[Odycay12]

Something I have wondered about is the support for multi-monitor systems. Normally when I play artemis with my crew, we have to dig out 8 or so computers to run the full ship, however because there are not enough of us to do all of the stations we often have each of us do two or more stations.

For Universe or Nothing, is there any chance of a multi monitor feature that would allow players to plug in more than one screen to a single computer and use them separately with different windows of the game on each screen?

Implementation wise it doesn't seem like it would be that hard, either allow multiple instances or the game to be run on one computer, all connecting to a master host (in the case of Artemis, the projector with outside view) or using a Master, Slave system. I.E one processes is the game host, and does all the actual code for the game on the computer, and then other instances can be launched that just act as additional viewscreens.

Just thought I would throw the concept out there.

[Mark]

The issue is not with screens/monitors but with input. You can run multiple instances of the client on one machine, it is how I test the game, but providing separate inputs to each client is at least quite difficult.

With touch screens you should be able to have separate inputs for each screen, but I will have to look into supporting multiple mice on one computer. I am not sure that it is doable.

[Odycay12]

Indeed, having multiple mice on a single client computer is quite complex. One way around it would be to treat it as though it were a single window, activating a 'multi monitor' mode wherein two or more consoles are displayed side by side when the window meets certain size criteria such as the ratio of width to height being at least a certain ammount, say 32:9 if you are using multiple 1080p monitors. as for how to make the window work seamlessly across screens, I would say not to bother. Most modern gpus have a multi monitor solution built in (NVIDIA Surround, AMD Eyefinity)

[Mark]

The issue isn't getting the game to run across multiple monitors, I have that in prototype form already.

I just have no solution for input at the moment, outside of using touch screens maybe.

I do appreciate the suggestions though.

[Odycay12]

  Wow is there anything you don't have a prototype of yet. Your in depth thought and dedication to the project is astounding.

If what you are referring to is having multiple players playing off of one computer, then the reality is that your options are quite limited, as of now, there is only one piece of software which has ever accomplished the multiple mice on one computer idea, and it does so by directly hooking the mouse drivers and creating multiple cursors via software while simultaneously overriding the default operating system cursor. The implementation of which I assume is not worth the minor feature it would result in.

Touchscreens are however of course an entirely different thing what with technologies like multi touch.
TL;DR Yes, it is quite difficult

[Mark]

I experimented with three methods of multiscreen. Separate clients connected to the server, rendering directly to each screen, and stretching the window across multiple screens.

Although I have a prototype of the second method, I prefer the first (multiple clients) as it is the most flexible. Multiple screens can be run on one machine, or over many. I currently load multiple clients on my dev machine, one to each monitor, for testing. My dev machine is a laptop which is a few years old, it has no problem running a server and three or four clients.

[Odycay12]

Awesome, looking forward to get to play around with it in alpha or whenever the game is able to be played.