The first steps for iOS multiplayer preservation...
There's something about early iOS games.
Before we entered the mid-2010s microtransaction hellworld model for mobile gaming, even the biggest videogame publishers were putting out high-effort iPhone games. Original titles like Gameloft's Asphalt, NOVA, and Modern Combat series coexisted with games based on AAA console games, like Splinter Cell Conviction, Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Call of Duty Zombies... the list goes on.
Of course, not all of these games supported online play, and those that did lost their servers ages ago. But most supported some form of local multiplayer, usually via Local Wi-Fi-- LAN.
That means that, in theory, these games could be played via LAN tunneling! I've spoken with CrunchBite (project lead @ XLink Kai) and with his advice, I am well on my way to capturing packets so we understand a bit more about how this all works.
He immediately suggested buying an old ethernet hub, as one of those between two wireless APs is the easiest way to grab packets. But, given that I've recently added a Linksys WRT54g to my home network for compatibility with these older devices, I wanted to at least attempt to run tcpdump on it...
Yeah, fat chance. Spent about 3 hours trying to get it to mount a Samba network share from my laptop before giving up and ordering the hub.
Can't wait to get my hands on it and work towards finding an easy way for anyone to play old iOS games together over the internet; There's so many of these and almost all of them support LAN play. I can't wait to try these games out with as many folks as I can convince to play, and hopefully to even cover some on the channel one day.
