An appeal for help - show BIS what VON means to you

[dslyecxi 23]

Its not about PR but about communications on a large, consistent, Multi teared scale. Something that until now [PR:ARMA] has never existed.

:rolleyes:

You must be new to ArmA. Enjoy your stay! Perhaps one day you'll see that this community has had "large, consistent, multi-tiered" comms as a standard since the days of Operation Flashpoint.

[megagoth1702 251]

Agreed, great thread!

[wohali 10]

Hi there,

I'm here at Dslyecxi's request to voice support for the concerns he's raised. Disclaimers:

• I play almost all the time with ACRE enabled and with VON administratively disabled on the server.
  
• I am a developer of approximately 20 years experience, having worked on real-time systems and network code for at least 10 of those 20 years. (At present I do not have time to contribute code to A2 addons; maybe in the future. That's my day gig!)
  

In general I have found that most multiplayer online games get voice wrong, and that a replacement such as Mumble, TS or Ventrilo is required to get decent voice quality, administrative functionality and a reliable transmission. VON in A2/A2OA has been a little different, in that it's offered for the first time to my knowledge a decent in-game abstraction of communications at different levels: direct, squad, commander, side, and global, combined with a fairly intuitive interface.

The problems I have with VON stem from two fronts: technical concerns, and administrative ones. If I had a magic wand to waive, I'd request the following:

1. Improved voice codec/quality/speed, or at least a way to configure the codec used. Dslyecxi already suggested this; I will be upvoting his ticket. It's a nobrainer in a world where the average network connection is at least 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up, to use something better than a GSM codec. 16kbps or even 32kbps would be sufficient.
   
2. VON reliability is also a concern. I will upvote Dslyecxi's ticket for this as well.
   
3. Ability to disable, selectively, one or more levels of voice chat. When running large events on servers, it's exceptionally easy for a disruptive user to abuse side or global chat, either intentionally or accidentally. As a server admin I'd like to be able to switch off these levels, selectively. As an added bonus I'd also like the ability to switch off these levels differently for text and VON. Right now the only alternative is to disable VON completely and switch to the TS3/ACRE solution.
   
4. Barring any of the above, formalization of something like JayArma2Lib into the A2/A3 core, in a fashion that is kept up to date with beta releases and patches. A standardized interface for named pipes, logging, timestamping, and integrating external code within the A2/A3 event engine, handled in a fashion that's approved by BIS, would make community-based addons both more stable and more easily supported by BIS at large.
   

Hope this helps.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Its not about PR but about communications on a large, consistent, Multi teared scale. Something that until now [PR:ARMA] has never existed.

I'm ashamed for not seeing that earlier.

[mahuja 12]

Surely your mistake is that you didn't realise Arma didn't exist before PR?

What did PR work on in early 2001 (arma cold war assault/ofp) again? (BF2 came out in 2005)

(Aka; you might want to "do your homework" before uttering such statements.)

Regardless, that bickering about relative self-importance is useless at best, and more of a hindrance to things getting done to the betterment of all. Kinda like war, but I digress.

----

On topic, I find the quality of ingame von, on max quality settings, to be such that I cannot understand people half the time. You'll hear my "say again" a lot. (You won't hear me saying "repeat" except when I mean *that* repeat.) Compare to the near crystal clear external voice comms like ts3. (And no, dwarden, CELT does not even enter that picture.)

If there is noise, discharging of weapons or the engine of a vehicle, all bets are off. Contact me by text, if have attention to spare for it (and it's not full of unrelated traffic) or ts if you're connected to the same server.

Never mind the technical issues making people not hear each other, when they cannot even understand each other when they do hear each other.

I voted up that one issue. Until that is fixed, the others are irrelevant. And it should be by far the simplest to fix, since you're not dealing with decidedly uncooperative nat routers etc.

[mosh 0]

I would like to make an appeal to the community for help.

.....

Thank you for your support in this,

dslyecxi

Thank you for your support... voted up all 4 and agreed, VON is very important to me.

[naash 0]

I totally agree with you !

[r71 0]

Last thing I want them to worry about and waste time on is VON. You can use TS and vent for that. Let them work on the game and get that done right.

[Floydii 0]

Given the vagaries of ACRE (some of the guys I play with just cannot get it to work no matter what we do) and the issue of it tanking everytime TS3 updates/ARMA updates etc. I fully support an integrated voice solution and have thusly voted it up on the issue tracker.

My experience is that everything but Direct chat works fine (speaking from smaller games of no more than 30 people). The inability to meaningfully modify direct chat voice volume combined with some players being unable to hear nearly anything for no apparent reason is the main bugbear.

Finally, the ability to build ACRE like plugins WITHIN the game to use it's VON would be the ideal solution.

[dale0404 5]

Another +1 for this but I would go further with the channels that are available.

Add the following:

4 Man Fireteam comms.

Ability for Fireteam leaders to ONLY speak with the Squad Leader (not group channel).

If your a Fireteam leader disable all other comms channels until your SL dies and your promoted to SL. And then obviously further up the chain as more people die... if they do that is!

Probably leave Global accessable to all though, not sure how to get around that if you need to say something OOC like RL issues.

[wipman 1]

Hi, for me the VON on the ArmA2 means two things, lag and distraction; lag because seems that or the servers can't deal very well with +6 players talking all at once or my connection is not very good (i think that's a mix of this two suppossitions...) and distraction; because im spanish and i've to listen carefully to those who speak in english, the quality of their mics isn't "the best one..." and i also have problems with the (very common) fools that use the VON to annoy the rest of the players making silly noises or jokes. I don't use to find it (the VON) usefull because it's rare for me, to find serious players on the public servers that care for the game's events/mission. But a not laggy VON system well implemented (and with good players) could be a very possitive thing, aside of be one of the features that atract or keep BF & MW players, to chat with their pals as a chick... . Let's C ya

[Sim.M 48]

I have to disagree about this. Frankly my biggest problem with VON in the game is that it's in the game on the server only meaning that if you cannot join the server you cannot communicate with people! This makes it impossible to help people with connection issues, have briefings before joining the server, fixing server crash issues with other team members and just hanging and chilling with your team mates.

We have VON disabled on our server for that reason.

I believe strongly that BIS should spend its efforts on making it easier to join servers with mods, fixing other multiplayer issues and making the game better, rather than re-inventing the wheel vis a vis VON. Why bother with all this work when TS and ACRE do a far better job both in and out of the game? When a server crashes and you are on VON you don't know if it was just you or your server that has gone down.

With TS we can regroup, restart and generally get things going again without people wondering what happened. We can lock our server and have folks join in on TS and then open and unlock it (rather than passwording it), we can tell people if they are missing certain mods when they join (this happens a lot) and help them get into the game.

VON does none of this.

[dale0404 5]

The community I play with use VON in game but for the non gameplay issues you allude to we use TS3, a perfect solution tbh.

Using VON adds alot of immersion in my opinion. But, yes as I stated before fixes are needed.

[colosseum 34]

We just use Steam chat or Skype. In-game VON works but can be a pain in the ass.

[neokika 62]

Hi, for me the VON on the ArmA2 means two things, lag and distraction; lag because seems that or the servers can't deal very well with +6 players talking all at once or my connection is not very good (i think that's a mix of this two suppossitions...)

VON uses P2P, so the server doesn't have anything to do with it.

I believe strongly that BIS should spend its efforts on making it easier to join servers with mods, fixing other multiplayer issues and making the game better, rather than re-inventing the wheel vis a vis VON. Why bother with all this work when TS and ACRE do a far better job both in and out of the game? When a server crashes and you are on VON you don't know if it was just you or your server that has gone down.

Probably not everyone wants to use 3th party software?

_neo_

Edited November 2, 2011 by neokika

[maddogx 13]

Having a reliable in-game VoN solution would be ideal, regardless of the availability of 3rd party solutions. Particularly where public MP is concerned, a significantly larger portion of players will be communicating if they aren't required to join Teamspeak/Mumble/Ventrilo in order to do so. The VoN functionality just needs to be stable, reliable and not cause any kind of problems for the server if enabled - which theoretically shouldn't be the case anyway with a P2P solution.

It would be even better if the VoN functionality was more visible in the game, for example if a small message pops up in a corner of the screen after joining a server, simply saying "Voice Comms are enabled on this server. Push [VoN Key] to talk!".

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that BIS should at least try to iron out the bugs plaguing the VoN system in Arma2, since these improvements will be carried over to Arma3 and add to the quality of public MP. Every little bit helps.

[rundll.exe 12]

To add some more:

Some people dont want to mess with TS or mumble (remember you must find a server to connect to), but just want to jump in a fast game with friends. A buggy VON system is quite frustrating when you have only 2 hours of time to play. To date, you can only pray for it to work, and when it does, it might stop working the next mission.

Note that I'm a TS3 fan because of the quality, and use it every time with organised games. But when I randomly invite a friend to play a quick game, we can't waste time with helping each other to install and connect TS/mumble.

[kilroy the nerd 14]

I always found ARMA 2's voice system pretty neat. Especially in being one of the few games where if you talk with mic, your characters mouth moves. I guess I'm amazed by all the small things.

Though, something about it does seem a bit of a weight.

[Leg 10]

I think you're sort of trying to make a revolution from nothing. Perhaps it can be 'updated' to ACRE standards, however right now it is not buggy and is quite reliable.

The IRC chat works perfect and is useful for those having issues, and the VON system is stable and has enough quality to stream a song if you set the proper server setting.

vonCodecQuality = 10;	// Quality from 1 to 10

I've seen success in groups which have used VON, and by using good structure you can use it effectively.

+Command or Squad Lead

+ Alpha Leader (a1)
- x (a2)
- x (a3)
- x (a4)
- x (a5)

+ Bravo Leader (b1)
- x (b2)
- x (b3)
- x (b4)

+ Convoy/Air/Support Assets
- Member units (c,a,s)

All member units are on group chat, use a script or join in the right 
slot to join the right group. Global channel (or in TvT it would be Side
channel) is to report in to Squad Leader, support assets or other squads. 

It does work, but it is not as realistic or good as using Acre. Also, I am sure many users would not like the only means of communication to be through a possible website forum and by going on Arma2. Using Teamspeak at the moment seems the best option even if VON was improved, and ACRE is doing fine with it as well..

It has never actually failed or become too buggy to use. The channels can be used to broadcast in vehicles, to only group, to team, etc so it has some "basic" organization in it.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Leg

[sickboy 13]

BTW there could be several possible fixes regarding or related to VON in the latest v1.60 betas;

ftp://downloads.bistudio.com/arma2.com/update/beta/ARMA2_OA_Build_86705.log

Anyone tested?

[.kju 3240]

Also make sure to provide VON debug logs to BI:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Multiplayer_Server_Commands#Admin

#login admin

#debug von

//outputs into logFile defined in server.cfg as e.g. logFile = "server_console.log";

[Atkins 10]

Any idea why Direct Communication quality is so much worse than other channels? At least now in PR everyone uses the Group channel all the time cos DC is so bad most of the time. Which is a shame.

[megagoth1702 251]

I want this stuff improved goddamit! Mumble is open source, give em some moneyZ and put it into arma2. Thanks.

[Placebo 28]

Bumping of old threads unless for significant reasons is against the forum rules.