During Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition’s switchover from Games for Windows Live to Steamworks, a few lines of code that was originally written for the console version’s split screen co-op went missing.
During RE5’s GFWL days, modders had used this code to revive split screen play, but when attempting to get the set-up working once more in the new Steam version, modders have found the source they needed has been “ripped out”.
The missing code has been discussed on NeoGAF, which has drawn the attention of Capcom. The developer’s representative wbacon explained the situation to the forum’s users: “The split screen code that was ripped out from the PC build is from the console version. As some of you may know, MT Framework is our multiplatform development tool/engine that is utilized across several platforms. The aforementioned split-screen code is an orphaned code base from the PS3/Xbox 360 SKU which simply does not work on a PC.”
Modders on the forum disagree, though. “I don’t understand why you claim the code ‘simply does not work on a PC’. As I was one of the key people who worked on the split-screen mod that enabled it on the GFWL initial release version for PCs. I can confirm that all the code is FULLY functional and it worked flawlessly for the GFWL version,” said TheBlade.
“We did not add anything extra to the game at all, it was simply enabled. The game has no problem at all distinguishing between two controllers. Evidently the game knows to assign PAD1 to Player1, PAD2 to Player2 vise versa. Otherwise no characters would have moved at all.”
Agreeing with TheBlade was Sectus, who said: ““PC version does at least have some code for handling multiple controllers. There’s an array defining which controller ID each player is using, and if you change player two’s ID from -1 to 1, then you’ll have two controllers controlling player 1 and 2.
“I was able to get splitscreen coop working fairly well except for a major problem with the game thinking player two is supposed to have their own savegame. I have no idea how difficult this would be to get working overall, but it’s a shame the feature isn’t there. I really wanted to play through the game in splitscreen with my girlfriend like I did with Rev 2.”
Capcom’s official explanation was given in a statement to Eurogamer, which points the situation to ensuring that both the main game and the Untold Stories add-on work seamlessly together: “As the original Resident Evil 5 release on GFWL didn’t officially include local co-op, the mode is therefore not supported by the recent Steam release.
“Some game code from the original GFWL release did have to be changed in the porting process so both Resident Evil 5 and the new Untold Stories Bundle add-on content worked seamlessly together. Unfortunately this has meant the latest release currently does not work with the previous local co-op mod.”
Thanks, VG247.