[Xpilot-hacks] XPilot for the iPhone

[Sean C. <sc...@7b...>]

Good morning.  It's finally time to share what's effectively the first 
major XPilot announcement in quite a while, and we couldn't be more 
excited.  But first, allow us to introduce ourselves.  We're 7b5 Labs 
<http://7b5labs.com>, aka Michael Sherman and Sean Cier, aka Han Solo 
and Blueshift -- XPilot enthusiasts from the heady days of the mid 
nineties.  Back then, we played from our dorm on a pair of now-ancient 
SGI workstations, even ran a server and published a handful of maps.  
These days, we find that our cellphones are in fact significantly more 
powerful than those workstations, and we started to wonder -- just what 
would the XPilot experience be like on an iPhone?

So we found out.  And then we got carried away.  And now -- in a couple 
days -- an XPilot client will be available for the iPhone and iPod Touch 
<http://7b5labs.com/xpilotiphone.php> via the App Store.  How cool is that?

We made an effort to keep the look and gameplay entirely faithful to the 
original, though we added a number of features to fit the constraints of 
the phone platform: a new touch-based ship control scheme, a "dashboard" 
for weapons and other actions, even a speed-based "auto-zoom" feature to 
keep as much of the view visible as possible on the small screen while 
not losing the ability to do detail-oriented maneuvers.

Of course, we realize that what really makes XPilot is the community.  
So our new client is fully compatible with existing servers and 
metaservers -- in fact, when you fire it up, it presents you with the 
metaserver's current list of running servers, and if anybody were to 
create a new map (polygon or raster) and start up a new server, the 
iPhone client would let you connect immediately.

We're hoping that this can spark a bit of a revival of XPilot and launch 
it back into the public consciousness, even if just to a small extent.  
To this end we'll be doing our best to promote it, via blogs and 
whatever other outlets we can think of.  So be warned that if everything 
goes as we'd like, there could be a spike of traffic on game servers for 
a little while.  If you've wanted to fire up a new server, or polish off 
a new map, or even bring down any server that isn't going to be happy 
with people suddenly using it, now's the time.

We can't say for certain when XPilot will be available in the App Store, 
as that depends on how long Apple's review process (which was begun a 
few days ago) takes.  When it is, we'll be able to distribute a limited 
number of "promotional codes" for free downloads.  If any of you -- or 
other members of the XPilot community -- are interested in trying it 
out, just let us know in the next week or so and we'll make sure to get 
a code for you to download it for free as soon as it's available.

The source, on the other hand, is available today, linked from our web 
page.  It's a branch of the XPilotNG code, which can also still be 
compiled as a "traditional" client on other platforms.

We hope you're all as excited as we are.  Please drop us a line 
<mailto:in...@7b...> if you'd like to talk more about the new client.