Other [GUIDE] MapleLegends on Android phone

Tested on Samsung S22 Ultra & s24 ultra

**Note** this is NOT remote access like teamviewer or streaming. The game is actually running from the phone itself.

Spoiler: Requirements

Any Android device: Tablets, phones, or your cars infotainment system.
Recommend Snapdragon CPU, although other CPU may work, the best drivers are with snapdragon at the moment.

Spoiler: Performance

1. Battery consumption: 15-25% / hour
2. Stability: Almost never crashes, i have kept a game up for over 27 hours.
3. FPS: you only need like 40fps for smooth gameplay, extra is wasting resources
   1. Max fps: over 300FPS on small maps
   2. AVG FPS: 100+ most maps
   3. Ultimate skills: Genesis cause it to drop to 20-40fps
   4. Crowded maps: bubbling map in subway runs 50-60 fps.
   5. Fm1 waiting for GM buff :10-20fps
   6. Fm1 getting GM buffed: 5fps
   7. Recommendation: use frame limit option to cap FPS at 40, reducing resources usage lowers power consumption and heat.
4. VPN keeps you connected when you switch LTE/5G towers/WiFi
   1. I have farmed 8 hours of gold tooth on a flight to Korea 30k feet in the air. Pretty stable with VPN.
5. Multi client does work, recommend running lower resolution for it. Hd2 vs hd1 vs hd0 , I don't like hd0

Spoiler: How it works

Wine runs windows application on Linux.
Termux runs Linux terminal on android
Box86 translate x86 instructions to ARM instructions (android uses ARM)
Dxvk translates DirectX 8 to Vulkan (since May 2023)
Turnip Drivers allow our snapdragon CPU to run Vulkan better than any other android device!
Mobox is an all-in-one installation package of Box86, DXVK, WINE, and Turnip that someone(Oleg) made.
Termux:X11 is the display screen for Termux where we play.
InputBridge emulates the keyboard, you can also use your own preferred key mapper.

Spoiler: Part 1, Installing Mobox

1. Credits to mobox here
   1. Install termux, termux x11, and inputbridge.
      1. Android 12 and above: disable the "phantom process killer" in developer settings
2. Open the termux app
   1. "Aquire wake lock" so it won't autoclose
3. Install mobox by copy & pasting the following command:
   1. curl -s -o ~/x https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olegos2/mobox/main/install && . ~/x
   1. Select 1 for box86 version if you have s23 or older device
      1. Better consistency. Mobox, termux display, and game loads perfectly 95% of time.
   2. Select 2 for box64 if you have s24 or newer (snapdragon 8 gen 3)
      1. Better performance once loaded, but consistency is 60-70% hit or miss. Keep rebooting mobox to try if fail.

   ​
   Update: instead of installing Mobox from oleg's repository, (since he gave up updating the project), I am now using jaycore's repository (since he took it upon himself to keep the project going) . (Link here)

Spoiler: Part 2, setup settings

1. Open Termux:X11
   1. This is our computer screen (display), tap preference to change display setting.
   1. Use "exact" screen resolution
   2. Forced landscape mode

   ​
2. Open Termux, type MOBOX to start the loader
   1. This is where we can adjust settings, such as:
      1. CPU core selection
      2. frame rate limiter
      3. FPS counter display
      4. compatibility fixes
   2. Select the first option START WINE
      1. What you see is Wine Explorer, works almost like windows desktop
         1. Tap to simulate left mouse click
         2. Tap+hold to simulate mouse drag
         3. Two finger tap to right click
         4. Wine Explorer operates like a PC with C: drive
         5. it mounts your android storage as D: drive
   3. Start > apps > winecfg
      1. Applications tab, change compatibility mode:
         1. Box86 : windows xp?
         2. Box64: windows 98 definitely
      2. Graphics tab, check emulate windows box, and adjust resolution
   4. Start > restart

Spoiler: Part 3, Install Maplelegends

1. From your phone or PC: Download latest installation file for maplelegends winewrap Mac version here
   1. Extract the maplelegends.pkg via 7zip, then extract the Payload again until you get maplelegends.app folder
      1. ****I've repeated this process a few times, some times it requires me to extract a second time to get Maplelegends.app folder, sometimes there's errors, but the essential files are all there.
      2. This is the slowest part of the whole process, takes 20 minutes? Alternatively you can pre-extract it from your PC and move it onto device.
      3. Another alternative option is to skip all this and copy+paste the windows PC version of the folder, you just need someone to send you the Mac version's maplelegends.exe file
   2. Once you get maplelegends.app folder
      1. Navigate to Contents/resources/c_drive and find the maplelegends folder
   3. Optional: Copy or move the maplelegends(Mac) folder to phone's storage.
      1. Termux's file Explorer sees your storage as drive D:
   4. Edit the legends.ini file if needed
2. Download 2 DLL files from here
   1. move+replace into system32 folder of wine explorer's C: drive

Now every time you start Wine, it'll open the C: drive like a PC computer. just navigate to Maplelegends folder and double click the .exe file to run the game.
i recommend restarting every time you change resolutions, it takes 1-2 start for the system to settle in.

Spoiler: Optional, setup InputBridge

1. Open InputBridge
   1. go to the 4th tab/icon with the finger. EDIT CONTROLS
      1. create and map each button to the keys you want
      2. optional to add a graphic overlay to each button via ICON MANAGER
2. Alternatively you can connect Bluetooth keyboard, controller, or mouse. Player however you want.

Spoiler: Troubleshooting tips:

1. Game freezes after character selection:
   1. Press enter at select character screen instead of mouse click.
2. Screen resolution of each of these display settings must be big enough to contain the next display within it.
   1. Android's Display resolution <= biggest
   2. Termux:X11
   3. Winecfg's emulated desktop resolution
   4. Legends.ini file <= smallest
3. Do not click minimize the game, it won't restore.
   1. if you need to get out of it, press the Home key on your device.
   2. Alt+Enter works for full screen, there's no ALT + TAB.
4. Unable to type in game
   1. After game loads, Click outside the game and back to enable typing.
   2. Press and hold the title bar to move the game window so you can click outside the game.
5. Pressing the "back" / "return" key on the device pops up the keyboard.
6. Termux > mobox > settings > dxvk settings
   1. Change the fps limiter to 50!!! Reduces GPU/CPU usage. Saves battery and reduce heat.
7. Inputbridge sometimes turns itself off when changing maps, just tap the cog button to turn it back on.
   1. {insert} key don't work for some reason.
   2. {F5} key is coded to run task manager, so avoid using F5
8. Very rarely. Once every 100 times while running MapleStory on the phone, termux would freeze/lag up the whole phone.
   1. If you can slowly get to the drop down menu, "exit termux" before your phone freeze, then it'll be fine.
   2. Otherwise it might freeze the phone and it'll restart.
   3. Even more rarely, after the reboot, termux:x11, our display screen is still "connected" to the previous session. You have to run this code on termux to force close it.
      1. pkill -f com.termux.x11
9. Legends.ini
   1. Auto clear cache set false
   2. Fast load set to false

Spoiler: box86 vs box64

Box64 works on all machines, but settings are different. Box86 installation comes with wine8.18 staging, which you can use compatibility mode for Windows XP. Box64 comes with wine9.x+ which you need to select Windows 98 compatibility. However, after installing box64, you can still go into settings and choose to reinstall wine8.18 staging.

Side note:

for those who read all the way to the end. This method can also be replicated on a Nintendo Switch, although that requires jailbreaking it via software or hardware mod.

Planning on buying a tablet late July, we'll see how it goes! Samsung tab s9

I bought a asus alloy rog and raspberry pi 5, maplelegends work on both of these devices​

 

Not sure if I understand...

Maybe? Android apps are very CPU dependent. If the tablet has snapdragon CPU I don't see why not. I don't have any tablet to test out though.

 

Attached a new screenshot to show the control pad. Inputbridge can customize the buttons , takes some time to setup how you like it

Haha

 

Finished a lot of optimization on the inputbridge overlay. Attached 2 screenshots with and without the icon overlay.

Probably works with a USB or Bluetooth keyboard/ controller

 

Zfold was my original goal! Until someone stole mine
Good to know that BT keyboard works too! I see some cheap foldable portable BT keyboard online for like $20, gonna try it one day.

Ps: you need help with inputbridge?

Please do! Bigger community can help more testing and troubleshooting!

At a GM buff channel 2 yesterday, my fps was 20-30 while waiting with everyone in FM.
While getting the buff though, whew! fps dropped to 1-5!!!

Worked fine at horntail with 40fps though

 

I am using input bridge 0.1.9.9 from the mobox guide. Also the mobox creator guy already pre-baked the input bridge into the system. You don't have to redo the installation for inputbridge using guides from elsewhere because it was originally designed to be used with another emulator called exagear.

Edit: after you install the inputbridge app on your phone, you just open it, and go back to termux , at this point you should see a tiny transparent cog wheel in the upper right corner. Click it once to use your current profile, and click it again to see toggle options. To edit your current profile, click the wrench icon.

 

Managed to load 2x clients on the phone today. Never realized it possible.

Need to figure out how to swap between the clients, as I cannot "minimize" . Game won't restore once minimized.

 

I tried to attach my inputbridge profile but it only allows images ? Maybe I don't have permission to do that, perhaps a mod can help. So I can only attach an image of my layout.

How MapleStory and key presses interact: when you hold the left key, your computer sends the keypress "left arrow down", MapleStory will keep moving left until "left arrow up" is received. When you change maps, inputbridge sees a drop in resource utilization, and mistakes the game as closed so it deactivates without sending "left arrow up". Just click the cog button again and press the arrow key to fix it. I'm testing to see what settings can mitigate this issue. It's annoying for sure.

Mobox , termux, and box86 is pretty well regarded by the emulation community, and is open sourced so anyone can check it. Pretty safe.

Inputbridge is a closed sourced keyboard mapper that was originally developed for exagear, another windows emulator. After a bunch of criticism the developer decided to take his software private and stopped providing updates to the ungrateful public. Can't say this is safe or not because it's closed sourced. If you're skeptical about it you can use your own keyboard mapper of your choice, or connect a Bluetooth or USB keyboard.

 

upgraded to samsung s24 ultra, performance doubled.

mobox box86 doesn't work anymore. must select option 2 for box64.

The biggest difference is to use compatibility mode for windows 98 (wine 9+) instead of windows XP (wine 8).

Character selection screen would freeze up on double clicking or just pressing enter. You have to use the "select character" tab via your keys. Solution found here. I find that using mouse to click the "select character" tab also works

Performance on the s24 compared to s22 is much smoother, not just high fps but it doesn't stutter as much while casting big skills or changing maps.

only caveat is that box64 now has some glitch with the display screen resolution. you must force quit thr termux app in order for resolution settings to update