Voice Communication?

[Cobra_Fast]

I'm simply going to ask if you would be interested in voice communication whilst playing.
That means:

• Would you be talking to other players?
• Would you even bother using Mumbe or TeamSpeak to do so or would you only use a game integrated voice chat?

Thanks for your reply in advance!

[SkillDude]

I would use Teamspeak, as it seems the easiest to set up for. I love to talk and this would be a great way to connect together. I always wish we were able to talk, whether as teams or as a public group in general, it would be fun to talk and meet the other players through voice chatting. Plus we wouldn't have people saying "Typing." every time!

Game integration is okay, but I would prefer to use external programs because then you have more options and choices. Plus if it was integrated in game, how would the setup itself work? I could only imagine it'd be a more painful setup than originally intended.

[blast]

The idea I have is to see if Mumble's server (Murmur) could be controlled via Ice to automatically join players to the right channel for their team. I'd have some registration page where it would create a user account on the mumble server (or associate a certificate - however it does stuff..) and then associate that with the global login of the user, somehow. Then when they played with that account, it would automatically move them to the right channel via the use of a BZFlag plugin and a web service.

At least... that's the idea. Not entirely sure if that is possible or not.

[Bullet Catcher]

I would be banned everywhere but Planet Mofo if others could hear the language I often use while playing , so for me it would be better to stay with traditional in-game chat.

[dango]

Voice communication is nice for team play where all members of the team are actually playing as a team. IMO, it wouldn't have many benefits outside of organized matches and groups of players.

And, if xbox live has taught the world anything, on public servers there will be many expletives thrown about. It's a lot easier to swear into a mic than to type it out.

I wouldn't oppose voice-chat integration, and would probably use it, but the way bzflag plays it wouldn't have much use.

[Bambino]

I would be banned everywhere but Planet Mofo if others could hear the language I often use while playing , so for me it would be better to stay with traditional in-game chat.

I've never seen or heard you say anything bad, I guess this is why

[hutty]

I would support the voice chat only if...
it was integrated in bz or an external program controlled within the bz interface
It could be easily turned of in case of abusers (I hate them cussers and spammers)
and it is set as a server variable so some servers can have no voice chat.

[blast]

Voice chat will not be built into the game directly since there is plenty of voice chat software out there. However, some level of integration with various solutions can (and has) been done.

I don't see voice chat as being something you automatically get shoved into doing, since that would require that we would either built voice chat directly into the game, or require a specific voice chat program to be installed to run the game. So only people that wanted to use voice chat would use it. This may limit its usefulness since some people would not be hearing the chat and might miss out on any plans that are made.

Blocking abusive users from speaking would be the job of the voice chat server admins (which may or may not be the same people that admin the server) or the individual users (you can mute a user in most/all voice chat clients).

[Upsetter]

I am supporting the idea of using Voice Chat in bzflag, definitely would use it.
Mumble as a choice would be great, even the mumble overlay works fine with bz. I would guess the autojoin thing could work via Ice although I used Ice only for getting the userlist from a mumble server.

Some players like me and some of my teammates in the GU league actually are already using mumble. It helps a lot for communicating during a match but can also be distracting if there are too many people. But of course its easy to change the channel and/or mute someone if you have the permissions.

The question is: if you implement something with murmur and Ice and let players automatically join a channel - would they be bound to the channel or can they move to / create another channel and get some friends from other teams of the bz server into it? Or do u have to use your own mumble server then? Just wondering.

[Dr Robotnik]

I have this to say.
No.

[blast]

I would be using my own mumble server. So they would join the mumble server, and then join my game server, and it would push them into the right channel for their team. They'd still be free to use a third party chat server and set up their own channels as they see fit.

[Sniper752]

I think i would support it if:
- It was integrated into BZ
- It would be able to be turned off
- You could talk to Public/Team
- If it would filter out swear words (OM_;damn;ect.)

I think this would be a really good addition to BZ on some servers where the teams actually play together, such as Missile Wars, Two/Three/Four Tanks (sometimes) ect.

[joevano]

I think i would support it if:
- If it would filter out swear words (OM_;damn;ect.)

Good #$%^ luck with that!

[blast]

There is no way to "filter" voice chat. You would have to mute people or not use it.

[Cobra_Fast]

Filtering voice chat would only be possible by preprocessing all the spoken audio as compareing them to samples of bad words. This would take time and destroy the advantage of voice communication (additionally such a voice filter doesn't exist for the common voice chats afaik, so someone's gotta build it).
The much easier way is to mute, kick or even ban people off the voice server who are not behaving well.

PS: Thanks so far for all the replys, i really got a tiny impression on how people feel about it now.

[Sniper752]

ok,
forget about the filtering then;
I kinda figured it wouldn't happen

[goonie]

Team Speak's the best third-party all around, but in-game integration is always nice to see. The only problem is it can take away from actual game development.

[chickenfarmer]

So, blast, when are you adding this to missile wars?



BTW - can't you multi-conference with Skype audio now?

[blast]

When I get time and verify that my idea will actually work. I'm on a newer Linux distro now, so I should be able to try it out. Just need to get some other projects done first.