Yes! I am that crazy lad who rented out a movie theatre last year for my graduation party with the Steam Deck! (on r/SteamDeck)
This time, I decided to do the same thing except a bit bigger and beyond.
As you can see, I have EIGHT PLAYER WIRELESS CO-OP working! No, this is not magic, but a ton of thinking and planning on my part to get this working.
This is done by using an external Bluetooth 5.3 Adapter alongside an Xbox Wireless Adapter. To make this simple, this would split the connections to have 4 controllers that are far away in range using Bluetooth, and the other half using 2.4GHz that the Xbox Wireless Adapter uses.
I used 4 off brand Nintendo Switch Pro Controllers (that were amazingly better than the authentic Pro Controllers) to connect to the Bluetooth Adapter, and used 4 Xbox Controllers to connect to the wireless adapter.
So, you may ask “how the **** did you get 8 player co-op working?!?!”
Great question.
This was done by having Windows and SteamOS dual booted on my Deck, which I used a program on Windows called “NucleusCo-Op” that lets you basically turn any game into a splitscreen title.
I did a lot of effort to get this all set up and working in less than a month, as I pretty much planned this last minute.
As you can see with the 8 player Minecraft, it looks like old console Minecraft with its visuals and HUD/UI!
This is because of a great mod called “Legacy4J” which literally accurately recreates console Minecraft if it were continued today. It even has native controller support built into it, even for the Steam Deck!
The Developer of the Mod, Wilyicaro, helped to make this work with NucleusCoOp!
Shoutout to him, he’s an amazing man, as he did all of this less than a week to get it working for me.
Same goes with Call of Duty: Black Ops II, as I also used NucleusCoOp for that.
So, how did it all run?
Minecraft with a TON of performance mods, ran at a perfect 60fps the entire time, with each instance having 6 chunks to save on memory.
COD BOII with all of the lowest graphical settings, ran at 60fps in all of the instances.
It’s truly amazing, considering I was using Windows, a non-supported platform for the Steam Deck besides a new driver about 8-12 months, with such incredible graphical performance.
And yes, as you can see with later images, I also emulated Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and held a mega tourney all emulated on the Steam Deck as well with flawless performance.
I, at my own birthday party against really good players, somehow managed to win despite the fact at my graduation party last year, I lost in the first round LOL.
You may ask, “Is this practical? Why not use a gaming PC to do all of this?”
Amazingly, I would consider this to be more practical than using a gaming PC because of its size.
I fit all of the 8 controllers I had, along with my Steam Deck, its dock that had a USB hub connected to two USB extenders of the adapters, fit in a small tiny plastic tub.
With a gaming PC, have fun hauling a large 40lb metal box around and take a lot of time to attempt to set up. Steam Deck was literally just plug and play with the projector supporting HDMI!
The Steam Deck is clearly powerful enough to be able to handle what I’ve done, with having 8 player splitscreen AND Nintendo Switch emulation off of one singular device.
It’s genuinely amazing.
Anyhow, I hope this post inspires someone to do what I did, to rent out a movie theatre and use their Deck to play games with good lads and have a ton of fun, because it’s worth it!