Brainstorm This integrated voice chat

[sgallaty]

I suggest having integrated voice chat that is basically radio.

method -

If player is in a ship, ship must have a radio module.

If player is not in a ship, they must have a radio module on their hotbar.

If player is in a station, they must have a radio module or must be using a radio module on the station.

Ship and station radio modules can have attached antenna modules to boost range. Their ranges are identical except for station to station transmissions.

Player's suit transmitter can transmit an effective diameter of 1 sector width.
Ship transmitters and station transmitters are twice that far with one antenna
Station/planetary transmitters are practically unlimited for broadcast and reception to other stations. Stations act as relays (probably using some quantum tunneling system)

RELAYING

If a player in a suit is within broadcast distance to a friendly ship (same faction), they relay through the ship and their broadcast distance is the ship's broadcast distance.

If a player in a suit is within broadcast distance to a planet/station radio, the same applies.

it's possible to have

player -> ship -> station -> other station -> ship -> player, for two players outside of ships and across the universe to speak via radio.

HOW IT WOULD WORK

The player 'tunes' the radio by activating it, and that sets the encryption channel (a string) - they can only send, receive off to radios with that same encryption. If no string is entered, it's unencrypted transmission which everyone hears if they have it activated.

COOL FEATURES

If two players are close, the audio is clear and instant.

If they are one sector distance, a 1 second delay is applied to transmitting the audio, to add a perception of distance, and an audio transform is applied to the sound to give it background noise and radio interference.

When in proximity to planets, radio should pick up EMI - such as :
Planetary Background Noise

When player is moderately distant - add some attenuated tube radio crackle and ring modulate on that.
Tube Radio Crackle

When a player is very distant, introduce a band-pass filter and noise pass filter with some ring modulation : technically speaking, I mean you modulate the voice onto the background noise with ring modulation. That gives a really cool interference effect.

Apollo 11 Voices

EDIT: Additional

To give some feedback to the user, if they are listening to someone who is out of their broadcast range it should give a faint but incomprehensible attenuated static signal.

It's possible to be able to receive but not transmit. A person in a suit that is in range of a station might be able to hear the stations broadcast, but not respond. The station would only get static.

 

[MossyStone48]

Steam can do basic VoIP already. A special mod would prolly need to be made for each platform to hook into the steam api for positional audio. The mod could have a module based system but the server would likely need to support it and each client would have to be running the mod too. As it is a lot of people use TS3, Skype or even Mumble. I know some folks in the EU that use Vent and RaidCall. Mods would have to be made to hook into each of them and everyone would need to be using the same VoIP client. It's possible but kinda messy just now. I think the bigger issue would be that without integration with StarMade server admin =/= VoIP moderator.

 

[sgallaty]

Witness games like H1Z1 that have integral voice chat. If you put it in, the game affords players tending to use your own systems.

Make it natural to the game, and players will naturally use it.

Players use these external systems now because they have to.

 

[MossyStone48]

Aye. Just remember if it's poorly implemented folks will use something else. The list you have there is a well thought and complete setup. Ideal in most respects and FUN because it adds to conveyance within the game. There's depth to communication. It prepares the player for technical hurdles later. If just talking requires something to be done on the user's end (in game) they'll eventually figure out that similar setups exist for everything from weapons to logic. Without a tutorial. Awesome!

A built in system light weight enough to be ultra portable for every platform's client to be in the base release would be epic. The possibility exists. Any would-be modder and even the devs would have to keep the technical issues in mind every step of the way. In the modder case the base release would be compatible (ideally EVERY release) but would not be included. Back to Schine team; Considering how busy the team is with optimization alone it might be left to the modding minded in the community to come up with something for now. At least until Schine can point the almighty Great Grey One at the issue. Having a partially working mod-solution would short cut his work immensely. Less strain on the god-paws.

All for it! Proceed with due diligence.

 

[aceface]

i hope we get voice chat like garry's mod

 

[Lecic]

This seems like a great way to do in game voice chat. Of course, a way to block people's voices needs to be added as well.

 

[MossyStone48]

Pull your receiver module out of the ship X3

 

[Lecic]

Pull your receiver module out of the ship X3

Alternatively, take the broadcaster module out of their ship instead.

 

[MossyStone48]

Shoot it out! For SCIENCE.

"Hey man.. I was about to call you!"
"..." *Shoots out their transceiver*
"So that's a no?"
"..." *Fly away laughing in tears of joy*

Sometimes silence is so much more valuable.

 

[Kojinus]

Integrated voice chat would be a cool feature, if it was done right. I personally use external systems because almost every in-game voip system has been an awful feature just thrown in 'cause someone had a few minute on their lunch break to kill.

It would be super cool to have a good system in the game though.

 

[Tobie]

Integrated voice will never replace things like teamspeak or ventrilo. Just look at every game that has ever had it, no guilds/clans/corps/etc ever use it as their main voice service. The thing that integrated voice is great at, is allowing people to talk to each other based on their in-game proximity, without needing to share voice server addresses.

When considering the fact that server populations are typically less than 50 people at any given time and that many servers already have their own voice services. And Combine that with the fact that any integrated voice feature will need an opt-out feature to protect players from abuse, Its hard to make a really compelling argument for investing the development time into a feature that wont add a whole lot to the game.

I would rather see that development time spent on things like the rail system and performance improvements.

 

[Snk]

+1. Good idea

 

[sgallaty]

The idea is that your own radio is tuned to a 'code' - and you can't hear any broadcasts that are not on your tuned channel (nor can anyone else hear yours).

A radio tuned to the default "null string" channel would receive null string chat.

Honestly, I far prefer radial sounds/comms systems to text chat magical global immersion breaking stuff

 

[Poofer]

Voice chat, if integrated, should work alongside the chat (the planned chat anyways), with channels that allow proximity, general, faction, etc. it would be integrated in the same chat channels and could be turned off as well as muting individual players.
This way you can RP by having only proximity chat without affecting those who want chat like other games where it works regardless of distance or inventory.

 

[jayman38]

Java Speech API and the Doubango API look to me to be the only realistic options for voice chat integration into a Java app. MMO-Mumble is working on a Java API for the open source Mumble app, but I don't see that happening soon.

Ideas for how voice chat should work:

1. Channels: Having channels is realistic and fun. Not having channels is not "spacey". I don't think we should limit the channel range, because it's the future and technology and reasons, but maybe that could be server configurable. (Up to 2.1 billion channels! 250 by default....)

2. Proximity: Not so fun, but realistic, and properly limiting. Should be extendable with existing Scanner Antennas and with light sticks (which are used to simulate external antennas on ship builds), plus the cumulative length of all the structure's overall dimensions. (Free-floating astronauts have to be grouped relatively close together to send and receive voice signal, but ships with antennas can naturally communicate across a number of sectors.) Maybe 100 meters per antenna block with reducing returns? If antennas already change scanning range, I'd recommend just re-using that range. Add the structure's dimensions, because even if they don't have an antenna structure of any kind, the ship's skin itself should still extend the radio range.

3. Permissions: Can be used to lock-down local communications on individual channels or ranges of channels to the structure's bounding box, give or take X meters, so that conversations cannot be so easily sniffed. (Leading to generally secure on-site communication and Cone-of-Silence docked rooms.)

4. The server should dictate who can talk by only allowing a single player to chat, by giving priority to the first player to speak-up or press the voice chat button. That way, you don't have ridiculous over-speak or griefers hijacking the channel all the time. The server simply sends out network instructions of who is the source, and everyone who can listen in streams the sound directly from the source, not the server.

5. Single user transmissions should be limited to 60 seconds at a time (can be shorter, when they stop talking), with a 2 second "cool-down" during which other players have an opportunity to "dial in" to the conversation. This will install a kind of Parliamentary Procedure into chat to help keep things in order. These numbers should be server-configurable.

6. Would it be possible to limit 3D sound location to only locations with established atmospheres A.K.A. planets? Outside of planets, it should be a simple radio audio signal in your ear. Basically, in my opinion, if someone is talking to you over radio on the ship, it should be hard to determine if they are in the next room or on the other side of the ship. Not so realistic in a ship with a known atmosphere where the other player is right next to you, but we can deal with that later, when we establish on-ship atmosphere game mechanics.

7. General hailing and SOS signals should probably be done in chat, to negotiate a voice chat channel between parties. Or maybe the hailing audio channel could always be channel 0.

8. Individual players need to be able to block and allow other individual players. (This is a given, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't left out.)

9. Relaying. A very spacey thing. I love it. I want it.

10. Radio blocks. I think radio will be so integrated into space travel, that it's just a given, and doesn't need a special block or a hotbar entry. I don't want radio blocks. (Maybe server configurable?)

11. Encryption strings. Not my cup of tea. However, it's suitably spacey enough. I want it. (So a communication channel in the game will consist of two parts: channel number and encryption string (normally empty for unencrypted chat). If you don't match up, you don't get to be in the conversation.) This also implies that two different groups can have two different conversations on the same channel with different encryption strings, and never know the other group was talking. This way, both groups can talk at the same time without the server stopping one group while the other talks.

12. Attenuated signals: I'm not sure we want this in the default game. It's very interesting, but I think it needs to be a mod.

13. Controls: In addition to a number selector, and an encryption string input field, there needs to be arrows to allow downward and upward channel stepping, as well as a set of selection buttons for "favorite" channels. Also, a squawk button, so that you don't have to talk. It just sends out a click or something. Maybe allow the squawk to have a tiny bit longer range than conventional voice chat range.

Radio Control Mock-up:
<< < [0] > >>
[Encryption String]
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
[Talk] [Squawk]
[Block] [Allow]

What about those players who want audio chat whenever, wherever? They'll probably either hang out at spawn with other astronauts in a conversation cluster or use a third-party chat app, so I'm not worried about them.

 

[sgallaty]

Oh I love that light sticks could be the antenna blocks for this. That's grand.

Now that I think of it, the 'channels' thing is actually somewhat complex and would require a mumble api or somesuch, because those are essentially 'channels'. That's a lot of audio stream combining.

 

[SgtFlexxx]

If we implement VoIP, then it must be done right. I witness many games that "just have it in there," and most people don't end up using it. I hate to keep referring back to Warframe, but it's the top one of my head that I play a lot. It has a crappy VoIP that blasts everyone's eardrums every once in a while, is extremely low quality, and stutters a lot, so no one uses it.

If they could implement a VoIP like ArmA 2 or Arma 3's, that would be excellent.

 

[Gristle]

Me and my group would likely never use this feature as we have our own VOIP system already. IMO the dev time to implement this feature would be better utilized on something else.

 

[sgallaty]

Me and my group would likely never use this feature as we have our own VOIP system already. IMO the dev time to implement this feature would be better utilized on something else.

Right, and the developer time isn't intended to solve the problem you had when you found another solution - it's to solve the problem future gamers will have so that the game is more accessible and more fun for them.

Requiring external VOIP is fine for hardcore gamers who will pay for it. It's a barrier for people who aren't.

 

[Gristle]

Right, and the developer time isn't intended to solve the problem you had when you found another solution

I think you are reading a bit into what I posted. I never mentioned any problems.

- it's to solve the problem future gamers will have so that the game is more accessible and more fun for them.

An integrated VOIP feature is not something the I look for in any game.

Requiring external VOIP is fine for hardcore gamers who will pay for it. It's a barrier for people who aren't.

RaidCall is free.

Just putting another perspective out there for this "Brainstorming" thread.