Client Plugin System - Make Mumble Modable?

[megagoth1702]

First of all - my english skills are very basic, please keep in mind that everything I say I mean with the biggest respect towards mumble and I dont mean anything in a mean or arrogant way. :)

ArmA2 is a well known military simulator. A couple of months ago a Teamspeak3 plugin got released that allowed 3D positional ingame audio like mumble and also simulates a complete radio system in a really good way, different radios, different powers, distances, frequency falloffs, distortion and whatnot. This is possible because the TS plugin talks to a arma2 modification which is running in the background to get positions and everything needed, this realizes the zero delay psotional audio and dynamic radio communication.

- little interesting video of my communities training session, you can hear the positional audio and small radio tests, there are different radios, but in the end this are the basics of how the mod works, simple, but it gives ARMA2 gameplay SO much...

So basically we have the normal talking (either PTT or voice activation) which is 3D and then we have the "radio key", which is a 2nd key that works like a PTT radio.

Eversince people tried it out they didnt want to play without it anymore. Kinda like when I played Battlefield 2 with mumble for the first time. :)

As Teamspeak 3 is evolving and the DEVs are cutting out needed feautures for the ACRE mod because of their current re-write of TS3 the ACRE devs are stuck - either they stick around with the "old" TS3 versions forever, or the TS3 DEVS get some feautures back in there. It does not look good though.

I am a huge fan of mumble and suggested to try and use that instead, it is free, has outstanding qualities, is loved by it's community and has very responsive and active developers.

I want to try to establish a cooperation between mumble devs and ACRE devs because I think that IF(!) mumble decides to go anywhere near being modable it would profit a LOT and gain popularity, everyone loves mods, everyone loves doing something and if something is not possible on TS3's crappy re-write it could be possible on mumble.

I asked Jaynus, the main ACRE dev, what he would need from a VOIP tool to be able to make the system work and he says that currently from teamspeak3 he needs:

1. raw pre-process audio stream callback

2. post-process mix stream callback

3. access to 3d rolloff code callback

4. start/stop talking callback

5. user join / leave callback

6. Inter-client plugin messaging

7. thread safety on processing callbacks

8. ID for each client/player

9. a stream for each player

also:

"[16:32:58] jaynus: when it sends a startTalking

[16:32:59] jaynus: I need to know whos talking

[16:33:09] jaynus: and when they send me a audio stream, I need to know whos it is"

He says that currently mumble does not have any of this and if he would have those "functions" to do stuff with mumble he could port the mod over with no big hassle.

I dont understand ANY of this... But I am just trying to keep the ACRE modification alive since it's what arma2 folks dont wanna play without anymore.

Please, think about this. Is there ANY ANY ANY chance to get anything like this going? Even if it might sacrifice some ms of latency time...?

Thank you a lot for reading this and thanks in advance for any response!

[kissaki]

Good, you did manage to post. Just when I wanted to reply on IRC you were off 3mins.

First off; that video / mechanic is pretty interesting.

The positional audio is already possible with the Link plugin.

With changing contexts one can also do different channels for the different ppl. By providing fake positional data one could also do radios etc.

All the other necessary processing can be done in the game/mod, if it is not already.

The only thing, in my opinion, you can’t do is using radio and pos. talking at the same time, as one can only have one context.

So I don’t think we need anything more which would require a lot of work. I also don’t see other things we would need for a thing like in the video to happen other than maybe allowing multiple contexts.