Wing Commander on Android

Hunter_13

Rear Admiral
For all of us WC Fans using an Android phone, I'd like to start this thread to feed our shared addiction.

I currently have all the novels (minus False Colors), all episodes of Academy and most of the games in varying levels of playablility on my Droid 1.

WC1
WC3
WC4
WC Armada
WC Privateer

Please post if you have more or want this stuff.
 
Hey--I'm also very interested in talking about how to Wing Commander up my phone and tablet... but please no piracy through the forums.
 
Using dospad for iPhone I managed to run Privateer intro. The game doesn't run, I'm trying to figure out why.
 
How does steering the ship work? And what do you use to run, say, Privateer on Android?

By the way, if Privateer works then Strike Commander should as well, shouldn't it?
 
Staying away from piracy, these are all done through Android emulators and the associated ROMs. Assuming you own the game that you have a ROM for or are considered "abandonware", all should be well. But I'm no lawyer, so take this for what it's worth.

PSX4Droid is the best PS One emulator I've found for Droid. It is no longer on the Market, but is now a free download, be sure you get "v2". This works great for WC3 and 4 even on a stock Droid 1.
Snes4Droid is another great emulator that is no longer on the Market, but can surely still be found in ".apk" download format. However you get the SNES emulator, this is the way to play WC1.
GameBoid is the GBA emulator used for WC Prophecy. Obviously any emulator will do, but GameBoid worked best for me.
ADosBox works best for Armada and Privateer as it doesn't send you straight to the joystick calibration (which naturally you don't have). Controls with the "arrows" is though, but I'm trying to get the hang of mouse controls in Privateer. If you don't have a physical qwerty keyboard, this will add a whole new difficulty... and in my opinion, you should be throat-chopped for not foreseeing the need for a physical keyboard.

Hope this helps, please feel free to ask about any emulator settings issues... or anything in general.

The ebooks are all what I found, and I own the original copies. In other words, I will not be sending them to folks in the interest of not becoming a cyber piracy criminal. That being said, ezPDF Reader is best for reading the ones in PDF format, and "Cool Reader" is great for epub format.
 
Staying away from piracy, these are all done through Android emulators and the associated ROMs. Assuming you own the game that you have a ROM for or are considered "abandonware", all should be well. But I'm no lawyer, so take this for what it's worth.

No WC product is "abandonware." We had a very good discussion about this type stuff a few months back, but the CZ search function is still a bit whacky so I can't pull it up to link it here. Abandonware is a word pirates use to make it seem what they are doing isn't really piracy...when it is.

This case is well made by the fact that GOG has already released Privateer and will be releasing other WC games down the road.

But it's very cool that you've gotten WC games to run on an android. Always interesting to read about people finding new ways to enjoy the classics.
 
So the multitude of abandonware sites staying online for years on end are just pirates hiding in plain sight?

Is it piracy if it can be bought retail? Luckily I own all of these things legitimately, but for the sake of conversation. Not trying to make waves, but I've had "abandonware" games since 1999, and still living on this side of iron bars.
 
They certainly are not. EA even sells Privateer through GOG right now--and Armada should be available later in the year.
 
So if someone starts selling the WC Academy animated series on DVD, then WC CIC will then be guilty of distributing pirated material?

For an example, try to find games made by Lucasarts on an abandonware site, then do the same for anything made by Origin. I understand you guys going with the most conservative response to cover yourselves, but if these things were illegal, I don't think they would be all over the place. I'm not some hacker breaking into servers and laughing whilst stroking my goatee.
 
So if someone starts selling the WC Academy animated series on DVD, then WC CIC will then be guilty of distributing pirated material?

No, the CIC received approval from those at be to distribute those episodes on this site and that's the big difference. All the cool stuff on the CIC from KS WC1 to all 7 episodes of Secret Ops and WCA we received permission to post from the copyright owners. If they ever told us to remove it, we would.

And here's the discussion we had about this very subject: Abandonware thread
 
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I see. Well, as I said, I do already own all of these games/books, and I'm not selling or distributing the digital copies. I do enjoy you all keeping WC alive, it has just taken me 10 years to jump onto this forum.
 
Oh I know, that's why I thanked you for finding a new way to play WC. It's always amazing to see how creative wingnuts are in adapting WC to a changing environment. I just wanted you to know how we feel/deal with piracy around here.

As I say to all new members...

Always good to see a friendly ship! :D
 
Awesome, and message received, you'll get no trouble from me. I just started the post to help folks out that already have the stuff, and need a guide as to how to make it work with the apps and their settings.

It was a great feeling to play all the way through WC3 on a smartphone... nostalgia: check!
 
Well if you are still online for a bit you should drop by #wingnut. It's the IRC channel where the CIC staff and other regulars hang out online to chat WC and everything else.
 
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Wait, you played through WC3 on your smartphone? But then you attached a physical keyboard and a mouse via Mini-USB, didn't you?

Wow, aDosBox is even compatible with Android 2.x! I sure hope Grim Fandango runs on this, too :cool:

Thanks for the hint!
 
Nope, the Droid 1, 2 and 3 all have keyboards beneath the sliding display. The emulators allow you to assign keys to controller keys. Not the easiest, but playable. Same for aDosBox, the touchscreen or the accelerometer can be set as the mouse.

Oh, and WC3 and 4 I played on a Playstation emulator, not in DosBox.
 
Oh i see, i was not the first to try this recently. I came to the idea when i was a little bit disappointed that the gog version of WC1 and 2 are just using Dosbox and are not really patched in away other way. Then i found DOSpad and now have WC1 and 2 as legal as can be on my Iphone (still had to jailbreak it to get DOSpad to run). I wonder if there is a way to get the accelerometer to be used as Joystick. How is the speed on the droid phones? For me WC2 is actually sort of playable this way wich is not what i expected.
 
The speed is just fine on aDosBox, it is the controls that are an issue. When using the arrows, you can't aim right at your target, it is always displaced from where you want it to be... no matter what. Setting mouse control on Privateer is a problem too because every time you put a mouse control input in, you have to always bring it back to center, and with no frame of reference, you'll spend a lot of time spinning around.
 
Setting mouse control on Privateer is a problem too because every time you put a mouse control input in, you have to always bring it back to center, and with no frame of reference, you'll spend a lot of time spinning around.

This is a problem with privateer in general. It's the only WC game I can't play with a mouse on the PC. On an android device or iPhone something on the screen that works kind of like a thumbstick would be ideal.
 
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