Locational Player Voice Over
Avata
Join Date: 2009-05-25 Member: 67477Members
Join Date: 2009-05-25 Member: 67477Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Simple voice-over-ip trick that might be cool</div>Typically in games the VOIP thing is done where when a player on your team talks, you hear his voice over the top of all the sound going on in the game. This is great if you're emulating a "walkie talkie" type model.
But what about including the option of being able to "talk" in the game. Actually IN the game.
What I mean is.... if I press my "push to talk" button and say into my mic "Draco, help me out over here", the sound in the game actually comes from my character. So this guy called "Draco" actually hears what I'm saying coming from the right of him and a little bit away, or close up, where-ever my character is in relation to his character.
This would also mean that multiple people could talk at once, because you'd be able to distinguish between what's being said cause the voices will come from different directions... and different distances.
To extend this slightly.... ALSO give the option for the enemy to hear what you're saying. I read another thread regarding taunting. Instead of just being taunting... add the ability for your character to speak into the game. As a marine, walk around a corner going "here kitty kitty kitty" and the enemy can hear what you're saying out loud, with the voice coming from your direction.
When I say option, I mean that you can choose when you talk, who can hear you. Press to talk for *Whole team over radio*, *Just your team out loud*, *Everyone out loud*. And of course, as a player, you get the option to mute anyone that's spamming or generally pissing you off.
Also, dead players can't speak out loud (You can't taunt the guy who just killed you.... you gotta take it like a man)
Consider the mayhem/usefulness of this simple addition of locational voice over
But what about including the option of being able to "talk" in the game. Actually IN the game.
What I mean is.... if I press my "push to talk" button and say into my mic "Draco, help me out over here", the sound in the game actually comes from my character. So this guy called "Draco" actually hears what I'm saying coming from the right of him and a little bit away, or close up, where-ever my character is in relation to his character.
This would also mean that multiple people could talk at once, because you'd be able to distinguish between what's being said cause the voices will come from different directions... and different distances.
To extend this slightly.... ALSO give the option for the enemy to hear what you're saying. I read another thread regarding taunting. Instead of just being taunting... add the ability for your character to speak into the game. As a marine, walk around a corner going "here kitty kitty kitty" and the enemy can hear what you're saying out loud, with the voice coming from your direction.
When I say option, I mean that you can choose when you talk, who can hear you. Press to talk for *Whole team over radio*, *Just your team out loud*, *Everyone out loud*. And of course, as a player, you get the option to mute anyone that's spamming or generally pissing you off.
Also, dead players can't speak out loud (You can't taunt the guy who just killed you.... you gotta take it like a man)
Consider the mayhem/usefulness of this simple addition of locational voice over
Comments
This idea has my support.
I remember when playing Zombie Panic for Half-Life, when some of my friends started talking, their character model's mouth actually started moving. The sound didn't come from the model itself though, but I still thought that was cool.
The aliens don´t speak the same language the marines do (and the other way around), so i suggest replacing the actual voice with unreckognizable sound to the ears of the other team, for the durantion the mic is open, so that they can tell where you are speaking from, but don´t have a clue what you are talking about. Same for aliens aswell.
This would generate a bonus aside from realism, since this measure would inhibit mic abuses (because your gonna get spoted and killed) and those annoying ppl that forget their mics open, making noises on the background.
For vanilla servers there could be an option to allow "sv_alltalk 1" so that aliens can hear rines and the other way around.
The only way it could be balanced is to switch to a private channel to talk to your team privately so you can discuss plans. Maybe have a little mouth piece animation extend from the helmet that fits over the marines mouth, and retracts when he's switches back to normal. You could use this to give false information to the aliens to trick them (jp rush to biodome hive in 30 seconds!!) then trash their undefended hive.
I don't see this making it in though, since the game will likely move to fast to really make good use of it. Hopefully it is something than can be modded in LUA by the community.
If you think about dogs, given enough time they can recognize what certain things mean, or what certain commands mean.
I guarentee you the Kharaa are more inteligent than any dog.
So it would not be outlandish for the Aliens to pick up on human language.
The only time it really gets to be a problem is when your able to hear strategies, but if you just separate the Comm voice to team only, its up to the marines to not give away any information.
The aliens could even sneak around to the marine base and just listen to collect more information.... so just because it sounds wrong at first, doesn't mean it couldn't be potentially awesome.
I'm not sure how complicated or hard it is to implement something like this, but it should definatly be tried out.
I extended the idea to "enemy can hear you" because one of my favourite things to do in AvP as the predator was to make the taunt sound. I'm sure it was completely useless and didn't phase the other people in the game at all... but it was hella satisfying to me
To combat the "Aliens talking with human voices" problem.... I think a neat "fix" could be to have a generic pre-recorded alien sounding wave file that plays from your position when you "live taunt" the enemy.... except the generic alien sound reacts to your input somehow. Something as simple as the volume of the alien "voice" matches what you input into the mic.
That way, an alien like sound *kind of* gets played with a human like voice pattern.
A better implimentation would be to get the alien sound to match JUST your voice pitch and volume. Then something as simple as "Come and get me" would come out "hissstroogarble" but would still be recognisable as a taunt.
As for aliens understanding humans... I'm sure you could do the same... except instead of generic "alien" sounds, it's generic "human" sounds... like the Sims... or like those "Speak visual" ads that nvidia have on their site. This would make it fair and balanced, and still give excellent immersion.
One more neat trick that would heap on a bunch of immersion.... using the environmental effects on the voices. I'm not sure where the technology on this is at right now... but from the times I did HL2 level design, you were able to place a sound effect on an area... for instance, echo in chambers, muffled in carpetted places... to give that environment an audible "texture". I imagine that this is pretty wide spread in game engines... and if the sound of your voice was processed according to the rules of the environment your character is standing in... Very cool.
I can just imagine the fraps replay of a marine rushing down a pipe in front of you and hearing the echoed voice over come back saying "Oh crap.. fall ba"
V3LOC1TY killed --[TS]Leeroy Jenkins--
In my opinion, although this feature offers some interesting gameplay impacts, the lack of realism of an wild 10 sec age alien understanding human vocabulary is strange enough, let alone whole strategies broadcasted by comms (same aplies for the other team).
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->A better implimentation would be to get the alien sound to match JUST your voice pitch and volume. Then something as simple as "Come and get me" would come out "hissstroogarble" but would still be recognisable as a taunt.
As for aliens understanding humans... I'm sure you could do the same... except instead of generic "alien" sounds, it's generic "human" sounds... like the Sims... or like those "Speak visual" ads that nvidia have on their site. This would make it fair and balanced, and still give excellent immersion.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Avata, we think alike, I just didn´t go that further on my previous post because I think this kind of feature is hard/virtualy impossible to implement (the adjust to pitch and volume part to the artificial sound, conditioned to a instant interpretation of the mic output), but you never know, maybe UWE could manage to implement it, if not, in some other criative way.
I´m sure I´d love to see that in-game.
I´m sure I´d love to see that in-game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well the idea of adjusting the volume came from a very early demo video of TF2 (years ago before HL2 was announced). They had a demo of a player turning to face the "camera" and saying "We've got incoming", which made the players "mouth" move.... From memory the mouth was pretty simple... just a handful of polygons... but still the effect was cool... the spoken input affected the model in realtime. This was explained to be according to the volume of the mic input. The mouth didn't form vowels or anything, it just opened and closed.
I also remember this being used in CounterStrike... I'm pretty sure CSS? The models had moving mouths (which was usually a moving gas mask or bandana) to represent speech, and it was based on the volume. The thing is you could "see" who was talking... but the voice came from all around you. I always felt this was a missed oppurtunity to match the voice channel's left/right volume to the location of the talking character.... When people speak you would know where they are! ("I need backup!", "Which one are you??" would never happen ever again!)
Both these examples being evidence that this isn't too far out of the norm for the HL2 engine at least to have the game react to mic volume.
Hmmm... I might for the hell of it make up some mp3 files that present this idea. I'll record some monotone "alien", some monotone "human", and then try matching the pitch/volume of a normal sentence to the monotone track. In my head the effect should be pretty cool! We'll see if it's true or not.
You know... this could be the kind of "Gimmic" that could really sell the game. Not only is it a TeamFortress style teamplay game with the proven mechanics of the original Natural Selection, but it has this groovy new gameplay mechanic that adds to the immersion and hillarity.
However you definately wouldn't want to do it if it detracted from the gameplay/enjoyment in any way. In no way sacrifice gameplay for gimmics!
(I just had a little giggle from the idea of people saying "keep your voice down they'll know we're here" or "radio's silent!" during a game. How often do we grind our teeth when stuck in a lone room and start the welder..... come on come on before someone hears me! Oh the tension!)
So no proof of concept mp3's <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
But then.... with the teaser trailer released and a autumn release announced I would reckon the team is way too busy to look into anything deviating from the bare nessesities... so fingers crossed this can be done with a later update or player mod
If you own a PlayStation 3 and plays SOCOM : Confontation, they have this kind of system
you push to talk over an "walki-talkie" function. If you only speak on the mic, without pressing the button your voice looks like coming from your character.
It moves his mouth, the sound comes from the TV, not from the blutooth mic.
Its a nice idea, and if incorporated would be really immersive, talking to your enemies like : DIE YOU BASTERDS!
and they can actually hear you! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Maybe in alpha stage of development? You never know...
I´ve just bought my Special Edition copy...
perhaps those of us who think this is a good idea can persuade the developers and community, while in alpha, and this gimmic can make it into the beta/release stages. Fingers crossed.
One button for local speak and another button for team speak. Simple. Commander is exclusively teamspeak.
Teams can't understand the other's respective speech, and the only problem is figuring out the range on such things.
My big question after reading the opening few posts was whether or not this technology was possible and reasonably straightforward to implement, or whether it had to be built into the engine from scratch. I don't know too much about game production beyond the artistic asset elements, so I have no idea if this would even be possible.
It's a relief to hear it's been done on other games, as that appeases some of my doubts. Unfortunately though, if it's not something the guys have already taken into consideration, the chance of it seeing the light of day in NS2 at this late stage is fairly slim.
The key of course is a way to make it private and to your team (i.e. team chat). The faceplate idea sounds like it could work for Marines. Or force mouths to be covered all the time, but I think they are shooting for having more expression and thus have a visible mouth.