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Frontier: Elite II on iOS via iDOS


TechnicalBYTE
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I'm not sure if this is the right place to put it... since it's not technically a new game. But it still runs on a mobile platform, and I certainly found it interesting.

Basically, I've discovered it's very much possible to run and play Frontier: Elite II and others, such as my favourite, Nomad, on the iOS platform. It's quite straight forward- a program called iDOS which is available for jailbroken uses, pretty much a port of DOSbox, can run any DOS program the same as the PC version. I think it may have been on the App Store once, but it would have been taken down.

It runs perfectly fine, except for the frame rate. It's honestly unplayable on planets, on my iPod Touch 3G, but I would think on iDos's supercharged iPad version it would run like a charm. I've also played games such as Mechwarrior, Nomad, Master of Orion, Begin and others, all fully playable. Now, I'm not sure on the legality of this, I guess it would matter to the individual game's licenses, but if it is legal and you have a jailbroken iOS device I say it's worth checking out.


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DarkOne
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I heard there was some DOS style emulators on iOS and Android I just have never seen them in action. If they are powerful enough and the control scheme is usable it could really open the tablet market up for some retro gaming.


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TechnicalBYTE
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Well, it's certainly capable. I found it quite impressive that it has a full emulated keyboard, configuable mouse mode, and customizable joystick/onscreen controls that is useful for pretty much any game. My iPod's old anyway- I guess the new devices would be far more capable of running it.


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DarkOne
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I think any emulator could really only be effectively used on a tablet and probably android for now because apple probably doesn't allow the app on the appstore. I wanted to get a android tablet for Xmas for myself this year if its in the budget and see what all the hype is. And emulators and such is what I mainly wanted it for to play older style games and of course keep track of SSC 😉


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Thor
 Thor
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DarkOne wrote:
I think any emulator could really only be effectively used on a tablet and probably android for now because apple probably doesn't allow the app on the appstore. I wanted to get a android tablet for Xmas for myself this year if its in the budget and see what all the hype is. And emulators and such is what I mainly wanted it for to play older style games and of course keep track of SSC 😉

I`d buy several cheap Chinese Android tablets to play the game) I`ve heard their price dropped down to 47.50$ 😕


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DarkOne
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From what I can tell by looking around is that DOSBox Turbo is the emulator to have https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... sbox&hl=en

Latest fixes:

Quote:

1.4.1:

* Fix virtual joystick calibration issues

* XBox 360 Controller Support

* Generic USB HID Controller Support

* Fix rare crash when 5 fingers touching screen.

Recent Changes:

* Sync with DOSBOX SVN.

* Fast Forward now mappable

* Relative Mouse Sensitivity Setting

* When using Landscape screen scaling factor, the screen is now centered.

* Display current cycle speed on restart & cycle change.

* Increase mem limit in cfg to 32MB

* More ARM7 Speed optimizations.

* Audio Pre-Buffer Setting

Some nice tweaks in that last release, guess this will be one of the first apps I buy for the tablet when I get one.


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TechnicalBYTE
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Aw... that runs a hell of a lot better than it does on my iPod Touch. I guess that's to be expected on an tablet though.


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trumpet
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I have an unjailbroken version of iDOS (lucked out and saw when it was up on app store for like 12 hours or something before it was pulled) and have been playing Frontier for over a year now on a semi-regular basis. It's great having an Asp Explorer in my pocket.

<img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//nyam.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

I have a good custom rig for the buttons if you want that works for me.

Yeah planets are jerky on my iPhone 4 but no more jerky than my Amiga 500, and I'm running it at full quality graphics.. I've still been able to land rough with lots of saving and very slow approaches.

I even forgot to buy autopilot once when jumping back to Sol once and so had to fly manual all the way in to the moon and landed at Apollonius City!!!


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