Any way to have two ACTIVE windows?

Hey there. As we all know the words "split-screen" and "PC" are rarely used in the same sentence. In the case of Left4Dead and L4D2, this was made a possibility, but due to the fact that the feature was implemented, but not activated. Other games, however, were not as fortunate.

Let's take the example of Borderlands. I have two 360 controllers I can use and a proper Xpadder config that's ready to go. Here's the process:

1. Open two instances of Borderlands.
2. Change the controls of one instance to WASD, etc.
3. Use keyboard and mouse for the first instance.
4. Change the controls of the other instance to IJKL, etc.
5. Use Xpadder to map for 360 controller for the second instance.
6. Use player 1 to "host" the game.
7. Use player 2 to "join" the game.
8. Split the two windows on your screen in windowed mode.
9. The problem: is there a way to have BOTH windows active so that they can be controlled? Apparently, it HAS been done: YouTube - Borderlands Split Screen pc (Tutorial). I've tried the instructions to this video with little success. At one point, I actually had both screens being controlled separately and simultaneously! Problem was, controls were completely wonky, buttons were not doing what they were supposed to do.

This method has the potential of being able to split screen up to 4 players on your home PC / laptop anywhere you go for ANY game. Only issue would be getting all 4 windows to receive input commands. Does anyone know of a software or an autohotkey script out there that will allow this? Any suggestions would be appreciated. My apologies if this belongs in the gaming forum, but I figured this is more software related.

 

Great. 3 days with no reply, finally get excited over a response, and it's just spam. Yay.

 

Uh, it hasn't been 3 days.

Why don't you PM the guy on YouTube who set it up so he can play with himself?

 

Set up a virtual PC. it will lag. but it can be done !

 

I have. He doesn't speak English well enough to explain it properly, as you can tell.

 

i am surprised someone did this because from a programming standpoint this is not possible. (2 separate applications) Even tool windows are faked to a certain degree to look active the same time as a main window. but internally they are not actually active at the same time. it switches back and forth like a normal window. we could bring up multithreaded apps. but this does not work with 2 different applications (2 different thread owners).

Im a little leery on what is actually happening or what he really did. its very suspicious.

 

Believe me, I was as skeptical as you are. It has to do with the Autohotkey script. I've had this working, two inputs simultaneously, but all the controls were wrong (up was down, down was up, etc). I think if I figure out the script a little better I'll be able to get this to work like his. If you look up "source split screen" on youtube, you can see an example of this once again. He has another related video where you can see him obviously playing with a friend in split screen.

 

If down was up and up was down why don't you just switch the hotkeys for them?

 

I'm not experienced enough with Autohotkey to understand the script inside it to do that, but the bigger problem is that it's every key that's off / wrong / not working. When I get a break from school I'll see if I can get this to work.

 

This is quite possible.

It is called Multi-boxing and is quite popular among Wowers. When I played WoW back in the day, I two boxed a mage and a warrior. There are countless wikis out there and forums that have published guides to set this up.

Multiboxing in World of Warcraft and more!

 

Thanks Surfasb. Wasn't aware of the proper term for it. Is there a specific tutorial you'd recommend for someone looking to actually have dual input as opposed to just having a replicated keystoke?

 

Hmm I may look into the borderlands thing. With my multimonitor setup it would be ideal since each person can have a full screen.

Problem is my borderlands game is Steam and you can only run one instance of it as far as I know.

 

There is a work around for that using Systeminternals Process Explorer. YouTube - Split-Screen Team Fortress 2 (Two Player Mod!!!) Tutorial! *MUST SEE*. If the dual input issue can be solved with a working Autohotkey script, there is no limit to PC split-screen goodness! It's been also done with COD4 and UT3! Look it up.

 

This thread seems more and more gaming-centric, so it's moving there

 

all you need to do is start steam in offline mode. You can run as many steam accounts as possible. Me and my friends had lan parties of like 10 people sharing CS:S in offline mode ^^ You can even host a game. Have the 9 people in offline mode and have the other guy run a open server ^^....or set up hitachi for playing with a friend in offline mod across the world ^^ Me and a friend back at home played total war on steam together ^^

 

Does Steam even have an offline mode anymore?

 

yes it does. You can go to settings to start offline mode i think. Also if your internet is down and you open steam it'll start in offline mode i think...the process of going into offline mode is a little hazzy....its been a while since i have tried to force steam into offline mode.

 

I go into steam offline everyweekend when I travel to the country, also why are you using a program to map the 360 controller? Borderlands supports a 360 controller natively. Speaking of which wouldn't it be alot easier and more fun to play this on a 360/ps3 on a big screen instead of bending over a tiny laptop screen?
And what the performance going to be like?

 

I don't know how it got in your head that this isn't possible from a programming standpoint. It certainly is. The concept of fast task switching (thousands of times per second or more) is used often in programming. Even a single core CPU that can only handle one thread at a time *could* implement multiple active windows. A window being active just means that it responds to input. It should be simple to imagine such a case.

 

The idea behind mapping the 360 controller is to allow cloning and multiple input with mouse/keyboard or another controller. If you map the same keys for both setups, both players will control both screens.

360s are garbage compared to higher end desktops and even laptops. I'd rather play Borderlands at full HD and max graphics, and have the portability of a laptop. Plus, the noobstick can never compare to the awesomeness of a good mouse , you can't even begin to compare aiming with a mouse vs. a controller in any FPS. But I don't want to start a PC vs. console flamewar here. I think the bigger cause is getting this software to work and bring split-screen to any PC game with multiplayer capabilities.

Has anyone tried this method yet?

 

C'mon! Where are all the comp. sci degree people? We're at the verge of a revolution here! I've been working on this and am getting SO close, and I have very little knowledge about scripting!

 

This isn't really about computer science at all lol.

I think you should try experimenting a lot more. especially if you believe in science
There are a lot of apps that weren't necessarily designed to have multiple instances but work just fine. Some of them dont unless you somehow install it twice, or just copy everything.

I think there are probably some tutorials on running virtual machines, first of all, and second to run it on your own machine rather than over a network will make it loads easier.

If I were you (although this would be somewhat for the heck of it, and just because I like linux) I'd install WUBI. That is, Linux that runs inside windows. And then install Steam on it
Cause, yep it works! Without an emulator too. [ Wine Is Not an Emulator ]

WineHQ - Steam Official Release

It may take messing around but the community support for linux based stuff is really astounding compared to windows.

 

There are guides on the multiboxing forums for certain games like WoW. Each game is different though.

 

Multiboxing is cheating, while this method is a legitimate multiplayer split-screen method, I looked into it and it is hardly relevant.

 

I knew a guy in wow who ran 5 multi boxes of it and leveled up a full party at once. It was ridiculous .

 

Multiboxing is not the same as trying to get 2 game clients to run on the same computer/screen.

Multiboxing is usually separate computers and a kvm switch from what I have seen.

Thus the entire term "multiboxing" meaning multiple computer boxes.

 

Precisely, but I appreciate the input regardless. Will let you guys know if I can get this method to work.