Andyroid... an alternative to Bluestacks for playing on PC
Though I've been mostly fine playing on Bluestacks... it has 3 downsides for me.
First is specific to my setup. It hates Logitech G110 gaming keyboards, which is what I happen to use on my desktop. It randomly locks it up, repeating the last key I pressed until I unplug the USB plug and then plug it back in. Other people report the same problem with just this model of keyboard. Sometimes I go all day without it happening, other times it'll happen twice in five minutes.
Second, the zoom has never worked well. It's worst when you first use it, after which it seems to settle down. But I've had it grab and move buildings before, collect resources, etc, as it randomly clicks somewhere on the screen.
Finally, Bluestacks is pretty graphics processor intensive.
So I decided to try an alternative, mainly because of the keyboard issue. I loaded up
Andryroid, another droid emulator for PC. Installation was straight forward, had to reboot during it. Added my google account during the setup though I canceled out of the 1clicksync thing as I don't want it messing with anything on my phone.
Launched CoC, everything good. The resolution was different than Bluestacks, I modified it (system tray, right click on Andy icon -> Settings -> Set Resolution) to 1600x900 the same as my Bluestacks used, and it feels the same.
Added in my other 2 google ids and now am switching between them in game the same as I can on Bluestacks of my phone.
Zooming works!
As for the zoom... zooming works fine so far on Andyroid though it takes a second to figure it out. What you do is:
1) Hold down the Control button for this entire process. If you have the setting on that shows a circle where you are "touching" the screen, when you first hold Control you'll see a single circle at the mouse pointer. It was on by default for me.
2) Drag the mouse some direction. You will see two of the "touch" circles now that separate further as you move the mouse. Those two circles are going to be where, when you hit the mouse button, it's going to "grab" the screen the same as you'd grab a tablet or phone's screen with 2 fingers at once.
3) So now the circles are separated a little, click and hold the mouse button. Now it acts as if you are touching the screen in those two points. While continuing to hold the mouse button (and the Control button still too), if you move the mouse to bring the circles towards each other, it is like a pinching gesture on a tablet and it Zooms Out. If you separate the circles further, it is like the expand gesture on a tablet and it Zooms In.
Takes a couple times to get used to, but I think I'll get used to it very quick once I get some muscle memory built up with it. And it actually has zoomed every time so far, it hasn't activated buildings or opened the chat window or collected gold or the other things Bluestacks would sometimes do.
I can't speak to whether it is easier on the graphics card or not yet. I'll try it on my laptop later, where I have a temperature widget on screen and can see if it runs cooler than Bluestacks.
Edit: Adding my update so it's all in one place for the OP link. Desktop working well, laptop not playable though for performance reasons.
Greg Russell said:
Andyroid update.
Preferring it on the desktop still... but no joy on using it on the laptop. It seems to require more CPU or memory than Bluestacks did. For a laptop I have a pretty good system, but it's very slow even just to launch. Couldn't get CoC to the point of playing the game, it kept hanging in the load screens before finally bailing.
So I wouldn't recommend it for laptops, though preferring it on the desktop.