this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
103 points (99.0% liked)

RetroGaming

29976 readers
196 users here now

Vintage gaming community.

Rules:

  1. Be kind.
  2. No spam, AI slop, or soliciting for money.
  3. No racism or other bigotry allowed.
  4. Obviously nothing illegal.

If you see these please report them.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Xylinna@lemmy.world
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
gts@lemmy.world
103
Terraria with RetroAchievements on Android (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Shatur@discuss.tchncs.de to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/66737678

RetroAchievements for Terraria require tModLoader, which you normally can't run on Android. I tried getting it to work with GameNative, but had no success.

But recently, I discovered this Android app that lets you run desktop .NET apps: https://github.com/FireworkSky/RotatingartLauncher

The installation is pretty straightforward: you just specify the path to the GOG Linux version of Terraria and the path to a ZIP file containing tModLoader.

For mods, I downloaded them on my PC through Steam and simply copied the .tmod files to:

<Internal storage>/RALauncher/Terraria/tModLoader/Mods

For save files, I set up Syncthing to sync ~/.local/share/Terraria/tModLoader/ to: <Internal storage>/RALauncher/Terraria/tModLoader

By default, the game opens stretched at a much lower resolution, but going to Settings -> Video -> Fullscreen automatically sets the correct resolution.

To log in to RetroAchievements, I had to connect a keyboard to enter my username and password. While doing so, I noticed a small bug: connecting a keyboard while the game is running crashes it.

I haven't seen this app mentioned on Lemmy, so I hope someone finds this useful.

P.S. The handheld in the picture is an AYN Thor.

top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] AliasVortex@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Woah! Running .net apps on Android is crazy, makes me wonder if it'd be possible to pull the same trick with RimWorld. I can't imagine it'd be too happy with a massive mod list, but the UI/ interface would probably translate pretty well.

[–] popcar2@piefed.ca 7 points 1 week ago

Things are getting really advanced when it comes to running Windows games on Android, to the point where people have gotten Steam running and are playing games like Silksong on their phones. Right now a lot of games crash and most 3D games don't run well, but chances are RimWorld could run fine on a higher end phone. Check out https://gamenative.app/ .

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Wasn't the whole point of .net to be "compile once, run everywhere" exactly like Java? I don't see how packaging an already ported runtime is such a great achievement.

[–] umgeher@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago

P.S. The handheld in the picture is an AYN Thor.

tks!!!

[–] CodingCarpenter@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Does the gameplay feel OK? No stuttering or anything? Is it better than just running the native android app? Also, which version of the Thor do you have?

[–] Shatur@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 6 days ago

Yes, it runs great without breaking a sweat.

Is it better than just running the native android app

It allows me to run tModLoader, which I can't do with the Android version of the game.

I have the 12 GB version. I bought it at launch.

[–] dis_honestfamiliar@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Nice.. Nice device! Does it come in larger screen?

[–] jaygray91@piefed.zip 4 points 6 days ago

If you like to look further, that is the AYN Thor.

https://retrocatalog.com/retro-handhelds/thor

That site is pretty handy to look up these emulator handheld devices.

[–] Shatur@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Do you mean, is there a bigger-screen version of this handheld? No, but it's about the size of a 3DS.

There are plenty of larger single-screen handhelds, though.