Voice System

[SheenBR]

What do you think about a Voice System in PT? I need advices, like, in which context this would be good or bad, when to enable this system, how to use it... I mean:

Use it for global GM/ADM announcements?
Chat between party players? Clan members?


Need more ideas before I start discussing about how this would be done :/: (I looked arround and I belive it is entirely possible)

 

[microamazing]

well, i think that will be nice, in fact, if u look inside client folder you will see some icons likage with that ... sure we never see a function of that, but there he is, i think is a party icon for a fun way.

 

[Vormav]

Sending good quality audio without lag via internet its not an easy task. So far I only seen it done right twice. Skype and Planet Side 2 (still some bugs).

If PT have 'abandoned audio code' I'm sure its nothing useful. There where plans to do that but there was reason to stop, making your own 'good' voice chat is not easy.

However you can use Skype SDK. You could connect player favorite list with Skype list. So that every time you select player and press that unused speaker icon it will make a call (with option to mute all sounds).

You could use already existing player_name.ini files:

[FRIEND]
ID00=friend1;#skype_number

But to make it useful you should add option to send #skype_number every time someone adds you to fav list, otherwise you are just adding button that will do same thing but from within game.


I don't see any other practical uses for voice chat in PT.

 

[SheenBR]

I didn't mean using PT code, I meant creating it from scratch in C and patching it into PT.


So your idea vormav, is basically a chat between players? hmm, I havent thought about that...

 

[tnrh1]

That's so annoying to chat with someone while you are training or hunting, a voice dialog even by 1 side could be perfect for this case.

 

[bobsobol]

This was discussed before. The original system is almost working. It is linked to the "Mic" on / off option in the launcher. The client loaded a secondary executable with ShellExecute() which introduces a chat overlay. That program creates WAV files from the Mic or the ASP server in the SAVE folder. It uploads the ones from the Mic, and plays the ones from the server.

The effect is a "push to talk" C/B or HAM radio system. You press, speak, release, transmit, receive, playback. With uncompressed RIFF headed PCM Wave files, I'm sure it's only practical for short sentences, like a walkie-talkie, and on an 10/100 Mbps connection to the server. (ie. LAN play)

Sound quality should be as good as compact audio cassette. (probably 22.4Khz @ 8/16bit mono)

A better system would be to integrate FFMpeg. I've used a double VLC session to capture and broadcast, stream and playback. The result is better than Skype or Ventrillo in bandwidth, and (with the correct encoding settings) nearly as bandwidth friendly.

This system is "peer2peer" so there is no server, but to do it that way, you would have to distribute players IPs to one another... and that may put them "at risk".

To introduce a proxy server would (I think) take considerable processing power from that machine. That's the conundrum.