Left 4 Dead PC Splitscreen Removed from Demo; Valve Plans Unofficial Support in Full Game

"the but tricky thing"

That rhymes, kinda.

I think they should leave it in with support, the feature is obviously there. For those with larger LCD monitors or for those that play on projectors or an hdtv, this would totally rock.

I could also see two people wanting to use two keyboards/mouses, two game pads, a game pad/ mouse/keyboard, so it would be nice for them to support all combinations of controller setups for this.

I do understand that the vast majority are probably going to be playing solo, but I know quiet a few people who might use this option myself. Co-op games are finally coming to light more so than in the past. A friend and I used to constantly look for good co-op games to play together on consoles and enjoyed lots of them.

Tossing this mix into the pc world where you don't have to have two pc's necessarily via internet connection or Lan would be nice. I could see more people interested in pc gaming if more games had co-op play ala-consoles, or at least I can dream. ;)

Since there isn't a new chatty, I'll post this here.

If I could host my own video game awards, the AI Director in L4D would win a shit ton.

Most hated character in a video game - Everyone hates the AI director. No longer can you bitch that "Shit, this game is too hard." no, what I hear most often is, "Shit our AI Director fucking hates us." It's become more personal. Your not just fighting the infected hordes, your fighting against a singular entity that is the AI Director, and its pure awesome.

Most evil character in a video game - Anyone who has played knows there are times when the Director is just plain evil. Today we got 3 hordes, smokers, hunters, and a tank thrown at us in the end, one of the hordes came after the door to the safe room opened, and last night, there was a witch right in front of the safe room. That my friends, is pure evil.

Most innovative piece of technology in a video game - The AI Director is amazing. I played through a game just now, and it was the first time our group had been together. We ran through the first level of the demo with no problems. There were item drops everywhere, pills and pipe bombs abound. The second level starts, and we get swarmed by two hordes with with ever present boss characters. We reset, and again got swarmed by the horde right outside the safe room. Again we reset, and this time we make it down to the subway station, most of us minus some fleshy bits. We get swarmed, but manage to hold the line with pipe bombs. First subway tunnel is fine, we make it up to the second weapon drop and come up empty for guns, theres only a lonely pistol and some ammo. Then we get hit with a tank.

My point is, the AI director takes everything into account, even the fact that its your first time playing with a group of people. It was all nice and easy, and then we owned the level, and then got our asses handed to us because the director saw we worked well as a team, so it decided to ramp up the difficulty. Whereas, if I join a game that 2 of my buddies are in, and we play all the time, we don't get an easy part and a hard part, its all hard.

Hard being a relative term, I want insane/suicide difficulty.

In reference to: http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?story=55841#itemanchor_18430828

I think lack of support for Co-Op play is seriously hindering PC gaming as a social activity. Back in 200-2004, the PC dominated online multiplayer. Back then you either played PC games online with real people OR played console games with real friends (if you had any).

But times have changed.

Now anyone can just plug an xbox360 into their HDTV for $200 and play by themselves online AND play co-op with friends in the room (bring their own wireless controllers). Its so easy and you can also play many of these games online. There you go, new Console gamer.

PC games are just not social activities. And LAN parties are not cool. That shit is not mainstream and needing your own computer and screen and controller just to play games will not catch on.


PCs are Cumbersome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J54D8tQbsjk
Gaming laptops are just as bad.


Lets face it, the only way to really enjoy a multiplayer game is to get in it and play. There is no reason you can't just bring a wireless USB keyboard + mouse and play split screen on someone else's HD monitor or HD TV. Or they could keep a few wireless controllers that work with the PC at the same cost as consoles. The fact that each person who wants to play needs their own gaming PC is a bit prohibitive of social PC events.

Its seems to me that I should be able to plug in another kb+mouse and play with someone on my two monitors. That seems possible to me. Where is the break-down of support? Is this a windows problem? Is this something Microsoft can do? Or is it really a software/hardware issue?

I was trying to find this demo on fileshack last night. Just realized today that I'd have to use Steam to get it. Doh

My favorite hack is the 3rd person view "hack". It's not even a real hack just a command. In the console, type:

bind T thirdpersonshoulder

T can be any key you choose to bind it to. But once you do it once, it toggles between first person and third person view. This comes in handy when you are in the APT's and things get rcazy and crowded. I hope this stays in.

Funny story about this:
My buddy finally came over to check this out... I setup my PC on my TV, get all the settings in line and start a server so we can play... we play through the first level of the demo, and during the second part he gets a phone call and has to go AFK... I log out of L4D and go play something else for a bit, but here's the kicker: when he comes back to play, splitscreen is totally gone... they stealth-patched it out in between the time we were playing and the time we went back to play again...

GG.

Hope it goes back in for full-version.

The SA forums have been hacking this demo to hell, they have found so many un supported features in the demo its just crazy.

Seeing DE_dust being run in left 4 dead was quite interesting.

Hooooooray!! I for one will be using this feature.

But where is the demo of the game for use 360 owners? *sniff sniff*

Been up since 8am(gmt) waiting for this....

Wow, Yahn Bernier. His BSP editor was the best way back in the day.

Kinda lame they decided to disable splitscreen for the demo, since the only people using it are getting it through console commands they pretty much know what they're doing.. If you didn't want bug reports on the feature say so, but if as they say they will leave it in as an unsupported bonus they should have left it in the beta as well so we can unofficially beta test it and fix it ourselves.

Although, If you still want to play splitscreen just download the demo from torrent, its unpatched ;-)

don't care, gimme the demo!