Workaround for multiplayer using some tools. If you do not like tiny screens you might enjoy this.
Multiplayer without Split-Screen
Сrеdit gоеs to Chip!
Removing Split-Screen
This is a huge workaround and might not be worth your time. At least it is an alternative before anything better comes or devs implement it back in the game.
Download ReShade and follow the installation wizard. When asked about preset, click on Skip and when asked about effects just click next. Party Animals uses DirectX 11/12.
On AspectRatio.fx github page, click on three dots icon and choose download.
Move AspectRatio.fx to reshade-shaders/Shaders folder inside Party Animals folder. Delete everything inside this folder except for ReShade.fxh, ReShadeUI.fxh and AspectRatio.fx
If you did everything correctly, your folder should have at least the files inside the red rectangle.
Virtual Display Driver (Optional. Only if you do not have two monitors or want to use your second monitor to any other thing while you play):
Install it by extracting to a folder, opening cmd as admin, navigating to the folder (by using cd command in cmd) where you extract contents from the .zip file and executing the following command:
deviceinstaller64 install usbmmidd.inf usbmmiddNote: If I extracted to C:\Guide, before running the command I would do the following.
After installing, everytime you want to enable Virtual Display, navigate to through cmd and type the following:
deviceinstaller64 enableidd 1To disable, do the same thing but with the following command:
deviceinstaller64 enableidd 0Download Parsec, make an account and log in. Your friend must do the same and add you as a friend. Click on the cogwhell (settings), go to Host and change host monitor to your second monitor (or virtual display a.k.a Generic Non-PnP Monitor).
This workaround basically stretches the game vertically and then increases the horizontal resolution so that the aspect ratio does not get horrible. This demands a lot of GPU power, because the game will render horizontal resolution twice in order to not stretch the game. (If your in-game resolution is 1920×1080, final resolution will be 3840×1080). I only tested this method with 1024×768 because my GPU is very weak. 1024×768 is a 4:3 resolution and it scaled pretty well (did not get stretched at all). I do not know if scaling resolutions that are already 16:9 will provide the same results, you will have to test by yourself. Your in game resolution must be the same as all your displays resolution. If you are going to use 1024×768, you also need to enable this in NVidia Control Panel to get rid of black bars (do not know AMD solution to this):
Open the game and choose your resolution and windowed mode.
With this everything is ready. Create a room, tell your friend to connect through Parsec and press RT while inside the room to join the game. Select your desired stages and begin. You will notice that the game is running splitscreen (and your friend probably did not see which animal he choose). Open SRWE, click on “Select Running Application” and Choose Party Animals. Set Width = double your horizontal resolution (in my case 2048) and height = your original vertical height (768) then click “Set”. Your side of the “split-screen” now will be only visible to you and your friend will be seeing their side but there will be horizontal black bars above and below your screens. To solve this press Home while in game, skip ReShade tutorial, check AspectRatio box and make sure these are the configs.
After everything, you can go on SRWE and click Remove Borders to get borderless window (sometimes while trying to remove borders program bugs and resolution goes back to its original state, just set it back to double horizontal size and try again).I will leave a video showing later parts of the process (I am too lazy to show everything).
Know Issues
- After the first map, if you noticed that the game is extremely zoomed in, just press HOME on the keyboard and disable AspectRatio. Something weird happens and the game corrects aspect ratio by itself.
- After playing, if your game starts crashing while trying to start, just go to party animals folder and delete the file ReShadePreset.ini
- Party Animals might crash after all stages are played, it is safe if after matches are over you use SRWE to set resolution back to normal and disable AspectRatio just to navigate through menus before starting the game.
The video has black bars because OBS enforces it as I was recording with 1024×768. Actual gameplay DOES NOT have black bars.
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