What to do when your Android is dated

[UesugiKenshin]

I would bet most use their tablet in landscape mode and are right handed. But the power buttons and the up down controls are on the left top. If I was the engineer, I would put them in the middle top. Say you are laying down using a sit up pillow to type and use the tablet to browse the web. The buttons are fine when you hold the tablet with your right hand, but you type with your right hand, so the left hand holding the tablet can accidentally hit the power button. It's hardly an issue.

Simple Control is a Google play store app. It lets you create a custom software navigation scheme. That is very useful in BotE for single button screencaps and flipping apps when multitasking. It's way better than the standard navigation buttons.

If I wanted, I could launch the browser app and immediately access the BotE wiki by pushing a single button. That is extremely useful for starships or alien race details. You could probably do a voice command app to do the same things.

[UesugiKenshin]

Standard navigation software buttons in landscape mode are on the bottom center and get in the way while the tablet is resting on you chest. You really want Simple Control and it's free.

With gestures like swiping or hold down and delay, I can launch apps to document BotE or launch a calculator.

Next time you play BotE, launch the BotE wiki in German in Google Chrome. It will autotranslate to English. Put up the minor races and starships in my signature links plus the main page. Now play BotE and use Simple Control. Then you have enough everything you need to succeed.

If only we had a campaign editor and map editor, I would create a set map and it would be glorious as the map would be extremely detailed with set stellar anomalies and minor race sectors and major race starting sector locations. Then I would document several giant sized maps.

[UesugiKenshin]

What I eventually want to do is a detailed map like this for BotE. Then you would develop a whole comprehensive conquest strategy as starting locations and empire size would be SET.


You could play regular BotE or plausible campaigns based on time period. No more waiting, but 1-10 hour games.

[UesugiKenshin]

If I could control the map, then I could do something like this.


And the top 20 rows would be above the flat galactic plane, and the lower 20 rows would be below the flat galactic plane. Thus BotE would seem quasi-three dimensional.

I would place every sector's primary star and by a correct type and with plausible planets based on who resides there. It would be a huge task as that is 1600 sectors at maximum.

[UesugiKenshin]

What works best for me is to turn off the music within BotE and use Pandora to stream mp3s. The game is so much more fun that way. I used to do it even on the Nook HD as well as using Spotify. It does not make my new Vankyo S8 laggy at all. It works smoothly.

The way you do that on lesser tablets is with memory optimizers.

You could listen to podcasts too. It works so well, you might consider partnering with a steaming music service as part of BotE to help pay for new programming as expenses come up for software and hardware plus just coding time.

[UesugiKenshin]

Ebay reduced the Vankyo S8 by $10. Prices will fall as Christmas approaches and retailers are concerned so there are bargains out there. The only issue is the supply chain as most tablets are made in China so don't wait until the last minute. You might start seeing "product is unavailable".

Ebay also dropped the Vankyo Z4 which is a 10" 32gb storage device to $85.

[UesugiKenshin]

The vankyo S8 works very well at voice recognition. I've been posting a few posts that way and it's about 95% accurate so I'm very pleased as I can speak a lot faster than I can type...on a small keyboard especially.

[UesugiKenshin]

Sorry, posted to the wrong section.

[UesugiKenshin]

Two days ago, unbelievably they are willing to give me an Amazon gift card worth $25 so I can get some minor stuff like some cables or more sd cards or software or a case for free. So the Vankyo S8 ended up being very inexpensive due to free shipping (but paying tax) and about $65 US or 55 Euros.

[UesugiKenshin]

Now is not a prime time to buy tablets, but the Vankyo S20 is an excellent bargain and it weighs half as much as a S30. If you like playing Rome 1 Total War, that is what you need. No emulation will work on an RTS so intense like that. That is an Android R1TW and so old mods like Roma Surrectum won't work.

I could play using Exagear's fan modified 3.02 and run Homeworld using software emulation, or run Alpha Centauri or Civ3's Star Trek mod. I bet most of you can run that.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ ... -0.404833/

My low end Vankyo S8 cannot play heavy graphics games like even Civ4 which has a well known Star Trek mod as it would be too laggy on the frame rate. Here is the video link.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iIFI3NJA4no

[UesugiKenshin]

My Vankyo is a 2 gig of memory system that typically boots with 18 apps running, so with an optimizer, uses 0.65 gig so 1.35 gigs are available. Connecting to the internet then will activate these programs running. More than enough to run BotE as prior about 0.45 gigabytes of memory were available. That is pushing it and on an old ereader.

Anyone wanting to run Homeworld on an Android ought to just get the 3 gig ram model and then can play higher requirement apps like the specialized Android version of Rome 1 Total War. The processor is better, the size of the screen is larger, there is more memory. Just watch the weight as that can double based on the model. The price is usually in the $50 more range so not too bad. (41.40 Euros). They totally rewrote R1TW and must be using advanced software rendering.

Tablets are not going away, so more and more apps will have higher requirements.

Tablets lack dedicated graphic processors so at some point, a tablet will be like a laptop and just have a graphics part on that tablet motherboard. That is the only way they could ever run some games and have a respectable frame rate. Right now Exagear 3.02 maxed out can run programs, but the frames rate are awful so the better games are unplayable. It is strictly a graphics board issue and likely will be a heat generation issue.

[UesugiKenshin]

When you insert a sdcard into a tablet, it can be for media like saved mp3 or mp4 or documents, or it enlarge your existing tablet hard drive for apps. I would recommend using it as the former. When the device boots, it does not immediately recognize this extension of space, so it could potentially cause issues. Also Exagear 3.02 does not recognize this extension, so that could cause you issues. Say you cloned an app like BotE for Android, or are running the Windows version of Homeworld or Alpha Centauri or BotE, these could cause issues if they are located on the sdcard. It is better as a media storage, and I bet that you end up wanting to unplug it.

The idea of cloning an app (having two copies on an Android) is designed to work like this. Say you have a Facebook app for business and you have a Facebook app you are running for a nonprofit and you have a Facebook app for personal use. You have to use cloned apps to make that work...or your tablet will only support one of them.

You might be running the regular BotE, the beta version of BotE, the beta multiplayer BotE and a modded version where the buildings and ship data have changed or the major and minor races. You might even have Exagear running and the Windows and Linux versions of BotE. Cloning is the only way to make the first four work.

I prefer to stream on my other ereader to listen to music, and run BotE on my new tablet with the wifi off. The new tablet is running optimized and only focused on BotE as I don't want it to ever have an issue while beta testing as I would lose an hour of test. I save every turn.

Historically in wargaming autosaves when being reloaded can be buggy. That is not a good idea. You want a good group if you made a flaw in your decision making process. You might try wild things just to see what happens for testing.

Whatever you do, if using multiple versions of BotE, you need a filing system to keep all those save games separately or it will be very confusing. I recommend you have some kind of cloud system like Google Drive. You might want to share a save game file with your friends or load it to the forum or redownload it to another tablet.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://techpp.com/2019/07/11/best-andr ... ning-apps/
Here is a discussion of cloning apps and various apps that work on the Android.

Modding on a PC running Windows is different as you can poke around the directory where BotE is installed to. But in an Android, the way it is set up, they don't want you to meddle with the installation. So some game software on an Android is resistant to change.

Exagear is just a fancier version of Wine that allows a Windows partition on an Android. Some install LimboPC as well and run Windows98. Then you can poke and alter some file in a directory which you cannot do on an Android unless you root it. Rooting can be smple if it works, or it can turn your tablet into a brick and void the warranty. I doubt anyone wanting to mod wants to do that or even run a mod that way.

Rooting allows the Android OS to update to the latest version so likely every tablet owner at some time will root their tablet.

So cloning apps is the way to go or running Exagear and using the windows version of BotE.
...
The real solution is what unCiv did. That app for Android is designed to load a map, load a scenario, and so anyone can mod. I wish every game app were written that way.

Why don't developers do this? Most game apps for Android are free and to make money they do three things.
1. Sell your data to data miners.
2. They have DLC which cost money as upgrades. The good way just adds maps or new units or new technology or new species. I wish all developers would do that. That is just modding, and in a healthy environment, anyone can do that to freely to make the game creative.

The bad way is pay to win and typically that is a MMO model so getting gullible people to pay to defeat older players and is sort of like gambling. They can't win as the older players have amassed power and wealth ,so use real money to do so. Everyone on MMOs despises this method.

3. Some apps online or not run ads and this is no different than the Pandora streaming music system or radio and television. This is a smart way and some game apps even have digital cash within the app and you can use that cash to buy DLC. Everyone wins. The only flaw is poorly written apps that do not allow saving prior to an ad as sometimes an ad hangs and so then someone loses their save game which is annoying.

[UesugiKenshin]

The tried and true method is commercial software, but that won't work for BotE as Sir Puff Cake made it open source which then blotunga made into a Android app, then a Windows and Linux app. Likely this means BotE will fade as other software comes along. So BotE is sorta kinda open source now as it is copyrighted. BotE is an odd duck where even though it is open source, how could someone change the combat formula or galactic map generation now??? How could someone add storytelling in the program? All you can do is change data files and not at all easily in the Android version.

BotE is not really open source anymore.

[UesugiKenshin]

The truly weird situation is there are modding sites that alter game aps so players can cheat with infinite money. They changed the apk, the actual program, and this is unchallenged. Right now, you can find an apk for BotE which altered the app. Those hacked apks are a bad deal as they are made to bypass the pay to win model. Which means less programmers want to write code as they get their profit stream taken from them.