3 Headed Let's Play: 3p1c Tool

We are 3 Men and a Let's Play, and this is our write up of the 3p1c Scramble tool from our channel.

Here is our Legend of Zelda playthrough if you haven't seen it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIduMmUoP5E&list=PLF6h-74xCPRkxdacaBynTY0-NcKs4ivA_

===About our Playthroughs===

The tool we are using is (tentatively) name 3p1c-scramble (3 players 1 controller).  It was written by me (Mike of 3 Men and a Let's Play) in C# (.net).  It takes the input on our 3 xbox 360 controllers and combines them and outputs it to a virtual joystick (vJoy) which is mapped into the Emulator.

For n64 game, we typically use Project64 v1.6.  We have to emulate in order to use the 3p1c scramble tool.

===Control Mapping===

The way we split up buttons changes from game to game.  There are 3 of us so we try to split everything evenly between the 3 of us for each game.  Typically we try not to split up movement and camera controls because that can be extra disorienting otherwise.

Here's an example of our control scheme for Ocarina of Time
Movement: joystick, Z-button
Combat: A, B, R
Items: C buttons

Everyone has access to START.  Useless stuff like toggling the map is given to whoever has the least to do so that they can at least be annoying.

As an added rule, For games where we would voice NPC, whoever controls the A button gets to voice them and we switch with the timer.

===Control Swap===

We have set the app to cycle the roles between us (scramble controls) every 30 seconds, this time can be changed in the app to adjust difficulty.

We tried implementing a tone to warn us of the swap, but because of our recording set up, we can't hear it.

We've gotten the controllers to count down with 3 rumble pulses before a swap, then a long rumble at the swap.

===Do you plan on releasing the app?===

I'm planning on releasing a public version open source without the controller view so others can play this way.  It will be pretty customizable in terms of controls, but may be limiting on what you can play with it.  I don't expect most modern games to work with it yet as they would likely ignore the vJoy controller and work with the xbox controllers directly.

I might release a version with the control overlay sometime in the future but currently it is buggy, inefficient, not user friendly, and the code is full of naughty words.

If you want to be notified whenever we do release the apps, follow our channel.  I will be posting a video with explanation on how to use it when it is released.