Been putting together a touchscreen interface for Tie-Fighter under Magic Dosbox. It's pretty barebones right now, but it'll only take about three-four more buttons and it should be fully functional. Then I'll make it pretty, etc. And lower opacity a tonne, so the buttons don't block the view.
Should only be a button or two needing change for Xwing as well. I'll drop a linky once I'm done.
It was a bit of fiddling around with sound options and cycles to get it running at full speed with very little audio crackle (I swear LucasArts must have used a weird sample rate. 44100hz? Nope. It's like 42000hz, or just a very weird sound system, so it always pops a bit).
SB Pro 2.0, 512 Block Size, 15 Prebuffer made it work better? Alongside 12000-14000 cycles, CPU:Auto, and 16-32mb of ram. Seems arse about face, but yeah, that worked on my phone. I honestly forget what I did as setup.exe, but probably close (I think it was a SB 16), but it was worse sound as that on the emulation end. So downscaling old cards might help? Damn you George!!!!!
Anyway, a work-in-progress, but works fine, with full joystick thumb controls on a mobile phone. I don't even want to admit how long it took me to remember how to get a joystick going in MDBox. I started this on another phone, which broke, got another, forgot I was doing this, broke that one, then got this one and thought "yeah, I'd really like that game on mobile". Anyway, WIP screenshot (flies fine):
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5nujci9o208i69xt0lpq5/Screenshot_20240816-235914.png?rlkey=5h3mglac92vg0446tmnutweyn&dl=0Very minimalistic, but on a game with a LOT of buttons. Do you need anything other than 100% or 0% or Match-speed% engine power? Same with the F9 weapons button, the F10 is actually "dump weapon power to shields". I probably only need "closest target" near the thumbstick, and then "wingmen attack target" and "wingmen attack attackers of target" or something, probably nestled near the right by the fire button (labelled "mouse touch"). Anyway, I'll see how fast I can smash through a few campaigns over the weekend, to see if there's buttons I REALLY need, but I'm pretty sure that would cover it. Tractor Beam weapons? Pah! You mean "Moar Engine POWER!" (Ok, I'll probably have to add a button for that too).
Edit: It's getting there. Some of the buttons don't work, some of them have names. Huzzah! But it's 3am, so it's a tomorrow thing.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/itn0ljzbszktws5kmwerz/Screenshot_20240817-025447.png?rlkey=yaefeg8hp2s17c1uj0uquvtho&dl=0I'm pretty sure I only need "attack target" for my wingmen, and "refill me now" for missile supply space trucks. I might need "stop attacking now", but that seems too complicated for a touchscreen. And targeting individual ship components is way above any sort of Tie-Fighter pilot's pay grade, even gunboat or defenders. Ain't gonna happen on this screen size. Buy a keyboard if you want that.
The early 0.2beta version:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ug57axf2lug6abqo82bnd/Tie_Fighter.mgc?rlkey=h7udl43s73iqyeylwy82nciyy&dl=0And some footage. Simulator training 1 (will turn down joystick sensitivity a tad)
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/v5asy03cfnz7dy18sc9ak/XRecorder_17082024_084436.mp4?rlkey=8a0lws8e9zpe3uh32jeeyrhn9&dl=0Intro sequence and first bit of mission 1.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/smfvmn5y1x9yqtqgolre1/XRecorder_17082024_081819.mp4?rlkey=ayf883mhji1ljz1ivk7qr8yr6&dl=0So, good frame rate, and soon to be good controls 👍