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(Near) Real-Time Voice Comm. in RPG's
Author
As the concept of high bandwidth Internet-connections are becoming more and more realistic, imagine the following feature in future MMRPG''s: The player uses a microphone to send real-time voice streams to the game server. Here the server mixes this voice with other real-time voices in the player characters proximity and the mixing is relative to the other players distance to the player in question. Even as we speak MS is getting close to implementing some of this on the Client-side in their new DirectX 8 Release. The burden is on the mixing server, but it should be possible. What about it, sitting in a bar/inn with your char. and listening to all the chattering around you as in a real bar?
Immersiveness is an important part in any game. the more the player feels he is actually in the game, the better the experience is and the game is more enjoyable. So yes, this is definetly a step in the right direction. However, I posted a similar thread two days ago and the response I got was how wierd it would be to hear the voice of a 13-year old coming from a marine or gargoyle or somethin 
Scary.....
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"I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them"
- Isaac Asimov
Drew Sikora
Napali Networks, Inc.
Scary..... ******************************
"I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them"
- Isaac Asimov
Drew Sikora
Napali Networks, Inc.
One additional thing to consider is that many people (including myself) isn''t native english speaking. In fact my spoken english is rather bad.
The games would be flocked with people speaking all kind of wierd pseudo-english mixed with their primary language. It would be pretty hard to understand. So for games with more complex conversation (that is, more complex than taunts in FPS games) it could risk to spoil the immersiveness rather than improve it.
Regards
nicba
The games would be flocked with people speaking all kind of wierd pseudo-english mixed with their primary language. It would be pretty hard to understand. So for games with more complex conversation (that is, more complex than taunts in FPS games) it could risk to spoil the immersiveness rather than improve it.
Regards
nicba
It wouldn''t be too difficult to let the client-computer change the pitch of the voice before sending it, so that the 13 year old kind can sound like a marine, or a guy playing as a woman can sound like a woman.
Author
The part about language skills is true though. The reason I posted this was to log respons as I''m starting to design a Star Wars-inspired space RPG. In such a setting language would be a real factor of the game, and people could be inspired to improve their language skills to play better. Also, real-time voice should of course not be the only way of communicating. I''m planning traditional text comm. with text-to-voice translation as an option.
Here''s an idea a friend of mine had for voice in an RPG. The trick with voice recognition is grammer parsing. Understanding the sounds made is fairly simple. When I speak, it converts that to a phonetic sound-string. That gets transferred across the network and is then synthesized by the voice I chose for my character. So if I''m 13, nobody will know it. My voice can be of a different age, ethnicity or gender if I wish.
Comments?
Pax
Comments?
Pax
Author
Man, that is brilliant. Is the technology for Client-side voice parsing up to it, or is this way in to the future? If this could be managed, it seems like a bandwidth-reduction scheme too.
quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
It wouldn't be too difficult to let the client-computer change the pitch of the voice before sending it, so that the 13 year old kind can sound like a marine, or a guy playing as a woman can sound like a woman.
Yeah, heh. That's exactly what I said
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"I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them"
- Isaac Asimov
Drew Sikora
Napali Networks, Inc.
Edited by - WebSpyder on August 25, 2000 3:29:15 PM
Ok, well, aside from my concerns of lessening the roleplaying ability, here''s THE reason that you really can''t do this:
Assuming a centralized server or set of servers for your MMORPG, there are two HUGE problems with this:
1) The amount of proccessing power required to mix a different data stream for each client, each mixing up to tens of other streams would be absurd. Think, "wait for quantum computing" kind of absurd. I make music on my computer. Believe me, i get annoyed enough waiting for basic transforms on a G4 with 256 MB of RAM. Then, assuming you compress with a codec such as mp3, well, you can see where this would be heading when you''re handling 3000+ connections.
2) Bandwidth. Handling 3000 upstream and 3000 downstream connections, even with mono sub-telephone quality audio compressed as mp3s, that would be a disgusting amount of bandwidth required. This limit would not be quite so incomprehensable as the CPU power problem, but the players would have to be paying too much money just to support the bandwidth.
I hate to be the wet blanket, but this idea is really close to impossible. There are plenty of other problems i can see, but those are the main ones.
Crackpot Productions--
Senior Cracked Pot--
Benc
Assuming a centralized server or set of servers for your MMORPG, there are two HUGE problems with this:
1) The amount of proccessing power required to mix a different data stream for each client, each mixing up to tens of other streams would be absurd. Think, "wait for quantum computing" kind of absurd. I make music on my computer. Believe me, i get annoyed enough waiting for basic transforms on a G4 with 256 MB of RAM. Then, assuming you compress with a codec such as mp3, well, you can see where this would be heading when you''re handling 3000+ connections.
2) Bandwidth. Handling 3000 upstream and 3000 downstream connections, even with mono sub-telephone quality audio compressed as mp3s, that would be a disgusting amount of bandwidth required. This limit would not be quite so incomprehensable as the CPU power problem, but the players would have to be paying too much money just to support the bandwidth.
I hate to be the wet blanket, but this idea is really close to impossible. There are plenty of other problems i can see, but those are the main ones.
Crackpot Productions--
Senior Cracked Pot--
Benc
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