List some of your favorite new takes on Tetris.

Tetris exists on nearly every platform in one form or another, and though ubiquitous some titles stand out as making changes to the familiar system that actually better the gameplay. These titles ought to be commended, as most companies creating tetris games merely clone a formula while these standout titles took a financial risk to better the experience. Tetris developers, look here for models of how to make your game the next must-own version of a game everyone and their grand-nanny loves!

My favorite takes include Push Tetris (Tetris DS, Nintendo DS) and the system of silver/gold squares (The New Tetris, N64):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxp8vZZzqfc

^Push Tetris -

Both players play on one board, which on their screen appears as if their own pieces are falling with the other person's pieces rising to meet in the middle. Tug-of-war style lines were added above and below the playing field, and breaking a line shifted the board towards the other person's tug-of-war line. Push the blocks beyond the tug-of-war line by breaking lines with the tetrads to win. This was a fresh take on competitive multiplayer tetris, and seeing the board fall down past your buddy's line to win was far more satisfying than merely throwing garbage onto someone else's screen (as was the case in nearly all competitive matches before this one). Very Satisfying!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENObKRhRzM8

^The New Tetris system -

Creating a 4x4 square of one type of piece turns them gold, and breaking them gives you additional points. Make a 4x4 with more than one type of tetrad for a silver, which gives you additional points for breaking them but not as much extra points as given for breaking a gold. This added new depth to multiplayer strategy, especially considering that more garbage was thrown to the other player when breaking gold/silver lines. Hectic!

Serious Sam: the second encounter has splitscreen co-op support and deathmatch for 2 players, though it's an older game. demo can be found here:

Left 4 dead 1 and 2 have full co-op support (including online support connecting with 2 other players co-op for a total of 4 players on 2-3 computers) for 2 player split screen on pc (works with buttons set for 360 controllers, and you must edit 360controller.cfg to set the buttons for any other controller), although you have to enter console commands here:

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L4D:

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open console (~)

Enter commands:

exec 360controller
ss_enable 1
ss_splitmode 2

To play online:
Join a SP game as normal and set the light on player 2 to slot 2, then join/start a campaign with less than 3 players playing.

Enter commands:
ss_connect
cmd2 jointeam 2 //4 survivors or cmd2 jointeam 3 //4 infected
name2

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l4d2

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http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1029890

There are also a number of games that you can run two instances of with buttons set on one for a gamepad and the other for mouse/keyboard. Quake 2 comes to mind. Instructions and files needed can be found here.

Unreal Tournament 3 has splitscreen support for 4 players.

there are also many games that allow multiple players to play on screen, but don't split the screen. Examples include the mashed series (demo here) , return of the king (demo does not have 2 player support, but is on Gamespot), and sports titles such as nhl 2004 (demo here).

It was discovered in the hardware thread below that two distinct cursors can be created in the windows environment and simultaneously run with two seperate USB mice. This means that splitscreen in left for dead is possible on one computer with two mice (better controls) if someone can figure out how to change the .cfg files to distinguish between the two mice.

previous discussion:

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=27028846&tag=topics;title

Any ideas?

For moderators:

This thread will assume the use of CMDMouse drivers and software discovered in the hardware forum to deal with a specific software issue. Please leave both threads up and running.

Recap/Bump

Splitting mice control so that two cursors work independently in windows is possible (see the end of previous post for a free way to set this up on a windows system). That means that splitscreen games on the pc (left for dead) could be played on one computer with two mice if we can figure out how to map controls of the bottom screen to the second mouse.

Any ideas?

Thanks - that is the file we use to bind the keys.....

We are going to need one of these two programs to seperate mouse input:

TeamPlayer (Full version costs $20)

http://www.wunderworks.com/download-teamplayer/

^works in the windows environment - allows you to have an unlimited # of cursors in windows.

Microsoft Multipoint (Free - you can download a plugin/demo at the first link, dev kit at the second).

http://www.mymousegames.com/Instructions.aspx

^multipoint demo software

http://www.microsoft.com/unlimitedpotential/programs/multipoint.mspx

^multipoint SDK

The easiest way to do this would be to develop a program from scratch using microsoft multipoint that will run in the normal windows environment. From there, set the controls of player 2 in the left for dead cfg to match the name of the 2nd mouse. I don't know what that name is, and I can't check without downloading the dev kit for multipoint - it requires VS.Net, which I don't have.)

So for right now, as far as I know, this is a dead end unless someone else programs the multipoint workaround.

Is anyone willing? Does anyone know another way to get 2 mice/cursors working in the windows environment?

EDIT:

Found another possibility - CPNMouse. It's a hassle to install, but I have two mice working in the windows environment now without having to pay anything. I still don't know what the names of the individual mice are yet, but if we can find that then we could simply change the buttons in left for dead and have splitscreen working with two mice on one keyboard. Here's the links for CPN mouse and some directions on how to get it working:

http://cpnmouse.sourceforge.net/index.html

^Site with the CPNMouse drivers.

1) Download 'Driver 1.01.zip' from the 'quick download' menu on the far left. extract the zip file somewhere permenant (ex. C: Drivers CPNMouse ).

2) If your mouse is a USB mouse, then follow the instructions on THIS page - http://cpnmouse.sourceforge.net/unknown.html - to add the line from those directions to the .inf file in the last line under the ' [CPNGroup.Mfg] ' heading.

3) Follow these instructions - http://cpnmouse.sourceforge.net/install.html - on installing the driver that matches your system

4) download this program - http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/cpnmouse/cpnmouse-ordinary-binary-0.1.0.zip?download - that will allow you to run the second mouse in the windows environment.

Does anyone know of a program that could remap the mouse movement of ONLY ONE mouse to that of a 360 controller's right analog stick? (moving mouse1 would be interpreted as moving the right analog stick of the 360 controller. Moving mouse2 would be interpreted as normal mouse movement. Sort of like Xpadder, but in reverse.)

If possible, with a slightly revamped cfg file, Left 4 Dead could be played splitscreen with 2 mice and 2 keyboards online on a single computer.