Portal 2 splitscreen streaming

[Plasmodium]

Hey guys, I have been trying on-and-off for the past couple of days to get Portal 2 splitscreen to stream from my laptop to an older laptop near the TV, and I can't get it to work.

My setup is this: My laptop upstairs ( Win7 HP 64bit, i5 @ 2.3ghz, 6gb RAM, GT540m) is running the games and streaming them over the LAN (with ethernet, so should be fast enough) to an old laptop (1st gen i5, 4gb, intel graphics, Ubunutu 14.04.2 32bit) which is hooked up to the TV. For controllers I have one official Microsoft Xbox 360 wireless controller and one nVidia Shield controller attached by USB. Now, both of these controllers are recognised by the 'client' PC: they both work in Steam Big Picture Mode, whether one at a time and both at the same time, they can both control the main menu of Portal 2, can both (individually) control a single-player Portal 2 game and my housemate and I used them to play several rounds of SuperTuxKart no problems.


Now the problem is this: when I get to the menu where it says "Press 'X' on the second controller to start splitscreen", nothing happens when I press "X" (or the Xbox logo button) on either controller.



What I want to know is this:

Is this a known limitation to Portal/Steam Streaming? (ie, that splitscreen doesn't work)

Is this a (driver?) problem because I'm using Linux? (And if so, is it fixable?)

Is it because I am using two different types of controller (even though both are XInput)?



Thanks in advance. I may also post this in the Portal 2 and Steam Home Streaming discussion boards, because I don't see a way to tag it in all three.

[Ashley]

This sounds like an issue with controller support over in-home streaming.
Does the controller work in singleplayer? If it does then try split-screen with player 1 using keyboard+mouse and player 2 using the controller (there might be a console command needed to make this work, I don't remember for sure but I'll find it for you if there is).
If having player 2 using the joypad works over streaming, then it would be a limitation with in-home streaming handling multiple joypads/joysticks.

[Plasmodium]

Thanks mate. I won't be able to try it till after work tomorrow (it's 11:30pm here and I have a 9 o'clock start :P), but I'll let you know how it gets on. The controller definitely works with singleplayer - I was using it to test out the controller when I was setting it all up.

Also, I've just remembered I have Lego Harry Potter or the Hobbit which have a similar splitscreen multiplayer mode. I'll try it with them too and see what happens - that might help us figure out if it's a Linux problem or a Steam Home Streaming problem.

I must admit, I did suspect it might be due, as you said, to the way the streaming thing handles inputs. BTW, if it's at all significant, I'm using xboxdrv not the standard xpad driver. I don't really know what the advantages are, but I heard xboxdrv was better...

[Ashley]

NP, I went ahead and found the command needed to do co-op with one controller

joy_remap_player_for_controller1 2

[Plasmodium]

Well I'll be darned. Got home today, fired up both machines, started Portal 2 with both controllers attached, went to multiplayer, and then pressed "X" on both controllers in short succession and lo and behold, it started a splitscreen game.

That's basically exactly what I've been doing since Monday, and it didn't work! The only thing I can think of is that before, I left too much time between pressing "X" on both controllers...

[Plasmodium]

Now I'm going to try to make my own xboxdrv config files - do you (or anyone else) have any hints about that?