Possibilities of adding a Launcher for Chrome OS

[GrimScull2019]

I was just gifted a chromebook and I was hoping to find a way to put CoH on it; So what are the possibilities of adding a version of the launcher that runs on the Chrome OS?

[GM Capocollo]

Homecoming only officially supports players running the game on Windows, and any launchers for alternate operating systems are provided by the community.  We have no plans to provide a launcher that works on Chrome OS, but if your Chromebook supports Android apps, you could attempt to use the emulator CrossOver on Chrome.  Whether or not it's actually playable will depend on the capabilities of the Chromebook.  

Edited August 23, 2019 by GM Capocollo

[WanderingAries]

Generally speaking, a Chromebook is basically like an android smart phone in most respects. It's designed for very light weight, web based applications (email, online document viewing/editing, etc). It's not intended for use with "full powered" applications. It's "ok" for a child's school work, research, or general internet browsing, but Not for anything that can't be found on the Chromebook app store/play store. IDK how many parents I get calls from asking why they can't do half of what they thought they could when they bought it. :/

[WanderingAries]

9 hours ago, GM Capocollo said:

We have no plans to provide a launcher that works on Chrome OS, but if your Chromebook supports Android apps, you could attempt to use the emulator CrossOver on Chrome

I just read through a bunch of things on that site. The app requires 2Gb RAM. That's a large chunk for a Chromebook. My concern would be insufficient RAM for the game and how the app handles the GFX (virtualization or hardware) as the Mac guys had trouble with their virtualization attempts due to the virtual GPU restrictions.

[Rockfall]

If your chromebook has an intel/amd processor, you can get a linux shell (/container) on it (my impression is most-to-all can these days), that linux system can install graphical apps, eg, vscode, etc. If you can do that, you can also install playonlinux or wine. If you can do that, you can in theory launch city of via that. I see wine in the repos, so there's a chance. That said the wine in the repos is 2.something, and wine is up to 4.something so it probably is going to be more complicated than loading up linux and apt installing wine.

 

If your chromebook is arm, you'd have to emulate the x86 processor via qemu or similar. If you could even get that to launch it isn't going to be playable.

 

Back in the day when CoH was new, windows PCs weren't really rocking more than 2-3 gigs anyway, so there's a chance.