Half-Life Fallout: Multiplayer Split Screen for Source Games - Half-Life Fallout

Ok so using this thread, I have succesfully managed to get two instances of Counter-Strike: Source running on one machine and connected to the same local server. One player must use KB&M, the other an XBOX controller.

PIC:

Now, I know some people are going to be offended, but I want BOTH players to use a controller (just so that it's fair and we can sit on the couch or something).

Problem is it looks like Source only supports an XBOX controller that calls itself "Player 1" (the controller lights up showing you your number). Left 4 Dead is different, but that has native split screen support. This method is slightly hacky - but totally works and is easy to set up!

So I need to read input from "Player 2" also. i.e. a second XBOX controller. How can this be done?

EDIT: Also, the best thing about this method is that if you have two (or more) monitors, you can have one instance of the game running on each! Better than split-screen!

Does it run at a smooth frame rate having both playing at the same time?

Yes on my system - on most mid-range desktop systems.

There is a frame rate drop when the window is not selected, but it's a consistent drop, so I think that has something to do with how fast Windows updates background apps. I think there may be a fix.

OK so I've officially got this working!

I used this site to map the second XBOX controller to the mouse and keyboard.

Only issue is the jerky framerate and no sound on the window not using the keyboard/mouse hack. The keyboard/mouse window must be focused for it to receive input. This causes the second window to be treated as a background process. If there's some way I can change how often to update HL2.exe when it is a background process, this should fix it.

    why dont you try a program that converts the 2nd gamepad into keyboard input, so its even more hacky, but fair. 

Turns out there's a frame skip when out of focus built into the HL2 engine. Can't be fixed without some programming knowledge. Here's to hoping valve makes CS:GO split-screen friendly