Getting this setup running involves jailbreaking and installing the Couch Surfer browser. It's not much, but it's a start. Those who have been around since the first iPhone 1.x jailbreaks surely will recall just how comparatively lame all the offerings were back then too.

We'll be keeping a close eye on future Apple TV gaming developments.

Utilizing the Unity web player plugin, Gameloft has (since this podcast was released) brought Order & Chaos to Facebook. Playing is as simple as downloading the plugin (if you don't have it already) and heading over to the Order & Chaos Facebook page. It's completely free until level 10, and after that you'll need to subscribe. There's a number of payment options ranging from 1 Facebook credit (equal to 10¢) for a day of access, or 30 Facebook credits for six moths.

Unfortunately, Facebook players play on separate servers from mobile players, so you will need to start fresh. Regardless, this is incredibly cool to see Gameloft doing and just goes to show the sheer ubiquity of the Unity engine. It's always neat to see iOS titles hopping platforms, and it will be interesting to see how Order & Chaos does on Facebook since it's basically now a passable World of Warcraft clone that people can play at work in their browser.

Currently, if you want to release an app or game on the App Store, you need to build it in Xcode using C, C++, or Objective-C, using the documented API's available for developers. To submit said game/app to the App Store, you need a valid developer account which costs $99 a year and your game/app needs to abide by Apple's guidelines. Updates to existing games/apps need to go through the same process, and pushing an update out not only requires an additional trip through the week (or more) long approval process, but also depends on users to actually download said update. When you think about it that way, there sure are a lot of hoops to jump through.

Alternatively, your can build your game/app using HTML5. This won't allow you to access many of the features and functionality of the device as easily (or, really, at all) compared to a native app, but taking this road puts the developer in the driver seat instead of Apple. There are other drawbacks as well, such as requiring online connectivity, although clever resource caching can get around this to some extent, and until WebGL support matures there's not really an easy way to do any kind of 3D.

Where a HTML5 distribution model greatly favors Facebook and social game developers like Zynga is that they can instantly and seamlessly push out updates to their platform. In fact, one of the original criticisms that Zynga had, and one of the reasons why Farmville [Free] took so long to be released on the App Store is that the week or longer delays for each update doesn't jive with Zynga's rapid-fire update model. Those of you who are familiar with Zynga Facebook games are fully aware, but it seems like there's something new being added on a near-daily basis.

In addition, by utilizing your own payment infrastructure with your HTML5 game/app, you're able to completely sidestep Apple's required 30% cut. While coming up with an entire payment system might be too much for most developers to handle, Facebook already has their credits system in place that millions of people are already using today. Also, when you're looking at things in the scope of Facebook's massive userbase, that 30% savings that would have gone to Apple can easily add up to millions of dollars.

HTML5 works great for games as Sarien.net proved a while back, and it's fantastic for apps as well. Give Google Docs a spin on your device for a great display of just what's possible with some clever coding. With these two examples, it's not hard to imagine what Facebook and Facebook game developers could come up with.

TechCrunch also notes another interesting aspect of Project Spartan: Even though Facebook is essentially pushing to distribute its content outside of the bounds of the App Store (and with 700m users, they likely have the muscle to do it), transitioning developers like Zynga to HTML5 and away from Flash only serves to further diminish Flash reliance in the gaming world.

Allegedly, 80 developers are currently involved in Project Spartan. It's hard to imagine this having much of an impact on the App Store in general, but historically speaking, underestimating the power of Facebook has been a terrible thing to do.

[via TechCrunch]

It was back in October that we began following the saga of Sarien.net, a retro Sierra adventure game portal setup by developer Martin Kool. In April 2009 his website began offering entirely web-based remakes of classic Sierra adventures, built entirely with HTML, CSS, and Javascript (though the project really began back in 2001 with a Sierra-inspired graphical chat client). Last year, Kool began creating versions of these web-based games with an interface and graphical treatment appropriate for the iPad and mobile Safari. The first iPad release to go online was Space Quest, which we previewed in November, followed by King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, earlier this month. These games were basically reverse engineered, ground-up remakes and were not licensed by Sierra. And, as such, last week's news of Sarien.net receiving a cease & desist letter from Sierra and closing its doors was sad, but not highly surprising.

It seems the Sarien.net story is not over, however. Kool has just revealed in a lengthy blog post that includes a fully history of the project that, in an unexpected turn of events, Activision has contacted him with a proposal offering limited official authorization to publish a subset of his remakes online.

Activision proposed to officially authorize Sarien.net to publish the first game of any series in its multiplayer HTML5 form. As it may generate interest in also playing the games' successors, Sarien.net will provide a link to Steam and other services that offer the full game collections. To me that sounds beyond "fair enough", and very reasonable. Also, as Activision may (or may not) choose to provide official releases of these games through the AppStore, they requested that all iPad versions of the games be removed.

Now even though it is based upon the same HTML5 technology I also find this request understandable, as I would probably have done the same if I were Activision. Then again, if I co-owned Activision instead of Q42, there might've been a World of Space Quest and worldwide free beers on Fridays, but right now this really is a huge step forward and allows games like Space Quest, Police Quest and King's Quest to be played by many people during work hours - err, I mean, in a browser.

And, so it seems that that Sarien.net and some of its web-based Sierra adventures will live on, though iPad gamers will not be enjoying the excellent custom treatment that they may be accustomed to -- unless Sierra launches their own iOS versions of said classics. (Incidentally, the jury is still out on what will ultimately become of Leisure Suit Larry, as it seems Activision sold it to CodeMasters at some point in the past.)

Kool indicates that his first order of business is to restore Sarien.net to what it was (but with the approved list of games), with a redesign and additional functionality to follow. While it's less than we'd hope for as far as iPad adventurers are concerned, this is certainly good news for the gaming community in general. And we offer a "hats off" to Activision for their consideration to Sarien.net regarding these classics.

Today we got word that the rest of the Sarien.net catalog has been ported over, and in addition to iPhone support, the whole site is now hosted via Amazon's content distribution network to make loading even faster. Most of the games have even been extensively tweaked to be easy to play on the touch interface.

I'm not sure how much more detailed I need to get on this because, well, all the games are completely free to play and don't require any kind of installation beyond navigating your iOS device to sarien.net, tapping the game you want to play, adding a bookmark icon for it, then launching it. The single down side (if you'd even call it that) to all this is that since the games are played online via a web browser, you need an internet connection, but that seems to be a decent tradeoff to being able to instantly play such fantastic vintage adventure games for free on your iPhone or iPad.

We've made a number of posts over the last few months regarding a fan-created, iPad version of Sierra's graphical point-and-click adventure Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter. What makes the effort particularly interesting is the fact that the game is entirely web-based. Load the URL in Mobile Safari, save a bookmark to your Home Screen and -- voila -- you're a tap away from playing a true classic on a device more suited to the style of gameplay than anything that was available back in 1986.

We're happy to report that developer Martin Kool has completed his effort and shared the public URL where iPad-toting space cadets the world around can get started on this excellent adventure. The game can be found right here:

http://ipad.sarien.net

Our observations of a pre-release version stand true for the final product. You tap the home screen icon and the game loads completely seamlessly without any additional work. It's crazy just how fast and easy the whole process is. The first time you load it up, there's a small load time, but as soon as mobile Safari starts caching parts of the game it's just like playing the actual computer game. There's even multiple save slots, and accessing them is as simple as rotating the iPad in to portrait mode.

The game features the same, relatively blocky graphics as the original. And, to the retro gaming fan in me, that's a splendid thing -- but getting them to render unaltered in the iPad's browser was no walk in the park, it turns out.

The only complain I could offer is the lack of sound effects that were present in the original -- a challenge of in-browser, HTML / Javascript gaming that the developer indicates he hasn't addressed "yet." I spent a brief period with Space Quest in days long past, and I can say that what the developer has delivered here, despite that complaint, is all that I remember and then some. Now, I confess that I'm more of a King's Quest man at heart, but that's no matter; Martin recently indicated that once Space Quest was complete, he's moving on to The Black Cauldron, King's Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry.

I would encourage any iPad gamers who counts themselves among fans of adventure to give Space Quest for the iPad a try.

Fans of the effort should visit Sarien.net's forum where Martin is soliciting opinions on an official iPad adventure series as released by Sierra.

Akihabara is a HTML5 toolbox filled with all kinds of neat goodies that creative developers can use to make browser games. On the Akihabara web site there are five demo games ranging from a simple Tetris-like game to a basic Zelda clone. The cool part is, these games work on every modern non-Internet Explorer browser, including the browsers of the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and apparently even other touchscreen phones like the Palm Pre.

Depending on what platform you're playing on, all of the proper controls appear on screen or you use the keyboard and arrow keys. On the iPhone, virtual controls pop up at the bottom of the screen and while they're not as responsive as a native game, it's still pretty amazing to think you're essentially playing a web page-- Without even a smidge of Flash.

All of the games on the Akihabara site are free, and really worth a spin both because they're really impressive pieces of web development but also so you can appreciate what things were like before the App Store came around.

Popcap ported their popular Bejeweled game to the iPhone and is accessible by pointing your iPhone/iPod Touch's browser to Popcap.com.

The game works reasonably well over an EDGE connection and can be a good way to pass some time. The gameplay is simple: use your finger to swap adjacent jewels in order to line up 3 or more of the same color.

Connextion is a web-based title that plays fine on any iPhone or iPod touch.  It's simple, it's fun.

The first is Rubik's Cube.  (You remember the Rubik's Cube, right?)  The game presents you with a 3D rendered, on-screen cube with rotational control arrows arrayed about it.  Once you click the randomize button, your goal is to rotate portions of the cube such that each side is a solid color (in case you actually don't remember the Rubik's Cube).  The interface is intuitive and it's a fun, new way to fiddle with your iPhone or iPod touch.

As the author reports on his blog,

I've finished the Rubik's Cube game for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. It runs pretty fast in Safari. There will be updates coming later. Any feedbacks are welcome. This is the first JavaScript application I've ever written but I still could finish it in about 10 nights.

I'm particulary proud of the 3D engine built on JavaScript and HTML CANVAS that features ambient+directional lighting and backface culling. This version is specialized for the Rubik's Cube here but I have a more generic version as well.

The second title is Tap-a-Brick 3D.  It's basically a remake of California Dreams' Blockout (1989), which is a top-down, 3D slant on Tetris.  As I've enjoyed Blockout on a variety of platforms over the years, this title comes as a particular treat.  Like Rubik's Cube, the interface is great and doesn't get in the way -- a well done iPhone game.

Vagvolgyi comments,

No compromises! It's the full 3D experience in your iPhone's web browser. Smooth animations and an interface fine tuned for the touch screen. Apparently it is possible to build quality games without Flash or the native iPhone SDK.

Rotate the block using the arrows and move it by tapping on the 3D pit. I added all the goodies: the mandatory collision detection, valid path detection, automatic computation of the shortest path. If it's not possible to move to the position where you tapped, the game even finds the closest valid location. (It's fun to try how a block moves around an obstacle if it has enough free space.)

These titles feel less "restrained" by nature of being Web 2.0-based titles rather than native iPhone apps than many such games out there.  Hats off to Balazs Vagvolgyi for his strong work.  We're anxious to see what's next on his list.