Re: Possibly off topic, asking about running android apps on an emulator

reeze wrote on Wed, 20 Nov 2024 22:19:58 -0700 :

Thanks to those who have responded. Looking at
 
https://www.msi.com/Landing/appplayer
 
which looks promising. My (so far) only intent
is to run the Bluepeak app periodically as I
feel it's a good idea to monitor the router etc.
On my old setup I could connect to its internal
web page which was very handy on a couple
occaisons. Have a little more googling to do
and I may have my project for Thanksgiving
break...

Thanks for mentioning that new emulator (which apparently works with
Bluestacks I guess) which I had not known of (probably didn't exist) years
ago when I had tested every free emulation tool on Windows for Android.

  *MSI App Player*
  <https://www.msi.com/Landing/appplayer>
  "Developed under an exclusive partnership with BlueStacks,
   MSI App Player is an Android emulator tailored for running
   Android applications and games on PC or Handheld."

 <https://download-2.msi.com/uti_exe/nb/MSI-APP-Player.zip>
 C:\archives\editors\android\emulators\msiapp\.
 Name: MSI-APP-Player.zip
 Size: 165138635 bytes (157 MiB)
 SHA256: 6EDDF491D7A1328EE5AF13B394BA0DFC4F6958BFA8C0D6C23F30B9FBA618A272

It's a biggie. Why did they even bother to zip it though?
 Name: BSX-Setup_10.40.0.6308.exe
 Size: 165488680 bytes (157 MiB) <=== same size as the zip file!
 SHA256: 0C10C01FA077CE51E674C52E40A0658CCFBE8E00FB39596FBAE2B928110DEB53
 
TOU: <https://www.bluestacks.com/terms-and-privacy.html>
Verified publisher: Now.gg INC
Defaults to C:\Program Files (x86) but can be installed where it belongs
 C:\apps\editors\android\emulators\msiapp\. (but you can't name the folder)

The installation is simple (there's only one option - install location).
When it launches on Windows 10, a billion games show up in the GUI.

I'm an octogenarian so I'm long past playing games (but I used to love
Microsoft Flight Simulator when it was on floppy disks so I get it).

It is well designed to promote games though - but it also seems to be able
to "Install Local APK" (which is a button in the "My Games" tab).

It's nicely done. Huge buttons. Really huge. Even my eyes can see them!
When I tape the (huge) "Install Local APK" button, another (huge) button
pops up of "Browse Local File" which brings up a (normal sized) Windows
File Explorer GUI which shows a few thousand APKs I've downloaded over the
years (Android saves automatically every installer you ever installed).

Since NewPipe is one functionality that is NOT on any other platform other
than Android, I chose that installer <https://newpipe.net/> to install.
 <https://newpipe.net/#download>
 <https://archive.newpipe.net/fdroid/repo/NewPipe_v0.27.2.apk>
 Name: NewPipe_v0.27.2.apk
 Size: 11718894 bytes (11 MiB)
 SHA256: 6ECA47F1713000790D4BF4EEB3D7565ABB78A091FEDDA2C78061203E660A4041

The MSI App Player said "Preparing App Player for playing Android apps".
And then "Downloading" (which really must mean "importing" if you ask me).
And then "Installing" (saying "Fueling up for epic gaming sessions").

Drat. It says "Something went wrong. Installation failed. Error code: -23.
Something went wrong while installing App Player. Check FAQ for details."
Clicking the (huge) button for "Check FAQ for details" brings up the
default Windows web browser to this Bluestacks-support web site:
 <https://support.bluestacks.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406934863373-Why-the-App-Player-is-needed-to-play-games-using-BlueStacks-X>
Which wasn't helpful at all (but that's OK as FAQs rarely are useful
nowadays since they're now just a marketing tool & not really an FAQ).

Trying something else, let me see, out of the thousands of APKs I could
install, let me try something that is so vanilla it's got to work.

Hmm... how about I try the best APK app search engine on the planet?
 <https://skyica.com/appfinder/get/>
 <https://skyica.com/appfinder/get/App-Finder-1.4.1a-U.apk>
 Name: 20241121_App-Finder-1.4.1a-U.apk
 Size: 4497432 bytes (4392 KiB)
 SHA256: 7075AFFE7593C03594DA6A1EB67AA955EBB2EE23FA28198FD49D5821602EC2B9

Drat. Same thing. Let's try the best APK app manager on the planet...
 <https://muntashirakon.github.io/AppManager/en/>
 <https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager>
 <https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/releases>
 <https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager/releases/tag/v3.1.7>
 Name: AppManager_v3.1.7.apk
 Size: 18143386 bytes (17 MiB)
 SHA256: 1922326A16870CEF0525AD99C7ECF6885F7B5E4AB93CB54DEF264BEA1FB77140

 Same error.

To test better I "should" play a game instead, but as I said above, I've
played more flight-simulator games than I should have in my younger days,
mostly off of floppy disks, and then I had my children play games off of
CDROMs & later on in DVDs & now their children play games off their iPhones
& Androids (girls get iPhones & boys get Android it seems in my extended
family - go figure) - so I'm not gonna bother to test it with games.

However, my tentative conclusion (having not tested any of the games...):
a. For emulating Android games on Windows, it's probably great.
b. For emulating anything else... maybe not.