Baton passing local co-op gameplay, how tough is it to develop a low-level application for this?

So basically recently I implemented local multiplayer in the simplest way I knew how, which was to have an interval count down from a minute and then it passes over control to the next controller that's plugged into the computer.

This was relatively easy using InControl, but without InControl I would assume it would be much tougher to make...Basically, the baton passing type gameplay system has been so far working out so well that I want to possibly create a low-level application that would run in the background and pass control from one single controller to a next.

In this way, you could have local co-op multiplayer for any game that's designed to be single player. I've worked with C++ before and three years full time with C# so far, so I'm wondering if a programmer could actually point me in the correct direction of creating something like this.

 

I’m confused. What exactly are you doing? Can you give us an example?

What I understood is like how old co op games worked where only one player could play at a time (super Mario world.).

I use up to five controllers in my game (four Xbox + kB/mouse.). I am never enabling or disabling them, I’m just enabling and disabling the object that’s reading from them for parts of the game that require “turns.” This allows me to both toggle back and forth between turns and allow both controllers to be active simulateously.

 

@newjerseyrunner I think I'm gonna have to post on C++ forums, because what I'm looking to do is actually use Visual Studio C++ to first read the controllers, then hook into a game's game window and stop a controller from being able to pass messages to the hooked game's window. I'll see what I can do if I have more time on it, but it's worked so far very well in my own game and I think it would make some great software, because you could turn any single player game on PC into a local multiplayer one.