How to run Battlefield Vietnam on an Android tablet or phone

[Phallic]

First things first, since you'll be installing an APK from an external source, you need to allow your system to install sideloaded apps. For this, open Settings, then "Security and privacy" then "More security settings", then "Install unknown apps", there allow your file manager (in my case the default "My files") to install unknown apps. Be sure to disable this again after completing the installation.

There are many more sophisticated and capable solutions out there, but as Winlator provides an excellent plug-and-play experience and controls are easily configured, you can't really go wrong picking this one.

Now, head over to https://github.com/brunodev85/winlator/releases to download Winlator

Once downloaded, start your file manager and run Winlator-9.0.apk and wait for the installation process to finish.

Now, go to your apps list/dashboard and check to see whether Winlator is installed.

Now open Winlator, in the upper right corner you will find a symbol resembling a +, tap it to create a new container.

Now, this is really extremely simple and it shouldn't be too important which settings you're using. But the settings depicted in the images are the ones I've had most success with, namely resolution 1920x1080, WineD3D as a DX Wrapper and GTX 1080 as a GPU. The rest I've left unchanged.

Hit the tick box and you'll have finished creating your new container.

Now upon opening Winlator you should be presented with a new container in your listing (Container-1 by default) next open it by clicking the play-shaped icon.

This is your home screen, by default a file manager window will be opened upon starting up your container.

Head to your "D:" partition which lists your default Android/Samsung One UI "Download" directory. You should also download your game there (VKHD installer in my case)

Now, just install Battlefield Vietnam as you would on a regular Windows PC. Running the game also simply entails heading to your C: directory as would be the case on any Windows PC. Desktop shortcuts should work flawlessly, too.

I'll write up some more instructions outlining how to set up the controls later. But this is all there is to the installation.

 

[Crash]

Wow.

 

[LTShaun]

Phal gives a good run playing on his tablet no lie!

 

[Phallic]

Phal gives a good run playing on his tablet no lie!

I'll take what I can get lol

Some more things I'd like to add.

While I know for most people this will always be more of a curiosity rather than something they'd seriously consider using as a daily driver, I'd still like to point out a few things that came to mind after my initial post and may be important.

Winlator is known to not run too well with Mali GPUs, which are prominently also used in, among others, Samsung Exynos SoCs which Samsung tends to employ for their European phones and even some mid-range tablets that are being sold internationally. Also, considering that this basically runs x86 applications in real-time on an ARM device, even old games such as BFV can be relatively demanding. I myself play on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9+ which uses a still current high-end Snapdragon 8 Gen. 2 SoC (the same as in the Galaxy S23 in fact) and I've changed my resolution down to 1366x768 which provides a rather smooth experience. 1920x1080 is still barely playable with 30 fps on demanding maps, but no fun, perhaps what one could call a cinematic experience.

 

[Phallic]

Now to the part with setting up controls.

First, head to your BFV directory and start bfvietnam.exe (or start the game by making use of the desktop shortcut)

This will, not too surprisingly, look like this.

Now comes the crucial part. Swipe up from the bottom and tap your back button which should now be appearing in the lower right corner.

Now a menu should appear, providing you with a variety of different settings and options. For now, just tap Keyboard.

This will bring up your regular on-screen keyboard, you can already do this earlier during the loading screen (if you'd like to skip the intros for instance)

To close the keyboard, just hit your back button again several times.

Now, repeat the same exercise and swipe from the bottom up again. This time rather than tapping Keyboard, go for Input controls instead.

Select RTS from the drop-down, now there are all kinds of fancy profiles or presets one can import or configure, but I found I am content with just using an ever so slightly edited preset.

This contains arrow keys, all the letters from A-Z in the upper right corner (in a sliding menu, tap and hold to move them sideways) as well as all numbers in a similarly designed menu. I find myself using these controls for all but chat messages, for which I'll be pulling up the regular on-screen keyboard. I've made small addition in that I've added a "MLB" fire button because I found it to be rather annoying that clicking on any empty space would count as a left mouse click.

Now, if you want to edit your controls (and I suggest you do, at least as to remap the arrow keys to WASD, since I've made the mistake of remapping my game controls rather than my keys which took like forever)

Once again, swipe up and back arrow to get to the menu.

Now, go to input controls again, only this time tap the gear to get to the setttings page.

It should look like this.

Now select RTS, and hit Controls Editor.

To edit a key, just tap it once and it will be highlighted. Then tap the gear in the upper centre of the screen. This will allow you to edit the key, like this.

On the depicted image you'll find a highlighted right arrow key, change its "Binding" to "Keyboard" and "D" and repeat the same exercise for the remaining arrow keys, replacing them with a WASD layout. You can also freely reposition them, I kept them in their original position as I want as much screen real estate at my disposal as is humanly possible. Also, the icon thing is pretty much self-explanatory.

You can also add new keys by hitting the + in the upper centre.

An example of adding a left mouse button. Reposition it by means of drag and drop.

To save settings, simply swipe from the bottom up again and hit the back button.

Additionally, hit the back icon in the upper left corner after getting back. All settings should be saved now.

I can't provide much insight into matters concerning mouse or keyboard support, as I've only been using touchscreen myself. While playing competitively on infantry is a hopeless endeavour, I've found flying helicopters and even standing a chance against seasoned players to be relatively manageable even if it's a far cry from what I'd been able to accomplish on a PC with mouse and keyboard, especially in terms of movement, evasive or otherwise. But only after increasing the mouse sensitivity considerably.

Below my sensitivity settings. And I guess that covers the most important areas of setting up rudimentary controls. You should now be able to enjoy a game.