Iota Multiplayer - Noita local multiplayer mode

[deft stump]

Iota Multiplayer provides local multiplayer mode for users. Users can control multiple players with gamepad/keyboard on a same PC.
If you want remote multiplayer, you can use Parsec to remote control other ones' PC. Your input will be transmitted to their PC, and their screen will be transmitted to your screen.

Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3289253957
Github: https://github.com/XM666-Dev/IotaMultiplayer
Wiki: https://noita.wiki.gg/wiki/Mod:Iota_Multiplayer

Steam version soon
Now steam version is here

[dusty imp]

Nice work! After some personal testing I tried it with a friend and it seems to function well

There are a few oddities here and there that might need some working on in the future but other than that it makes for a pretty intuitive experience

Just to mention two here: The cursor for the extra character's sometimes dissapears, usually this happens if I have the game out of focus but dying seems to also cause it. Something tangentially related is that p1's cursor when using a mouse follows the other player even if p1 is offscreen, I assume it just stays at the same position of the screen and this is causing it, it dissapears correctly after a second or three of not moving the mouse

The second thing I noticed I'm less sure if it's a bug, but if you share perks and one person picks one, the perks respawn, like mentioned, however, the same person can then again take perks once again

But all things considered this is definitely a lot of fun, thanks for making this!

[haughty oasis]

I have made a similar mod that allows for multiple keyboard/mouse on the same setup with splitscreen as an option.
You can use it if you are interested and @deft stump you can copy/paste anything from it if you want to continue working on this mod (no need to mention me).
https://github.com/Linksyx/noita_multiplayer
I'll continue it on my side if a gui lib allowing for a good inventory system is made at some point

[dusty imp]

Your mod also certainly peeked my interest, especially since it allows for multiple keyboards and mouses which is a really nice touch, I usually play with 3 others so hearing about the inventory issues makes me worried slightly about it. Also, theoretically speaking, would it be possible to somehow collect the inputs via something like parsec or steam play together to one pc without having the other players need to install the files? No worries if not, I think having only host needing to install something would really help out people to play more easily because some of my friends can not be trusted with files lol. Anyway I can only imagine the trouble you went through to get the mod working so really nice job on that! I'll probably try to test it purely locally sometime

[haughty oasis]

Unfortunately no, I tried with Parsec, Steam Remote Play and Rust Desk and none of them have mouse/keyboards inputs you can differentiate from other devices when received. I figured it was maybe possible with Rust Desk but out of the three it has the lowest visual quality and no sound (for me at least)
And about installation there's actually nothing to install, it's just executing the script so that should not be too hard (and for the one use case you mentionned you only have to send your friends the parsec installer, and a folder with the remote script alongside the settings.json)
If you are able to get some differentiated inputs with Parsec that would be definetely be great tho.

If you try to test locally it won't be the same script than what your friends would have to do, in your use case you should take a laptop for testing

And the local and remote folders are really not well named...

And I'll try to do a basic hotfix for inventory since ImmortalDamned got it to work for 4

Oh and finally if your friends happen to all have the game maybe use IQuant's mod instead

[dusty imp]

Gotcha, that makes sense as a noticed the same problem with steam together, keys are not really the problem as those can always be rebinded with mnee, it's mostly the mouse that seems impossible without your method so far as I know. And ah I might just be confused then? I was talking about the logistics of the settings json and just sending the file over. I fear I might not be the person to get differentiated inputs working but I might give it a looksie later

[dusty imp]

That makes sense actually, I will give that a shot then, thanks a lot! Speaking about IQuant, I'm the only one with the game so that's not an option right now, hoping to get them to buy the game eventually lol

[haughty oasis]

@deft stump do you have any idea what makes your mod be able to display 4 hotbars instead of only 2 ?
I can't find anything special about that in your mod but it works.

[deft stump]

It needs unsafe api so won't make this at current time

[deft stump]

The second isn't a bug, if you want it you can just pick up more perks, I think there's no need to make limitations, that allows more flexible allocation of resources

And the cursor may not important - so I will fix this because you mentioned this

[dusty imp]

Ah gotcha, thatwas what I inititialy expected but thanks anyway for clearing that up!

[dusty imp]

Thanks a lot!

[mellow sentinel]

would really appreciate some help, for some reason when my friend connects via parsec with controller his joystick moves my inventory, swaps my wands and shoots them while im on keyboard, is there any way to stop this from happening?

there were no issues vice versa, when i used controller and he used keyboard everything worked smoothly

[mellow sentinel]

nvm turned mouse and keyboard off from guest in parsec and it got fixed

[loud spindle]

no, you just need to write your own gui code

[deft stump]

The vanilla stuffs are more convenient I think

NoitaPatcher also provides extra features more than 4 hotbars

[quartz token]

ive seen multiple people say noita patcher can get you to have multiple hotbars but i downloaded the mod and it is not very clear its not just another mod its like a library for mod makers to use so i have no idea how to make it work if anyone knows how or there is instructions somewhere that would be helpful

[deft stump]

no

The NoitaPatcher is ONLY USED BY DEVELOPERS

I'm surprised that many people misunderstood my meaning

I mean I will use this library to make multiple UIs work later

[deft stump]

@haughty oasis Mm, I think maybe there's no need to transmit multiple keyboard/mouse, because these inputs could be just mapped to different gamepads locally
Compared to using extra software to transmit the multiple keyboard/mouse over the network, this solution is significantly more convenient, and only requires players who need it to use it

See this https://github.com/Zalafina/QKeyMapper

But for mouse position, I need a software to transform the mouse position to gamepad stick vector, so the vector could be transformed to mouse position in the host

I don't know too much about C++, it's hard to develop one by myself

[loud spindle]

you can be sane and just write C++ like its C

[deft stump]

I haven't developed any desktop program yet

[loud spindle]

C is simple

[shut skiff]

probably better to just leave entangled worlds for that problem, since it would be a nicer solution because of the other problems parsec introduces besides needing to use gamepad

[haughty oasis]

That could be good for players over Parsec, but I'm not sure you can use it for same room local play, or I didn't understand it.
And for your message about the mouse to gamepad in C, I'm not sure what you meant exactly but I can look at it if you explain it a bit more. Do you want to do mouse->joystick->parsec->host's joystick->virtual mouse in host->Noita ?
What is the point then as you still require software on the remote player's side? You found a way to make the mod safe?

[haughty oasis]

Entangled Worlds requires all players to have the game, which isn't ideal to introduce friends to it. And you can still do inputs seperately like I did (udp script) or try to convert to gamepad and back like he's talking about if I didn't misunderstood

[loud spindle]

not exactly

you can copy paste and spoof steam id

[shut skiff]

game doesn't have drm, so you can just copy game files, and then entangled worlds doesn't require you to have steam so you can still play

i just mean putting in developer time for something with large innate problems when theres a better solution is a bit silly

[deft stump]

With Parsec, my solution doesn't need additional network connecting to transfer multiple keyboard/mouse, players could just configure their key binds in the mapping software locally, and doesn't require everyone to use mapping software (if someone is host or gamepad user)
What I mean by that is mapping multiple keyboards/mice locally to different gamepad inputs, transferring those gamepad inputs via Parsec, and in the host, secondary players will use gamepad controls, so everyone could use keyboards/mice.
Yes the mouse to gamepad is roughly that
This is safe without additional network connecting 😄

[loud spindle]

🤔 you still need to manually install software, how is it any more convenient than entangled worlds?

[deft stump]

No, entangled worlds is not local multiplayer

Entangled worlds is still not perfect in some ways

[shut skiff]

the camera system alone imo makes entangled worlds nicer for non same-system play, main issue with entangled worlds is like, shared hp which some people dont like, i think its fine but thats preferences

[loud spindle]

i think they are making an option to not do shared health

[shut skiff]

yeah just not for a month or so, he wants to fix stuff up first

[loud spindle]

its open source, you can always contribute

[echo lodge]

Ahem

[loud spindle]

!

contributor!

[echo lodge]

Maybe even sooner, #74 preferably needs #75 to be done first, and #75 is basically distributed enemies, and I don't really want to do this distributed stuff back-to-back.

[vast fog]

Hi guys, does anyone know why P1 can't shoot down or up sometimes? He can shoot left or right, just for the note.
Me and my friend tried different types of coop mods, but Iota is the best one for us, but for some reason having this issue and it killed a lot of good runs :C
I have no idea what affect it, it just happens spontaneously

[gleaming vault]

I know you want an answer from someone who would know but attempting to ping the whole server wouldnt help

[vast fog]

Sorry, I was trying to ping people in this post, did I use the wrong tag?

[gleaming vault]

oh it was here not everyone

[vast fog]

Ahaha, no worries, anyway I managed to modify other coop mod to fix our issue c":

[deft stump]

This may be a very complex issue, and I think it could be caused by MNEE 😦

[loud spindle]

why bother wiith mnee?

[deft stump]

I have discovered this problem, but it only happens once

[deft stump]

The mouse input is got from mnee, and may be disabled by some gui problems sometimes

[loud spindle]

you can just use inputgetmousepos

[deft stump]

I mean mouse click

[loud spindle]

you can just use inputgetmousebuttondown

is not get*

[solid plaza]

I hope it doesn't go away after mod restarts, cause if the case – providing a savefile with the bug should immediately solve the issue.

[vast fog]

It does go away, sadly

[solid plaza]

To clarify also, this happens when P1 is controlled through the mouse?

[vast fog]

Yep, P1 controlled through the mouse

Also, it happens randomly, I have no idea how this could be triggered

[solid plaza]

My guess is that it's some typical noita engine bs (for example, just in the last 10 minutes of testing, I discovered that apparently no-shooting-in-inventory is fully hardcoded, aka complete piss). The best course of action would be to just blindly close all the potential gaps, so will see what comes out of this.

[solid plaza]

alright, I've changed some stuff, it's up on github for now, let me know if this improves anything for you (this is a direct download link, don't forget to rename the folder to "mnee" after extracting the archive)

https://github.com/re-coilless/mnee/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

[vast fog]

Wow, that was so quick, thanks!
I'll let you know if it's back!

[deft stump]

Oh, how did you fix this? I really can't figure this one out

[deft stump]

Yes, you have changed the gui input filtering. I'll see if this works
I noticed that you are getting input from global variable always, but for guied inmode, shouldn't it get the latest value directly from ControlsComponent?

Or you will get the old value 😦

[solid plaza]

There's some severe bs with how ControlsComp is handled in this game - for some ungodly reason they are delayed a whole frame (even FrameDown value updating is delayed a frame) while InputGetMouseButton is available immediately. To combat this, I'm storing the raw input value from the previous frame and only then comparing it with the ControlsComp one (I could indeed use just raw ControlsComp input here but since I'm trying to blindly fix a bug, better be tripple sure).

So yeah, the guied inmode lmb/rmb input will be delayed a frame from now on, cause that's apparently how nolla wants it to be.

[loud spindle]

this is probably just due to update order

your lua runs at the wrong point during the frame

[solid plaza]

Oh, and I cannot even guarantee that this change will fix anything regardless, we'll have to wait and see what feedback comes.

[solid plaza]

It's PreUpdate, yes, but seems kinda weird that input methods are not synched.

[loud spindle]

its probably some poro things

[loud spindle]

try pre, post, luacomp

[loud spindle]

maybe it grabs it from poro for some of the values at one point, and uses sdl2 event stack at a different point

alternatively you could just be measuring wrong

[solid plaza]

If I'll put this on lua comp then the order of execution becomes unpredictable -> mnee state is no longer the same for all lua contexts
If I'll put this on post it's literally the same as gettin it a frame later except now I have a freefloating chunk of code in PostUpdate

[vast fog]

Just for the context, my friend came over to live with me for a week and we couch-coop'ed some games
But he's back to his home now and I'm not sure we'll play Noita anytime soon, since he's living kinda far away from me 👀

I'm curious why I was the only person reported that bug, maybe it's rare?

[solid plaza]

There's definitely no rush, especially since that's an exceptionally odd bug.

[vast fog]

Also, do you have an idea what triggered this bug?
We tried to do a lot of different stuff near Mountain entrance but couldn't replicate it
Usually it comes after 15-20 minutes of playing and as I said - restart helped to fix it for some time

[loud spindle]

you could use entangled worlds

[solid plaza]

ImmortalDamned encountered it once too but I didn't do anything back then since, well, I just hoped it's some extremely unlikely occurence. But you are getting it repeatedly it seems, so that's an actual problem to solve now.

[vast fog]

Or Parsec for Iota, I know
It's just not that fun to play online for us 😄

[solid plaza]

Hm, there're couple of cases of me using 10-minutes delays in the code, can it be closer to this time?

[loud spindle]

?? why would you have a 10 minute delay for anything?

[vast fog]

I'll use MNEE from workshop and start the game with timer and let you know

[solid plaza]

Some cached values are 90% single-use trash in certain contexts, so these cases are getting purged fully at this time to not just hover in ram.

[vast fog]

Do I need to trigger timers somehow?
Or just starting coop is fine?

[solid plaza]

Yeah, they should start ticking immediately.

[vast fog]

Looks like it's not happening :D

Not sure why, I'm using old mnee

I think I need to actually play to test it, since again, we tried different things to trigger it near mountain and had no luck

[solid plaza]

No worries, I'll keep an eye on reports in general.

[deft stump]

Don't you know the world update executing order?
The game executes all the OnWorldPreUpdate callbacks from mods at first of the frame,
then executes the "MidUpdate" (every components are updated at that time)
At last it executes all the OnWorldPostUpdate callbacks
So the internal code may seems like that:
for (;;){
WorldPreUpdateAll();
WorldMidUpdateAll();
WorldPostUpdateAll();
wait_until_next_frame();
}
It maybe not 100% correct, but should roughly like that

So, if you use ComponentGetValue2(controls_comp, ...) on MidUpdate/PostUpdate, you could get the latest value at current frame

[solid plaza]

oh, damn, I totally forgot about midupdate, will see

huh, was there just OnWorldUpdate? I could have sworn a second ago there was but nope?

[deft stump]

To run codes in WorldMidUpdate, pls use LuaComponent script_source_file

[solid plaza]

then this applies

[deft stump]

I just call it MidUpdate, the game itself doesn't provide functions like OnWorldMidUpdate

[solid plaza]

putting it just on some lua comp will make it unpredictable

[deft stump]

What is "unpredictable"?

The game update ControlsComponent at first always, then execute script_source_file at next

[solid plaza]

as in, I have no control over the order of execution of lua comps themselves, so the chunk with mnee state update could have run 1st, 5th or last in the update stack

and this would cause synchronization issues between different lua contexts, so one will have lmb pressed while others will receive it only a frame later

in fact, if the execution order is not static within single run, this could cause some lua comps to never have lmb press reported, since at first they will be too early and then they will be too late

oh, actually, I can provide an easy way to apply filtering on your side, so per-luacomp solution

aka leave it to lua components to check for the controlscomp value

[deft stump]

Yes, I mean this, directly

[solid plaza]

nice, based

[deft stump]

In fact, you can make every lua comp check and perform mnee state update themselves

[solid plaza]

this would rob mnee of it's main advantage then – being optimized due to performing all computations just once
sufficiently advanced bindings require quite a number of operation and with elaborate modpacks it might impact the frame rate if not consolidated into a single source

[deft stump]

Just do something in mnee.mnin_* (those functions that used to get inputs)
You can do this only once each frame

[solid plaza]

I'll add inmode-like system that operates on per-component level though, so one can utilize it for cases that require such

[solid plaza]

oh, I see what you mean, only update inmodes on the frame when they are requested

yeah, this will be the best case

[deft stump]

It seems a bit like SettingAccessor 🙂

[solid plaza]

nope, it actually is just a full frame delayed (running in lua comp; first number is frame, second is InputIsMouseButtonDown, third is ComponentGetValue2)

what a bullshit

last one is mButtonFrame

checking for init.lua context globals (to make sure I'm not running it there somehow) – all clean

[deft stump]

What are you doing now? Don't enable the IotaMP, because it already has 1 frame delay on player
I use this to test and it works really fine

The game adds GameFrameNum by 1 in the between of PreUpdate and MidUpdate

for (;;){
WorldPreUpdateAll();
GameFrameNum += 1;
WorldMidUpdateAll();
WorldPostUpdateAll();
wait_until_next_frame();
}

And this also works

[solid plaza]

how very strange, I'll do more digging

[solid plaza]

oh, that makes sense, you are only printing the log when the actual delayed inputs are updated
while this works by itself, it's still an issue when integrated into a larger system, since mnee operates first and foremost on InputIsDown, all the comp checking is secondary

try running this code

if( InputIsMouseButtonDown( 1 )) then print(
  GameGetFrameNum(),
  tostring( InputIsMouseButtonDown( 1 )),
  tostring( ComponentGetValue2( ctrl_comp, "mButtonDownLeftClick" )),
  ComponentGetValue2( ctrl_comp, "mButtonFrameLeftClick" )
) end

[vast fog]

Sorry for this little intrusion, but why it wasn't working only for shooting down and up with mouse? 👀

Left and right was 100% fine, but I'm not sure about angle

[solid plaza]

considering that mnee gets the initial LMB state directly from SDL, there is a frame when I cannot accurately account for GUI filtering, hence the delay is needed
redoing the backend itself to operate on ControlsComp for the case of mouse buttons is out of question too, as the whole idea of mnee is to exist in complete independence from normal input

[solid plaza]

that's the thing, I have no idea what could be the reason
but LMB clearly was not working and this part of the system is the only odd one out that might be the issue

main working theory is that there was some kind of malformed gui object present at the top/bottom of the screen that was blocking the inputs but that's one hell of a bug to be so uncatchable

[solid plaza]

fuck, that makes sense, yep, that's what you meant by Iota having a delay

yeah, I've put just raw testing code on lua comp and it does indeed behave

however, for the current way you are doing input system this will still be an issue

so I guess the best course of action is to have 2 ways of gui filtering, Pre-Capable and Instant

Alright, now there are two inmodes: "guied", a more robust version that works everywhere yet has a frame-long delay, and "guied_instant", will only work for lua comps (will explode if you run it on PreUpdate) yet is immediate to respond.

[deft stump]

#1262257753636864091 message this one is like that

[solid plaza]

yeah, I figured only after I wrote that one

reading back, I do be repeating myself a fair bit ngl

definitely gotta sleep more

[deft stump]

I'm still confused why there are two inmodes
I'm thinking about making another input framework mod

[loud spindle]

i dont see why you need one

the input api is perfectly fine

[deft stump]

To use editable key binds and universal configuration gui

[loud spindle]

ig, it really doesn't seem like you need anything complex though

[solid plaza]

the more frameworks there are, the better; if you'll need any code from mnee - go for it

[jolly ginkgo]

Great mod. Is it possible to add an indicator indicating which way the second player is behind the screen?

As in spelunky

[winged stirrup]

i have no clue how to setup this mod

[shut skiff]

did you read the guide? @winged stirrup

[winged stirrup]

yes i figured it out i forgot to delete this

[jolly ginkgo]

Same bug

[tacit silo]

So we have the setting on that should give us both a perk in the mountain (aka i grab one and 3 new ones are spawned for my friend) but so far after picking one no more appear and we just have one perk that also isnt shared

[deft stump]

OK make a GIF and we will see

[deft stump]

Make sure you have turn on this
I can't reappearance this issue

[jolly ginkgo]

Sometimes switching between the main players helps with this bug

[tacit silo]

i think i did it right with the gif
and yes the setting is turned on

also sorry it took a while my friend couldnt play till now

[deft stump]

Use this test version and send debug messages under there to me

Pick up a perk and it will shows

[granite pilot]

Revive feature not working for me.

[deft stump]

Doesn't your coop partner press the revive button?

refer to workshop page description

[jolly ginkgo]

Double GUI thing killing my FPS. Please make it toggable. And please return one player camera fix