avoid jailbreaking your phone to gain direct access.

You’ll want to read THIS for a tutorial on how you can find the home directory of Pocket Tunes. Just enter this directory and, under that, in Documents/PtRecordings, you’ll find your recordings.

1.3 Filenames

The filenames in Pocket Tunes are plain ascending numbers (1, 2 etc.) and no easily readable file contains the station name and the timestamp of the recording. That is, if you would like to know the time of the recording / the station, you’ll need to fire up Pocket Tunes and go to the new “My Recording” station directory. An example screenshot of it:

(FStream allows for renaming the records to anything.)

1.4 OGG recording

Unfortunately, Pocket Tunes doesn’t support OGG recording. It does record a file but it’s unplayable. This means you still must use FStream to record OGG streams – into, of course, uncompressed (that is, very large) files. Hope the developers of PTunes come up with at least an uncompressed record option to remedy the situation.

Fortunately, FStream doesn’t consume much power when continuously recording OGG either. In my tests (under exactly the same circumstances as with testing Pocket Tunes’ battery consumption in Section 2 below), it produced about the same power consumption figure (5%/hour for THIS stream) as Pocket Tunes playing back (and recording) a 64 kbps AAC+ (NOT HE-AACv2!) stream.

1.5 Fast forward / rewind

FStream doesn’t offer any kind of fast forward / rewind functionality when playing back previous recordings. Pocket Tunes does. While it doesn’t have a slider (unlike a decent multimedia player) for random positioning, it has two arrows to the left/right of the main control area in this playback mode, which quickly skip / rewind 15 seconds upon every tap. This is also shown in the following screenshot:

2. Power consumption

I’ve pretty thoroughly tested the battery usage of enabled recording. I have some great news: simultaneously recording a stream will result in no additional battery use at all – as opposed to some other apps also using the file system to implement time shifting.

With a 1.FM station (AAC+ 64k), streaming over Wi-Fi, the two cases resulted in exactly the same 5.5%/hour battery usage (starting from 100%) on a 3G S.

3. HE-AACv2

Note that Pocket Tunes doesn’t support HE-AACv2 by default. Nevertheless, there’s a codec meant for it; it needs to be purchased from inside the app. It costs $3. While I did try, I haven’t managed to purchase it – I’ve received some error messages when trying to initiate purchasing. (Needless to say: much as my phone is – of course! – jailbroken, my copy of Pocket Tunes isn’t pirated – as can also be seen in the first screenshot above.) Some screenshots showing this:

Upon encountering a HE-AACv2 stream, Pocket Tunes automatically offers the in-app purchase of the decoder

If you tap “Show more information”, you’re taken here with the built-in Web browser

(second page of the same Web page)

This is what is shown when you tap the Buy button – again, my copy is legit (I’ve paid $10 for it); that is, probably it just dislikes jailbroken phones, which is VERY bad practice.

4. Sale!

Currently, Pocket Tunes is offered at $7. The developer states it will soon be raised to $10 (again).

5. Verdict

Now with the new recording feature (and also the recently added background playback one), Pocket Tunes has become one of the best choices. I can only recommend it.

TUTORIAL: quickly finding in which directory a given application resides on iPhone

Menneisyys — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:05:31 GMT

There can be several cases when you want to access the home (installation) directories of some of your installed (non-Cydia) applications. This can be pretty hard as the directory containing them /private/var/mobile/Applications, has cryptic subdirectory names.

There may be several reasons for doing so:

- You can have direct access to the configuration files of a given app (for example, the data files of your third-party Web browser for quick manual editing to quickly import / export favorites when needed) (Note: as far as the best Web browser, iCab Mobile is concerned, it has mass favorite export/import capabilities via a wireless connection)

- You’d like to transfer the files saved from, say, the great Web browser iCab Mobile or the radio streams recorded by the radio streamer apps FStream or the just-released version of Pocket Tunes. (Note: the former two apps allow for accessing these files via a wireless connection via their built-in Web server; see [Settings icon / ] Export/Import / Start Server in iCab Mobile and More / Web : Web Management / Server Activation: Activated in FStream.)

- You’d like to add additional games to, say, the great emulator C64. (Other, exclusively Cydia-based emulators developed / ported by for example zottd use a directory under /private/var/mobile/Media/; that is, with them, you don’t need to hunt for the home directory. Note that Cydia-based programs install themselves under /private/var/stash/Applications instead)

There are several ways of combating this problem.

One is just transferring the entire directory structure under /private/var/mobile/Applications to your desktop computer and there either use a filesystem search tool (e.g., Alt-F7 in Total Commander) or just dumping the directory list, including subdirectories, with a dir /s >dirlist command. Copying the entire directory structure, unfortunately, is very time-consuming and keeping it synchronized is also a nightmare (you need to manually find the new directories of recently-added programs and transfer them yourself if you stick with Total Commander’s T-PoT; if you use other means of directory synchronization, the situation may be somewhat better).

A much better choice is just generating the directory list on your phone and transfer in to your desktop for quick directory name lookups.

To make your life much easier, I’ve made a video of how this is done. It’s

HERE

(click the link to see the video!). In a nutshell:

1. Install MobileTerminal from Cydia:

(this isn’t in the video)

2. Start it

3. Enter “cd Applications”; make sure you capitalize the first A. (Alternatively, you can use the built-in “Tab” support by just entering e.g. cd Ap and, then, make a swiping gesture on the screen towards the lower right corner. I also do this on the video to avoid having to enter the entire directory name..

4. Enter ls -R >dirlist (you can use any other name instead of "dirlist"; for example, in the screenshot below, I used "diirr"). There are two ways of accessing the > character. One is just using the on-screen keyboard (as usual): tap .123 and, then, the #+= button. If, on the other hand, you would like to use MobileTerminal more (for other tasks as well), you’ll want to learn its shortcut menu. To get the > character from there, just tap and hold the screen and, when the square context menu (the one with the three times three rows/columns) is displayed, without releasing your finger, slide down to the bottom right icon (;~)). When the contents of the underlying context menu changes to simple characters, just slide your finger to the top right corner (to > ). Then, release your finger.

A shot of the command:

Note that in the last few seconds of the demo video linked to above, I show how this is done.

5. Wait until it finishes running.

6. Transfer the newly-created file (in this case, /private/var/mobile/Applications/dirlist) to your desktop.

7. With an in-file search tool (e.g. F3 in Total Commander), search for the program name (without spaces); for example, “PocketTunes”. You’ll see something like this:

Look for the long hexadecimal number preceding all this; here, it’s “B5C31D23-057B-48BF-9165-D98481F104F2” (it's on the top of the window in this case). Once you know this, it’ll be very easy to locate the given directory; for example, if you use the great T-PoT plug-in with Total Commander, all you need to go to \private\var\mobile\Applications\, hold down Shift and Alt and enter B5. Then, the cursor will directly be positioned to the first occurrence of keys starting with B5. If there are more than one keys starting with B5, you can go on entering more characters; for example, B5C3.

Now, you’ve found the app directory you looked for :)

Rhinoskin

Oakley — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:59:29 GMT

I owned the aluminum Rhinoskin cases for both my Axim X5 and X50v and would drop at least $50 to get something like that for my 3Gs. Assuming I don't win Chris' Otterbox of course =P I shot an email the the Saunders customer service ppl asking about it but the website looks a little dated so maybe they folded.

Has anyone seen a similar product available? I worked at Home Depot back in my Axim years and carried my pda ultra-hip holster style. That case took beatings against forklifts, you name it. Anyone else a fan of them?

Misc news: Web browsers, IM, radio apps, multiplayer games, emulators etc.

Menneisyys — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:06:27 GMT

There have been quite a few major updates, announcements, releases lately, since my publishing my previous news catch-up article slightly more than a month ago. Let me show you some of the most important ones.
(NOTE: I’ve already published some of these pieces of news in my all-in-one roundups and “bibles”. That is, if you do follow them (you should if you really want to know what’s happening on the iPhone scene), you already know of them. If you don’t but, in the future, would like to get notified of new releases / versions of a given application / game genre, don’t forget to subscribe to the given articles. It’s very easy.)

1. Web browsing news (also see the iPhone Web browser roundup): the two most important pieces of news is the release of
- The vastly enhanced Perfect Browser 2.5, which, at last, includes some great functionality that, so far, not even iCab Mobile supported (nevertheless, see my remark below on the just-released iCab Mobile 2.0)
- iCab Mobile 2.0 released today, introducing a LOT of goodies. A must buy!

2. Instant messaging news (see The one and only REAL iPhone Instant Messenger roundup): there have been several major updates:
- IM+, one of the best titles, received in-app purchasable (English only) speech recognition, text copy capabilities and the ability to send out Push mail to Gmail, Hotmail and, probably, now even Yahoo.
- Fring has also received some major updates; for example, support for links, copy/paste, voice improvements etc. (Note that, while it does have some speech / talk improvements, it still is unable to talk to the latest MSN clients)
- eBuddy, the free client, has just received a lot of goodies
- so did BeejiveIM, one of my favourite IM apps; the new features mostly concern group chats and showing multiple chats in one tab.

3. Radio stream receiver news (also see Everything you'll ever need to know about listening to radio on the iPhone):
- Pocket Tunes Radio has (following ooTunes, which implemented this kind of functionality first) received background playback capabilities with streams compatible with the built-in QuickTime player; that is, MP3 or AAC (but NOT AAC+)
- Some smaller bugfixes for Time-Shift Radio and Tuner2 Hi-Fi Radio
- Clock Radio has received, among other things, a sleep timer

4. Multiplayer gaming news (also see the iPhone Multiplayer Gaming Bible): now, there has been a LOT of improvemens and tons of new releases/articles.

First and foremost, I’ve added dynamic behavior to the main chart. Now, you can disable both full columns and also games fulfilling a certain criteria, making browsing the almost 200(!) games much easier.

Second, several “big names” have been released:
- DOOM Classic (FPS; with local 4-player multiplayer)
- Eliminate (FPS; with remote multiplayer with up to 8 players)
- Rock Band (rhythm / music game; appraised by TouchArcade a lot); another, similar game is Metallica Revenge.
- ATV Offroad (a GREAT motocross racer; local multiplayer up to 4 players)
- Adrenaline Golf Online (a very nice golf game)
- Sniper Vs Sniper: Online (a strictly online sniper game; players tend to love it)
- Two new kart games (Shrek Kart by Gameloft and Cocoto Kart Online; both are considered better than the previously existing Krazy Kart Racers by Konami)
- Fifa 10
- World Series of Poker Hold'em Legend by Glu (many state that, as strictly a poker game, it’s considerably better than previous titles. However, there’re few online players; hope this will change as more and more people start playing it online)
- Asphalt5 (a VERY good racing game; now, it also supports online opponents; I haven’t encountered major lags)
- Monster Ball by Full Control ApS (a decent puzzle game with remote play with, currently, few players; still, it’s well worth the current introductory price, $1)
- Cliffed by IUGO (a quick action game with remote only play with quite a few players)
etc.

Several previously existing titles have received multiplayer support in updates:
- Mecho Wars (TBS with remote multiplayer)
- Quantum Collapse (RTS with remote multiplayer)
- Warfare Incorporated (RTS with remote multiplayer)
etc.

Third, I’ve added at least a hundred high-quality (HD video, stereo audio, controlled exposure and focus, unlike most of the other iPhone videos out there) multiplayer demo video to YouTube. These are strictly multiplayer videos; in most cases, you’ll also want to watch the single player ones to for example see how one needs to play against the AI (when applicable; that is, the given game can be played against a computer opponent) . Do NOT come telling me “hey, your videos suck because they don’t show single player modes”. Yes, I know that – the point of these videos is simply NOT showing you single player.

5. Remote desktop controlling news (see Everything you will ever want to know about the remote desktop controllers on the iPhone) (note that I published this article after the publication of the last Misc news roundup; here, I only list the changes since the original publication, not 09/27!)
- The Mochasoft RDP client received Windows 7-compliance; now, if you in no way can pay for your RDP client, this may turn out to be one of the best (still, I’d still shell out the $30 for either the super-excellent Jaadu apps or LogMeIn)
- LogMeIn Ignition received far more special keys and a new “Compressed” color mode. (Note that it still doesn’t support file transfer / accented characters / audio transfer / clipboard synchronization) / real full screen mode without anything on the screen.)

6. Game console / computer emulation news
- after a very long (almost two months!) silence, the developers of the (from AppStore removed) C64 announced 1.1 is being approved (see THIS for my review of 1.0). It, in addition to the original titles, has three additional games, International Soccer, International Basketball and International Tennis. (Also note that I’ve created three multiplayer demo videos of the Windows Mobile version of the same emulator, developed by the same folks; please see the links HERE, in the UPDATE (10/31/2009) section.
- Zodttd, the developer of several iPhone emulator ports, announced he’s working on a Nintendo 64 emulator port for the latest-generation iPhones and iPod touches. (Sorry, no joy for even iPhone 3G or iPod touch G2 users, let alone the first-generation versions.) Please see THIS for more info.
- A certain ZX Spectrum emulator has also been released in the AppStore. It was simply a disaster and just a rip of an open source project; fortunately, Apple, in the meantime, has removed it. (So did the developer; it can no longer be found on their homepage.)

7. As far as jailbreaking your 3.1.2 iPhone / iPod touch is concerned, you will want to follow the links HERE, at the bottom. Note that, in the meantime, blacksn0w has been released, which is (at last) capable of unlocking the new, 05.11.07 baseband. It’s available HERE for download. blackra1n has also been updated to RC3; with some other fixes, it also contains blacksn0w; that is, you won’t need to separately jailbreak and unlock your program, you can do all this in one step, using only one executable (that is, blackra1n). Much-much easier than with the Dev-team’s old approach!

The Towers Trap Strategy Guide

Menneisyys — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:53:53 GMT

First, let me start with a quick review & comparison:

Well – finally it’s here! My favorite tower defense game for Windows Mobile has just been approved to the Apple mobile platforms. What is more, it only costs $1, which is quite a steal for this game – particularly if you take into account that I paid some $10 for the Windows Mobile version – when it was at a 50% sale (the regular price was, IIRC, $20).

In my opinion, this title is one of the best (if not THE best) tower defense titles for the iPhone. I might be a bit biased, of course – after all, I’ve played the WinMo version quite a lot before any game in the genre has been released for the iPhone and, consequently,

iPhone Note: the following tutorial is based on the Windows Mobile / desktop version (released in Summer 2008). The iPhone version isn’t at all different when it comes to the available tower types, game modes and the creeps. The only (slight) difference is in the operation: it’s far more finger-friendly, as opposed to the Windows Mobile (and, of course, the touchscreen-less desktop Windows / Symbian) version.

First, now, it’s far easier (and safer!) top upgrade / sell towers. In the previous versions, you needed to pay special attention not to tap / click the wrong side of the (very small) tower upgrade / selling interface. The iPhone, on the other hand, a much bigger area of the screen is dedicated to upgrading / selling as can be seen for example in the following (8k) screenshot (look for the 100 (upgrade price) / 40 (selling price) icons in the lower right corner):

That is, tapping (selecting) the wrong icon is much- much harder. This means accidentally selling a tower, which, when there is a massive surge of incoming creep attack, can have lethal consequences – remember you can’t place a newly-purchased tower when there’re any creeps over the position you’re going to place it.

Note that there are two ways of placing a new tower. First, if you start dragging in the new towers from the bottom-most screen area. Then, your finger won't cover the place you're going to drop the tower – it’ll be displayed about an inch (2-3 cm’s) above your finger. This, however, doesn't work with the bottommost two or three rows on the map; there, you need to tap the final place without dragging. This can, sometimes, result in misplacing if you don't tap-and-hold (but quickly tap instead) and, while holding the screen, look for the colored bars moving around on the X / Y axis showing the final placement of the tower.

As you can see in the screenshot below, Web high scores are also implemented:

(a 8k screenshot; I’m also on the list ;) )

Speed-wise, unlike on Windows Mobile when running on high-resolution (VGA) devices (as opposed to low-resolution QVGA ones), even the 3G (let alone the 3G S) runs the game just fine and you’ll only encounter severe slowdowns if you let some 15-20 waves of creep on the field at the same time. When not doing so (that is, at most, letting 2-3 waves of creep on the field at the same time), the game remains perfectly playable – unlike on Windows Mobile and VGA devices.

Note that there are some (slight) changes in the game limits too. For example, the 8k game now “only” has 81 enemy waves as can also be seen in the following screenshot (showing my having beaten the AI on the iPhone 3G):

Incidentally, this is how my set-up looked in the last wave:

All in all, my existing WinMo / desktop PC / Symbian strategy guide will be just fine with the Apple version too – taking the differences outlined above into account. Here it is:

Towers Trap Strategy Guide

In my latest Misc News collection, I’ve already recommended Towers Trap, a brand new game on two mobile (Windows Mobile and Symbian S60) and desktop Windows platforms. GameZoneProject‘s official page is HERE. No matter what platform you have, I really-REALLY recommend giving the trial a try and play through the (initial) tutorial. (Again, you’ll have text rendering problems on VGA Windows Mobile devices). I’m pretty sure you’ll like the game.

In this strategy guide, I give you a far better and more thorough introduction to the game than the demo tutorial of the game. This includes explaining the difference between the available weapon types, the enemy (the “creeps” ), how the maze should be constructed etc. That is, first, make sure you play through the demo. After this, either start the Easy mode - or the 8k one so that you actually have a chance against the creeps. In a nutshell: creeps, your enemies, enter from the top and left. They must be stopped from reaching the other side. If they do, you lose lives. You only have 50 lives to start with, meaning you can only let 49 creeps reach the other side before the end of the game, which, at least in the 8k mode, consists of 80 waves of creep invasion.

The game is very well playable on touchscreen-enabled mobile platforms (and, of course, desktop Windows with mouse / stylus). On touchscreen-less ones like Microsoft Smartphone (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) or Symbian S60v3, playing the game is a little bit more complicated as the cursor moves pretty slow through the field. Hope a future version adds hotkeys for quickly jumping for example half a screen in a direction (utilizing the currently not used buttons). On the other hand, these platforms support quick weapon selection (using the numbers).

Now, let’s take a look at how the weapons can / should be used.

Weapons at our disposal

Sniper. Very useful, ranged, anti-ground&air, non-area-damage (non-splash) weapon with multiple functionalities. In the beginning of the game, it’s what you’ll need to buy (unless you play in the 8k mode) to successfully defend yourself against at least the first few waves of creeps until you can purchase more advanced weapons like Shocks and, even better, Earthquakes and/or Cannons.

However, its usage doesn’t end at this! It’s not just an early game weapon. Actually, I’ve found it much more useful than the Cannon & Air combo when talking about ranged weapons. (That is, I’ve lost almost all of my 8k games when I’ve gone mass-Cannon & Air, unlike with mass-Snipers. Both using the recommended three-wide vertical structures, mostly Earthquakes being outside and Cannons / Airs / Snipers inside to be protected from the lockdown of Ice creeps.

Rocket Launchers. (Referred to as Luncher.) Much better (almost twice as long) initial range than those of Snipers. It’s also somewhat stronger. However, it costs double the price and can’t be used against air opponents.

Cannon. This very expensive, (only) anti-ground weapon has pretty low (2) damage and moderate range (between that of Sniper and Rocket Launcher).

Shock. While it’s pretty weak (5) and has as bad a range as Sniper, it has a very useful feature: it slows down all creeps it manages to shoot at for quite a lot of time. This is essential. However, as it’s mostly because of this (pretty much permanent) side-effect that it’s worth using and, otherwise, has low damage, I don’t recommend going for mass-deployment. In most cases, 10-14 will be sufficient even in end-games: 4-5 Shocks at both entrances and, if you have a long (ground) path, some additional Shocks when the initial shocking effect is eliminated.

This only anti-air weapon, Air, is much stronger (strength: 20 vs. 8) than the other anti-air-capable one, Sniper and has a much bigger range (10 vs. 6). However, in practice, I’ve found going the mass-Sniper (with some Shocks, placed at both entrances, to slow them down right at entering the field) route better in games. Remember: if you absolutely don’t use Airs and go the mass-Sniper route, it’s only the last two tides of creep airplane ships that may have a chance to get past of your defense (in 8k games).

Earthquake is an anti-ground weapon only. You will want to go the (mass-) Earthquake route as soon as possible as it has excellent splash (that is, damaging several creeps at the same time) damage (70; compare this to the 2 of the Cannon, the 8 of Sniper or 10 of Rocket Launcher). Its range isn’t very good (6) and upgrading it is very expensive (compared to, say, Snipers); therefore, you’ll want to place them to the creep path as closely as possible, while backing them up (mostly against the icy opponents) with Snipers and, possibly, some (very few) Cannons to easily get rid of closely-packed creeps / Shocks to make sure the initial slowdown / shock delivered to the creeps is safely repeated.

Radar. This is a passive structure with the only aim of showing invisible creeps. As is described below, in the “Enemy creeps” section, in general, it suffices to place only two or three of them (fully upgraded) onto the battlefield. Note that the icy creeps also block Radars; during this, invisible creeps will creep in undetected. Therefore, make sure you protect them in the same way as ranged weapons behind Earthquakes.

The (initial) stats of all these weapons is presented in the stats area:

This shows the strength in the top left corner (10 in this case), build cost (20) and range (10; bottom left).

Enemy creeps

The most notable creeps you need to pay particular attention to:

The bombs, , have the bad habit of jumping over empty corners like the following:

The solution is not leaving any empty corners on the field; always use “covered” or “filled” corners like this:

or this:

The satellites, , are very fast. Shocks are essential for slowing them down.

The airplanes, , are the only air enemies. In my 8k practice, I’ve found that while “simple” Snipers deal less considerably damage to them, even a battalion of 8-10 upgraded Airs (the dedicated anti-air weapon), placed in the center of the gaming field, won’t stop at least the last two, most powerful tides of then-superstrong airplanes. Just putting at least four columns of Snipers and one column (as recommended) of Shocks (in the entrance) will almost completely stop even the last two tides of them.

When I tried placing a massive amount of Airs in the center of the battlefield, I generally lost my 8k games because it’s very important to have as many anti-ground ranged weapons in there . These means, most preferably, Earthquakes backed up (where ice can’t affect them) Snipers as Rocket Launchers can’t be used for anti-air and Cannons, while excellent against enemies coming in a bunch, aren’t as powerful as the mass Earthquake + Sniper combo.

The yellow guys, , come in a group as in . This means Cannons (which do splash damage affecting very adjacent enemies) and, to a lesser degree, Earthquakes are especially useful against them.

The invisible folks, , make it necessary to build Radars on the field. Fortunately, splash damage done by Cannon / Earthquake is effective against them even when invisible if there are visible enemies (very) close to them. I recommend putting two radars in the two entrances (and upgrading them entirely) and another one in the lower right corner to get rid of the remaining ones.

The boss (a black ball - remember the one - see for example THIS - in Epyx’ Impossible Mission?) is worth trying to eliminate at any rate as it gives at least 100 points. That is, try not to bring it to the field with the other enemies so that all your weapons can shoot at it. Also, if the field is doesn’t have many other creeps making it hard to guarantee you can build the tower back, use the tricks like quickly altering the path of these balls by quickly removing a tower - and, when the have come sufficiently close, re-building it. With a loss of 2 dollars a time (if you use a non-upgraded Sniper for the trick), you can give the AI a hard time and keep the two bosses in the maze for quite long, until they indeed get destroyed.

Finally, Ice, , is by far the worst enemy: it disables all kinds of weapons (even Radars!) in its close vicinity. A very good counter-measure is not using columns of single or even two weapons, but - horizontally - group your weapons into groups of three. The two external weapons should be Earthquakes and the inner one a Sniper. The majority of my screenshots show exactly this setup. This way, even when the Ice creeps disable the outer Earthquakes, the inner Sniper will still be able to shoot at them. Nevertheless, be prepared to see some of them pass even the strongest weapons. Fortunately, this will only be an issue with the last about two waves - at least in 8k games, if you quickly build up your structures - not leaving out the three-wide walls of weapons as can be seen in the following screenshot:

(Note that the full-screen screenshots have all been taken on a desktop PC to make my life easier (compared to all the hassles of taking screenshots on phones...). The game looks exactly the same on VGA devices. On QVGA ones, the sprites aren't high-res and the non-active (game) area is much smaller.)

An example screenshot of showing these creatures locking down the nearby towers (showing a massive attack; that is, swamping the maze on purpose. Of course, you won’t want to do anything like this, particularly not at the end of the game, where not even splash weapons like Earthquakes or Cannons will be able to destroy most of them)

Here, locked-down towers are white.

Tips & tricks

* in 8k games, it’s worth deploying Shocks right at the beginning in the first row so that the enemies are slowed down right at the beginning, giving your weapons much more time to take them out. Also, make sure that if you manage to build up a multi-column defensive structure like the one in the screenshot below:

then, place some additional Shocks in the points far away from the start because the shock (and the consequential slowdown) goes away after a while. In the above shot, there’s one in the lower right corner and the path is built up in a way that it takes the enemies back to the upper block of several long-range Shocks, making sure that all your enemies are slowed down (again). Of course, the artificial intelligence of the app gives priority to shooting at enemies having been further on the field; that is, in a structure like this the Shocks will shoot at the enemies coming from down and not just entering the field. Of course, this is what one would expect.

What's your current theme? (winterboard)

btate0121 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:38:21 GMT

Share your screenies!!!

How to transfer SMS from your T-Mobile to PC?

cobby034 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:08:38 GMT

Hello,
I have many sms everyday. Some of them are very important. So,I want to sync them to my computer. How to do this?
Thanks!

*NEW update for iMagnify App Available Now!

iMagnify — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:49:00 GMT

Update for iMagnify has been released! We promised you an exciting new feature so here it is! Tip Calculator was added to iMagnify to simplify yet another aspect of your dining experience!
Having trouble reading your dinner bill and you don�t want to reach for your glasses to see?
iMagnify with its 4x zoom will magnify your dinner bill and brighten the screen with its low lux adjustment feature.
AND NOW�. You can even insert your bill total into the Tip Calculator to find out what each guest pays and what gratuity is correct according to your dining experience.
Let iMagnify take you out to dinner! :)

iMagnify Search in App store

Yes, you can put several hundred applications on your iPhone!

Menneisyys — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:04:01 GMT

The iPhone operating system has never allowed for listing more than 9 (SpringBoard) pages of 16 applications each, which has severely restricted the number of applications you can install on a phone. (Actually, the number of third-party apps you can display is even less as the built-in applications take up one tab – around 14-16 icons.)

The problem was slightly cured by the introduction of OS 3 this June. It allowed for both slightly more (11) SpringBoard pages so that you could see a bit more applications. However, additional programs you synchronized did not show up – even when they are there on your phone.

Fortunately, there are several solutions for the problem.

1. SpotLight for OS3+ users

SpotLight, the new built-in search in OS version 3, allows for quickly finding installed applications not fitting in the available SpringBoard pages and, otherwise, invisible. It also has the big advantage of not requiring the phone to be jailbroken to run – you can install hundreds of apps to a non-jailbroken phone if you only want to use SpotLight to access them.

The next screenshot shows the characters “Sa” entered in SpotLight. As you can see, several applications have been found containing the “Sa” characters in their name – even ones that, otherwise, didn’t fit in the available SpringBoard pages.

(A video showing the same is

HERE

; fast forward to 1:06 to see my pressing the Home button twice (with some pause in between to avoid the Phone app coming up instead) to quickly access SpotLight and entering “card” on the on-screen keyboard.)

Of course, relying on remembering the name of your programs that aren’t, otherwise, visible, may be a little too complicated. In this case, you’ll make great use of the Cydia application “Categories” and its even more advanced, just-released add-on, “CategoriesSB”.

Let’s start with the former, “Categories”. Before that, however, let me explain another problem with SpotLight.

1.1 Caveat: memory usage

(Note: there’s another reason NOT to use SpotLight. Upon my tests, on a 3.1.2 iPhone 3G with about 300 programs installed, it has turned out to take about 9-10 Mbytes (!) of RAM memory after the first start. It seems it’s a system process; that is, if you ever bring up SpotLight, it’ll stay resident until the next phone reboot, taking away these huge amounts of memory. Being a system process also means tools like System Activity Monitor by Recession Apps won’t be able to free up the RAM reserved by this tool. NOTE: with fewer apps installed, the memory usage of SpotLight will only be slightly lower – with 3 or 4 apps installed, it’ll be around 6-7 Mbytes.)

2. Categories

Categories is a well-known Cydia application to allow for putting your applications in subfolders. Using it is very simple: after installing it from Cydia, you tap its icon, tap Add to add a new category, enter its name in the “Add / Enter category title” dialog), tap “Add”. Then, select an icon for it. (This all is demoed in my demo videos; see below.)

After this, tap the newly-created category title and, when Categories switches to displaying it (later, when it becomes populated, this can take a while, even on a fast phone like the 3G S), tap “Add” again – still in the top right corner, as was the case with adding a category itself. Then, just scroll up/down and tap all apps that you’d like to add to this category. When ready, tap “Done”.

Iterate over the above for all your categories you would like to create; then, press the Home button. SpringBoard will restart; now, there will be some new icons on it – the categories you’ve just created. Just tap them to load them; keep in mind this can take quite a lot of time. For example, on an iPhone 3G with a category having 262 title, loading takes slightly more than six seconds (video showing all this

HERE

). You can try to cache individual categories in memory by tapping the “Info” icon in them (bottom right corner) and enable “Keep resident” as you can also see at 0:32 in the

above video

. Nevertheless, it’ll result in HUGE RAM usage, which you can’t free up with, say, System Activity Monitor by Recession Apps. You can see an example in the

above-linked video

– at 0:18, I show you the free RAM (48.80 Mbytes; see the uppermost, green value) of the 3G before making the category with the 262 titles resident. After this, I close the given category (by pressing Home) and invoke System Activity Monitor again to see the amount of the current, free RAM. As you can see at 0:42, it’s decreased to 38.71 Mbytes and tapping “Free memory” doesn’t help either. That is, 262 icons take up a whopping 10 Mbytes of RAM!

Unfortunately, if you don’t enable the memory-hungry caching, Categories’ approach is very cumbersome (slow) sometime, as is also explained for example HERE. I, myself, don’t really use Categories’ folders at all (I find my favourite apps much faster with SpotLight – but, again, it’s OS3+ only), unless I forget the name or just want to see what I have on my iPhone.

2.1 Quick ordering of the list elements

It’s pretty easy to quickly change the order of the list elements. Say, you want to order them in alphabetical order. For it to work, you need to modify the file at \private\var\stash\ Applications\categoryname.app\list.txt. This is the file where each category is listed (note that \private\var\mobile\ Library\Categories\list.txt only lists the category names; you won’t want to change this in any way). It’s a textual file just listing the app names belonging to this category and is also manually editable.

To quickly reorder the files (without having to do it manually on the iPhone itself), just transfer this file to your desktop and issue the command

sort list.txt > list2.txt

Then, just transfer the newly-created list2.txt back to your iPhone. Make sure you rename it to list.txt and, therefore, overwrite the entire contents.

The YouTube video

HERE

shows this all with a real-life example. The left pane of Total Commander (with the T-Pot plug-in as is explained in my earlier articles) shows \private\var\stash\Applications\MP games.app. At first, I’ve pressed F3 (View) on list.txt there just to show you the original contents of the file. (It’s visible between 0:06 and 0:08.) Then, at 0:09, I’ve copied it to the desktop. At 0:22, after traversing the focus to the desktop (right) pane, I’ve issued the sort list.txt > list2.txt command there. (Note that I’ve, temporarily, lost the focus and tried to issue the command above while still standing in the left pane. This is why, at first, it didn’t work. It took me a while to realize I was still in the wrong pane.) As you can see in the video, a this created a brand new file, list2.txt. At 0:30, I’ve selected it and pressed F3 (View) again. The results (now in alphabetical order) can be seen at 0:34. After this, at 0:37, still standing over list2.txt, I’ve pressed F5 to upload it to the iPhone. In the upload filename, I’ve deleted the ‘2’ from list2.txt (0:39) and, then, at 0:40, I’ve just pressed Enter to let Total Commander overwrite the original file. After restarting the phone, Categories shows the new files in alphabetical order (actually, the screenshot above is taken with CategoriesSB installed; with the plain Categories, the ordering would be vertical.)

Two screenshots of this (with exactly the same application list) in action:

(before)

(after)

3. CategoriesSB

3.1 iPhone 3G (and, possibly, iPhone 2G / iPod Touch 1G and 2G) users, attention!

Before moving on, a quick warning: as of version 1.0.2, there seems to be major problems with CategoriesSB running on the 3G (or at least on the test device: 3.1.2 with AppSync. The same configuration, with AppSync, worked OK on the 3G S). For the time being, do NOT install it on the 3G (or, it seems, any, memory size-wise, comparable iDevice: the iPhone 2G or the iPod Touch models of the first two generations).

I’ve run two major tests to find out whether CategoriesSB renders the iPhone 3G useless. The results of my tests are, unfortunately, positive.

At first, I’ve installed about 220 apps on the iPhone, totaling about 6.7 Gbytes; that is, leaving around 300-400 Mbytes of free storage (of the 7 GByte /var partition of the 8 GB model). Immediately after installing CategoriesSB on the top of the, previously, working Categories, I got into the infinite reboot loop making the entire phone useless and necessitating a complete firmware re-flash.

After reinstalling OS version 3.1.2, I’ve repeated the test; now, with smaller (but more, carefully leaving out the bigger ones from synchronizing; about 300) programs “only” taking up some 5GB (leaving exactly 2G free; way more than in the first case). I’ve distributed the (about 300) apps in five folders, each having apps between 40 and 120 (that is, way lower than in the first case). In the first test above, I only had a huge category having all the apps.) The amount of free RAM didn’t change after this; however, SpringBoard has become much more sluggish (until it caches everything; after that, it operated snappily) and the boot-in time increased from 35 seconds average to 01:35 min:seconds average. Note that, sometimes (say, twice from ten cases) it won’t boot in at all. I’ve even waited once about 12 minutes for it to boot in, just watching the white apple logo. In these cases, just reset the device by pressing Power + Home at the same time until the screen went dark; then, release both buttons and quickly press Power again; after this, it boots again.

Putting all the third-party apps in Categories folders didn’t result in any problem (except for having to reset the device when it didn’t boot in in under two minutes) in my very extensive tests (a LOT of restarts and resets just to find out whether it does boot in).

After just installing CategoriesSB on top of the already-existing Categories (and its already-defined and populated categories), it wasn’t even able to boot in. That is, for the time being, if you do install CategoriesSB on a 3G (and models with similar RAM memory configurations), be extra cautious and backup / save everything before doing so.

Again, I don’t know whether this is caused by AppSync or just the large number of applications. Probably the latter, which is just too much for the “little” 3G. I didn’t have the time to test the same without installing AppSync – synchronizing some 5 Gbytes of software to the 3G takes about 4 hours (over USB2, of course).

Note that having to restore (not taking into account the time and effort needed) isn’t a problem if you don’t want to unlock your phone ever and/or you have a 2G or 3G (as opposed to the 3G S, these two models can safely be “downgraded” to 3.0.x even from the current firmware version, 3.1.2; this can’t be done with the 3G S). Fortunately, it seems it’s the pre-3G S models that suffer from this cycle problem – I’ve loaded even more apps on my 3G S and have never had any problems with it. While, again, the 3G completely crashed because of loading considerably fewer applications on it.

3.2 Installation

CategoriesSB is a just-released, commercial addition to Categories. It requires the latter. This means you can directly install it on the already-existing Categories on your iPhone – or, if you still doesn’t have it, the Cydia installer will also download and install Categories in the background.

In

THIS

demo video, it’s installed on top of an existing Categories installation – this is why it only downloads some 11.2 kbytes (as opposed to the much larger download when installing on a device without a preinstalled Categories). As you can see (at 4:47), right after having installed CategoriesSB, I demoed stepping into the same category as with Categories. Doing this was instantenous – unlike with Categories. What is more, it doesn’t seem to take any memory.

CategoriesSB doesn’t add any new icon to the SpringBoard and doesn’t change the way of adding new folders and, in them, apps in Categories either. The “only” change is how the folder icons themselves work: they come up in an instant (as you can see in

THIS

already-linked demo video) as opposed to the 6-second-long loading of the same applications under Categories (demo video showing the latter

HERE

).

Note that, unlike Categories, the individual folder icons don’t have an info / settings icon in them. Currently, there isn’t anything to set with CategoriesSB.

3.3 Other advantages over Categories

3.3.1 Badges

CategoriesSB allows for displaying badges too. An example of IM+ showing an incoming (Push) message:

Two caveats here: 1. Unfortunately (as of the current, 1.0.2 version), this doesn’t apply to the “Running in background” badges applied by Backgrounder. (You can see this badge in the lower left corner of the iPod icon in the lower right corner of the screen in the above screenshot.)
2. these badges don’t transfer to the folder (parent) icons themselves, as can also be seen in the following screenshot:

Note that the I’M icon (second row, second column) doesn’t have a badge, even with a sub-icon inside it does.

3.3.2 Dock

The lowermost part of the screen (the dock) is that of SpringBoard (as opposed to not having anything as is the case with Categories) – this is also a plus, compared to Categories.

3.3.3 “Up one nested category”

Also note that, as was the case with the original Categories, CategoriesSB also supports nested categories. Now, unlike with Categories, if you press the Home button in any of the subcategories, you’re only taken back one level up in the tree and not to SpringBoard again (that is, the root of the tree, where you would need to traverse the category tree again to find your previous position; this could be a time-consuming process with deeply nested category trees like Games -> Color Matching -> Tetris clones). Unfortunately, as is the case with Categories, if you start an application from inside CategoriesSB, when you press Home, you’re taken back into the root; that is, SpringBoard itself.

3.3.4 History (“Recent”)

Finally, it supports “Recent” categories. It’s like the “History” icons (in Portrait mode, also the names of the programs, in addition) in the start menu of Windows Mobile. To do this, just add a category named “Recent”:

Make sure you don’t put anything in it! When you tap it, you’re shown the last 16 programs you’ve started – not only from CategoriesSB, but also from SprinBoard itself. An example:

4. Another demo video

Another demo video is

HERE

. It shows installing the entire package from scratch; adding a new category (at 3:50; actually, two categories, one of them being Recent to be able to quickly access recently run / accessed apps), populating (at 4:40) and using (6:30; note that I searched for the category from SpotLight; you will want to put its icon in some of the first pages or even the dock at the bottom for even quicker access) it.

5. Another remark

Note that, when installing from the built-in AppStore, the icons are brought back to the regular SpringBoard level with both Categories and CategoriesSB. After the update is finished, they’re all automatically taken back to their original category. This is shown in the following screenshot:

I need help!!!

yoyofu — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:39:16 GMT

Hello,everybody,

I have downloaded free a PXL application from this:
but I don't know how to install it.

Who knows it and please tell me.

Thanks very much!

FancyStacker1.1 is featured in the "what we're playing" section now !

phoenixreanima — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:10:19 GMT

FancyStacker1.1 is featured in the "what we're playing" section now !

Another Topple this is not. The closest I think it comes to is Stacked. The BIG difference though is that while you are given an ordered set of shapes to drop and balance, the order in which they appear is not necessarily the proper way to complete the level. For instance in one of the earlier levels you get a triangle and then a long plank. But the only way to get them to balance is to get the long plank UNDER the triangle - so you have to drop the triangle from high on the screen, get the plank and quickly drop that one so that the triangle lands on it - reversing the order. Then there is a level with balls rolling down a ramp and a spinny thing at the end. Now to prevent the little balls from falling down you need to get one of the last shapes offered on the spinny thing before all the little balls. So as you can see the game takes quite a bit more planning and manipulation than the other stacking type games.

Graphics: 3/5; Sounds: 5/5
The graphics are of the line drawing that have become popular of late. I am not sure why some of the check marks are sideways or even tilted or bent. In fact though I know WHY there are exclamation points that turn to check marks I am not sure that is needed. It actually makes me a bit nervous that I did the wrong thing and its warning me that I dropped the block in the wrong place! The colors are a bit muted and sometimes makes the objects look a little blurry (maybe just my eyes though). The music (new in this release) is soothing and suits a game of this nature.

Gameplay: 4/5
There are walkthroughs of the first ten levels which can be considered a help guide. It shows that sometimes the order of the shapes are not the ideal order to solving the puzzle. All in all, the difficulty ramps up rather quickly in the 40 levels. That's not such a bad thing for a game with only 40 levels though. It will detract those that are more comfortable with the easier difficulties. Not quite sure that someone who knows their ability on this kind of game lies in the easy to medium range would want to take a chance on a game with only 40 levels knowing they might only get through half or less. I would rather see more levels spread across the difficulties.

Controls: 5/5
Controlling the pieces is all done by touch and I found them to be very precise and tight. That is a big plus since you rely so much on precision and timing in this game.

Overall: 4/5
When all is said and done, this is an excellent physics stacker that is quite unlike the other stackers on the market. This one involves timing and precision and thinking ahead with the pieces you have available. With some fine tuning on the graphics (the clarity and the exclamation points) this will be an excellent alternative. Adding some easier and mid-level difficulties will also open this up to the more casual gamer who likes to just drop and stack - but with the timing twist.

Great job at creating this Phoenix Reanimation and wonderful to see you involved in the fine tuning of this game.

reviewed by New England Gamer

How to make your own iPhone Ringtone and transfer it to your iPhone directly?

zzyjetty521 — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:33:38 GMT

How to make your own iPhone Ringtone and transfer it to your iPhone directly?