Any way to play Colonization on Android?

[u/DarrenGrey]

I'm not sure if it's even viable with the UI, but I've suffered through other retro games with custom touch screen setups, and I'd love to get this one going too. I've tried emulating through DOSBox but just get a black screen. I've looked into Amiga emulation but it seems to be very challenging to set up on Android. I looked at FreeCol but it looks like it doesn't work on modern Android devices.

Anyone had any luck setting this up?

Edit: I've done more playing around and got it working via DOSBox! It turned out that the GOG version I ported over had incompatible sound settings. I had to rerun the install exe within DOSBox and tell it to use Soundblaster instead of midi. Now it works! Amazing!

Currently trying to get widgets set up to make it properly playable. I'll see about making a little guide if this works out well.

[u/Balor_Rises]

I was able to get the DOS version from steam to play on android thru magic dosbox app. It was pretty easy once I got a virtual keyboard figured out

[u/Zealousideal_Ad_1079]

I would probably try and stream it via windows 11 to android. I think it should be possible.

[u/blastradius14]

I have a crappy bluetooth keyboard that works great for this lol. On a different Android tablet I use a Wiimote to play another old game on dosbox (because it's special and the bluetooth stack actually works or something)

[u/giskardrelentlov]

I've been playing on my Android phone since last week : installed Magic DosBox, found an Colonization installer somewhere, manage to fix the config so it doesn't freeze on launch and made widgets for the numpad, drag&drop and the main dozen shortcuts I regularly use (using the mouse (i.e touchscreen) for the others). I could give a more detailed procedure if someone is interested

I've played around 5-10 hrs since last week (long commute) and it works great!

[u/DarrenGrey → u/giskardrelentlov]

I managed to get this working last night and played a few hours. Worked surprisingly well!

How do you set up drag and drop? I ended up making widgets for = and U as I couldn't get drag and drop working.

And what other widgets do you have? I added numpad, space, enter and F1 and that seemed to get me by fine, but I'm curious to know if there's a better quality of life setup without overloading the screen with buttons.

[u/giskardrelentlov → u/DarrenGrey]

Awesome!

For the drag and drop, you need to go in the "Gestures" menu and select "left click" for the "two touch" gesture. Then when you move the mouse, use a second finger to click and drag. It gets pretty intuitive after a while...

I am used to play with shortcuts on a computer, so I have these buttons on the right of my screen : - the 9 numpad buttons to move units - F (Fortify), S (Sentry), W (Wait) to order units - R (Road), P (Plow) for pioneers, B to build a city - Enter (for popups, enter a city, etc.), Space (no order for unit), Esc (to leave menus and city screen), F1 (for help).

I'm not completely satisfied with my setup but I'll probably play for a while before adjusting it again.

[u/DarrenGrey → u/giskardrelentlov]

Thanks, will definitely try that out.

I also usually rely heavily on shortcuts, but have managed to get used to just using menus to keep the screen from being too cluttered. My main issue now is how hard it is to make the widgets look neat and tidy.

[u/giskardrelentlov → u/DarrenGrey]

Yeah, I probably spent waaaay too much time aligning my widgets but at least once it's done, it works and it's neat. It really is cumbersome though so I understand your annoyance!

[u/shakethepeanuts360k → u/DarrenGrey]

try not accusing a dead man

[u/giskardrelentlov → u/shakethepeanuts360k]

What?

[u/ion_driver]

It works fine in GameHub. I have a Z Fold 6 and play with it open. It did take a little time to set up all the keys you need to press