Please fix "No Splitscreen" Bug On PC Version

wwwizzarrdry · July 30, 2020, 1:16am

I found a bug in the Steam version of the game.

The option to choose local coop is missing, but I checked the same game on other platforms and the option is there. I think it might be a UI bug that needs to be patched so PC players can see the splitscreen option when they start the game.

For me, the bug reveals itself immediately on the main menu. The option to select local multiplayer (aka splitscreen) is not visible, while it is present on at least 2 other platform versions.

From the forums here, on Steam and Reddit, it appears to be affecting a very large number of players. Let me know if you need more help recreating this issue for your technical team.

Thanks

Isthiswill · July 30, 2020, 2:36am

In the past Split Screen was never available on PC. Local Coop referred to multiple PCs on the same Local Network, aka LAN.

Since launch I never heard any confirmation that PC splitscreen was an option. It’s not in the steam store listing.

renfried · July 30, 2020, 3:16am

Yes, there is no split screen on PC. You really don’t want it anyway in its current state. There’s various threads in the general discussion group and elsewhere about the problems plaguing console split screen.

The lan option can be found in the party settings at the top right of the main menu screen if that’s what you are looking for.

wwwizzarrdry · July 30, 2020, 5:20am

Wow, so it isn’t a bug? Seems like discrimination by platform is just getting worse every year.

In BL2, it was really simple to launch 2 instances side-by-side, designate the second window to run under a separate save profile, start a LAN session and voila, the second player could join your game. But now it seems even that option has been removed.

Can you post a solution that will allow me to run 2 instances of the game so we can play LAN sessions on the same screen?

renfried · July 30, 2020, 11:52am

Hmm, didn’t realize that was even possible with bl2.

If bl3 won’t let you run two instances, you could virtualize one of them with something like virtualbox or vmware. You’d probably need a beefy computer to run both, but it’s doable.

menikobellic · July 30, 2020, 12:23pm

It was possible before, you could open two instance and play 1 instance with mkb, another with gamepad, but later in a patch the devs disabled gamepad control when the game is not focused. So right now even though you could open 2 instance its not possible to play.

menikobellic · July 30, 2020, 12:25pm

You could done it with BL3 too, but few months ago devs introduced a patch, which disables gamepad control when the game is not focused. So now you are not able to play this way, which is really a shame, why would dev “fix” this when there are tons of legit issues to fix.

renfried · July 30, 2020, 12:45pm

Well that’s kinda crap. What about streamers who use gamepads and a second screen for the stream tools. I’d be willing to guess that was unintentional.

menikobellic · July 30, 2020, 1:03pm

It wouldn’t have made it into the patch note if it was unintentional, devs were clearly trying to block playing co-op this way . https://borderlands.com/en-US/news/2020-06-11-borderlands-3-patch-hotfixes-june-11/

renfried · July 30, 2020, 1:13pm

Huh, I completely missed that one. Of course I just switched to PC from Xbox within the last few weeks, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the PC “fixes.”

That really doesn’t make any sense, unless it was causing some kind of weird performance problem. Or they were just being greedy and trying to keep people from playing that way (don’t know that I believe that one, but entirely possible).

menikobellic · July 30, 2020, 1:17pm

No worries, I became a fan of the series by playing BL2 and TPS co-op on same PC, otherwise I might have never been interested in the series the first place.

wwwizzarrdry · July 30, 2020, 1:24pm

Wow, and here I was thinking it would be a simple request to ask Gearbox how to let my wife and I play through the campaign together as we did in the previous three games. We’ve seen videos of how poorly it runs on PS4, so that’s not an option.

Seems like a totally different company than the Gearbox of 10 years ago.

Isthiswill · July 30, 2020, 4:01pm

To be honest, the same company never had an option for intentional PC Splitscreen or same-device co-op from day one. So it’s not fair to say they have changed. It’s just that people found work-arounds.

As for your situation, depending on how powerful your PC is, you could try an Emulator to build a virtual PC and run the game on both. That would tax system resources.

If you can acquire windows Server you can make multiple virtual machines run it, but again, system resources would be heavily strained, and that would probably break TOS.

The legit way would be, get a second PC and run the game in true LAN mode.

4GB GPU & 3.2 GHz professor was the key to getting my build optimal to run the game. I was able to buy a Dell Optiplex 9020 Tower off lease to get the processor speed plus 32gb ram, 1TB SSD, and Win 10 pro for under $500, and then got a GPU for under $150. I only run at 720P (TV’s max res) but I do so at High with some Ultra settings at 48-60fps. It was a Major upgrade from my laptop.

But yeah, two PCs on the same network has always been the intent from GBX as I have understood it based on Steam Store listings alone.

wwwizzarrdry · July 30, 2020, 4:21pm

I don’t think it was always their intention, according to the creative director.

The weird part though, is that his reasoning makes no sense to me. For the first 3 games, we played local coop without any issues regarding a second save profile. I don’t know what he’s talki g about with regards to “it’s a limitation of Steam software” preventing splitscreen. It just isn’t a problem. gearbox falsely thinks that the people who want splitscreen also demand that 2 Steam accounts can be logged in simultaneously, when it’s really just a persistent save file that’s required.

This is all that was necessary for the last decade:

Batch Script:
start %GamePath% -WindowedFullscreen -AlwaysFocus -ResY=%VertHalf% -ResX=%CurrentHorizontalResolution% -ControllerOffset=0 -SaveDataId=1 -WindowPosY=0
pause
start /wait %GamePath% -WindowedFullscreen -AlwaysFocus -WindowPosY=%VertHalf% -ResY=%VertHalf% -ResX=%CurrentHorizontalResolution% -ControllerOffset=1 -SaveDataId=2

(I bet the AlwaysFocus switch would resolve their recent attempt to disable controller input on blur as well)

menikobellic · July 30, 2020, 4:56pm

Some of the parameters don’t work on BL3 e.g. “SaveDataID”, “AlwaysFocus” , “ControllerOffset”, so this time around its less co-op friendly, and after that patch, its just confirmed.

Just because their past games had no split-screen on pc does not mean, they cant do it now. Look at Larian and what they did with Divinity Original Sin series. Even DOS1 at launch didn’t have split-screen but they added later and did a rework on UI side and added split-screen on Enhanced edition. None of their past games had local co-op, yet they did it, bcs they value their players. Then they added local co-op on DOS2 and upcoming BG3. Their games are on steam too, so saying “steam wont let us” is just bullsh*t. GB even went out of their way and patched the game so that co-op on same PC is as difficult as it can get.

They didn’t have to do anything, if they just keeps things the way it was since launch, but they went out of their way, spend dev time to “fix” stuffs that don’t needed fixing and no one asked for.

wwwizzarrdry · July 30, 2020, 5:04pm

I hate to go off subject in my own thread, but you brought up Divinity, not me! Can we all just take a moment and tips our hats to those guys? They’ve managed to make the most accessible, consumer friendly, coop friendly series of games in their genre I’ve ever seen. Gotta support their efforts with your wallets.