How does local play work? Am i missing something?

[Hamfrags]

Haven't yet bought the game, but I wanna know; Do I have to buy controllers for my computer to be able to play with friends at home? I don't have any, so will I have to use the buggy online mode and multiple computers?

[hektikfrog]

i dont own the game, but isnt that what local play means? you need multiple input devices plugged into 1 pc. might be possible to get 1 (maybe even 2) players on keyboard, and 1 on controller (or more, depending on number of controllers you have, obviously)

[Hamfrags]

I personally don't know the exact definition of local play, so I suppose that's why I couldn't find any information on this elsewhere. I guess I'll still consider buying. :)

[kylerk]

Local play does mean that multiple controllers are connected to one computer. The game does control best with multiple controllers.

Other wise you have some options. You can play the local version of the game using the "Shared Controller couch", which allows multiple players to share one input method. This limits the game to "creative mode", but it would allow multiple people to play with a single keyboard. I wouldn't suggest it if you really want to get into the game, but it does work.

Lastly you could technically use the online system to play in a LAN, with multiple computer attached an everybody on their own keyboard, but in that case, everyone would need their own copy of the game running in Steam for that to work. If you are all in the same house, it would be far better to just play locally with multiple controllers.

Hope that answers your questions.

[Kai]

Is it possible to take multiple keyboards, but identify them as individual devices and map only specific keys to the game?

I know that windows recognizes keyboards as a USB device, and will take input from 'any' keyboard, but register it as the same signal across all of them.
But is there a way to 'identify' different keyboards based on usb ports and have the game identify that signal instead of windows?

Raw input for instance.

There's a program called Teamplayer that lets you use multiple cursors, generally the idea is that windows seems to be overriding how you want to use those signals, you'd have to install something to overwrite that.

If anything, if you can turn a keyboard to be recognized as a 'gamepad' then it might work.

[RichardAtlas]

We haven't looked into that extensively, but the simple answer is that no, it doesn't seem possible. It's exactly like you said, you have to really trick the computer into thinking your second keyboard isn't a keyboard somehow. While this might be possible, unfortunately our dev team of 3 people can't look into it right now. Best bet would be find some software that convinces Windows that your second keyboard is a controller and map the buttons... sounds sticky.

[Kai]

Well it's also that if all games lets you play local multiplayer with multiple keyboards easily, then those joystick and gamepad manufacturers would be out of a job since people won't need 3-4 gamepads for 4 player local.