Borderlands 2 PC (Steam) split-screen / dual-monitor guide

[Sycdan]

Originally Posted by Misapoes

Hello,

I'm having problems with the sound devices. I have a laptop and a tv through hdmi, both are the same 1080p resolutions.

When I follow your indievolume tutorial, everything goes fine until I try to run a second instance of borderlands, which crashes before the launcher starts. I can't run any other borderlands instance until I close indievolume.

What am I doing wrong?

You may not be doing anything wrong per se, it's likely just IndieVolume causing problems for no good reason... it's a funky little app. In IV, go to Tool -> Options -> Preferences and uncheck Integrate into System Menu. That might possible reduce its unsolicited interactions with other programs.
Alternatively, try running both instances of the game first (with IV closed) then run IV and go through all of those steps. If you're using Sandboxie, then IV will ignore that instance of the game and only try to handle the one you loaded directly, whether it was first or second.

[botman]

Originally Posted by Misapoes

What am I doing wrong?

If you are trying to get the audio from both to go to the TV, you shouldn't need IndieVolume at all. Just make sure "Mute Audio On Focus Lost" is OFF and you should get audio from both instances going out to the same audio device.

The annoying thing about both instances sending audio to the same audio device is that during cutscenes (like the intro cards for Marcus, Zed, etc.) and when someone uses the ECHO network to talk to the player, the audio can get doubled and slightly out of sync which might annoy some people. If this is the case, leave the "Mute Audio On Focus Lost" to ON and just use the output from one instance. As long as both players are fairly close together you should get most audio cues for both from just one instance of the game.

[Misapoes]

Originally Posted by Sycdan

You may not be doing anything wrong per se, it's likely just IndieVolume causing problems for no good reason... it's a funky little app. In IV, go to Tool -> Options -> Preferences and uncheck Integrate into System Menu. That might possible reduce its unsolicited interactions with other programs.
Alternatively, try running both instances of the game first (with IV closed) then run IV and go through all of those steps. If you're using Sandboxie, then IV will ignore that instance of the game and only try to handle the one you loaded directly, whether it was first or second.

Unchecking "intergrate into system menu" has done the trick for me, thanks a lot!

It's a pity I can't find any free alternatives to IndieVolume though!

[Sycdan]

Originally Posted by Misapoes

Unchecking "intergrate into system menu" has done the trick for me, thanks a lot!

It's a pity I can't find any free alternatives to IndieVolume though!

Great! Adding that to the guide. Yes, it is a shame about having to use a non-free app to do this, when in BL1 there was not even any need for it. *sigh*

[~Exlair]

Maybe I'm completely missing something here, but how exactly do I get the .bats to run properly without encountering the Steam error of;

"Steam.exe (main exception): Cannot open blob archive file: CMultiFieldBlob(mem-mapped file): Failed to open existing file, Win32 Error 32 "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process."

Certainly related to running different processes of the game, but I think I've done everything detailed here.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Kzboy]

Originally Posted by ~Exlair

Maybe I'm completely missing something here, but how exactly do I get the .bats to run properly without encountering the Steam error of;

"Steam.exe (main exception): Cannot open blob archive file: CMultiFieldBlob(mem-mapped file): Failed to open existing file, Win32 Error 32 "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process."

Certainly related to running different processes of the game, but I think I've done everything detailed here.

Any help would be appreciated.

Steam in offline mode? Sandbox setup right? That's all I can think of, but I'm not the most experienced person here.

[Sycdan]

Originally Posted by ~Exlair

Maybe I'm completely missing something here, but how exactly do I get the .bats to run properly without encountering the Steam error of;

"Steam.exe (main exception): Cannot open blob archive file: CMultiFieldBlob(mem-mapped file): Failed to open existing file, Win32 Error 32 "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process."

Certainly related to running different processes of the game, but I think I've done everything detailed here.

Any help would be appreciated.

Wow, okay, I certainly never saw that error in my testing.

Offhand I don't know why that happens, but I might be able to make a guess if I knew at exactly what point you get that error, though you could try removing "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\" from the Direct Access section of the sandbox.

Are you logged in to Windows as an Administrator? I have not tested this with a Limited user account.

Does the second Steam instance finish loading?

Can you load Steam manually through Sandboxie? (Sandbox -> Steam2 -> Run Sandboxed -> Run Any Program -> Run As UAC Administrator -> C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe)

The steps outlined here may help.

[~Exlair]

Thanks for the aid.

Okay, after going though changes here and there -- it would appear that other Steam instances don't load, thus causing the issue at hand.

I have personally closed Steam and manually re-opened it with Sandboxie, this appears to work for the game instance I want, it's more of a manual fix though.
I am administrator of my computer as well, so that clears that 'issue'.

[Sycdan]

Originally Posted by ~Exlair

Thanks for the aid.

Okay, after going though changes here and there -- it would appear that other Steam instances don't load, thus causing the issue at hand.

I have personally closed Steam and manually re-opened it with Sandboxie, this appears to work for the game instance I want, it's more of a manual fix though.
I am administrator of my computer as well, so that clears that 'issue'.

I take it back: removing "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\" from the Direct Access section of the sandbox seems like a bad idea; for me, at least, it renders me unable to load the game at all via the sandbox.

What if you close the regular Steam, then start the sandboxed game, then try to load Steam again after? Or, what if you make another sandbox (copy settings from the first) and don't use the un-sandboxed Steam at all? Can't say I've tried that, but it should work (unless you run into the same bug you're having now, of course).

Also, you could try adding the /elevate argument before the /box argument in the batch the loads the sandboxed instance, forcing it to run as admin.

[Addsy]

Hey Botman, couple of questions you might be able to help with:

I have managed to get 2 windowed fullscreen instances going perfectly, however the UI is really small, is there a way to make the UI a little bigger? or even something similar to how the console UI works?

I am running the 2 on a single 1080p screen by the way, both at resolution 1920x540

Also i am running the player 1 split screen as keyboard and mouse and the second is using an xbox 360 controller. On the Player 1 instance the mouse is offset and where i am pointing the mouse doesnt point to where it should do on the screen. Is there any way to fix that?

One last thing. I can't seem to get the audio to come from both instances, I tried setting them both to that option you mentioned but i can still only hear the active window.


Any help is greatly appreciated