I couldn’t really find any nice RTS games for my android, so I though that it would be quite awesome to run StarCraft somehow. Of course remotely!  The only running PC emulator for android  is currently “aDOSbox”, which is unfortunately really slow 😦 so there’s no way of running the old first version of WarCraft yet. Anyway, here’s my idea.

What you need: Andoid Phone, androidVNC, preferable a GNU/Linux or BSD server with tightVNC and Wine.

You could just run a VNC server on any Windows/MacOSX machine, but what I was thinking about is having a server somewhere that will be able to run StarCraft when I want. I don’t need it at home, where I’ve got a full fledged computer.

Short instructions: install StarCraft with Wine on your Linux machine. You’re gonna have to configure tightVNC to 640×480 – 8 bit resolution, because the program won’t do it for you on a vnc X server (I’m assuming we’re not running proper X session on a server). To do it, find your “tightvncserver” script (e.g. “which tightvncserver”) and edit the variables. Then “wine starcraft.exe” and we’re off 😀

Here’s how it works for me:

Set your androidVNC to fit screen and touch -> mouse click. The screen is a bit crunched to fit the screen, but I think everything is fairly readable, if you know the game. The stretching is not smooth, but it looks alright. It’s good to remember the hot-keys  for most actions, even building, because trying to hit the small command buttons without a pointer or a stylus is a pain. I tested it in London over the Internet connected with Wi-Fi to my server in Warsaw, it was playable. I don’t even want to try over 3G 😛

I don’t really play games on my android, but it’s not what’s important here. It’s the Geeky Time Excellent! 🙂 Cheers!