voice chat in mmorpgs

You might want to check out Space Cowboys. Its one of the few mmorpgs that has integrated voice chat.

I agree with your sentiments about things like TeamSpeak ruining the immersion. Dungeons and Dragons Online had a voice chat feature integrated into the game and I HATED it! The fact that it was a part of the game left no excuses for not having it on and people would not group with you if you had it off. Very frusterating... I also hate the looks my sisters would shoot me when mysterious voices would come pouring from my room.
In terms of efficiency the only compromise I can think of off the top of my head would be to implement some kind of voice recognition software that will turn spoken words into text. It has the advantage of being faster than typing (for some at least) and also not ruining flirtations with someone who apparently a female... I don't know much about how well it could actually be implemented in a real game though.

Actually I too dislike voice chat.

And in my opinion there are many ways of efficiently communicating group orders.

The current plan I have for Bloodspear (not generally a cross-game feature, so it's not in Primogen) is to implement an RTS style interface for group leaders, allowing formation changes, and triggering moves on all group members as a single gestalt entity.

The objective I have is twofold:

Firstly it is to allow regimented group fighting based on a much smaller network exchange with groups / regiments being treated as single entities;

Secondly it is to allow a group leader to efficiently pass orders (via the gestalt group entity) to allow group actions, such as adopting testudo (tortoise) formation with shields, club-shooting archery (indirect fire), operating multiple-user machines, and much more.

There are a couple of drawbacks - primarily that it removes freedom of choice for the individual group members to some extent. This (if you've ever fought as part of a block unit at a re-enactment or LRP event) isn't as bad as it sounds - it allows the group members to concentrate on a very narrow field of opponents and partners without needing to worry about where they're standing.

The second drawback is that it relies very strongly on a single authoritative leader for the group - it doesn't allow for the banter you get when actually arguing a plan out with your mates - it's much more military in its outlook. I'm toying with the idea of a more scratch-pad styled system (especially useful for sci-fi or contemporary games where a group member might want to report positions as a 'spotter') but I've not yet firmed it up.

maybe i can imagine how voice chat would fit into a game like space cowboys (thanks for the link yspotua), but imho NEVER into games like dungeon & dragons online or everquest and so on

i don't know how developped voice recognition is today - in terms of precision and speed - so i can't say whether the voice-to-text translation the_provoker suggested will work - but maybe an low-level version of this idea could be usefull: user-created text macros which would be triggered by voice commands. it would help in situation where time is rare (like someone caused an "add"), but it would not work for discussing tactics.

_winterdyne_'s idea also sound very promising, especially for tactical combat manoeuvers.


to answer one of my questions on my own: i personally think everything i need to fully experience a game has to come with the game - so i hate external tools or addins. i would call that bad game design if you are not able to beat a game element (e.g. raid dungeon) without external tools. but i can see that excluding voice chat is cost efficient from the developpers' view, since there are well known existing programs to provide these features. so you save time and money and of course bandwith, if you have your players use external programs.

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Original post by Strohmann to answer one of my questions on my own: i personally think everything i need to fully experience a game has to come with the game - so i hate external tools or addins. i would call that bad game design if you are not able to beat a game element (e.g. raid dungeon) without external tools. but i can see that excluding voice chat is cost efficient from the developpers' view, since there are well known existing programs to provide these features. so you save time and money and of course bandwith, if you have your players use external programs.

Yeah- to be honest, it's not such an issue if you set your mic for volume activation, using a tool like teamspeak (used it in SWG a bit) can be great. I really don't think it's bad game design to *recommend* a third party tool like this or even for that tool to greatly assist in gameplay, but it is bad game design to make any given scenario impossible without it. Another argument for it is simply that teamspeak does the job very well - it's a lot of work to equal it.

Macro'd commands can alleviate the issue (so a single click makes you tell your group 'charge!' or so on), but personally I never feel like setting such macro's up.

Voice-to-text is actually pretty far advanced these days - I got exposed to it while working for a small company dealing in computer equipment and software for the disabled. Have a look at Dragon Dictate and similar packages. These require a little training to get used to the user's voice, but they are *very* smart systems. However, they do tend to be rather resource-hungry, both in terms of RAM and CPU time. As home PC's are increasing in power it will eventually become viable (it's already possible) to include such systems in a client application.

You'd want to perform the speech analysis on the *sending* client, as the cleanest data source, and also to minimise network traffic. Providing chat is modal (ie when you click in the chat box ALL keyboard input is ignored by the actual game) it may even be possible to configure an existing package like Dragon Dictate to work with an existing MMO. Might need to create a false recording device to allow -press to record recognition in the package... I've not looked at it in years, so I couldn't tell you.

Well, pen & paper roleplayers have made due with the fact that their voices don't sound like their characters for years, so it's possible to do. Someone reading a novel out loud and not doing each character's voice correctly shouldn't ruin the immersion of the novel. I guess the main problem is that it's much more embarassing to talk in a scottish/dwarven accent than it is to type in one, plus the voice will never look as authentic as the text. I play p&p and online games, and I usually have an easier time playing ridiculous characters in front of strangers online than strangers in person. I can really only do ridiculous voices in front of friends without feeling like a total tool.

I think if you're in a group of people really trying to roleplay, it will be fine. If you've played p&p enough and you're with decent roleplayers, you won't even notice that Barry White is playing the princess. It would be the same as Barry White reading a novel and reading a part where a female character speaks. He wouldn't have to try to make his voice girly; he'd just read it in his normal tone of voice with a slightly different inflection and you'd imagine the character as a girl just fine.

But I guess part of the advantage of p&p and books over video games and movies is that it's easier to let your imagination take over. I agree that when you're playing a very visually and audibly intense game that it's harder to ignore the audio/visual parts that break immersion.

It seems the obvious answer to incorrect voices is to adjust them. If we can recognize speech enough to turn it into generally correct text and vice versa, converting speech to IPA and then converting the IPA to a different voice should be practically trivial.

how about voice filters - so it takes a 12yr old kids voice, and turns it into a 15 foot tall Orcs voice.
Or takes a 30yr old male voice and turns it into a 2 foot tall pixie's voice ;)

Speech recognition would be a nice workaound, but I think most recognition algorithms are pretty CPU intensive.

In most MMOG's the server cost is dependant on what the game can do, the more a game can do the more expensive the server and the more money you pay monthly.

That being said, I'd rather pay less and download ventrillo for free.

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Original post by Timus In most MMOG's the server cost is dependant on what the game can do, the more a game can do the more expensive the server and the more money you pay monthly.[...]

I doubt very seriously that bandwidth or machine costs make up a significant portion of the cost of running a professional MMORPG. For an indie developer, they can definitely be the main expenses, but when you're dealing with millions of account each paying monthly, those costs should become virtually nothing compared to the wages of key empoyees. Of course, features do cost something to develop and maintain, but that is true of any type of game.

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[...]That being said, I'd rather pay less and download ventrillo for free.

Sure, but you still have to pay for the ventrilo server (unless you're playing with 8 or fewer people and one of you has a fast enough connection to host the free server).

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Original post by Extrarius Quote: Original post by Timus In most MMOG's the server cost is dependant on what the game can do, the more a game can do the more expensive the server and the more money you pay monthly.[...] I doubt very seriously that bandwidth or machine costs make up a significant portion of the cost of running a professional MMORPG. For an indie developer, they can definitely be the main expenses, but when you're dealing with millions of account each paying monthly, those costs should become virtually nothing compared to the wages of key empoyees. Of course, features do cost something to develop and maintain, but that is true of any type of game. Quote: [...]That being said, I'd rather pay less and download ventrillo for free. Sure, but you still have to pay for the ventrilo server (unless you're playing with 8 or fewer people and one of you has a fast enough connection to host the free server).

Yes, the profit is there and it is large, but if my own personal server costs $910 monthly and it is purchased particularly for 30 people to use at once then I expect a massively multiplayer online game's servers would suck a fair bit of money. Sometimes I'm not surprised some servers are laggy since I'm only paying $15 a month.

And as for Ventrillo server costs, that's the problem of my clan leader/guild master ;-).

All your points aside, I still stand by my original one. Live streaming sound in an MMOG is feasable, but costly, and the expenses of the company = the expenses of the consumer.