Let's turn the clocks back to about a month ago where OnLive CEO Steve Perlman revealed vague details of a new wireless technology that he believed was going to change everything. The claims being made were fantastic, in that they've not only broken a key law of wireless technology that dictates the maximum amount of data that can be transferred wirelessly, but they've exceeded it, many times over. Also, Perlman claimed that this was all possible with equipment that is less complex than current wireless gear, with both higher range and significantly lower latency.

Obviously the implications this could have on iOS gaming could be massive, as even the latency reduction alone could potentially completely change the face of mobile multiplayer gaming as developers are no longer forced to utilize net code to deal with the comparatively high latency of existing wireless networks. Honestly, it all sounded a little too good to be true, but remember: We all said the same thing about OnLive.

A white paper was released today which reveals some of the details of how this all works. It starts off very easy to follow, and includes some great explanations of why current wireless technology has the limitations it has. Specifically, detailing why you can't watch YouTube at a sports game and why your wireless network is so terrible in your New York City apartment building.

Illustration showing WiFi networks overlapping, causing a performance drain for all connected devices.

Following the cursory background into the how's and why's of current technology, the white paper dives into what makes DIDO, or "distributed input distributed output" different. It's more of an overview, as apparently the complete answer for how it all works involves "very long, involving immensely complex mathematics, very carefully designed software and hardware, and new data communications and modulation techniques."

Like most technological problems these days, the current "problem" of wireless technology is solved by implementing the cloud. The magic of the DIDO network all takes place in the DIDO datacenter where previously mentioned complex mathematics are all computed to tread the whole DIDO network as one entity, utilizing a (potentially) vast array of DIDO access points to precisely send very specific waveforms to certain access points to result in all users being to take advantage of the full wireless spectrum.

Illustration of DIDO's ability to allow every device utilize 100% of the available data rate.

If you're at all interested, I highly encourage checking out the white paper where everything is explained so succinctly that there's not much use in me paraphrasing it here. One thing that is worth mentioning is that they've stressed that this technology has been developed specifically to be a mass-market product that was built from the ground up to be both practical and inexpensive to roll out, as well as capable of scaling to any size.

As the white paper puts it, "We believe DIDO wireless will completely transform the world." I'd love to see that happen.

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We've got some screens of Crescent Moon's Siegecraft, a hot-looking fixed-weapon castle defense game set to hit the iPad and iPhone later this September.

Siegecraft is all about putting you in control of various kinds of turrets against several different types of hordes: catapults, ballistas, rams, siege towers, and trebuchets will be your weapons against boats, vikings, vikings in boats, knights, and other 'races' who wish to take the object or place you're protecting in Siegecraft's instance-based levels. One of the most remarkable things about the title is its visual appeal, which is why we want to show it to you.

The camera perspective might be pretty tight, but know that this is a 3D rendered game and it leans on a robust physics engine, which should make for some additional fun if it proves to be solid in final release form.

Aside from the look and tech, though, the game does have another edge: race-based play. In its initial form, you'll be able to play as Knights, Vikings and Samurai across their own unique campaigns. Down the line in updates, Crescent Moon is planning to expand on this with Orcs, legions of the Undead, Egyptians, Romans, and men from Sparta.

Looks cool enough and, surely, the race thing will give it the edge it needs to feel like a new thing amongst the throngs of other fixed-turret games out there. We'll keep following it as it worms its way through Crescent's innards.

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With a name like Emissary of War, Cedar Hills Games' RPG has to laced with all the sober-serious conceits and tropes of a traditional Western RPG, right? Wrong. As I continue playing a near, if not already, feature-complete build, I can't stop myself from thinking about how badly I whiffed in our announcement post. It's a Western RPG that's informed by other party-based, isometric RPGs, sure, but it's also one that trades in ye' old sober serious tone and goals for something different. Also, it's thrown out a lot of traditional mechanics so it can do something entirely novel on this platform: tell you a digestible, snappy story.

From a purely mechanical perspective, this is an isometric hack-and-slash. You point and touch to move the barbarian Ghent around his environment and you click on an enemy to kill it. It's pretty simple stuff. Each area operates like an arena with a finite amount of fantasy villains to maim. It's a cast that includes Mer-people, rock-spiders, ghouls and ghosts, and mercenaries.

After you take out everything, you're allowed to proceed into a new area. If you look closely enough, you'll also notice that hidden areas unlocked, too. These will provide you with some extra goodies to use in the game and lead to some of the more challenging fights you'll have.

Ghent is accompanied by an old friend, Hassock the alchemist. He functions as a foil of sorts to the raw brawn of Ghent, but he's also a handy design element: he'll heal you as you fight, as well as add ranged support to battles. You don't directly control him, but you can queue up his actions in the corner of the screen if you don't agree with what the AI has in store.

This frees up you to focus on the action, which is typical hack-and-slash fare: you click on a dude and you swing until it explodes and rains crimson and coins. You don't earn experience points or pick up loot. Instead, you'll earn gold coins which can be exchanged for weapons in a hunk of UI that also includes ability upgrades which you can unlock by collecting Runes. I realize this might turn a lot of you off, but a streamlined upgrade path is a cool and functional way to cut out the standard RPG fat and really get to what really matters to Cedar Hill Games: Ghent and Hassock and their part of the unfolding story.

The duo, before and after battle, have scripted, but also real-time conversations. Most of the time, chats break down to the two simply reinforcing the notion that they're in this for the long haul together, but they'll also talk about the next objective or the one they've just accomplished. Bigger, more produced 'movies' compliment this stuff.

I'll be vague since I don't want to kill the story for you. Ghent and Hassock are, as the namesake of the game says, emissaries setting up alliances. Their unusual brand of bartering has made for a lot of solid partnerships across the realm, but suddenly, all of it is being undone. The quest revolves around figuring out who is doing this, and of course, why.

One thing that really caught me off guard is the tone. It's light. Hassock is a bumbling, but brilliant dude who is prone to tripping over his shoes. Ghent is heroic, but dim. You'll see these two ham it up a lot, even when the situational circumstances turn quite dire.

The writing as a whole isn't going to put Valve or BioWare or whatever out of work. But it's some of the sharpest stuff we've seen so far in this genre on this specific platform. Also, Cedar Hill Games isn't trying to stretch the story over 50+ hours. This is a four-to-five hour romp, which means its story flows in a much more natural, less fluff-ridden way.

As for the lack of the traditional loot-grind driver, I was initially surprised that Emissary of War has retained my interest over the course of several hours, but the upgrades come quick enough to feel like you're actually being substantially rewarded for fighting, so it operates in much the same fashion. Also, the story works well enough to keep you plodding along.

I certainly haven't seen the entire game, so I'll definitely be checking it out a little later this August when the game is slated to hit. You can hear Cedar Hill Games' CEO Tobbyn Manthorhpe on our podcast this coming Monday if you want his perspective on the title.

Needless to say, we'll be keeping our eyes on this one.

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In case you didn't know, Unity provides the glue that makes a considerable amount of iOS games work. It's a game engine, development environment, and multi-platform publishing tool rolled into one easy to use package. (You can read all about it here.) The magic behind Unity is what brings the world of Aralon [$4.99] to life, and what allows you to level up in Order & Chaos Online [$6.99]. Similarly, it's what allows Gameloft to take Order & Chaos and seamlessly turn it into a Facebook game. The engine isn't limited to 3D either, it's what's behind fantastic 2D platformers like Max and the Magic Marker [99�] and too many other games to list.

Recently, Unity 3.4 was released which brings a whole boat load of new features, functionality, and other tweaks. So many, in fact, that it's hard to pick out which to highlight. Personally, I'm excited for better water effects, because who doesn't love water effects? Also, finally having gyroscope support is going to be great. The best part about these kind of engine upgrades, is that most of the tweaks and enhancements are essentially "free" just as part as developers upgrading to the new version, and testing to make sure that nothing breaks in the process.

If you're a Unity developer, download 3.4 and give it a shot. If you're a gamer, keep an eye out for upcoming Unity titles that benefit from the mile long feature list of the 3.4 upgrade.

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We see the "one man designing an ambitious game on his own" story a lot, but this one has a couple of cool twists. It involves a comic book illustrator and a game set to tackle an age-old genre and inject some really neat-sounding concepts.

Steve Uy is our designer in this story. He's an artist whose credited in several Marvel and DC comic books. In our forums, Uy listed Uncanny X-Men, Iceman, Legion of Superheroes as titles he's touched. And as you'll see from the game images, dude knows what he's doing.

Uy is the illustrator, narrative designer, and concept artist behind World Without End, a great-looking strategy RPG in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics. But while Uy is doing the lion's share of the actual game design, he has actually enlisted some programming and audio design help.�This video explains how he's using the help�in a little bit more depth.

World Without End, as described by Uy in a conversation with Wired, is a 15+ hour tactical RPG. Like Tactics, its battle system is turn-based and you move different characters with different abilities, strengths, and ranges around a designated battle area in order to get the best possible outcome against the enemy. As you attack, you'll expend action points that will regenerate over turns.

Where it differs, it differs pretty wildly. World Without End is grid-free. You'll be able to move your characters around the battlefield and around its 2GB world map wherever you please. Battles, as indicated by this video, are highlighted as "green" areas. Once you hit them, the fight starts immediately and without a load screen.

Uy's game doesn't have experience points. Instead, it has Battle Points, which are a currency that you'll exchange for upgrades and the like. Uy doesn't want grinding to be a mechanic, so he's designing a BP upgrade system that gives you no clear-cut advantages. You'll win fights based on how you play, as opposed to how many hours you've spent leveling. Honestly, this latter concept couldn't possibly sound more appealing to me.

As for the story, Uy is being way too cautious about its details. We know a couple of things, though. For one, you'll play as a dude with amnesia. Also, when you meet (old) friends, you'll find out that they know so much about you that they can predict your actions and thoughts. Neat!

Uy hopes to get World Without End out of the door by this fall and we definitely wish him the best in this endeavor. We'll stay tuned to his updates as development continues.

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Augmented-reality games are weird. They hardly work and even when they actually do operate as intended, the game experience is usually lacking and centralizes entirely too much around the whole augmenting gimmick. I'm also not too sure if there's even a market out there for these kinds of games. But, I probably shouldn't be so dismissive, especially when there's a new, apparently solid-looking SDK out in there in the wild.

According to TechCrunch, Qualcomm has released its ARG SDK, which was originally intended for Android devices with Snapdragon chips, for iOS-compatible devices. This initial release has support for, specifically, the iPhone 4, iPad 2, and even the fourth-generation iPod Touch.

If you're in the dark on augmented reality, it's a pretty simple concept. You point your device's camera at something real and then the game turns that into something interactive. A lot of card games, for example, like to incentivize their physical, branded cards by allowing you to scan them into their respective games and then use digital versions of them. Other games just incorporate real-world settings on top of existing mechanics, like this Star Wars game here:

Having an SDK at hand that actually works with a target platform organically should really empower those studios out there who have good augmented reality ideas, but don't want to spend the research and development costs of getting the core technology that makes the "augmenting" work. This is a good thing for all of us because, hey, who knows? Maybe we will get that game that completely changes my jaded perspective on augmented reality games in general. (I hope so.)

[Via TechCrunch]

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Developer Crystalised are throwing their hat into the Unreal Engine powered 3D shooter ring with their upcoming title Desert Zombie: Last Stand. They announced the title back in June via a teaser trailer, which was a cool cinematic but didn't showcase any gameplay. Today, they have released a new gameplay trailer from an alpha version of Desert Zombie that showcases the game in action. So far, it's looking pretty incredible:

Yeah, I'm pretty sick of zombies too, but that video looked awesome nonetheless. All we really know about the game at this point is that it will be a completely free-roaming third-person affair and include 6 levels to survive though, including an on-rails shooter sequence in a Blackhawk helicopter. No release date is given other than "coming soon", but we do know the game will be $5.99 whenever it launches and will require 3rd generation hardware and up.

You can check out discussion of the game in our forums, and we'll be sure to keep our eye out for more on Desert Zombie: Last Stand in the coming weeks.

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One hurdle when making games for the iOS platform is creating controls for an entirely touch screen interface. Often, the simplest approach is the best, and it doesn't really get much simpler than single-tap gameplay. That is the approach taken in�Space is Key [99�] by ChrisJeff Games, which was recently released in the App Store. Space is Key started out as a popular Flash game, which is another platform that is well-suited to single-button mechanics. Because of this the game translates extremely well to iOS, and offers a fiendishly difficult but strangely captivating arcade experience.

Space is Key is a series of 43 single screen challenges distilled down to the basics of running and jumping. Your tiny square character handles the running part automatically, entering from either the right or left side of the screen. Your job is to tap the screen to jump at just the right times to clear the obstacles in each level and safely make it to the other side of the screen.

That may sound simple, but Space is Key is anything but. If your square so much as grazes an obstacle, you're instantly killed. This is a game where you will die no matter what, and you will die often. There's no avoiding it, and that's really the point of the game. Your score is calculated as the amount of times that you end up dying after a straight run through all 43 levels. So yes, we're all going to die when playing the game, but let's see who can die the least.

The margin for error when trying to successfully navigate past obstacles is razor thin, and the difficulty can be erratic. A certain level you might completely nail in just a few short tries during one play through, then the next time that same level might take you a hundred tries or more (literally). This makes it difficult to get too excited even if you are doing particularly well, since it can all come crashing down at the drop of a hat, but that also adds an intensity to the game which I like.

This sort of masochistic gameplay ends up working because Space is Key is so darn quick and easy to play. Upon death, your restart is instantaneous and automatic, to the point that many times you haven't even processed that you've screwed up before you're already off and running into a new attempt. This means it's incredibly easy to just waste lives with reckless abandon when becoming particularly fixated with passing a certain level, and if you aren't careful, a potentially good score can slip away in the blink of an eye.

At first blush, Space is Key might look like nothing more than an early Atari 2600 title. That's basically correct, but little flourishes like cool particle effects and a kick ass chiptune soundtrack give it a modern touch that would never been possible on that old hardware. Despite the retro aesthetic, the game has a lot of personality. This is mostly due to the humorous messages that pop up throughout the game that are designed to teach, praise, and pester you along the way.

The only downside to Space is Key is that it doesn't have a whole lot of lasting appeal. I played it pretty obsessively for a few days until I'd achieved a decent score, but after that there's not much reason to revisit it. A global leaderboard and 25 well designed Game Center achievements extend the experience, but I'd really like to see some more levels or possibly some additional modes down the line. Hints on the game's Facebook page lead me to believe that we'll see such things in the future.

While the gameplay on the whole is a bit thin, Space is Key is pretty entertaining for a 99� title. At times you'll feel like breaking your device over your knee due to the difficulty, but completing the game is a fairly quick and satisfying experience. It's hard to not want to keep replaying through the game hoping for that "one perfect run" where you get an insane score. As infuriating as it can be at times, when you do finally have a great run in Space is Key it makes all the pain worth it.

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When Traction Games first brought Stickman Skater [99�/Lite] to the App Store, it was a bit of a surprise hit. With the release of its spiritual successor, Stickman BMX [99�/Lite/HD] it's a question of how much of the core gameplay will change with the name while still retaining fans of the original.

Not much, it turns out. For better or worse � depending on whether you like Stickman Skater � Stickman BMX is essentially the same game. You'll get two buttons to use, one that controls your pedals and another that makes you jump. There is an advanced option that allows you to control your tricks as well, but although at a glance you might think Stickman BMX is about pulling tricks off, it has more in common with the likes of Canabalt than it does with anything else.

That's one of the main problems with Stickman�BMX, it might have worked a bit better as a one-button game. The requirement to constantly hit the pedal button is more annoying than it is helpful and you'll rarely find yourself wishing you could slow down. Even with the advanced controls and scoring bonuses, the tricks still don't feel all that integral to the game, which means you'll spend most of your getting through the levels, not flipping over bars.

Even though they're not particularly complex, the levels do keep you on your toes. Stickman BMX cruises at a faster pace than Stickman�Skater, so you need to pay a little more attention to what's coming up. While a lot of the time the game just throws objects in front of you out of nowhere, the fact you can branch through the levels in several different paths is an interesting take. There is also plenty of variety � sixty levels in four different zones are included in the game � with more available for in-app purchase if you can't get enough. As you'd expect, there are different medals you can get for getting different tokens and collecting stars as well as finishing without dying. Also available as an IAP is the ability to use a skateboard as in the first game, if BMX bikes aren't your thing.

As far as level design is concerned, Stickman�BMX takes a lot of the ideas of the original�and expands on them. The biggest improvement between the two is the design, where Stickman�Skater was complacent in pushing you down a linear path toward a finish line, Stickman�BMX at least offers you multiple ways to get there.

As you've probably already noticed from the screenshots, Stickman BMX doesn't have the best visuals in the world. The simple, cut-and-paste style aesthetics are certainly intentional, but they won't be turning heads. It would have been nice if they'd spent a little more time on the menu and button design too, because they're completely hideous. For what it's worth, the sound can get a bit aggravating as well and you'll likely find yourself muting it from the start. But this clearly isn't a game worried about its aesthetics, it's all about how it plays.

It might not be pretty, but if you liked Stickman Skater, Stickman BMX does a good job of bringing enough new content to make it worthwhile. As an overall experience, it doesn't offer much new to the table, but it does expand on the ideas of the original in a way that changes how you'll approach it.

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