Feature Request

[Aevans0001]

https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/5804/feature-request-multi-console-multiplayer

 

@Darkshade  or anyone else.  Can someone please explain to me how this feature request works.  I am very interested in it, if it will work in my instance.

 

First thing is that I don't play many portable games.  I could defiantly see how this would benefit portables, but what about consoles?

 

I would like to play console games between 2 separate computers like a system link configuration

 

Here is a snipit of the feature request submitted by Darkshade

 

Darkshade

 created an issue 2020-12-11

My wife recently received some time off, and as such, I thought that it would be a nice idea to spend time playing some games together.
The sort of games I wanted to play with her were multiplayer co-op games, where we could go through a story together and actively complete the game together.

She's a fan of The Legend of Zelda series, so Four Swords on the Gameboy Advance, Four Swords Adventures on the Gamecube and Four Swords Anniversary Edition (DSiWare) came to mind immediately.
Alongside games like Kirby's Amazing Mirror (Gameboy Advance).
I also wanted to give Triforce Heroes (3DS) a shot, before being reminded that it's 3-Player only.

We started with Four Swords on the GBA.
I opted to do this through emulation because it would allow us to effectively play 'Split screen' while sitting on the couch and playing the game(s) through HDMI-out (mirrored) on the TV.

For my purposes, I found that the ideal setup was to have two of the same emulator in separate locations from my usual Emulator directory for Launchbox (as not to mess with the settings).
They would each be set up with separate settings (for controller input and any other quirks required) so it would simply be a case of booting them up each time and selecting the game I wanted to play.

[Darkshade]

@Aevans0001 Hi!

First of all, thank you for the interest in my feature suggestion, I'm eager to draw attention to it, as it should be fairly easy to implement and I think many people interested in a multiplayer experience would benefit a lot from it.

To answer your question in terms of my proposal:

The tl;dr version is that Launchbox support would be added to recognize additional directories for multiplayer purposes.

These emulator directories are set as separate directories per-player and exist (in multiple instances) for each console.

An example I gave in the ticket was 4 Gameboy Advance emulators, each in separate directories which have already been configured to work in a multiplayer environment, with each being already set up to occupy a quarter of the same screen.

The user would select Multi-Console Multiplayer in the Big Box menu once a game has been chosen, and the amount of players and then the console and game each player wishes to use individually (for things like cross-play, trading or hooking up a Gameboy Advance to a Gamecube for example). 

BigBox/Launchbox would then boot up all of the emulators selected based on player count and the slot the player is in.  (If player 2 picked Gameboy Advance, it would pick the directory for the 'Player 2' Gameboy Advance emulator etc.)

 

This is not limited to a single screen, as you could configure each emulator to its own separate screen or screen space, depending on your set up.

It's also not limited to just handhelds; all of the heavy lifting is done within emulator settings (Where it's placed on the screen, which controller it uses, whether it's able to auto-link to another device, go online etc.)

So provided the emulator(s) you're using have support for local (or even online) multiplayer, this feature request would allow LaunchBox/BigBox as a front end to boot a multiplayer configuration automatically, and since the directories are separate from your standard single player emulation settings (unless of course you set them to use the same directory) they won't interfere with your standard settings either (meaning you'd need to resize the screen again, reset controls etc.).

I hope this helps!

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Darkshade

[Aevans0001]

Yes, great write up.  By advertising I hope to get more people intriqued by it and vote for it.  Hopefully a new vote will be coming out soon