Voice Commands

Development
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As discussed in Dev test7341 server games from today Saturday 11/28/2015, I’m showing this as an idea to implement a fast and efficient communication method using predefined voice commands. Using a quick command system as used in other games in a way to improve gameplay and team communication instead of using all your keys for different binds. You can see in the video that I can move around, shoot and do different things while using the commands :grinning: (I used Wolf:ET as example since this game came from the same quake engine as trem did.)

Edit: Wait a second, had some trouble with youtube, reposting link again a few moments

Edit 2: Link fixed. Changed the word Talked, for Discussed

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some of the commands on the video took like 3 sec to fire. that’s way too slow for trem so they will still end up as binds. instead i would rather suggest to include some voip in the game. some clans already do that using teamspeak but it would be nice to simply have it build in.

but to be honest, i’m still not sure how it affects the game. sound is important in trem. so if 10ppl in your team start spamming voice chat (‘hi’, ‘yes’, ‘nice shoot’) will it still be playable?

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Tremulous does have built-in voip capability, but it needs a lot of work to be of decent enough quality and functionality, and is not a priority for the initial release (but definitely something we would look into later). From what I understand there is already a lot of the code required to implement this advanced taunt concept, and could be practical enough to implement for the initial release.

There are some disadvantages to using voip in a public game instead of taunts:

  • Background sound from mics

  • potential difficulty in understanding understanding some players whose 1st language isn’t English and/or due to their accents.

  • Not being able to use VOIP all of the time due to your surroundings (like in a library or at work :wink: ).

That is a very good question. @Woodbury , what happens when a lot of players on your team use those taunts at the same time?

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Actually I made it slow for everyone to see the options and see how it worked, that was the point of the video, if I did it fast no one would be able to even read, I just memorized what says what, v43 thanks, v15 fire in the hole, v55 bye, I can guarantee it is pretty fast. Where V is the key to open the voice chat menu, and you select the options with numbers.

The idea behind this is to get everyone the chance to communicate easily, when binds seems common between experienced players, new player may be not familiar with binding stuff in trem, so the idea to implement a look-a-like voice chat command to the new trem version may help new players to adapt faster.

And so it is in Wolf:ET, the thing is, you dont have a radar helmet or aliens senses in there, and you have to check every little sound you hear like walking sound from your own team, to see if they aren’t the enemy between gunfire, fire support, airstrikes, bombs, grenades, etc. I think it wont affect that part of the games in trem.

You can see in the video there is a voice chat spam protection, where you cant actually spam voice chat x number of times in x amount of time. I think it is 4 or 5 max in like 5 seconds time (you can edit that in server config) , more than enough to voice chat, for example, Incoming flank!, Cover me!, Grenade! at the same time. Wasting you voice commands can be bad, because when you most need them, console will tell you (Spam Protection) and dont send the voice chat to your team.

Thinking about it, I was only looking this for humans, and if it works It could get aliens some disadvantage, maybe do the same for aliens but saying they are telepathy commands?, they are all connected to the overmind anyway.

Sorry for the late answer, I had a busy week.

@newb @dGr8LookinSparky

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Keep in mind the average tremulous brazilian needs to have FLANK filling up his screen before he realizes someone is going to rape him in the ass. Technically, VOIP is excellent for scrims as long as they keep it silent when it’s needed, binds are the best in pub games (Fast to use (1 press of a key), customizable, mostly silent: You need to hear your surroundings and be able to use the binds while in a fight. Weapon sounds, alien footsteps, localizing using sounds, low HP (no one gives a shit about the flashing screen)… are all invaluable.).
Public VOIP is plain cancer as far as I can remember, people are usually just spamming music randomly or other retarded shit.

That seems rather easy to fix with a proper UI. You could even provide them with default binds which would pretty much be the same as vocal chat without vocal chat, how handy.

Disadvantage in team communication? R u smoking crack?

bind 5 say_team Thanks!
bind mouse4 itemact gren; say_team Grenade!

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That would not be happening with the voice commands, which are per-recorded assets. Those assets would either be default from the new client, custom from the server, or if sv_pure was not enabled, custom from your own voice commands pk3 file.

I noticed something interesting with KoRx’ data, their voice commands for the aliens were sequence of alien sounds, essentially making up their own alien language. Their alien voice sounds consisted of the follow “phrases”:

  • “base”
  • “builders”
  • “grenade”
  • “hs2”
  • “hs3”
  • “rush”

These are the actual audio files:

A chat bind would accompany each voice command. Here is KoRx’s alien.voice configuration file:

base
{
        "voice/alien/base.ogg"
        {
        	text "Our base is under attack!"
        }
}
 hs2
 {
        "voice/alien/hs2.ogg"
        {
        	text "The humans have reached stage 2!"
        }
}
 hs3
 {
        "voice/alien/hs3.ogg"
        {
        	text "The humans have reached stage 3!"
        }
 }
builder
{
        "voice/alien/builders.ogg"
        {
        	text "We need more builders!"
        }
 }
 grenade
 {
        "voice/alien/grenade.ogg"
        {
        	text "Grenade!"
        }
 }
rush
{
        "voice/alien/rush.ogg"
        {
        	text "Rush the enemy!"
        }
}
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@everyone please note voice commands and voip are 2 different things entirely.

I’ve already developed a voice command UI menu, but it’s never been merged in.

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I mentionned only VOIP but having someone spam ‘‘THANK YOU THANK YOU’’ “NO PROBLEM” with voice commands while you’re fighting and making you miss for example the goon bleeding sound that happens around 80-100hps (which is when most non-suicidal people fall back) isn’t very tempting either. The voice commands’ sound/volume if there is any should be mutable/adjustable. Plain text binds should also be kept in.

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We would have anti-spam measures built into the Voice Command system (idk if we have them implemented currently though).

agreed.

Text would accompany each voice command.

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What I’m saying basically is, in most quake games which are (very) fast paced even 2 seconds of missed information can be enough to fuck you up.

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This is why we need to test this system in-game and see if we can adjust it to meet the needs of Tremulous, or if it doesn’t fit in. But keep in mind that many Tremulous players do use voip (especially in scrims), and the voice commands should be way less intrusive than voip.

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Voice commands will never replace or be nearly as good as VOIP in a scrim, in any competition on any game. You can provide a lot more detailed info through VOIP than with just VCs, in less time. VOIP isn’t intrusive in scrims because people are playing their lives and usually shut up when it’s needed, or their clanmates might bitch at them, or they all don’t give enough of a fuck and are just chatting between friends. Public VOIP is bad, a bunch of people will usually fuck around and spam the shit out of it with music, different languages, insults, [insert retarded shit], and will most likely close to never communicate properly, as I experienced on a few servers in the past.

As for voice commands, a bunch of other people (I can speak for them) and I’ll very very likely have them muted 4ever, and will probably stick to drowning the teamchats with ‘’^1FLANK WATCH UR BACK MONGOLOIDS’'-like messages, for many REASONS™, the first one being that pollacks don’t understand vocal english, and the second that plain text is both equally, or more efficient and less intrusive than VCs.

1 Like
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Except that reading requires more attention than listening, and chat spam filling up the screen can be very intrusive.

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Chat spam won’t prevent you from hearing those 2 corner camping rants walking towards you and getting ready to plunge their scythe-shaped-appendages in your ass. (Unless really heavy spam; often all messages are sent under half a sec so the bleeping isn’t even a problem.). Also, after reading a message once, it takes absolutely no attention and you’ll notice someone said flank with the periphery of your eyes. As for filling up the screen, that’s pretty anecdotic to me. It should disappear with rescaling/moving the chat, the space between lines is usually wide enough to fit a dretch.

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But chat spam can obstruct vision to some degree. Voice commands would not prevent you from hearing such audio cues neither, in the same way that voip (used in scrims the proper way as you described) would not distract from those cues.

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Usually people talk while camping in base, or in the middle of action. When they are scouting and try to be sneaky the channel becomes silent. Also in scrims you usually only have 3, maybe 4 or 5 in extremes, people on the channel, which all know eachother relatively personnally/well, in pub games you’ve got teams of 10 brazitards and polebags.

Not if you are adding them on top of the chat bleeping, and also if you want to hear them and understand the message over the sound of weapons & other aliens, you’ll still have to keep the volume high enough.

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is text chat usually sent at those times?

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It isn’t obstructive as long as it isn’t spammed. Text chat, especially binds, are relatively oftenly used in scrims. The chat in itself not so much unless they are setting up plans & shit while sitting in base and someone doesn’t have a mic. Also, scrim mode OP.

I’m not sure how Fk and Nos both behave in VOIP during scrims, from my experience using it too much is too distractive and obstructive.

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@maejong just let us test the thing, anyway I’m sure that a “Voice Commands: on|off” option will be available and you can turn them off. Also voice commands with sv_pure wont allow music or other annoying things you are imagining, at least wait for the test and refute it after.

Edit: btw the beeping sound of chat should be also an on|off option, I dislike chat sound, but grew accustomed to it since I couldn’t take it off.

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In CS:GO (and earlier Counter-Strike games), not only are there voice commands such as these, there is also VoiP. You can’t tell your team everything with just voice commands without there being tons of useless commands. For example, VoiP is faster for telling your teammates that the enemy Overmind is building in the Garden on Niveus than text chat is, and more people will pay attention to it. VoiP is also the only way to really ask for help in the middle of a fight since you can’t exactly type but you can easily hold down Shift (or whatever your VoiP bind is) to tell your team where you are and why you’re about to die. The problem with VoiP in Tremulous is I’m not sure if there’s a way to ignore individual people using it, it’s not enabled by default, and most people don’t even speak English well because the community is so small and spread out. One important command for VoiP that I can’t remember if Tremulous has is “voice_scale 0.0-1.0” for scaling voice chat volume.