Best playable alternative to settlers DS on pandora?

[asimov-solensan]

Hello,

So, I found this game and was curious about it. Sure I heard about the series but never played or read what it was about.

Then I started playing and immediately got hooked to it. At first it was really fun but then started to notice crashes and AI errors and thought that it was just the emulation. Sadly I read that the port is totally broken and crashes or errors in the game mechanics are the rule.

Still I'm in the mood to play this game and would like to ask here what's the best alternative to play on pandora. It can be settlers 2 (seems to be the port for DS) or others, all I ask is:

Works on pandora (of course) with minimal frameskip.
Fits the pandora screen and is easy to read, and manage.
Fits the controls on pandora.

So what options do I have? dosbox? amiga?

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Not sure what's already been ported and packaged, but there's Widelands and Return to the Roots. The first one is some sort of open source clone of Settlers 2, the second one calls itself a Settlers 2 extension due to its new content, but it is actually a full open source engine reimplementation that just needs the data files from the original PC game.

 

[levi]

Settlers DS running under DraStic perhaps? Not tested it myself though.

 

[ptitSeb]

Return to the Roots doesn't play campain mode (last time I checked). I haven't ported it to the Pandora (but I started, and it did run with gl4es, but I haven't finished due to the lack of compain mode).
Widelands is not Setlers II, but it's a pretty good clone.

Settlers II does run on DosBOX, in 640x480 mode, a bit slow, but not really slower than the DS version IIRC (I haven't retried lately).

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi all

@ptitSeb: could this be of any use ?

https://www.settlers-android-clone.com/

Cheers, Magic Sam

 

[ptitSeb]

This is a Settler III clone, not a Settler II (and II greatly > III IMO), and it's not me that wants to play settler2 on the Pandora, it's @asimov-solensan

 

[Magic Sam]

@ptitSeb: +1 regarding Settlers II > Settlers III And I rather meant to ask you whether this Android Settlers III clone could be ported to the Pandora

@asimov-solensan: did you give FreeSerf a try (this port is rather old and could use an update) ?

https://www.pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/freeserf.69792/
http://jonls.dk/freeserf/
https://github.com/freeserf/freeserf

@canseco : could you give Widelands (build 20) a go ?

https://wl.widelands.org/

Cheers, Magic Sam

 

[ptitSeb]

I think latest Widelands needs OpenGL 2.0 or something. Hopefully latest gl4es will work.

For jsettlers, I'll take a look later.

 

[asimov-solensan]

Settlers DS running under DraStic perhaps? Not tested it myself though.

I guess you didn't understood my problem. I was already playing it on DraStic, but the game itself is broken, as a rom or physical or whatever they just released it unfinished.

I'm not really fond open-source clones, from the links people added it seems that all them are in an early state and I won't enjoy them.

Dosbox may be my best bet, but it's a pain to configure and I bet that I will end with cursor problems or without sound, or whatever ...

Has anyone with exagear license tested this?

Man, I would love to see this ported or recompiled whatever was the magic that was done with diablo and starcraft (it was called static recompilation maybe).

By the way I was just in the mood to play this kind of game, Is there anything playable on the pandora? And I mean something finished, I guess all those open-source clones will be astounding when finished, but right now they don't cut it for me.

 

[TrashyMG]

Has anyone with exagear license tested this?

well if you think DOSBOX is tough to setup, on the Pandora Exagear isn't an easy task to even get working period.

ptitseb's Dosbox version is pretty easy to make game specific setups.
http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=dbgl_ptitseb

 

[mamemaniac]

@asimov-solensan: Settlers 2 should play nicely using Pandora Dosbox, just check this (very old) video:


Of course, like TrashyMG said in previous post, it's better to use ptitseb Dosbox for easy game configuration.

 

[asimov-solensan]

Wow, that video is amazing but sadly it shows that touchscreen isn't working, I expect several other problems.

So, as a summary:

Options for the original game:
- Return to roots: amazing project but still incomplete
- Dosbox: Control problems and I bet there are screen and performance drawnbacks.
- Exagear: Too much work to get unknown results, for me this is too much bother for just a game.

Clones:
- So far widelands seems to be pretty complete, although there are still improving it. I tested in my laptop and it has a different peace, and indeed lacks the original's charm. But so far seems the best I can get on pandora if we get the latest version.

Thanks a lot for all your comments.

 

[elvissteinjr]

Wait, what would you want to use Exagear with? Settlers 2 was a MSDOS game, so it won't just run in Exagear + Wine or something.

 

[TrashyMG]

- Dosbox: Control problems and I bet there are screen and performance drawnbacks.

Which flavo(u)r of dosbox are you using?

 

[asimov-solensan]

I was thinking about exagear and the gog version of settlers. I thought it was adapted for windows. But now that you mention it some games just include a preconfigured dosbox.

Last time I checked dosbox was with dosbox gl (by ptitsebt?). And was unable to map keyboard controls. If you check the video in this thread the touchscreen isn't working and nubs aren't great either.

 

[TrashyMG]

There are several different DosBox versions floating around with UIs. I just find the interface Ptitseb uses fairly easy to deal with. To me the touchscreen works well for mouse input, but one quirk I found is you need to go full-screen and back (ALT-ENTER) to get the touchscreen to hitting the right places. What difficulties did you have to map the keyboard, I suppose some of it depends on the game too, some games back then had a separate executable to configure setting like the keyboard and sound and such.

 

[asimov-solensan]

Well I bought gog version and it includes a preconfigured dosbox. Is there anything I can salvage for pandora?

I will try with dosbox and wish for the best.