Let's talk about VOIP in 1.09

[dslyecxi 23]

This topic will be covering the upcoming 1.09 patch for ArmA, as experienced by myself and some fellow ShackTac members. I'll post some info and videos and then answer general questions about the patch for anyone who's interested. Bear in mind that I will not do the following:

a) Post the entire changelog (as it's still WIP)

b) Get into very fine detail about anything other than VOIP

With that being said, my impressions of the 1.09 patch at this stage are that it's going to be a very good one for this community. I think the most telling aspect of 1.09 testing is how frequently our players want to "test" it. The amount of depth and fun that is brought on by the enhanced VOIP is incredible - it has been awhile since I have had so much fun, or laughed so hard, as when testing 1.09 VOIP.

Moving away from the VOIP briefly, I'll touch on a few of the other changes in 1.09 that are particularly significant.

- Framerate has improved a good deal, especially in North Sahrani.

- Ballistics have been enhanced.

- Recoil has been tweaked to be more responsive (you can see this clearly in my videos)

- Vehicle damage models have been tweaked for better gameplay (more survivable).

- AI has been improved in several ways (ie: they do not zero in on your so accurately based upon sound, their dispersion is related to their skill more clearly now, and a few other things). The best way to sum it up is that the AI is more fun to play against now.

- NetStats difficulty option. This allows you to disable the scoreboard during a mission, and see it when the mission actually ends. ShackTac has been running a mod that totally removes the scoreboard for awhile, and this actually ends up being better than that - you prevent people from seeing their scores during the mission, but still allow for the possibility for people to see those scores when the mission has ended.

- Kill message difficulty option. Another favorite of ours - now, instead of having to use a stringtable mod to disable the death messages, you can disable them server-side.

There are a bunch of other changes in 1.09 - BIS has been very responsive to suggestions and comments on it. As I said, I'm not going to go into the full changelog. There has to be an element of surprise, after all.

And now... moving back to VOIP.

VOIP in 1.09 is amazingly cool. We've been testing it extensively, oftentimes going through five builds in a week, with each one addressing issues noticed and implementing feature requests or tweaks that we've suggested after our test sessions.

The pride and joy of VOIP for me is that we finally have a "Who's Speaking" indication . You will not see this in the videos (afaik) because it was literally just added, but our initial testing of it has revealed it to be very, very handy. This is set as a server-side difficulty option in case any groups don't think it's "realistic" to have an indication of who's talking over VOIP.

The indicator works like this:

- When someone speaks on Direct Speaking (locational chat), their name does not show up. You can hear their voice coming from their body instead.

- If someone speaks on Global, Side, Group, or Vehicle chat you will see their name display at the bottom of the "chat" bar. When they stop speaking, their name will linger for one second and then disappear. The name is color-coded based on what chat channel they're speaking over - white for global, blue for side, green for group, yellow for vehicle. If more than one person is talking at once, you will have their names appear to the right side of the first speaker, in the order that they started talking. Because of this, you can have many people talking at once and still be able to figure out who's who, while screen real estate is preserved due to the fact that it lists them horizontally instead of vertically.

Think "Teamspeak Overlay", except integrated into the game by default. It's an awesome feature.

Oh yeah - when you die, you can speak in VOIP with the dead players, without the living players hearing you. The same thing happens with text - dead people's text cannot be seen by the living. Admins can still transmit to all players, though, if they choose.

Here are some videos of us testing VOIP. Bear in mind that this is obviously prerelease test footage and that there are elements in the behavior of VOIP that are still being tweaked and addressed.

The first video is a simple "Battle Drill" mission of ours that is meant to train MOUT fighting and movement through urban areas. This mission shines with VOIP - the amount of communication fluidity that is present now due to the VOIP is fantastic. This is the video you should probably check out first - I went through after the mission and subtitled what I was saying, due to the fact that (as is to be expected) my voice was not recorded via FRAPs.

Hires: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec10_voip_mout_bd.wmv

Lores: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec10_voip_mout_bd_lowres.wmv

Next up we have a mission where our squad is moving through a forested area to try to locate two captured pilots. My voice isn't subbed one this one, but you can see where I'm talking (due to the VOIP transmit indicator showing up). This is a pretty neat video as well and is fairly typical of our VOIP experiences thus far.

Hires: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec8_voip_Forest.wmv

Lores: http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec8_voip_Forest_lores.wmv

And, finally, some stupid outtakes and such from our testing. Things can't always be serious, after all. If you have sensitive ears or no sense of humor, you might want to avoid these.

http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec11_madcows_breakdown.wmv

http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec12_lazy_sunday.wmv

http://dslyecxi.com/videos/dec8_boss_battle_outtake.wmv

Here is some further information I posted at SimHQ which some of you might find interesting:

Quote[/b] ]Here's how ShackTac will be running TS/ArmA VOIP integration. We do things at the platoon level, but it applies to squad-level procedures as well.

We will utilize TS for the following:

- Command chat, using the "Channel Commander" functionality. This will include:

x. Platoon Commander

x. Squad Leaders

x. Leaders of any special elements (ie air, armor, etc)

- Squad chat. This will be where the entire squad is in the same TS channel. This is to be used for the Squad Leader to communicate to his squad members, or for a squad member to talk to the entire squad. There will be an emphasis on not using this unless you're a squad leader or fireteam leader.

We will utilize ArmA VOIP for the following:

- Fireteam chat. Because of how our organization breaks down in mission terms, each "group" is actually a fireteam. Because of this, speaking on the "Group" VOIP channel means that you're talking to just the members of your fireteam. I believe that the SimHQ template you guys use is very similar to this. "Group" chat can be potentially used to maintain control over your fireteam when you're spread particularly thin for whatever reason, or when things are loud enough that you can't rely on the direct-speaking channel. We will be experimenting with this channel a lot to see how best to utilize it in the future.

- Vehicle chat. The "Vehicle" channel will be used for, you guessed it, vehicle-based chat. This will allow vehicle crews to be much more communicative than they have been able to be in the past, and should really help us out and make certain types of missions a lot more feasible (ie a mission where there are 10+ vehicles on our side) and less of a headache in terms of TS.

- Direct Speaking. This is the big one. Direct Speaking is used to communicate verbally with anyone around you. This is where we have been restricted with TS - there are only a few ways to organize TS, and we basically have the best compromise possible, with things broken down to the squad level. However, that means you have 14 people in the TS channel for a squad, and since a squad can be distributed over a several hundred meter area in some situations, it can make for confusing communications if everyone is trying to talk (even in moderation). We have restricted a squad TS channel to mostly the SL and FTLs in 1.08, and 1.09 will open it up and allow us to have fireteam members talking as much as they want to anyone around them. This is huge - the significance cannot be emphasized enough.

Situations that have stood out to me in our recent VOIP test sessions (we do them almost on a daily basis to provide feedback to BIS), with regards to Direct Speaking, are:

1. Me, as a medic, hearing a burst of gunfire, a burst of return fire, and then, from about 50 meters away, someone shouting "Medic! We need a medic over here!"

2. Hearing people shout insults back and forth in the darkness of an adversarial mission in between bursts of flare light and exchanges of fire.

3. A squad advancing on line through some woods takes fire. Up and down the line, you hear people shouting "Contact front!" as everyone goes to ground and dives behind trees. There are a few tense moments, and you can hear people asking "Where's that coming from? Where are they at?". After a second you hear, from further down the line, someone shout "It's a dshka, left side of the road up ahead!". The contact report is repeated verbally up and down the line, the dshka's engaged, and the person who kills the gunner shouts "Dshka down!", followed by that call being verbally passed up and down the line.

So, there you have it. That's the basic story of 1.09.

I will try to answer questions to the best of my ability, keeping in mind the caveats made above and my own schedule.

[Balschoiw 0]

1. Have the texture loading issues been adressed ?

2. Has pathfinding for AI been improved ? (shaking units, AI crossing bridges)

As much as I can understand your passion for the VOIP thing, I´m still more interested in the technical bugs that we have to live with since day 1 of Arma.

So maybe you could give us a little prospect of what has been fixed of the major Arma bugs that still plague the game in numbers.

[hunterhr 0]

I for one welcome our VOIP overlords.

[kevb0 0]

Awesome! 1.09 looks awesome. Those non-serious videos are hilarious.

Thanks for the update, Dslyecxi!

[dslyecxi 23]

1. Have the texture loading issues been adressed ?

2. Has pathfinding for AI been improved ? (shaking units, AI crossing bridges)

As much as I can understand your passion for the VOIP thing, I´m still more interested in the technical bugs that we have to live with since day 1 of Arma.

So maybe you could give us a little prospect of what has been fixed of the major Arma bugs that still plague the game in numbers.

As I clearly stated in my main post, I am mainly interested in discussing VOIP and will not get into details on anything not covered directly in my post.

Sorry.

I know a lot of people have their own personal ArmA axes to grind, and I'm not interested in dealing with that.

You may not agree with that, but at least you can respect my wishes and make an attempt at avoiding posting topics that you know I will not be discussing.

[Balschoiw 0]

Whatever. Thx for sharing.

Maybe you shouldn´t post something like that

Quote[/b] ]I will try to answer questions to the best of my ability

if you don´t plan to do so.

[dslyecxi 23]

Whatever. Thx for sharing.

Maybe you shouldn´t post something like that

Quote[/b] ]I will try to answer questions to the best of my ability

if you don´t plan to do so.

Try reading a bit more carefully next time. The first paragraph of my post says, quoting:

Quote[/b] ]Bear in mind that I will not do the following:

a) Post the entire changelog (as it's still WIP)

b) Get into very fine detail about anything other than VOIP

Perhaps I should be more clear. I will not discuss anything that isn't at least touched upon in my post. Is that better? Sorry for the confusion, I thought it was clear the way it was.

[Lor 0]

As someone who has had a great deal of experience both talking and in listening to people who talk (talking & listening) both in real life (IRL) and in "videogames" (VGs) I can say that this news is fanbloodytastic.

The videos are a must watch item. Seriously. Watch all of those before you even think of replying.

[Goldline 0]

hey Dslyecxi whats the url to your website forum ?

i thought that it was http://www.Dslyecxi.com/forum

appearently not...

[dslyecxi 23]

hey Dslyecxi whats the url to your website forum ?

i thought that it was http://www.Dslyecxi.com/forum

appearently not...

We don't run a public forum at the present time. It's basically a members-only forum currently.

[Heatseeker 0]

Im checking the videos out, thanks for sharing .

I wanted to try VOIP because of direct speach, seperate channels and how its integrated into the game.

Im afraid that after this long people just got used to TS and wont try it out when 1.09 arrives, i hope this wont be the case, it would be a shame/waste..

1.09 is sounding promissing .

[-X- Charlie 0]

Oh why word... 'Madcow Breakdown' is just incredible. Thanks for sharing, you just made my day!!

[dslyecxi 23]

Im checking the videos out, thanks for sharing .

I wanted to try VOIP because of direct speach, seperate channels and how its integrated into the game.

Im afraid that after this long people just got used to TS and wont try it out when 1.09 arrives, i hope this wont be the case, it would be a shame/waste..

1.09 is sounding promissing .

The thing is, TS and ArmA VOIP complement each other very nicely. There is a distinct use for both of them, and they work fine together (from what we've seen).

I can't imagine people playing 1.09 and not having a blast with the "Direct Speaking" VOIP in particular. It adds sooooo much to the gameplay.

[DBO_ 0]

Looks very promising so far.There is absolute proof that bis listen because the fix list in your posts , mirrors perfectly the top 7-8 community addons , ballistic fixes and vegitation fixes etc.

Myself voip is a welcome thing and nice to see it working (to a fashion). But i ask one question, if you sneek up on an AI and shout for example "Over here" or even talk normally , does it register just like other sounds ,such as running and gun sounds allow them to also know your location. it would be nice if it did .

I am trying to tie it in with this.

Quote[/b] ]sensitivityEar

Float: Default 0.0075

Sets how well can the given unit hear others. The bigger the value, the better the hearing.

sensitivityEar = 0.13;//man

[dslyecxi 23]

i ask one question, if you sneek up on an AI and shout for example "Over here" or even talk normally , does it register just like other sounds ,such as running and gun sounds allow them to also know your location. it would be nice if it did .

I honestly don't know. If I had to guess, I would say that the AI are not influenced by your voice comms.

I get the feeling that coding it to be that way would be pretty difficult, so I don't know if that's a reasonable thing to expect in ArmA.

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Thanks for the information, looks like a nice feature.

Overall I'm not that impressed because there are quiet a lot of bugs that can be seen in the videos. (bad shadows, lightning, texture loading, the *pimped* bmp, the *endboss* soldier, etc.)

MfG Lee ..

[mr burns 132]

Thanks for the information, looks like a nice feature.

Overall I'm not that impressed because there are quiet a lot of bugs that can be seen in the videos. (bad shadows, lightning, texture loading, the *pimped* bmp, the *endboss* soldier, etc.)

MfG Lee ..

The coolest feature i spotted was the grenade damage actually being deflected by walls

[Heatseeker 0]

The coolest feature i spotted was the grenade damage actually being deflected by walls

Thats already there afaik ?

[MisterXY 0]

Nice new features and cool videos. But what I hate to see is that zooming in down the ironsights... soooo unrealistic. Still wacky player animations ohh well.

But that VOIP features blows anything away... even bugs.

[mr burns 132]

The coolest feature i spotted was the grenade damage actually being deflected by walls

Thats already there afaik ?

Just tested to be sure and i still die in a similar setup like seen in the boss battle video (at 1:30)

Even tried concrete walls to no avail..

[dslyecxi 23]

Thanks for the information, looks like a nice feature.

Overall I'm not that impressed because there are quiet a lot of bugs that can be seen in the videos. (bad shadows, lightning, texture loading, the *pimped* bmp, the *endboss* soldier, etc.)

MfG Lee ..

This is just proof that you can't please everyone.

I'll be nice and address your concerns.

1. I don't know what you consider to be "bad shadows/lighting", so I can't really cover that.

2. Texture loading is because I'm running FRAPS to record the video, and it tends to cause issues. It's not an innate aspect of ArmA for me, it only happens occasionally when recording with FRAPS for a long period of time

3. The "pimped" BMP is a script of ours that we're running in the mission, it's not a bug. It's happening because a person in the BMP is triggering the script repeatedly.

4. The "endboss" is a bug. Considering that you're looking at BETA TEST footage, the whole point is to discover things like that so they can be fixed.

I guess you can look at it as the glass being half empty if you want, but that's a pretty sorry way to live your life.

edit:

Quote[/b] ]Nice new features and cool videos. But what I hate to see is that zooming in down the ironsights... soooo unrealistic. Still wacky player animations ohh well.

Zooming in irons isn't really unrealistic, but I don't want to turn this thread into a discussion of that, so I'll simply say that I disagree with you.

The animation transitions in a lot of cases have been smoothed out. I can't give details on them because I'm not sure exactly which ones have changed, but the general movement feels a bit smoother now.

[evilnate 0]

Can you clearly hear the VOIP of others when inside or near loud vehicles that are running their engines? With TS, lots of us are adjusting our arma sound levels when mounting and dismounting vehicles.

PS. thanks for showing us BI WIP.

[dslyecxi 23]

Can you clearly hear the VOIP of others when inside or near loud vehicles that are running their engines? With TS, lots of us are adjusting our arma sound levels when mounting and dismounting vehicles.

PS. thanks for showing us BI WIP.

The sound levels inside of vehicles are being tweaked to account for this, actually. We had trouble at first, but they keep tweaking it more and more in response to feedback about it.

[Prydain 1]

As much as I can understand your passion for the VOIP thing, I´m still more interested in the technical bugs that we have to live with since day 1 of Arma.

So maybe you could give us a little prospect of what has been fixed of the major Arma bugs that still plague the game in numbers.

x2

Some little voice net thing is not exactly the first thing BIS should be looking at (even if it makes them & you 'wow'. TS is easyer to use with bindings.

You should have replaced the details of the voice system with more information of the following:

Animations - I think we all know why. "Arrggg, put the bleeding AT4 away and lay the feck down!" Is said every time I play.

AI - God, I hate getting insta-sniped, moving in ArmA is not fire and maneuver, its hide in cover until the AI forget you are there and then fire. AI pathfinding is also a bitch.

Armour - Why BIS decided to go for a life meter for vehicles is beyond anyone. 5.56 should not be able to destroy a T-72, BMP or BDRM, even if it takes a long time to do much damage. Give us penetration values.

Other than that, Looks awesome.

[hoz 0]

Keep on topic folks.