Split Screen

[HarryButt]

I actually had fun playing Serious Sam in cooperative splitscreen mode...
But if it should require that much of an effort, it's not worth it. In Serious Sam it was a nice feature though.

[DeVsh]

the engine DOES support multiple views i got informed (CSQC), and after introducing myselft to proper programming i have thought that i might crack on with this one.

it is understandable why the nexuiz developement team doesnt want to do split screen, because they have only 5 members and making split screen is like making version 3.0 of nex (so heck of a lot of work).

Me and my two friends (one is to be doubted, because he cant get his head around some things, so maybe i will have him redesign the menu) are going to try and mod the source code. We will log down every single MSN convo about this and every single code change (with references to file and the line number) on a forum in the main sticky thread. There will be a new thread where the non-developers can post their ideas about code (im talking about code changes not ideas like here which are useless).
WE HAVENT LOOKED INTO THE SOURCE CODE IN VERY MUCH DETAIL YET.


NOW onto THE TOPIC. We have sorted our priorities for version 0.1.0 in this order.

A] Understanding how processes take place for all things listed in point B e.g. trajectory of a bullet and bind the view with position of mouse and position of character.

B]
1) managing to produce 2 views one above other (this will give us some hard core CSQC learning time)
2) editing the networking client code so it is able to connect to a non modded server. We will achieve this by locating 2ce as much ports to the client and forward the packets around and making the client add a bit of data to a packet (or label them), so data sent to player one does not affect player 2. The second problem is to cut out (for player 2) only the part of the packet which applies to itself, so the client doesnt get the positions of other players twice and mess up the whole positioning (due to lags). Mapping of values sent by the server to (what it sees as two clients running on same IP) values of player and player2 on the client side.
3)Finding out if the engine supports joystick AXIS (i know joysticks are supported) and if not add axis support & deadzone , threshold.
4) Binding the view to the position of player2 and joystick (RX and RY) and separating inputs (so if you move the joystick it does not affect both views).
5) Redoing/Renaming values so player2 gets his sets of values for health and stuff
6) Sort out .cfg files
7) Making 2 crosshairs, 2 scoreboards independent of each other, "You Fragged" and "You have been fragged by" appear accordingly in the right place and in the right time, Bonus Flash relocated to appear either in top part of screen or bottom (engine modification i think) and loads others
Aiming support for Gamepads/Joysticks, I have a few ideas but i need to figure out how to make targetting sticky. Make two crosshairs one (dummy) dependant on Rotational joystick in the center of the view and one moving within 50 pixels (or whatever measuring unit in XYZ) of the position of the mouse trying to line up with a hostile target (i need to think how to script the detection of the target and how to make it line up). The basic flow is that there is a constant line drawn between targets in sight and the player on the joystick (lets say the crosshair is X away from player). Now if a point that is X away from the player on one of the lines (that i was talking about previously) is 50 pixels or less (or N away in a straight line or less) from the dummycrosshair's (Rotational joystick's) position then it moves away from the center of the screen to be in line with the target. After target no longer in the boundary the croshair moves back in line with the other one. I know there are going to be two main problems "what if two targets are in the boundary" the closest to the 'false' crosshair will be chosen. Number 2 is obviously aiming rockets, because you need to aim them a bit infront of a running target. Thats why we are going to add a button bind with a variable that will either enable "smart_target" or disable. For example you might map it to button 9 on the xbox controller (which is the left thumbstick pressed down) so you can toggle the targeting with it. This will be hard and probably will require engine modifications OR nexuiz code remake in big style (maybe using some bot AI code). However this is not the top priority and if it will be playable split screen then we crack on with this, but if this takes too long to develop it will be released in version 0.1.1 with all toggling options like multiple keyboard and mice support and enabling the user to switch views(top/bottom) or input devices between player1 and player2.

In later releases we will be cleaning up bugs and code, also we would like to take advantage of stereo sound and map all sounds for player1 to right speaker and all sounds for player 2 will be played through the right speaker, while the music is played through both.

THIS IS HOW THE DOUBLE CROSSHAIR IS GOING TO LOOK (note its a cut out from a 2ce as big picture.

I'm pretty sure i missed out on some other bits that would make the game impossible to play or buggy like one player press left mouse button and both players shoot, and feel free to add to the list of things that need to be done.