Suggestions for Mumble

[Ace42]

They cant, but they can understand an arabic guy speaking english,

I see, so your argument that it is realistic that, on all the servers I'll be playing on, the foreign factions will be speaking English, and as such you'll be able to follow perfectly their conversations and react accordingly?

[CareBear]

I use B for mumble, V for voip and I changed the commander communication key to H. I tried to set 2 different PTT, but, actually, mumble doesn't allow to have 2 different keys for the same task, so I think the DEV behind the PR MUMBLE version will have to take a look at that.




Sooooooo, what do you think ?

what do you mean? i have 2 keys for the same action, one for when im infantry and one for flying, they both seem to work xD

[=Romagnolo=]

Well, I didn't try with the new version, only with a old one.

But, what do you think about the main idea, bear ?

[AnRK]

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HEY HEY HEY HEY GUYS, new revolutionary idea here

As I already see in the actual games with a lot of mumble users, some still prefer to use the VOIP than MUMBLE. So I was wondering what could be done to force the players to use more mumble than voip. Here is what I came along:


Make 2 bottons push-to-talk (PTT) for mumble. One will be mumble only and the other will be the actual "B" key.

WHY THAT? should you be asking...

simple!

Imagine in real life, if there are a 6 man squad and all of them with radios in the same frequency. If they are next to eatch other, they, of course, can use the radio, but it will look and sound retard because they will hear the voices of eachother directly and from the radio at the same. That will cause a lot of unnecessary noise and confuse, so it will be a lot easier just to use the mumble and the radio only if necessary (when far from eachother).

I use B for mumble, V for voip and I changed the commander communication key to H. I tried to set 2 different PTT, but, actually, mumble doesn't allow to have 2 different keys for the same task, so I think the DEV behind the PR MUMBLE version will have to take a look at that.




Sooooooo, what do you think ?

Not to shun your idea or anything too much, cos it is a good idea, but I think as this gains popularity and there are more features in a more PR orientated codec/version of mumble, servers (at least the more hardcore ones) will probably begin to turn off their VoIP facilitates so people will have to use it. If the DEVs get most of what they want out of mumble then perhaps turning off VoIP could even become part of the server licence.

And I was under the impression that your average English or American soldier couldn't understand overheard conversational arabic fluently... Funny, that.

Like Johnny said I think it's more realistic to hear what the enemy are saying and comprehend it then to hear nothing at all. I still reckon that there must be some way of having a basic voice scramble on the opposing team however, wish Jaymz would post here already!

[Tartantyco]

How do you get to that conclusion? I was under the impression that physics doesn't care what nation you are from, or what you believe.

-Which is why I've consistently advocated seperate channels for teams. You can't whisper because they'll still hear garbled noises quite far away and then there's numerous building/vehicle issues as you said, and they're from completely different countries, no way would they be able to understand what the other team is saying under all the noise, accents, pressure, abbreviations, etc, that would be present IRL. It also pressures people to use in-game VOIP instead because they don't want to give away their positions/presence, completely undermining the entire point.

.........

[Rudd]

Occlusion:
Sure, voices should be a little quieter with a wall in the way. But only a little. Sound does not travel in straight lines, but is propagated in a concentric-circle-like manner and can also travel through surface boundaries. Hence, you will still hear someone on the other side of a wall.

I don't see how that can be brought in since that doesn't seem to actually work for game sounds ingame....

When speaking a different language, you know damn well that you can still be heard by other people. How else could people know more than 1 language otherwise? So, no matter what language the other team speaks, you should (realistically) hear them. Probably in an ungarbled fashion, infact.

yea, but how many soldiers in a squad are likely to be able to speak fluent arabic/whatever?

[Tartantyco]

Not only is it an unconvincing argument, but it backfires.

-That wasn't arguing against not being able to hear the enemy, it was arguing against you being able to understand what they say.

-About them not being able to hear you; you have physical obstructions and ambient sound to make that unfeasible. Just a simple experiment: Go outside and yell something during the day. Then go outside and yell the same thing during the night. You'll be heard a lot further during the night because you don't have as much noise around you from animals, other people, vehicles, machinery, etc. Now, how much noise do you think there is in a war zone? It's simply not feasible because it's biased towards an extreme, and extremes aren't realism. It's like saying that because there's some way of destroying a tank with just one hit of something in reality this should also be so in-game, not accepting the fact that there are very real limitations the software.

-This is why there's cooldown timers for weapon aim when you change stance or move around, not because it's that way in reality(At times I can stop, aim, and fire accurately in one second) but because that is the average in reality(Most of the time it takes more than one second) or it more accurately simulates reality(Suppression is a good example of this). You have to comprehend that just because something is a certain way in reality doesn't mean that it translates that reality into the game, because game engines are not perfect representations of reality and as such an individual realistic feature does not necessarily improve realism in-game, in fact it may break it.

-Mumble does not mirror sound realistically(Sound is vibrations traveling through the air, Mumble transmits audio from one client to another) and as such you cannot expect it to behave realistically in-game.

[Tartantyco]

But which extreme is more representative of RL? Considering a LOT of maps are forests, grasslands, open streets, deserts, etc.

-And all contain ambient sound, human made or from the environment.

Forced mumble use is not one of the features that risks breaking the game, as many, many people can testify to, having had the best rounds ever when mumble was used by everyone.

-Until you have engineered a way for Mumble to function like in-game VOIP does now in addition to everything else there's no point in talking about forced mumble(Something the DEVs have said won't happen). What we're talking about here is using Mumble where in-game VOIP is an alternative. What happens then is that people will choose in-game VOIP over mumble because one of the primary uses of mumble is negated by the fact that the enemy can hear you as well. If my squad makes contact and I send two guys to flank then they can use mumble to communicate with each other and the guys still engaged can use mumble at the same time without flooding VOIP. If the enemy can hear those two guys then the entire point is lost. If the enemy can hear you on mumble, and vice versa, then there is a decided tactical advantage to using in-game VOIP instead of Mumble and therefore you negate the entire advantage Mumble has and relegate it to a de facto Teamspeak.

And comparing it vBF2 VoIP? You are not going to argue that vBF2 VoIP is more realistic are you?

-It is realistic insofar as if six people had radios then that's how it would work. You're arguing that something that doesn't work like sound, Mumble, should work like sound, and that's just stupid. Additionally, in-game VOIP is instrumental to squad cohesion, it is again an example of something that due to the constraints of the platform, game engine, etc, must be implemented to achieve a realistic goal.

-You have to understand what I've been trying to explain to you this whole time, that something that is made to be or appear realistic will not necessarily be realistic in-game. You're just stuck on the fact that in reality both you and the enemy can pick up and process sound, along with the rest of the animal kingdom, while simply discarding the other blatant facts that I have already explained to you, such as speaking volume, language, accents, jargon, code, vehicle sounds, gunfire, ambient sound, technical constraints of mumble, organizational limitations that require communication to be overcome, human physiology, etc, that all counter your argument.

-Here's an article you should read:

Tunnel Vision and Tunnel Hearing -- FSI

[TheFaceCC]

i got a question, not really a suggestion but does mumble support voice proximity? for both teams not only your own.

ive always wanted this in a game so i can hear the other team

would force people to use radio silence, which adds more realism (until your being shot at of course)

[AnRK]

I assume you haven't got mumble yet, or at least haven't used it for very long if you have. Hearing the enemy is already part of the setup though (if your in the right channel and stuff that is)

[TheFaceCC]

I assume you haven't got mumble yet, or at least haven't used it for very long if you have. Hearing the enemy is already part of the setup though (if your in the right channel and stuff that is)

yea i havent used it much, but if this is implemented in pr this feature will stay in? i hope at least, is there also a way to tell if there the opposition or do they just sound like they are speaking english, would be cool to add some kinda feature so the opposition to coalition forces speak in their languages and to make it a little fairer for the us and brits make them sound like gibberish

[AnRK]

...we thought that perhaps if there a way you could have a simple scramble effect on the opponents speech, so obviously you can hear that there are enemy but don't have a clue what they are saying. Finding an appropriate way of doing that without making it sound like your enemy are on a high dosage of hallucinogenic drugs may be hard, but there's probably some way of doing it well.

Like that? There's been pretty much everything that I could want or not want from mumble discussed in here so far already, much like with the rest of PR in the rest of the suggestions forum...

That's IF it were possible though. Still not heard from Jaymz (lead - or is that only? - sound developer for PR) in this thread yet as to what might be able to make it in and what's a bad idea etc, but he's understandably busy at the moment.

[McBumLuv]

Bump.

Was wondering if the ingame BF2 nick could be displayed in mumble as well, at least for administration use, though it could be a consideration for further down the line.

[Sgt. Mahi]

There should be an option for "mute/deafen everyone except this user" when u right click on a mumble user.

[ShockUnitBlack]

My suggestion:

First, I think everybody who has played with on the 128 player server with any degree of seriousness agrees that, with the new twelve-men-to-a-squad cap, the effective management of any unit reaching that limit is going to become a nigh-impossible task for whomever the unfortunate player is put in charge of organizing the Twelve Angry Men under their belt - who will, naturally, all be taking shots at each other's mothers over a clogged-up VOIP.

Second, everybody also seems to be more-or-less in consent that the fix to this is:

A) The inclusion of a fireteam system, however rudimentary.
B) An overhauled VOIP system (read: an overhauled PR Mumble).

Anyway, I’d like to throw out a proposition for a system that would largely kill both the above birds with one stone while at the same time adding a much-improved Mumble VOIP system into the game. For starters, here’s a picture of my ?improved? Mumble to give you an idea of what I’m thinking of. I’ll explain each feature in detail later on.

Team 1
Squad 1
Squad Leader
Ytman

Bullseye
Rudd

Fireteam Leader
Napoleon

Viking
Rath
Squad 2
Squad Leader
Bufl4x

Discojedi
Hotfranc
Fireteam Leader
Diemortal

Sushisacha
Imchicken

Squad 3
Squad Leader
Tman

Animalmother
Tomking
Fireteam Leader
Sporanix

Wickens
Majorissues

... Same set up thing through to squad nine, and then the same thing for the other team.

Okay, first thing you’re going to notice is the separate squad, squad leader channels, and then the new squad fireteam leader channel. For squad one, for example, Ytman is both the squad leader and the leader of squad one’s “fireteam one” (the SL does double duty here). Fireteam one is composed of Ytman (again, its leader), Bullseye, and Rudd. Squad one’s fireteam two is lead by Napoleon, and composed of Napoleon, Viking, and Rath.

The fireteam leader would be an entirely unofficial position beyond that he (or she) sits in their respective squad’s fireteam leader slot. What is currently squad chat becomes fireteam chat, with the fireteam leader receiving comms from all their team’s members - making it roughly four men to a comm. channel rather than eight or so (remember, all VOIP is run through Mumble here rather than BF2, so coding isn’t as big a problem). Squad VOIP would still exist, except now it would be, by default, bound to some obscure key-combo so people are only using it over fireteam VOIP when they need.

If you’re in a fireteam-leader mumble channel, there would be VOIP key that would serve as a direct line to your squad leader, and if you’re a squad leader, the same key would dial up your fireteam leader. Otherwise, the current system would remain as-is. Here’s a possible list of Mumble control keys (BF2 keys aren’t used) -

Mousewheel Down - Local Mumble speech (all).
Numpad + - Speak to your squad’s fireteam leaders (fireteam and squad leaders only).
Numpad Enter - Speak to all squad members (all squad members).
Left Alt - Speak to all squad leaders (squad leader only).
Y - Speak to fireteam members (all fireteam members).

Another thing I’d like to see implemented is the following commands, which are all fairly self-explanatory.

Left Alt + F1, F2, F3, F4, (to F9) - Speak exclusively to the SL of squad 1, 2, 3, 4, (to squad 9). EG: To speak with the SL of squad seven, hold down Left Alt and F7. To speak with the SLs of squad 8 and 4, hold down Left Alt and F8 and F4.
Left Alt + 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 (to 9) - Speak exclusively to the key number’s corresponding squad member. EG: To speak with the fourth squad member in your squad’s Mumble channel, hold Left Alt + 4. To speak with squad members 3 and 8, hold down Left Alt + 3 and 8.

The first command would ensure that the squad leader channel isn’t filled with information eight out of nine SLs don’t need to hear. The second command has more-or-less the same principle backing it.

The other thing this system would need would be either:

A) A Mumble that could identify what server, team, and squad the player’s in.
B) A toggleable Mumble overlay that a player can easily use to get where they need to be without minimizing the game.

Now everybody and their dog’s going to be talking about low Mumble usage, full integration, and mandatory install and use rules, etc. I’m not going to get into that. People have been going over that for years now and there’s nothing I can add to the debate. I support it and it would be necessary for an advanced system like this to be possible, but that’s hardly my call. This is just what I think would be a good system.

Thanks for reading!

[DankE_SPB]

Left Alt + F1, F2, F3, F4, (to F9)

Comms with squad 4 will be awesome

I suggest you to wait for new mumble to come out, it will address quite a few problems and add some useful features