ZDoom

Hi everyone, new to the forum here!

I want to play Doom split screen with my boyfriend, but after some research I'm pretty confused on how to do it
The first and most interesting result was SsDoom, a modification of ZDoom that seems to support Splitscreen natively, with also support for multiple Xbox Controllers, but the project has been abandoned, only supports Windows 32bit and I'm not sure about mod compatibility, as it seems to be based on a pretty old version. Because I'm running Linux at the moment and I'm pretty interested in playing with some mods, this isn't a really good strategy.
My second Idea was to use the Eternity Engine, as it too has some split screen support, but they doin0t have a Unix release for the last updates and I can't compile it myself
Same issues with Edge, only Windows Support in releases and can't get it to build
I read some posts talking about using multiple instances with a virtual network to get splitscreen running, is it really the only way? Is it impossible within the engine itself?
I'll try the various possibilities when I have a Windows machine on hand, if there are other things I should know please tell me

thanks!

Get Zandronum, run two instances of it (i recommend splitting the priorities between CPU threads), start up a dedicated server, and join it with both clients. Obviously you need two separate folders or two separate config files (but i can't remember the parameter for a custom cfg, maybe -config ?) and set up two controllers. If you don't have a good PC, you may want to set one of the instances to use Software renderer instead, so as to take a load off the GPU.

TDRR wrote:Get Zandronum, run two instances of it (i recommend splitting the priorities between CPU threads), start up a dedicated server, and join it with both clients. Obviously you need two separate folders or two separate config files (but i can't remember the parameter for a custom cfg, maybe -config ?) and set up two controllers. If you don't have a good PC, you may want to set one of the instances to use Software renderer instead, so as to take a load off the GPU.

Does this (minus the dedicated server) work with GZDoom too? Last time I recall only the window in focus would receive inputs, be it gamepad or otherwise.

I remember doing this in the past with a custom version of the VisualBoyAdvance emulator to do Pokémon battles against my brother on the same PC

DabbingSquidward wrote:Does this (minus the dedicated server) work with GZDoom too? Last time I recall only the window in focus would receive inputs, be it gamepad or otherwise.

No, because GZDoom will pause the game as soon as you switch to another window. Zandronum for obvious reasons can't do this and still recieves input normally, but this is not the case in Windows for some weird reason.

TDRR wrote:No, because GZDoom will pause the game as soon as you switch to another window. Zandronum for obvious reasons can't do this and still recieves input normally, but this is not the case in Windows for some weird reason.

I'm not having that problem...

Rachael wrote:I'm not having that problem...

I haven't been keeping up with the new GZDoom updates, so that's why i didn't know. Curious, when was this added? I don't remember any option for it in 3.6.

It got added in 3.2.5, the rendering portion got added very closely afterwards but either 3.3.x or 3.4.0.

But does this really work in the end?

Two instances in two different folders with two controllers does infact work. You just need to tweak it to your liking.

Wasn't there an unfinished ZDoom splitscreen build lying around somewhere?

Death Egg wrote:Wasn't there an unfinished ZDoom splitscreen build lying around somewhere?

Yes, and i actually figured out how to make most mods work with it (Got patches for DUBG, D4T and BD) and fix some bugs. If anyone is really interested, PM me.

It's called SSZDoom by the way.

Having splitscreen in GZdoom would be cool anyway

Rachael made an old attempt but besides being incomplete only would work with render buffers and the version by the other guy on D3D (SSZDoom) had two screens with two menus, player two was just a clone of player one and it was only for XInput.
I still need to try this.

I plan to revisit that since the status bar code got updated, but the changes I plan to make to GZDoom would be pretty deep. In other words - if it doesn't make it to mainline, it will never get properly updated in the future.

That's great. In that case at least in could make it to LZDoom, there won't be any refactorings there.