Half-Life: Alyx’s multiplayer mod finally lets two people play Valve’s VR adventure together, though only barely. 

Even just rudimentarily showing another player’s positioning, the ambitious open-source multiplayer mod is still undeniably impressive, even if all you can do is hang out with another player in VR as a Combine scanner faceplate.

You and the other linked player are still each playing on your own separate versions of the game without synchronisation mind you, So unless you’re incredibly well-coordinated, you’ll both be seeing slightly different things, with no linked physics interactions or physical presence beyond the virtual avatar. 

To get it all working, the mods co-creator “Kube“ explained on Twitter, that “we *just* sync the head coordinates,” alongside rotation tracking to show what they’re looking at, “but that’s enough to feel like you’re hanging out with a friend!”

? Introducing alyx-multiplayer ?

This open-source mod introduces multiplayer for Half-Life: Alyx running on Windows.

Official site w/ install instructions: https://t.co/HVyKtqv8DP pic.twitter.com/j4RsRdFCHj

— kube cringeski (@KubeRuns) June 2, 2021

With Half-Life: Alyx never designed to have co-op functionality, let alone be given a non-VR version, modders have certainly been able to achieve some staggering results from inside the Source 2 engine, so who knows what they’ll be able to concoct next.