Two players, one keyboard.

How to setup vJoy and UCR to play as two players on keyboard.

Introduction

Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- does not feature the option to configure Player 2 for keyboard usage. Nor can you set a gamepad for P2 - the greedy Player 1 claims both these input devices!
These two glaring problems are detrimental if you want to play offline against your friend, but only have the Keyboard or a single gamepad.

Luckily there's a way to setup virtual gamepads, and then configure them to read inputs from your keyboard, but you'll need two pieces of software.

The necessary programs

The applications we'll be using are called vJoy by Shaul Eizikovich, and UCR by evilC.

vJoy

From the author's homepage:[vjoystick.sourceforge.net]"vJoy is a device driver that bridges the gap between any device that is not a joystick and an application that requires a joystick. If you develop an application for windows that requires user physical input you should consider incorporating vJoy into your product.

vJoy can be incorporated as-is or modified. vJoy can be used with fixed configuration or configurable. It also comes with tools and example code that feeds it with data and configure the virtual joystick.

vJoy is implemented as a joystick virtual-device driver for windows (XP and up) that does not represent an actual hardware device.

The vJoy device is seen by Windows as a standard joystick device. However, it receives its signals through a simple software interface. Coders can take advantage of this interface by modifying the provided sample code."

Since Revelator can only accept Gamepad inputs for player 2, we have to make the game think there are actually 2 gamepads connected. It's important that we add TWO of them, because the first one will be assigned to Player 1.

Universal Control Remapper (UCR)

An AHK based tool that let's us bind keyboard keys for feeding inputs to the vJoy virtual gamepad. This is where you will assign the keyboard buttons. It has a very simple GUI and takes only a few minutes to configure.

Installation

Getting the programs up and running is super simple, and only vJoy requires an actual installation.

vJoy 2.1.7.7-260916 by Shaul[sourceforge.net] Has to be this version, not the latest release.
Run the installer and follow the instructions. It's advised to include the "Companion Applications" as the'll help with testing and troubleshooting.

Universal Control Remapper(UCR)[autohotkey.com] by evilC.
You can find the download link at the bottom of the OP. Simply extract the the files wherever you see fit.

Setting up vJoy

This is a relatively straight-forward procedure. Start by running the "Configure vJoy" application. Searching your system for "vJoy" should find it. If not, it is located in the "\64x\" folder in vJoy's installation directory.

The first thing to do is adding 2 devices. You can select which device you want to configure by using the top tabs (marked green). You can add a new device by clicking "Add Device" (in the red box". The program will freeze for a few seconds and you should hear the USB connection sounds.
Go ahead and add a POV Hat Switch for the D-Pad, make it contintous (Blue). Hit "Apply (red).

Navigate to Windows's setup for USB Game Controllers (typing "USB" in the search field should find it). Hopefully you should see 2 new installed game controllers - both named vJoy Device.

Now fire up the vJoy Feeder Application. It's time to test the Virtual Gamepads.In the top right corner, you should see "Terget Device" (red). Go ahead and select Device "2".
In the Windows setup, select (probably) the bottom vJoy Device and enter properties.

In the vJoy feeder application, go ahead and press down a few buttons (Blue), and then switch focus to the USB setup. The keys should light up! Go ahead and play around with the other settings as well, just to make sure it's all working.

This could be a good time to start up -REVELATOR- and head into Versus Mode, just to make sure the game is indeed recognizing two gamepads.

This concludes the setup for vJoy.

Setting up UCR

NOTE: Do not run the vJoy Feeder at the same time as UCR, it will cause conflicts and bug out UCR.

Go ahead and launch "UCR.exe" from the folder you extracted previously.
Begin with making sure that UCR sucessfully loaded the vJoy drivers by going into: IOClasses > vJoy > Show vJoy log.
It should return something similar to this:


If it checks out, proceed by making a new Profile using the "Profile Toolbox on the right side of the program.

Next, you want to add a two remappers for the Axes, these will be your directional input.
Open the Plugin Selection Drop-Down, and select "Remapper (Buttons to Axis)".
Add two of these. Name first one "Left/Right" or "X-Axis", and the second one "Up/Down" or "Y-Axis".

Now it's time to assign this remapper to the Stick of the Virtual Gamepad.
First we must select the correct Decive:
Click "Select an Output Axis" > vJoy Stick > 2
This only tells the program which device the binding is for, we now have to select which Axis we want our keybinding to control.
The text on the button changed, because it's now set to use "vJoy Stick 2"
Click the same button again > vJoy Axes > 1(X)
The button should now read: "vJoy Stick2, Axis 1" as shown in the image below.

Do the same thing for the Y-axis, but select "1(Y)"
All that's left is adding Keybindings. "Low" is Left/Up, and "High" is Right/Down.
Hit the "Select an Input button" > Select Binding > [KEYBIND]
You can now test the Joystick in UCR. Press your assigned keys and the "Preview Sliders" should start moving around.

Now you can go ahead and add the gamepad buttons. It's basically the same way, but you want to select "Button to Button" in the Plugin Selection Drop-Down, and Output Button is mapped: vJoy Buttons X-Y > Z
I suggest adding at least 10 buttons so you have enough for the common combat bindings.

Here is the default layout Vjoy will use:

Punch (X) - Button 4
Kick (A) - Button 3
Slash (y) - Button 1
HSlash (B)- Button 2
Dust (RB) - Button 8
Taunt (LT) - Button 5
Special (RT) - Button 6
P+K+S (LB) - Button 7
Select - Button 9
Start - Button 10

You could of course just remap the buttons In-game, proveded you keep track of Button 3/A's binding.

NOTE: For some reason "L" is executing Players 2's Punch. Very strange. To avoid issues if using the "L" key, press the "Input Button" and tick the "Block" setting. This will temporarily disable the "L" key on your keybard. I think is is hardcoded as P1's "Accept" button.

With this you should be all set to use Keyboard controls for Player 2. Please let me know if something's unclear or not working.

[Kidlat]

I've made this work on Blazblue only twice. Everytime I quit it seems it doesn't work anymore. Is there a way to troubleshoot the problem so I can know what is wrong?

[Merami]

i think this doesn't even work anymore, i can't get this to work on blazblue or umineko

[Doer of Moms]

help i cant find ucr.exe

[maniwa]

Thanks a lot for the guide!! After following your steps I managed to finally get to play Blazblue Central Fiction with my sister!
I just want to point out some stuff that was different from the guide on my end, in case anyone also wants to play Central Fiction (I'm not sure if it's because Vjoy or UCR themselves updated or it's because)

1. The "Download" button in the UCR link is broken, instead, I had to go to the GitHub link below that one and get the archives from there
2. The corresponding "Button-Button" plugins that you have to set up in UCR were different from the ones given in the guide above. For me, they were as follows:

"Vjoy Button" - "Xbox joystick correspondent"
1 - A
2 - B
3 - X
4 - Y
5 - LB
6 - RB
7 - LT
8 - RT
9 - Start
10 - Select
11 - LS
12 - RS

[MrSix]

i managed to get this working, but when im trying to play it on blazblue, things got weird, the arrows button control WASD buttons at the same time, for example, when i move p2 character to the left, p1 move to the left too can you fix this ?

[MrSix]

Punch (X) - Button 4
Kick (A) - Button 3
Slash (y) - Button 1
HSlash (B)- Button 2
Dust (RB) - Button 8
Taunt (LT) - Button 5
Special (RT) - Button 6
P+K+S (LB) - Button 7
Select - Button 9
Start - Button 10
Can you send a picture of your config in UCR please ? i can't get the setup in this part

[heterophyes heterophyes]

Yeah in retrospect I'm very sorry for being rude, I was just frustrated because I set the input buttons without order and even after binding the buttons in the settings they still didn't work properly (a bunch of buttons kept overriding each other and I got a kick -> slash gatling from pressing kick twice)
So to fix that I basically had to bind each key I wanted according to the default vJoy layout you provided

[Slaskburk]

@Marduke
Hell yeah - I tried following it recently while configuring for local play on on STRIVE with 2 players and I had trouble with some steps despite writing the damn thing. It's a roundabout way of doing it, but at least it works.
If you didn't get it working and there's a step in particular that trips you up, let me know and I might be able to shed some light on it.

@DonH.
If your real physical controller is still working and being detected as player 1, you should only need to bind the keys for vJoy controller 2 in UCR.

@D3SUM0RPHIN3
Ouch, that sucks to hear mate. I hope you didn't have any intricate configurations that were lost from the mishap, and that you have the driver setups for your devices available for re-installation.
I'm not entirely sure which of the software "Keyboard Splitter" refers to though.

[heterophyes heterophyes]

this is literally the most confusing guide i've ever read in my entire life, but thanks for the effort

[D3SUM0RPHIN3]

My drivers for input devices on spare pc got fucked up after keyboard splitter installation. Be careful, you may face same issue