Is local Co-Op a thing?

[Roxxapo]

Too many games ignore local Co-Op these days.

[superdupergc]

tl;dr - mayyyyybe

I can't guarantee local co-op because I didn't plan for it initially - there's a lot of stuff in the game that assumes there's only one player. Currently, there's no local co-op. Actually, I'm not sure how many people would even use it on PC since you don't usually have much screen space to work with on a monitor vs a TV

That said... I want to put Black Ice on consoles eventually, and I think local co-op would really help, so I'm planning on looking into it. This would be well after the 1.0 release on PC, though, so please don't think I'll have it soon.

[Roxxapo]

Yeye. That's good to hear! I mean, even Don't Starve: Together ignored local co-op.

Also, I've always wondered... is there a way to allow split-screen on two monitors?
Me and my uncle did it with a borderlands 2 splitscreen mod, but I've never seen it officially added into any game.

[superdupergc]

Hmm, I imagine you could do that with Eyefinity (or similar) in almost any game by simulating a single monitor and doing vertical split-screen, have you tried something like that?

[Roxxapo]

Nah, but I will now!

[that's what she said]

Sorry for bumping. I'm just here to show some interest in this feature. Is there still any plans for split screen at some point in the future? (It's a huge point for me - living room setup, PC is connected to big TV which works way better than any console since I can use any controller I have).
Since the game has co-op it seems to me that it should work pretty well in split screen too. Plus it's Unity engine, it's fairly friendly for implementing split screen viewports and sound.

I don't think any rogue-lite FPS games implemented this, could be a big point for console crowd.

EDIT: Oh god, I'm lier. Forgot there is split screen in Space Beast Terror Fright and Polygod. And SBTF has absolutely amazing split screen implementation (way better than most games), but it's way more simple game too.

[Roxxapo]

Oh yeah... I forgot I posted this and now I want it again lol.

[Zennith]

Honestly, split-screen for PC games isn't as unwanted as most developers assume. Local Co-op isn't something to just forget about on PC if you plan to do it for consoles. Just because I play on PC, doesn't mean I don't want to be able to invite friends over to play EDF 4.1, Serious Sam, or whatever other game on split screen. There's a good reason we're allowed to have multiple controllers connected to our PC's. Personally, I use my living room HDTV as my computer monitor, but even on a standard computer monitor I have played split-screen before and it works just fine.

This is something I've heard alot, most developers are afraid to put split-screen in certain games because they feel the window would be too small and unenjoyable... Think back to the N64. Not everyone had a very large TV back in the day, and we would be playing Perfect Dark on a P.O.S. tv that barely worked but you know what? It was still fun. It was nice to be able to do it, it was a good time, even if we couldn't see wtf we were doing.

TL;DR - People do want split screen games on PC. It's fustrating when dev's make the console version Split screen but not the pc version.

(P.S. I'm not calling the dev of Black Ice out, this is a general rant. Sorry. ^^;)

[Roxxapo]

Originally posted by Zennith:

Honestly, split-screen for PC games isn't as unwanted as most developers assume. Local Co-op isn't something to just forget about on PC if you plan to do it for consoles. Just because I play on PC, doesn't mean I don't want to be able to invite friends over to play EDF 4.1, Serious Sam, or whatever other game on split screen. There's a good reason we're allowed to have multiple controllers connected to our PC's. Personally, I use my living room HDTV as my computer monitor, but even on a standard computer monitor I have played split-screen before and it works just fine.

This is something I've heard alot, most developers are afraid to put split-screen in certain games because they feel the window would be too small and unenjoyable... Think back to the N64. Not everyone had a very large TV back in the day, and we would be playing Perfect Dark on a P.O.S. tv that barely worked but you know what? It was still fun. It was nice to be able to do it, it was a good time, even if we couldn't see wtf we were doing.

TL;DR - People do want split screen games on PC. It's fustrating when dev's make the console version Split screen but not the pc version.

(P.S. I'm not calling the dev of Black Ice out, this is a general rant. Sorry. ^^;)

I've seen plenty of games put split screen on the console version, but not on the pc version (even on games that released on console originally and got ported to pc)

[superdupergc]

If I do it for consoles, I will try my best to get it to PC as well, but I'm not even sure I can do that! The problem is you have to render the game up to 4 times as much, and it's hard enough to get the game to run smoothly with just one player. Plus, again, I really didn't design the game to run in split-screen because, well, I didn't have the foresight.

[Druthers]

+1 for split screen!

PC connected to a 4k TV is couch co-op with 4 1080p screens.

It's one of the best things that's happened to PC gaming.

D

[superdupergc]

Yeah sorry, it’s not going to happen. There are so many things in the game I’d have to change in order to get it to work, it would just take forever. We don’t have the time or budget to do it.

[Druthers]

That's too bad.

Seems like it would just be an extension of co-op/multiplayer. Each player has a viewport.

D

[superdupergc]

That’s what I thought at first too! But there are a lot of elements in the game that assume one local player, not the least of which is the networking code for non-local multiplayer (which was already hard enough to get working for up to 10 players!)

Add onto that that we’re a very small team on essentially zero budget making a large open world game that has to have good framerate, adding additional cameras for each local player into the scene would tank the fps. That’s why games like Halo 3 do tricks like turning the graphics down when you play local co-op

[Druthers]

Yeah, no worries,

Sometime in the future might work out better. Maybe a sequel?

D

[superdupergc]

Haha, let me worry about finishing this one first.