BG:EE and remote mouse viability

Corvino

BG:EE has now risen, Lazarus-like from its legal difficulties, hooray! The only problem this causes me is how I'm actually going to play BG2:EE.

I recently moved house, and my desktop PC is now being used to run my TV and audio setup. I'm controlling it using my iPhone as a trackpad and Hipporemote as the VNC software. It's solid for running films and internet browsing, but does anyone have experience running BG or and infinity engine game on a similar system?

Pros: Bigscreen BG
Playable from the sofa
Macro-capable shortcuts

Cons: Lack of a mouse (they're precise)
Limited to 4-5 shortcut buttons at a time
Fiddly to use click & drag or function + click buttons

If playing this way is awful then I do have a netbook that can run it.

Two key questions though:
1) Has anyone used a similar setup?
2) If you could only have 5 keyboard shortcuts (including space), what would they be?

Shin

Sounds like a very convoluted setup, can't you just use an actual wireless mouse?

Anyway, I'd probably pick pause, inventory, map, game screen and quicksave.

Corvino

I'll probably just keep it simple and run it on the netbook after a bit of testing. The iphone screen was pretty fiddly, and lack of decent click & hold/shift-click etc made it more frustrating than it was worth.

BelgarathMTH

I play all games including BG on my big screen TV, from my living room recliner. I use a Logitech trackball mouse. No arm motion is needed to control the mouse, only your fingers, and it rests quite comfortably on the armrest of the recliner.

The drawback is that it only has two programmable buttons, and it's wired. It still works the best for me. I just run the wire extension cord right through the side of the living room up to the recliner, under a throw rug.

The two buttons are all I need for most games. All I ever use in BG is space for pause on the left programmable button, and Q for quicksave on the right. I have a wireless keyboard nearby on an end table that I can grab to push tab for highlight if I need it. The wireless keyboard can also rest in my lap for typing as needed.

I wouldn't play any other way. It's just too comfortable not to, and too awesome to play BG and other games on my 81" living room TV.

Coriander

A trackball would probably be the way to go. But if you need a few more buttons there have also been one or two setups for keymapping to gamepads around here.

sepotter

Well, I'd personally just recommend getting a nice wireless keyboard and mouse, and then get small sort of desk or tray that can rest over your lap, and go that route.

Illustair

@belgarathmth and that's the reason why I have to earn well. So I can someday (hopefully soon) I could play BG on my own 81" TV while I'm on a comfortable recliner. Now that's life! :-)