Selective/Locational Voice Communication

[Cpt-Praxius]

Well I was having a shower (like you guys need to know) when I thought of something that would be good in RO.

It's nice to have the ability to use your microphone to talk to people, but the thing I don't like about it is how either everybody hears you or your whole team hears you..... and it's like they're right in your head.

There should be a way to make the mics for each player locational to their in game characters so that you hear the person talking to the left or right of you, or ahead, whatever and if the farther away you are, the harder it is to hear them.

But the thing is, any enemies nearby can hear your mic as well, just as if they were listening in the next room beside you in real life.

That way people would be more cautious of when they talk and what they say, as well as how loud.... and if someone is being annoying on their mic, all you have to do is walk away from them.

However, a feature should still remain for server admins to talk to anybody on the map and perhaps squad leaders can communicate to any of their team mates..... think of it as a megaphone being used or something.

This system would also prevent people from communicating to their team halfway across the map, telling them where someone is, when that wouldn't really be all that easy back in WWII.

Now of course the problem is that people could still text one another.... but if you made it so that the text is normal sized or larger up close to the person sending the text and the size of the text gets smaller the farther away you are so that you have to focus more to read, as you would have to focus to hear, to the point where you wouldn't be able to read the text at a certain distance... that should equalize.

Of course Admins and Squad Leaders wouldn't have to worry about this..... but even more at the same time, it'll reduce the amount of text clutter on the screen and all the distracting chatter between the same 2-5 people.

They can still chat and text to one another all they want..... so long as they're at a decent proximity to one another..... which would/could also help force people to actually stick together more in the game.

Of course feel free to modify this idea anyway you wish..... thoughts?

 

[Zetsumei]

I think gobal communication should not be removed, simply because teams never have any initial planning before going into the action. For the grand sceme of things they need to be able to communicate with each other.

Sure in reality people didnt have portable radios, but its not like people were at location suddenly not knowing what to do.

There is already a local channel for voice commands, aka so only people in close proximity of you hear you (including enemies). And that has been there since RO 1.0 in the mod afaik.

I think the issue is more that its hard to distinguish the difference between local and global chat.

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Personally what i would like to see, is the ability to talk to someone on your screen like simply selecting him somehow and then having a private chat (or shouting in his direction), and being able to add more people easily to that group.

So people can form a little squad, easily on the go. Normally in a battlefield you remember people by their faces their posture etc, in a game its hard to distinguish people from each other.

If its easy to see who is who, and you can easily talk to that person, then i think its more likely that smaller squad based tactics could and would be used in publicplay.

Another thing i would like to see would be universal naming conventions for streets and buildings and possibly slightly more detailed grid references.

So you can say an enemy is in the Volkhovskaya utilatsa street in building A or building 10 for example. That could normalize the communications a lot more and make it easier to cooperate.

Rather than having to say, an enemy is in that street you get into after you spawn, and then the furthest away building that is 3 stories high. Or ideally be able to point at a location and say an enemy is there making it show for your entire mini squad.

The things i say might not be realistic as a user cannot talk to a squad that easily etc. But i just don't think that if communications are restricted even more than they are now that the teamwork would improve.

 

[LionbI4]

For radio communication there could be special 'radio' effects, like voice activation button noise. It could simply be another low bitrate codec, which will add some noise by itself.
But for local communication we should have superb codec with best voice quality.
Teamspeak3 client/server beta will be open to public tomorrow, it may be possible to write a third party addon for RO, which use teamspeak3 sdk to place speakers in a correct 3d orientation.

 

[Zetsumei]

I think it would be nicer to use mumble integrated into ROHOS if they integrate something (and i hope they will). Mumble got some cool "local" features as well. And its under a GPL/BSD license so it would be free for tripwire to use. And mumble is just as good as ts3 and offers the same features and more (its only missing filesharing from ts3).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumble_%28software%29

The issue with radio communication itself and radio effects is, that realistically there would be no radios used atleast not for every soldier, although for inter tank comms it would be awesome. So if there is a public and team voice chat, i dunno if adding radio turning on and off beeps and some noise would really feel that realistic.

 

[RedGuardist]

For radio communication there could be special 'radio' effects, like voice activation button noise.

Would be very cool feature, if the intercom of tanks and radio transmissions between tanks were done like that. I mean that there would be slight disruption rumble in the voice etc.

 

[Cpt-Praxius]

See for the tanks in team voice communication as you guys are describing sounds like a good idea.

But I'm still leaning towards my original idea of the localized voice communication outside of the tanks.

Merely for realism, I think it'd be cool to be on a map like Arad in South Village, where your over at one building and your team mate is accross the street trying to tell you somthing.... so like in a real battle, you'd have to run over near to them to hear what they have to say, have your little pow wow of what you're going to do, and then break and take back off.

Sure right at the start of the map people don't really have a plan setup decently, but even 5 minutes into the game there may still not be a plan.

Perhaps what could be done is that as soon as everybody spawns, allow for 60 seconds restricted in spawn for both teams before the map timer starts for the round so that the team and the squad leader can plan what they're going to do, who's going to break off to where, who's gonna cap what, what to do in case you're pushed back, who get's what vehicles, etc.

Of course allow this spawn wait to be disabled for servers who don't want it, but have the feature for those who want to plan first.

Then if say you have the enemy pinned somewhere, they can't just call out for help from someone halfway accross the map, they'd have to send a runner/scout to go get help..... of course this would work both ways if you're pinned instead. And since you can hop on tanks and trucks, the scout/runner can come back with the reinforcements.

(Added: Basically you can start off with a general tactical plan and then once you leave spawn, you're pretty well on your own with your team mates to figure out what is needed to be done or modified once you can see what the situation is.... much like in a real battle, unless the squad leader is nearby, then you can hear the tactics and plans on the fly.)

I personally feel this type of communication system could change the overall gameplay and make it more realistic. Sure some might be a little miffed that it's more difficult to give away enemy locations.... but they can't give away your position any easier either..... You'd have to follow the gunshots and explosions just as you would have to in real life.

Besides, I remember people talking about wanting to have classes setup so that MG's and PTRD classes have spotters and for them to stick together....... with this type of communication, along with a different method of tallying points for those who stick together, I think it could make the game more interesting and reduce lone-rambos running and gunning. No system can remove these people completely, but it can reduce how many take up this tactic, without actually punishing them in any serious fashion, besides being completely cut off from the rest of their team..... which they diserve anyways if they want to play that way, because in real life, you'd be just as cut off if you decided to wander off on your own.

 

[Eric Snyder]

I completely agree with localized voice comm. I have thought about this idea for a long time. The first time I realized the power of this type of feature was back when ultima online first came out. Communication was via text, which would be printed on screen over the head of the person talking. You could whisper, talk, or shout. If you got too far away, you would not "see" their speech anymore. The effect of all of this was that it did, for the first time in my experience, create an absorbing life-like virtual experience. Funny how something so simple completely changed the game.

While I think that localized voice would be the most realistic, something would need to be done to promote team work, as the localization of voice would diminish teamwork (which is hard to get as it is!).

I think that a game lobby for each side would be great. Here you would select your team's squad leaders, look at the map, make battle plans. Would be neat to assign everyone to a "squad" here. Maybe your voice comm only worked within this group of people. Squad officers could also comm with other offices, etc.. I think that there are a lot of things that could be done to promote coordinated battles, which I think would give us far greater fights, and be more fun.

 

[NoxNoctum]

Yep there's a program called Mumble that does this already so it's obviously possible. It's used a ton in Project Reality (where 90% of the playerbase have and use mics). Can be really cool.

 

[LionbI4]

Is there any ways to extract player coordinates from RO client memory?
If yes, we could have a plugin for teamspeak3/Mumble to use 3d sound for connected clients.

 

[Zennousha]

I agree with the localized audio outside of tanks. We already have a magical map telling us locations that are being captured that we're nowhere near, so not having team global chat isn't that big of an issue. As for the "planning" bit, really, plans change on every respawn/objective capture.

The other thing I find with global team chat is usually one person is the one participating. That could very well lead people to ignore their comments. If more people partake, it could become too hectic and provide too much chatter. By having localized you're almost forced to work on a squad based level and really opens up some gameplay opportunities.

 

[Cpt-Praxius]

I agree with the localized audio outside of tanks. We already have a magical map telling us locations that are being captured that we're nowhere near, so not having team global chat isn't that big of an issue. As for the "planning" bit, really, plans change on every respawn/objective capture.

The other thing I find with global team chat is usually one person is the one participating. That could very well lead people to ignore their comments. If more people partake, it could become too hectic and provide too much chatter. By having localized you're almost forced to work on a squad based level and really opens up some gameplay opportunities.

Agreed.... one thing I hate on mutiplayer FPS's and voice com. is usually it's either never used, or you have 10 or so people trying to yack back and forth to one another, distracting your ability to focus on in-game sounds, plus there's so many people talking, you can't usually make out what the heck they're all talking about..... and usually they're talking about nothing useful to the game but just using the game as an over-glorified internet chat room.

Or people come on and start playing their stupid music in the background.... or you have players on your team, publically chatting with people on the other team and not really doing anything at all.

Just last week I got onto a server that had two arse clowns making all sorts of annoying noises and sounds like they just got brained by a brick or something.

"Duuuuuuhhhhhhhh...... Deeerrrrrrrrrrr..... Bllllaaaaaaaaaaaa.... Wwwooooooooo....."

And when I told them to please shut the hell up, they'd just laugh and keep doing it, until half the players on the server just left.

In this new system, they could just sit around with one another acting like they belong on Monty Python with diapers on their heads all they want, while everybody else walks away from their antics and can actually play the game without being distracted by them yelling right in their ear everywhere they went.