Last night... I played Entropia on my android tablet... (idon'ts also supported apparently)

Yup

I kid you not... and it was dead easy to set up too. You just download splashtop to your tablet and then your PC and bob's ya uncle! Very quick to configure.

ok a little more to it than that... you need to run in windows mode for it to work but it really does work. Great framerate etc... Alas it was dark (and moving around wasn't the eeeeeassssiest of tasks so I couldnt really get the "ce2 on tablet wow factor" so to speak... will try again later today.

So yeh, my experience so far...

Why'd you want to do this? Well I think the lounging on the sofa and playing entropia appeal has to be there, even if its just for some auction browsing. Its fiddly though I won't deny.

Thankfully, Entropia has a wealth of control modes to play with so I think this should be doable to a degree. I was mainly using the "double click the landscape where you want to go" method.

So my advice:

Make sure you familiarise yourself with the controls and learn to switch between the 2 mouse modes and how to zoom in and out and move the screen around.

typing (ie chat) using the keyboard was a little odd... you would type a word, and it didn't appear in game till you moved to the next word. I suspect a change in android keyboard would maybe effect this.

Using voice for "chat dictation" worked fantastically (if you turn the music off) but had this weird habit of typing what you say into the game then deleting it then typing it again... (odd but not a problem as it didn't pres enter in between).

The standard keyboard isn't really suitable for WASD control. (you will quickly see what I mean).

I felt a bit like I needed a different/smaller keyboard to try so it took up less space.

Mouse look "works" but it unusable. This is the same as reason as the issues I had with joystick control initially. Basically, in entropia, you can't just "move the mouse" to look around as it will spas out. I think it works on velocity or something rather than physical position. It works if you are VERY VeRY careful. (ie it doesn't work since who can be carefull with a touchscreen?).

I tried "driving a car" with this by holding down both the "mouse buttons" and trying to steer.... needless to say there were rocks, cliffs and a whole world of badness.

I was thinking about it today... and I think the best solution might be to try using the buttons from the action book and placing them on screen to essentially create a "custom touch interface". I suspect this will only allow me to "press" one at a time though (so no forward and strafing at the same time) this might be better than nothing though...

I read online that one guy managed to control games in splashtop by using a wireless x box controller plugged into his PC... I guess you could do similar with a wireless mouse perhapse?

All in all I think its worth knowing about... and probably ok for chatting, crafting, auction, checking your weekly interest gains ( = ) ) and possibly even mining.

Only other thing worth noting is that when you log on to splashtop it will change your PC res for the duration of the session. Its not the same as normal Remote Desktop in other words.

Let me know if anyone else tries it and what your experiences/tips are!

Cheers

Wistrel

 

Oh there seems to be an implication that maybe its possible to play via mobile internet too... might warrant some experimentation maybe at a later stage.. Entropia on the bus maybe? ^_^

 

I had a bit of a fail last night... I tried adding the control icons to the screen in entropia but found when I "pressed" them on the tablet they had no effect... (or only occasionally) I don't know why but in short I think they need a new control mode...

So basically movement via anything other than the landscape double tap is a bit of a no no.... at least without creating some sort of extra program...

I imagine for example you could have an android app that pics up control inputs and feeds them back via wifi to your PC which then translates them into keyboard/mouse presses. In short, rather too much work.

I did do a sort of experiment though. I've been quite interested in the occulus rift of late. I'm particularly interested in the idea you could maybe use it for entropia and what that would be like. (I don't think you can - at this stage at least)

So what I did last night was hold up my tablet and move it around while at the same time moving my pc mouse appropriately so as to "simulate" the idea that the tablet was a "window on the world" (eg adjust the tablet to gradually point at the ceiling and move the mouse accordingly so I'm looking at the sky at the same time).

The effect was really quite convincing! So I think there is definitely scope for VR with modern day graphics being a cool thing.

What might be interesting would be if the accelerometer output of the tablet could be picked up in order to control things ie translated into appropriate mouse movements and sent back to the PC to appropriately adjust the view. That would be really cool but, again quite a lot of work!

Wistrel

 

about the black screen. Honestly when I ran the server on my PC it told me to put entropia into window mode straight off. Then it worked. I have an Archos 80g9 tablet.
I don't know if the splashtop software supports phones... ie things with smaller screens it might do!

haha drive car with phone.. well I tried that! it didn't really work cause as I said, only "click on landscape" was a workable solution to navigation and I don't think that works with the valk. You can certainly use keyboards. I tried a friend's mac bluetooth keyboard once and it worked fine. Think a usb keyboard might go too... dunno.

you could maybe use a mouse plugged into your pc if its a wireless/bluetooth one and you are in the same building. you can use PC controls at the same time as the android.

It sounds like you are looking for remote based play though ie eu on the bus or something.

 

I think the power/stats of the tablet/phone etc may be a factor but it is probably about if it is able to do the decompression as I expect the server is somehow compressing the screen data to get such good frame rates