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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: Making local coop an official supported feature?  (Read 2530 times)

drugon

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Making local coop an official supported feature?
« on: March 12, 2017, 11:04:49 AM »

I played Cooperative Multiplayer Combat mod a little with my friend and I think in spite of it's rawness it has a great potential. So I wonder if this could become an official supported feature with possibility to play not only campaign and simulation but missions also in coop, better interface, maybe dynamic split-screen (like in Catacomb Kids or better like in Renegade Ops), gamepad support and so on. It still be OK though if there will be no official support but mod development will be continued.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Making local coop an official supported feature?
« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2017, 01:41:34 PM »

I played Cooperative Multiplayer Combat mod a little with my friend and I think in spite of it's rawness it has a great potential. So I wonder if this could become an official supported feature with possibility to play not only campaign and simulation but missions also in coop, better interface, maybe dynamic split-screen (like in Catacomb Kids or better like in Renegade Ops), gamepad support and so on. It still be OK though if there will be no official support but mod development will be continued.
From what I understand, that are many hardcoded or unsupported java features that would be needed for the game to support local coop. And even if they added in now by java, Alex wouldn't be able to use them as he uses a really old version of LWJGL and a recode would be a HUGE undertaking (Most likely at LEAST a year plus from what I have heard). Plus a recode would "lock out" many more players than he would gain due to the changes in in system requirement, mainly GPU usage

Now about gamepad support: If you have Steam installed, you can make just about any game work with a game pad due to their emulator. HOWEVER! if you run any other kind of gamepad needing game, you will need to either A) ALWAYS run it through Steam or B) close Steam down. This is because Steam hijacks your controller input
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drugon

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Re: Making local coop an official supported feature?
« Reply #2 on: March 12, 2017, 02:14:33 PM »

But it just works now with mod. So there is no need for that changes that you've written about. Not sure about split-screen and gamepad though but other that that all should work fine. As for Steam - there are other ways to use gamepad in Starsector (still not very convenient). Though you can use Steam for online multiplayer in games where local only multiplayer is available.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2017, 04:42:07 PM by drugon »
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Tartiflette

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Re: Making local coop an official supported feature?
« Reply #3 on: March 12, 2017, 02:17:15 PM »

The difference between "barely work in a mod" and a shipable product is two or three years spent rewriting the game engine, changing incompatible core mechanics and adding the necessary tools.

I'd rather have a complete solo game thank you.
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Nick XR

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Re: Making local coop an official supported feature?
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2017, 10:01:06 AM »

I played Cooperative Multiplayer Combat mod a little with my friend and I think in spite of it's rawness it has a great potential. So I wonder if this could become an official supported feature with possibility to play not only campaign and simulation but missions also in coop, better interface, maybe dynamic split-screen (like in Catacomb Kids or better like in Renegade Ops), gamepad support and so on. It still be OK though if there will be no official support but mod development will be continued.

For gamepad support, look at JoyToKey, it's not ideal integration, but PC gaming isn't supposed to be easy ;)

The rest of the changes would require a non-trivial amount of time to implement because they change some fundamental assumptions (like a single view port, or that the game can pause).  Honestly, based on the number of downloads of the coop mod I don't think it would be worth Alex's time. I think people just like to talk about it on the forums :)