Voice comm in NS2?

Plasma · March 2009

Are there plans for voicecomm in NS2?

This feature was there for free in NS1 due to the half-life engine having it (I assume), but what about NS2?

I recently read that the TeamSpeak 3 SDK is available (http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=teamspeak3sdk), so I dont know if this helps make this decision easier or not to consider.

I use a mic every now and then in-game, but even when I dont, I benefit from listening to those who do have one <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />

Cheers

Italianmagic · March 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Plasma @ Mar 21 2009, 10:41 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1703208"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Are there plans for voicecomm in NS2?

This feature was there for free in NS1 due to the half-life engine having it (I assume), but what about NS2?

I recently read that the TeamSpeak 3 SDK is available (http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=teamspeak3sdk), so I dont know if this helps make this decision easier or not to consider.

I use a mic every now and then in-game, but even when I dont, I benefit from listening to those who do have one <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />

Cheers</div>

I believe that voice is an important part of NS and won't be left out. Probably is going to be a better stream quality than NS 1 had to offer. :]

I wouldn't be worrying too much about this.

Jiriki · March 2009

I hope NS2 will have a top-quality (maybe <a href="http://mumble.sourceforge.net/Main_Page" target="_blank">Mumble</a> developers could be worth contacting) voice communication system and not this HL-speex crap. In-game voice won't be used in competitive games but its great for public.

Addition to this I hope players will be able to talk to nearby players without transmitting to commander and other people.

OBhave · April 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jiriki @ Mar 22 2009, 08:12 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1703231"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>I hope NS2 will have a top-quality (maybe <a href="http://mumble.sourceforge.net/Main_Page" target="_blank">Mumble</a> developers could be worth contacting) voice communication system and not this HL-speex crap. In-game voice won't be used in competitive games but its great for public.

Addition to this I hope players will be able to talk to nearby players without transmitting to commander and other people.</div>

...heheh now I'm picturing a couple of rines whispering and gossipping "man, this comm is such a <i>######</i>" - "yeah I know, right? Did you hear about when he..."

But in all seriousness... it would be kind of nice to have a button to talk just to your squadmates without taking up the airtime for everyone else all around the map.

I think the comm should probably hear everything tho. Otherwise you'd really really miss that "battle chatter" when commanding.

... an alternative would be to have just one talk button, and rines can only talk to squadmates/nearby rines, and the comm has a monopoly on public broadcasting. But that would have some serious problems and would only be implemented as a server options, if at all.

.... I'm guessing that they'll just go for the good old simple system (everybody broadcasts publicly). I mean the teams wont be so big as to create any problems, and plus that way two squads can avoid talking at the same time and pissing the commander off.

It was a fun thought experiment, tho

N_3 · April 2009

team sizes aren't big enough to warrant 'squad chat' imo

aeroripper · April 2009

Team chat should be global across the team. It sounds cool to have localized voice chat, but it kills the bigger sense of teamwork across the team. It would really have to be playtested. Maybe you could have a button for switching between global and squad chat?

sherpa · April 2009

Agree with aeroripper. In Battlefield 2 I was totally flustered when configuring my keys- it seems half my keyboard was used up for comms, in the end I didn't bother trying to figure out which key was for voice comms. Just a push-to-talk-to-everyone please, ala NS1.

I say go for the latest codex used in HL1- configured correctly (make those settings default!) it was perfectly fine and didn't lag my very poor connection.

juice · April 2009

Global voice comm is good, but there is also an advantage to be able to just voice comm to people in your vicinity as well. A key for global, a key for local. I don't think it's too complicated.

"THERES A SKULK IN THE VENT!!!!!!!" <14 people turn around>

Of course, the voice chat icon over someone's head can help with this. If you see the icon you know the guy next to you said it, so no confusion. But everyone else... maybe they just didn't see the icon and weren't looking at their teammates, so they look up for the skulk.

With 16 people on a side, it can get pretty crazy with everyone talking globally. But maybe that's a good thing. (skulk snicker:snicker)

xposed- · April 2009

I support squad chat.

Not only does it further immerse you in the "squad or team" atmosphere but it keeps chatter local, when needed.

Bacillus · April 2009

I'd say one squad voice and one voice for the whole team. I can't see how that is too many, since you can probably even cut some preset 'follow me' commands with the squad voice.

6 v 6 with experienced players goes fine with one channel, but you're definitely going to need another channel to make sure your public teammates understand the game the same as you do. Right now one voice channel and 16 players per team is a terrible combination.

It could be even better if the squad voice works as 3D so that you can tell the direction of the squadmember speaking. Tech1nical performance is top priority though, so anything that doesn't lag is fine.

In a similar way commander could use squad voice to speak to selected/marines on screen only and he could hear their squad communication. That also allows commander to hear the combat chatter nicely.

Bollwerk · April 2009

I love that mumble idea! Positional audio is awesome and increases the immersion by x-fold
Mumble is intensively used on Project Reality (http://www.realitymod.com/) a nice demonstration can be seen here: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/pr-mumble" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/pr-mumble</a> (you should plugin your headset/sourrund system)
So it does work - and from a up-to-date game like NS2 I expect no less then include such an awesome feature, especially if the source code for it is open-source.

about the keys:
currently you usually will set one key to "push-to-talk" which will use positional audio making you - depending on the server configuration - audible to everyone (even foe) in your surrounding
a second key bound to "force center" will transmit your msg to everyone in the channel, non-directional

delay is less then with TS, audio quality is great and the calculation of the positional audio almost doesn't eat up any ressources (cpu/ram)

Kassinger · April 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bollwerk)</div><div class='quotemain'>I love that mumble idea! Positional audio is awesome and increases the immersion by x-fold
Mumble is intensively used on Project Reality (http://www.realitymod.com/) a nice demonstration can be seen here: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/pr-mumble" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/pr-mumble</a> (you should plugin your headset/sourrund system)
So it does work - and from a up-to-date game like NS2 I expect no less then include such an awesome feature, especially if the source code for it is open-source.

about the keys:
currently you usually will set one key to "push-to-talk" which will use positional audio making you - depending on the server configuration - audible to everyone (even foe) in your surrounding
a second key bound to "force center" will transmit your msg to everyone in the channel, non-directional
h
delay is less then with TS, audio quality is great and the calculation of the positional audio almost doesn't eat up any ressources (cpu/ram)</div>

Wow, I would love to see this in NS2. Imagine a rine shouting out at skulk he knows is around the corner, daring him to get out. I like the two-system approach, with one button for positional and the other for teamspeak.

ratclaw · April 2009

With juice's example, local voice chat would just work better. If something really needs to be heard by the entire team, the commander can relay the info.

As fun as it would be to listen in on conversations as a skulk, aliens can't speak English so how could they listen in?

Cxwf · April 2009

I remember playing BF2 with squad-chat, and I just always felt so isolated from my team. Granted, with teamsizes up to 64 people it was almost a necessity, as that many simultaneous voices would just be chaos. But I hated never knowing anything about what was going on beyond my tiny corner of the map. Being a Commander was even worse, as you were isolated to the Command voice channel and almost nobody used that channel to begin with.

In NS1, with teamsizes of around 6 to 8 people global voicechat was perfect. You had just enough communication to keep everyone up to date on the situation, without the channel getting too crowded. Larger teamsizes of 12 to 16 started to get a bit hectic. I'd still rather hear everyone than hear no-one, but it did get tough to hear stuff like skulk walking noises with that many voices.

NS2 is aimed at larger teamsizes than NS1, right? I'd suggest that its almost a necessity that EVERYONE can hear the comm when he speaks, and the comm should be able to hear everyone else as well. The grunt's voice channels could conceivably be split by squad when teamsizes get large enough, since they need to be able to hear sound-effects as well as voice chat. But if that was done, they should be consolidated again for small teamsizes.

aeroripper · April 2009

Here's how it should work:

<b><u>Commander</b></u>

- He hears everybody by default, and everyone hears him speaking no matter what like in NS1.

- <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" /> (He hears automatic, locational voicecomm within a certain distance of a squad as he scrolls around the map.) <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" />

- He is able to isolate single, or multiple squad voicecomms by clicking on them. If he just wants to listen to the all important squad 5, he can.

I imagine some testing would have to be done to implement the ones that work the best. I imagine that hearing everybody, and having the ability to isolate certain squads would be the best implementation. By only hearing locational communication from squads as you scroll along the map, you might miss important information from other parts of the map.

<u><b>Marines</b></u>

- Hear everybody by default.

- Once joined with a persistent squad, it automatically switches to squad chat.

- This would likely be handled in a few ways.
1) They JUST hear other guys in their local squad.
2) In addition to hearing their local squadmates over voicecomm, their voice would be actually projected into the game world to give it a more 'immersive' experience.
2a) If say 2 squads are isolated by the commander, both of those squads can hear each others voices like normal, and projected into that 3d space. Squads that AREN'T part of those isolated squads, will only hear their voices as they projected into the game world. So if there was a lot of noise from a battle, or they were far away, it would be hard to hear what they are saying clearly just like in real life. Essentially it would be like those isolated squads have a 'high quality communications link' between their helmets... or something. Projecting squad voices into the 3D enviroment might have performance problems, and the obvious yet interesting situation where aliens hear what the marines are saying, or completely giving away their position.

Has anything like that ever been done in a game?

<u><b>Voicecomm FX to add immersiveness</b></u>

Whatever implementation is integrated, the voicecomms should have a cool sound when activated.

1) When the comm speaks to everybody, its like a loudspeaker in all the marines helmets. All other voicecomms currently active are faded down to 1\2 volume until the comm is done speaking.
2) When any marines talk to any other marines in global chat, it sounds like normal radio to radio communications. Maybe with subtle static and clicking sounds like radios give off.
3) When any squad mates talk to each other, if will sound very clear, close, and personal. It should sound like a really good pair of headphones. Imagine speaking into a small box with sound-dampening foam on the inside. It's a very neat sound, and not unlike a recording studio box.

I doubt half this cool stuff will be added, but I think it would add a LOT to the overall immersiveness to the game by just adding some FX to different levels of voice communications to better fit the world.

smikolai · April 2009

My fear is that this feature would be scoped out for release on time (my guess is this year, perhaps beta late summer and retail by Black Friday or Xmas).

It is a 'nice to have'.. but I agree I'd be sad to see it not make it into V1.

Bollwerk · May 2009

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (smikolai @ Apr 18 2009, 02:21 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1705173"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>My fear is that this feature would be scoped out for release on time (my guess is this year, perhaps beta late summer and retail by Black Friday or Xmas).

It is a 'nice to have'.. but I agree I'd be sad to see it not make it into V1.</div>
true, but then again: it already is done... -> mumble

@aeroripper:
I do come from bf2 and thus naturally am more fond of the squad system. Therefore I favor the "Commander -> Squad-Leader -> Squad-Member"-hierarchy and the resulting ways information is relayed.
A think we experience in Mumble is a "lack" of chat discipline. Well, it is not really a lack... here is what happens:
16 ppl join a mumble channel, they go ingame and join up in squads. Naturally they will group up in the 3d-environment to fight along side their squaddies.
So we end up with multiple small groups of players in the 3d-environment. Positional audio and range dependent fading limits the com locally. Now we get groups enforcing local chat discipline but NOT global!
They simply can't because they do not hear that another player on the other end of the map is talking as well. This is not actually a problem!
However when ppl join the mumble channel and are not ingame they will hear every one with 100% volume from up front.
Since there is no "global" chat discipline it is near to impossible to retrieve valid information because of the overlapping coms (its like 5 ppl spamming music on NS1 at round end).

Therefore a Commander that can hear everyone talking, whilst those ppl do not know that somebody else is talking as well will cause extreme distraction and confusion.
Obviously this, ordering ppl around, reacting to foe's actions and building stuff is asking too much of anybody.

@Kassinger:
I think this could be a server side setting - it could be like "all talk" - admins can switch it off

Voice comm in NS2?

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