Sektor wrote:hifi was working on proper widescreen support. He has made similar tools/hacks for Command and Conquer games. I just sent him an email telling him about your splitscreen mod.
Thanks! I wonder if he made
this, because it looks very promising. I'll probably try to merge that with my proxy dll at one point (or if someone else wants to, help is welcome
)
Sektor wrote:I don't think it is a Windows XP limitation, I think multiplayer mode is just coded in such a way that it requires one CPU core for each instance of multiplayer GTA2. It would be nice if vike could remove that limitation but most people have at least dual core CPUs these days. If we can figure out how to control an AI ped with a controller then we could have local multiplayer with a single instance, as long as everyone stayed on the same screen.
As you can see on the screenshots, I got a two player network game working. But it isn't really running stable, I can run it a few times and then I need to reboot before it works again
(you guys don't seem to have that problem, right?)
I think its a single core, I'll post the specs of that laptop when I find time to do so
Cuban-Pete wrote:Played today with a friend. It worked quite nice, but there are some small things. For example GTA2 Manager suddenly crashes (I use it to start up network games). By first closing GTA2 Manager, after starting the games, and then run your program it worked, no crash.
Yeah, that's normal (gta2manager uses the dmavideo.dll too, but has something else on the same address -> the gamepad glue mod just writes data there and crashes it). But with the new version, you don't need to launch the manager manually or place a custom dll in the gta2 folder
Cuban-Pete wrote:The layout of the controls was, according to my fellow gamer, uncomfortable. For example, going left is not always going left (it depends on the players position). Not sure, what to do about this, I guess this is how GTA2 has always been, but easy adjustable custom controls will be nice (sorry for the 'double post').
That's just how GTA2 works. maybe we can hack in some custom, more intuitive controls (as Sektor suggested, maybe even make a twin stick shooter), but this isn't a priority at all for me. If you really want to play it, you will learn the controls fast
Cuban-Pete wrote:Also the sound was a bit boring, especially since only one player had sound (effects).
Should be 'fixed' in the new version.
Cuban-Pete wrote:Car radio would be nice, but also kinda weird if more players at the same time would listen to different music, it would probably be chaotic. Perhaps some (custom multi-player) GTA2 mood music would be nice. I could eject all the radio talk and combine the songs into one. Here is a nice future-idea: Change the background music depending on the players position. But... not really a high priority idea.
I recommend turning off the radio sound (however you would do that, delete sound files?) and launching another music player with custom music in the background. On windows, you could use the excellent
foobar2000 and map global key bindings to change the song for example, also it provides web interfaces that can be accessed with mobile phones (with a plugin). Or just use a CD player next to your PC ;D
Sektor wrote:At first it was launching GTA2 in network mode and starting the game even though the selected map doesn't normally allow starting with only 1 player. player2.exe was still on the join lobby. I changed the IP in gta2manager to 127.0.0.1 and then it worked.
I don't really get how the join IP is related to the map, can you give a more detailed explanation?
Sektor wrote:Is there a proper wait to quit splitscreen_mod.exe? I just killed the process each time.
Yes, just press [F2] and it should kill all related processes (Player1.exe ... Player6.exe, splitscreen_mod.exe, sdl_controller_code.exe).
Sektor wrote:We'll need to change the way GTA2 offsets the player names since in some resolutions, they are really far away from the players. At least we can untick show player names for now.
For me this worked fine, can you give me a screen shot? Also I don't do anything fancy with the player names except setting them in the registry so it shouldn't be different from the normal multiplayer (except for the resolution).
Sektor wrote:Sound was working in both windows.
Yay! I remember that this worked a year ago, but I couldn't verify it with my current setup (didn't find XP sounddrivers yet for that laptop >_>)
Thanks for all the feedback - and if anyone knows a little programming, you should try to modify the splitscreen_mod code. It is really easy (download AutoIt3 and the improved SciTE editor from
their site, clone the code with
github for windows (requires win7 or higher) and get going)!
PS: If anyone is working on a GTA2.exe hack in combination with this mod, remember to clear the GTA2.exe cache (path is in the readme file).
PPS: Hosting the game takes a very long time on my machine (joining is faster). Is this better on your PCs? (maybe you can measure the time)?