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[Oafsalot]

Hi,

  I recently submitted a question to Tarn concerning if he will provide any support for Steam DF over Steam Link. Which would allow players to keep their fortresses on their powerful home PC's but play DF on their phones and tablets while on the move!

Tarn basically said that he doesn't know anything about Steam Link or what would be needed in order to make it work.

Steam Link provides a lower-latency connection from a device like a phone to your home PC without the need to mess with your router and assign port forwarding etc. It somewhat standardises the experience with Bluetooth controllers and keyboards and mice.

In order for DF to play over steam link, it needs a few tweaks that are at present not possible. Android doesn't have an ESC key for example and you can't resize windows from Steam Link. Also you can rejoin a game in progress, if you disconnect and reconnect you have to load an additional copy of DF to continue.

Steam Link would be a great way to epxand the playability of DF. DF with a GUI and some small modifications, like rebinding the ESC key, etc, would do it. As most of that work is already planned I can hope that someone will pick up on this and bring it to the attention of Tarn.

So if you have experience with remote play on DF, over RDP or Steam Link, add your comments here and let's see if we can make this happen.

Thanks

  Oafsalot

[Shonai_Dweller]

Surely tons of other PC games have issues with the Esc key when trying to play on an Android device? What do they do?

[KevinM]

I don't know, there's so much that is not yet in the game, I'd prefer that progress be made there, rather than time being taken away to do some side project. 
Asking for steam link now is like asking for whipped cream on your pie or cake, which happens to still be in the mixer and not yet half baked.  We just happen to enjoy licking the bowl, even if there are raw eggs that might cause some issues from time to time.

I've played via google desktop, webex and gotomeeting before, and it's not really worth the hassle.   The response time due to latency can be a pain, and I wound up sending the individual ticks (period key) to advance time to prevent too much going on.  I then went on to play Unreal World via remote session instead and saved Dwarven Fortress when I was local to the computer.

There were a very few times I would use google desktop on a device and a bluetooth keyboard, or a chromebook with google desktop to remote to my PC for a few extra turns right before I'd go to sleep, but that's the extent of what I'd use it for.

I would be curious I guess, to find out what the business viability would be versus the work it would entail.  I wouldn't think it'd be worth it, but that's why you're asking, I'd think.

[TheLifeOfRyanB]

If I was going to play DF this way I'd attach a full usb keyboard to my android tablet.

[Shonai_Dweller]

If I was going to play DF this way I'd attach a full usb keyboard to my android tablet.

Well, isn't the point that Esc somehow still doesn't work on Android, regardless?

[anewaname]

If you use a separate set of init files when you start it through android, you could rebind the "leave screen" action to something other than the ESC key, and choose the windowedx and windowedy settings so that DF opens up in the window size you prefer.

You probably can do this by creating a start-via-android script on your main computer that redirects to the second set of init files or modifies the init files each time.

About the disconnect-and-rejoin issue; it doesn't sound right that the still-running DF app should not be accessible, and starting a 2nd instance of DF while the first instance is still running seems excessive.