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Voice Over IP for Linux Games?
fathom asks: "A few friends and I are attempting to move all of our gaming from the Windows platform to whatever distro of Linux we like. For the most part we've all had great success: just about everything we play is fine under Linux. However, there is one major drawback: we don't know of any software programs for Linux to do Voice Over IP like BattleCom, RogerWilco, and the GameVoice. Are there any programs out there like this for Linux?" Why limit to Linux? What Voice Over IP software can be used for any Unix that's flexible enough to work for other applications as well as games? We did a similar question about a year ago; has anything changed since then?
Speak Freely for Linux might be what you need.
Using Java for VoIP sounds cool, but how did you overcome the terrible latency issue with Java Sound? Or did you go with less than 100% pure Java approach (e.g., JNI). I tried to use Java for VoIP once, but found that Sun's Java Sound implementation in Java 1.3 was quite lousy in terms of performance. I measured a capture/playback latency of about 200 msec with a simple audio loop program. This is about an order of magnitude greater than the limit of what I would find acceptable. In my opinion, Sun's Java Sound API is seriously screwed up. You can't even do full-duplex operation under Linux with Sun's Java 1.3/1.4beta. Until Sun fixes the latency problem and some of the significant javasound-related BugTrac bugs, I'll stick with c/c++ for VoIP.
I figured you might want a response from a game dev so here goes.
1. Why would I care about portability? Aside from my own personal desire to run a game on Linux, there's no reason. It isn't going to increase my profits in any significant way, and it's going to take time away that I could be using to do other things (like fix outstanding bugs).
2. SDL doesn't really do anything 3D-wise as you imply. What support it does have is OpenGL-centric which means I can't use the latest DirectX 8 features. DirectX is pretty good these days. If you haven't messed with it recently you should take another look.
3. The argument about MFC / QT is fairly moot. My company, for the most part, uses neither. Almost everything we'd use MFC for is available in the STL. And the rest (GUI stuff) such as our menus and interface code are done in-house.
Overall the codebase I work on IS fairly portable. But there's more to putting out a port than just recompiling.
The whole argument is time vs. money. If the extra time spent will generate enough profits to offset it, then porting a game gets considered. In most cases, however, the extra time for porting it, testing the port, keeping the port version synced with the Win32 version, and supporting the port are not worth it (with the notable exception of porting a game to a console such as the PS/2 or X-Box).
game publishers need to get off their arse and provide a linux version of each release
I see you are another GNU/Linux zealot. I'm not sure if you realise a few things. First of all, if you speak/write like that to a game publisher and/or developer, you will piss them off and they'll just ignore you. I would just ignore you too. The publishers are not necessarily the ones that will provide a GNU/Linux version to a game. IF it is profitable to have GNU/Linux ports to games on a regular basis, it would be done. Most game developers and publishers have nothing against GNU/Linux. The publisher wouldn't care if they publiushed C64 games, as long as it made a profit. The problem is that not enough people will purchase them. Secondly, it can take a lot of work to port a game, depending on how heavily it depends on MS Windows APIs. Sure they could use cross-platform libraries such as Qt, wxWindows, and WineLib, however they will generally slow down the development process and make the game run slower. The point of making a game is to make money, not support some OS. I like GNU/Linux a lot, however from a game/profit point of view, GNU/Linux might as well be a TRS-80.
A scripting language (such as UT's) is hardly a JavaVM as far as memory is concerned.
I'm not so sure you know what a JavaVM is then. In windows its a collection of dll's that bytecode runs on top of. This alone doesn't make it a memory hog. go to the Tomcat website. Tomcat is a very nice web app server running on a JavaVM with a memory footprint of around 10 megs when processing jsp's, servlets and serving content. And much less when sitting idle waiting for requests.
Of course UnrealScript doesn't run in a "Java"VM, but it does run in a virtual machine.
And your python example is nice, but way too stripped down to realistically use it for a VoIP app. Like the original post said, most of the necessary stuff was already in the existing Java API's.
With your embedded vm, you would be starting from scratch
sipc
Video Conferencing for Linux
Voice over IP technologies are the same as those used for video conferencing, but with audio codecs only. The two VoIP/VideoConf standards for call setup and control are H.323 and SIP.
Speak-freely is a venerable program and there is both a Linux and a windows version which can intercomunicate, but its sound quality is pretty poor. `ohphone' gives much better sound quality and is easier to set up.
I was also able to use openmcu to provide rudimentary group conference services. This is also packaged for Debian.
BTW, with ohphone you can talk with windows Netmeeting users.
It's not the developers that are relevant here but management. Game developers by definition are a rather "nerdy" lot. Claiming that you need to have a developer with a special axe to grind is simply false.
Also, multiplatform programing subjects the development process to constraints that it might not otherwise have. These constraints actually ultimately benefit the development process by making it more structured.
Besides, a popular PC game is bound to be ported to "one of those other non-DirectX platforms" sooner or later.
Infact, EA's most profitable game platforms don't even run DirectX... (just read their annual reports)
The managers are the bottleneck, not the developers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I was purposely avoiding this thread, but you summed it up in a very nice way. Not as nice as I woulda been, but nice.. Thanks.. 8-)
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
*POP*
^
|
(Brain cells overloading)
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Petitions, lists of names, and pleas will not get you Linux games; money will. There's been a few high-profile games released with Linux versions, and their sales figures were abysmal.
True, almost all of these games had some weird circumstance that may have contributed to the poor sales figures (like release timing vs. win32 version, etc), but regardless of the circumstances, Linux games just don't sell.
And let's not forget the difficulty of deploying and supporting PC games on Linux. DirectX may not be perfect, but it's a huge, huge positive for Win32, especially in terms of installation and support -- and it's getting better all the time. OpenGL is nice as well, and cross platform to boot, but try providing a concise, clear set of instructions (or a single installer) that gets accelerated OpenGL running on Linux across a wide variety of consumer graphics cards. It's just not there. Also, I'm sure the various small differences between Linux distros can prove to be a headache as well.
A game platform needs some sort of central authority controlling the feature sets, the quality of drivers, and a consistent, usability tested installer. This central authority provides a lot of platform stability while sacrificing a small amount of absolute developer freedom. Microsoft provides this for Windows, and it works remarkably well considering the wide variety of hardware and software configurations out there. No one entity is centrally controlling and planning the gaming experience on Linux, and this is bad.
gzip doesn't really help much on audio. I wouldn't bother, since I'd only use this on a local network anyway. I guess if you're encrypting, then gzip doesn't add much overhead, though.
I actually have used something like this, but with netcat execing an mp3 decoder with stdout going to a socket. The other end of the socket is on a computer too slow to decode MP3s in real time, running rawplay with stdin coming from a socket.
The slow machine (a P75) has bad memory bandwidth too, so the 1.5Mb/s data stream still slows it down noticeably. Fortunately, I'm shuffling around my computers, and I'm retiring the P75.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
You might want to use Vorbis. (see www.xiph.org) The encode/decode functions are in a library, so it should be easy to use. You could look at the source code for oggenc to see what library calls it makes. Check out the docs at http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/doc/vorbisenc/ (some of the links in the encoding library API ref are 404, it seems...).
Another reason for using vorbis is that it will keep Fraunhoffer from suing you for using an MP3 encoder.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Look out for the Mac OS X versions... The combined markets of linux w/ OS X is exactly what linux needs to boost it's purchasing power in the market...
Hi All,
I wrote a trivial test app using the java sound API to make a VoIP program. It didn't implement any kind of standard, and it was completely insecure, but it worked after a relatively small amount of effort and it performed really well.
Java Sound passes just about everything through to the card so Java vs C didn't really come in to play much. All I did was decide that one machine was going to play server, and then everyone who connected to that machine got their byte streams mixed using the java Mixer and then sent back the mixed stream.
I'm up to my neck it projects right now, but if someone wanted to lead it up, I'd submit code and experience. Then we wouldn't have to worry about platform at all.
Jason
Also, porting to the Mac tends to be an afterthought. As in, let's worry about making the "real game" (on the primary platform) as freaknasty as possible, and think about possibly offloading the code on a Mac developer later.
And finally, regarding developers that wish they could be working in Linux, I presume you weren't referring to artists, level designers, testers or producers. ;^) Sorry to be brutally honest, but hey, remember the PS2 does run Linux kick-assedly (although it's only been available in Japan... so far)!
JOE LUNIX
You should make your upcoming game for Linux. It is technically
superior in many obscure ways.
PC GAME DEVELOPER
Sorry, we could only pick one operating system, and it turned out
to be Windows. Better luck next time.
Well, that _is_ a file transfer protocol, not to be confused with the file transfer protocol known as FTP... Not stupid, not a problem.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Hmmm... Maybe I wasn't clear enough.
If you tell me to use 'file tranfer protocol', I'll assume that you mean FTP (and is - for some reason - on a let's-expand-all-acronyms-trip). If you say to use 'a file transfer protocol', I'll probably start by trying ssh, as it is safer, then FTP if ssh doesn't work (and rsh never, ever).
In the same vein, if you are talking about VoIP, you are talking about that specific protocol. If you are talking about 'voice over IP', that could mean anything (well, as long as it's about voice over IP, that is). This is even more so for 'voice over IP' than for 'file tranfer protocol', as FTP is a far more well known, widely used term than is VoIP.
So, VoIP is a specific protocol, 'voice over IP' is a technology application with many potential specific solutions.
Then we could get into the whole area of commoditisation of terminology (think thermos), but that would lead this post far beyond what is reasonable...
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Hey, don't try to agree to things here! Where would academia (or open source) be if everybody suddenly started agreeing with each other? :)
Seriously, this is of course a rather pointless, unimportant argument, and (as a previous poster impolicated) this will all be sorted out through the normal language mechanisms of common usage. However, pointless, unimportant arguments can be rather fun (as nobody gets seriously offended), so here's my 2 cents:
The point made above that 'Voice over IP' was capitalized is an entirely valid one (and I totally missed that). When the poster talks of 'common usage', however, I feel it breaks down somewhat as (unlike FTP) the term simply isn't very common.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
BTW, I just wanted to say that its been a pleasure discussing things with a person who actually knows what they're talking about and doesn't dodge questions :)
Likewise.
I should probably email you with my email address, as these articles will be archived soon, preventing further comments (especially the antimatter propulsion one). Is your listed email address accurate (modulo spam-removal)?
Do you know why you wouldn't use an FFT for audio or video compression?
Out of curiosity, why?
Dabbling in signal processing and audio/video compression is one of my hobbies, though I'm only an amateur.
Loki had the same sort of problems when they ported Tribes2. They switched over to a freely available GSM encoding (from a university in Germany). It worked so well they're adding the code to the Windows version so you can chat between versions.
As a person who plays Tribes 2 alot, I am agaist putting the VoiceIP stuff into the game. Tribes2 VoiceIP is horiable and I know that other companies can do alot better job at the VoiceIP than the makers of Tribes2.
--
Linux O Muerte!
For the remote speaker, we tried running esdrec and then esdmon | lame ... | nc broadcaster-host:12345.
For the broadcaster, we joined the remote speaker into the stream by: nc -l 12345 | mpg123 -s - | esdcat.
The only problem was - it had a latency of about 5 seconds :)
With a text-to-speech system, you can get voice output without having to worry about bandwith issues, poor quality sound, or people without a microphone.
With Netrek's RCD macro system, it's pretty nifty the things you can do. For example, a player who is in a base is hurt, and pushes a single key for generic distress, causing everyone on their team to get a message like:
F0->FED Help(SB)! 0% shd, 50% dmg, 70% fuel, WTEMP! 9 armies!
But your client will speak, "Base hurt, weapon temped", because all those numbers are a pain to listen to. Later the base is ok, so he pushes the same key.
F0->FED Help(SB)! 99% shd, 0% dmg, 99% fuel, 1 army!
Now the client just speaks, "Base is ok". The macros can have "if" statements based on the relevant values, e.g. if(damage>50) "hurt" else "is ok". It's a lot faster to just push a key than to say the relevant information. And if you don't have all the noise, you don't lose text communication with your teammates.
BTW, if it wasn't obvious, this is a shameless plug.
Actually, he's not really being anal; for those of us who actually work with VoIP, people who randomly throw these terms around due to lack of knowledge annoy the living hell out of us.
:P
You'd probably get pissed off if I compared visual basic and C++, but to me they are more or less the same thing... so I avoid making those kinds of comparisons. do the same for us
EOM
http://www.vovida.org/
if you search around this website, you should come across a program called VOCAL, which is known to compile under linux, and provide some degree of VoIP support.
Guys, I wasn't trying to be anal, only educate people, because I know a lot of poeple are not aware there is an actual protocol called VoIP.
The comparison to ftp is entirely accurate.
I never said anyone was wrong, only that we should avoid confusion.
VOIP, or Voice Over IP, has come to mean a specific suite of protocols for providing telco integration, call setup/teardown, etc. We shouldn't use it as a generic term for 'speech over internet' anymore..
is this feature in the linux version as well?
Back in the day(94?), when DOOM was new, my best friend played it on his laptop, which had no sound, as was common at the time. That meant DOOM played over the crappy pc speaker on the laptop, which was just annoying. So he played with no sound. In a completly dark room, with no sound, it could be a very creepy game.
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Speech has more redundant information that most audio signals... A large factor in speech recognition is context.
How lossy are you willing to have this?
Written english contains something like 1.6 bits of entropy per character, meaning aproximately 10 bits per word. That can be pumped into a speech synthesizer and result in *very* lossy representation yet it maintains almost 100% of the meaning. (Ignoring fine details like inflection, etc.)
The best way, from a bandwidth point of view would be to detect phonemes and transmit only those, recreating the audio on the other side. This is a 'bit' CPU heavy for realtime...
At any rate, MP3 encoders might not be the best thing to use, they're tweaked to work well on music not speech. Likely you'll create a larger file than you need. Simply mask out all frequencies below 500hz and above 3000hz (I think) and apply a simple logrithmic encoding and you'll get fairly decent compression. It's also fast.
Nice to see you still posting to Slashdot, I had thought you weren't here anymore, being that you vanished in the middle of a thread... Or, do you not check your posts (slashdot.org/users.pl) to see if you've had any responses?
Sorry, I forgot I was talking to the person who proved Fermat's last theorem when she was three... Or was that only solve the traveling salesman problem in constant time... Oh, no, just an expert at audio compression, the only opinion that matters in any matter philosophical, and the first person to solve the Monty Hall problem.
I really wish you'd read the posts before you reply to them, you'd be a lot more relevant.
I never said MP3 wasn't usable, I said *MP3 ENCODERS* weren't a good bet. The MP3 encoders ARE tweaked towards music, that's what people tend to use them for, and what they are engineered to do well.
You made a comment about just finding one, tweaking it a bit, and having a great solution. The only open-source ones I've seen have been designed with "MP3s", or 128kbit music... If you used one of these you'd have a lot of tweaking to do to get decent compression from it.
It also doesn't fit the problem, as I saw it. This thread is about communication for a game. Barry White tends to perform very few concerts via Quake3 server.
While I'm at it, I think I should mention that telephone calls are compressed, usually with hard arbitrary cutoffs, and MuLaw encoding. Also, the whole point of logrithmic encoding is to have more resolution for quiet sounds, instead of the loud sounds. What you describe is exactly backwards from the way it works.
I assume though, that you find the quality of voice over the toll networks to be unbearably bad though.
You know, I did say "I think" after the numbers 500hz and 3000hz, that sounds right, but I may have misremembered. I even marked it as such. However, arbitrary cutoffs sound only marginally worse than a smoother cutoff, and usually only on specific benchmarks.
If you'd prefer a touch more CPU, then by all means, use a smooth falloff. I assumed speed was all-important because of the gaming aspect... I wouldn't want a 20% speed hit from audio encoding.
When you're doing audio compression, delaying the signal for 50 or 100ms is safe, and gives you all the context needed. I also understand about perceptive encoding, not that it's a huge technical achievment as you make it out to be.
As with the gun control thing... I think you've got an agenda and you can't see that it's not mine. I don't give a rat's ass about gun control in your country. I do however find it annoying when someone throws around a bunch of misused statistics and emotional ploys to deceive people as to the severity of the problem. If you really had a strong point, you wouldn't need to use a bunch of tricks.
And you don't really seem bitchier, you were more insulting in the other thread and just as quick to anger, without reading the post.
Don't waste your precious time on my account, if I want to have this kind of technical discussion I'll go talk with the marketing team.
I think the key in your question is the word 'good'...
Many encoders do this (arbitrary cutoffs, etc) but they aren't designed from the same point of view as an average encoder on a PC...
The reason simple *Law encoding is so popular in telephony is that it takes very little CPU time, on embedded CPUs without an FPU. It also produces a constant-sized output. That's very handy in networking with technologies like ATM where you can reserve bandwidth.
If you have CPU time to burn, even 10% of a modern CPU, then doing a perceptual encoding of speech in realtime gets your better quality at comparable sizes. But if you're trying to do this with so little CPU as to be transparent to the primary application (usually, in this discussion, a game taking 100% of the CPU) or on a tiny 8-bit CPU with 64 bytes of RAM, FFTs (etc) aren't an option.
The reason for the hard cutoffs is that they're usually done in hardware while the signal is still analog. I believe you can get current soundcards to do something like this while recording. If you can't, the work required to seperate out the unwanted frequencies through software means you should probably do a more advanced encoding.
If you're curious though, try an 8000hz voice sample with cutoffs where Gordonjcp suggested, then if your audio program supports it, try 8bit logrithmic encoding. (Not just 8-bit linear encoding, it's much worse.) It's definately not worth encoding music in, but it's not bad for voice. (After all, the telcos use it.)
What do you do for work? I have a feeling we're both in opposite ends of the same field.
Ummm... Go reread the post. I think it was humor.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Excellent. And with that DirectX 8 that is due out for Linux, he'll be all set!
Seriously, while a PITA for Linux, it will be great for 'Doze games.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
What you want is a nice SIP API. SIP will be your session layer in this case, allowing for standards based signalling between all the endpoints. In addition, it can be used to provide integrated instant messaging and even setup the gamimg session itself. Much progress has been made in the past year, and real implementations are starting to appear. The Vovida stack would probably be the best place to start, but a slightly higher level interface might be helpful for this sort of application (a GPL'd stack wouldn't hurt either, they use the Vovida license). For those interested in SIP checkout Henning Schulzrinne's SIP page @ http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/sip/
wake up and find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Rodger Wilco has a mac version as well
-- remove NOSPAM for actual email address -- Things are not as square as they may seem
We've used RAT from UCL quite sucessfully for VoIP calls in Linux (and between Linux and other platforms). It uses RTP for things like video and audio synching too and has handy gateway transcoding services available to it to translate between codecs. There's also a companion video client, VIC and a whiteboard system too.
Some of the releases are a touch tempremental but you should be able to make one of them work!
OS X is being touted as a OpenGL friendly desktop OS. While Mac game selections aren't as bountiful as Windows, the situation is better than in Linux. When games start appearing that are OS X native, the resulting sourcecode should be much easier to port the rest of the Unices. Granted the UI layer is completely different but the hardcore game engine components won't be so bad. Hell, it might even give GNUstep a large amount of interest. The GNUStep libraries would probably ease much of the pain of porting the UI stuff as well even if they aren't employed to backend 'nix desktops.
Games that are intended to sell well on the Mac and Windows have to be somewhat portable. The OS X environment resembles it's fellow Unices more than it does Windows. Of course, Microsoft can release DirectX libraries for OS X and not Linux..........
I've seen a lot of posts to effect that MacOS X is bad for Linux and will kill it's mindshare. OS X is no more bad for Linux than Linux is bad for the BSDs. Sure more people may use it as a desktop but it could mean that more commercial software comes to Linux (and the BSDs). A rising tide floats everyones boat.
ssh has the -C flag that uses the same compression algorithm as gzip. That might make the above scheme barely practical. I know, I know, it was a joke..
I will point out that ssh compression works wonders on a vnc session if the server is running sshd. There is a nice howto on the vnc page for tunneling the connection over ssh. Secure and faster....bonus!
If how about useing Speak Freely or Open Phone?
I'd like to step in and ask: where I can find that information?
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Eww... I'd never use DirectX for Linux.
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Depends on your soundcard drivers.. The SB live I have has drivers that let multiple streams into the card, so you could hear and have your quake audio...
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Mod this one up ;-)
Not only is this a cool project, they have good comparisons of open source implementations of telephony codecs..
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Yep. They've added a GSM VoIP codec in the latest patch which works on both platforms (Windows and Linux).
Petition, schmetition.
There are Linux game publishers out there. If their unit sales numbers were comparable to numbers for Windows games, then you'd see more publishers writing to Linux.
All the petitions in the world can't make an unprofitable situation profitable.
Um. Like yes it would.
Nevrar
Well, for the year 2001 you may want to use `ssh' instead of `rsh', and /dev/dsp instead of /dev/audio for Linux, but the idea is still the same ...
Almost as much fun as making the Sun next to you belch while the newbie is using it!
ad
Well excuse my caps! They were in deference to the replied-to post! (Oh and bidirectional, compound that implied condition as another error as well)
Not logged in, guess who.
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Wait, WTH is going on with the cookies?
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I use it all the time. (GF in CA, I'm in MI) The Linux version can be a bitch on some soundcards (ES137x and S3 SonicVibes) compared to the Windows version.
What else to say? It'll do multicast conversations, and coexist nicely in LPC10 mode with Quake on a 56K so long as you don't mind not being to hear Quake save the CD audio.. The delay can be unbearable. If I yell into the mic, I can hear myself five seconds later some nights. Others, it's nearly instantaneous.
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If you're referring to the ohphone that is a part of the OpenH323 stuff, you're only right because of the bitrates involved. The largest amount of bandwidth you can eat with SF is about equivalent to what you consume using G.723, one of the better compression ratio H323 modes.
Also, using H323 as a carrier would mean you need at least a 1/4 cycle (You are only sending or receiving data 1/4 of the time) peak throughput equivalent to a capped cable modem; I've used Speak Freely on as little as a 9600 baud modem in 100% cycle operation.
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GSM, the standard used in cell-phones, works fine with less than 1/5th of that bandwidth (bidirectional in 2.4-2.8kbps, will do realtime compression in a 486, and there are freely available GSM compressors.
.96kbps, but they sound horrible. in comparison.
There are also public domain encoders for the military voice standards, LPC and LPC10. Those are usable in as little as
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If there was a Linux port of Half-Life, then this upcoming voice feature would kick butt. We wouldn't need these voice utilities.
:)
Off-topic, this upcoming Spectator feature would be sweet as well.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I was reading today that the next patch for Half-Life will include funky little voice communication.
The article is on Gamespy, but b'dern it, Links is not letting me grab the text with my mouse. Um ... I think this is the link.
Seriously, if you're speaking and your voice is being carried to it's destination via IP, then it's Voice over IP. I don't think anyone is confused by that.
I have used this and can attest to it working. It not oly worked, but worked fine connecting to a netmeeting user as well. So it is also viable for connecting to window users
Um, hello? Have you ever PLAYED Diablo 2? That makes EverQuest look NICE.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
I noticed that the Linux Tribes2 seems to have some GSM thing built right in. Haven't fiddled with it yet, as I think my Microphone is dead and the game seems to run much too slowly on my system anyway (Time to spring and get that geforce2 *sigh*...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How about Speak Freely for Unix?
I have played with it a bit, and it seemed to work, but I haven't actually used it for gaming yet.  It didn't seem as simple to configure and use as some of the windoze voice comm programs, though.
I know when I was looking for tools like Net2Phone and Dialpad.com for linux I found a few SDKs on Freshmeat for VoIP. However, none of them were geared toward gaming such as Rogerwilco and Battlecom. I would love to find a good cross platform "game-geared" VoIP system. Btw - only RWBS is for Linux - no linux clients that I know of
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
TPJ had an IP phone in ~70 lines of perl - this should be adaptable to your purposes, I'd think...
I've been toying around with a streaming MP3 system that would allow for unlimited conference sessions to take place, even if the client is on a modem. great for team games, and you can use as low as 16kbps of your total bandwidth to do it.
The central server has to have some pretty processing power and bandwidth, but it'd work.
I can write the linux server and client, but I don't know anything about programming witht he soundcard in windows.
Damn. If I'm not going to be able to say all that stuff that articulately(sp?), they should at least give me mod points to give him.
jred
www.cautioninc.com
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Hey just found this:
http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/multimedia/software/
Its called R.A.T. or Robust Audio Tool
(Rod Toll of Shadowfactor is an acquaintance of mine, and he and the Shadowfactor team are now at Microsoft).
but, to date it hasn't been done well.
... in the case of games, Valve's next patch to the Half-Life engine will contain code to do this very thing. It should be interesting to see if a company has more luck trying to write this code directly into their product, rather than replying on other companys to create add-ons (like BC and RW).
Roger Wilco is notorious for using up resources and being near-unhearable and Battlecom, while pretty solid, also has problems with static creeping into the transmission (interestingly, ShadowFactor is about to discontinue Battlecom).
One solution is simply to build Voice-Over-IP into the app
_f
That's like saying that any protocol that transfers files over the Internet should be called 'File Transfer Protocol' and is equally stupid.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
So if I tell you to send me a file using 'file transfer protocol' you're going to assume that I mean good old RFCd FTP, port 21, all that crap? Or are you going to assume I mean HTTP? ICQ file send? MSN file send? SMTP MIME? scp? rcp? Zmodem over telnet? The poster above IS saying that Voice Over IP, the protocol used in all sorts of hardware and software, is NO different from 'voice over IP', or any form of protocol involving TCP/IP and transmission of voice. By his defintion, VoIP could involve FTPing sound files. VoIP is a specific technology, with a specific implementation. Hell, Linksys's new Cable/DSL router has a VoIP option; plug a regular phone into the assigned jack, and tell people to point their VoIP software at the router's IP address, and if somebody calls, it rings the phone.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Grr... ;)
:)
That'll teach me not to submit without proofreading first
The first line is not talking about DCTs, but DFTs, for one. Sorry about the typos, too
Mental note to self:
Plaese porff raed.
- Rei
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
BTW, I just wanted to say that its been a pleasure discussing things with a person who actually knows what they're talking about and doesn't dodge questions :)
- Rei
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
Sure is :)
:)
Though, if you want a fairly speedy response, _NOSPAM_krpease@collins.rockwell.com (my work address) is probably better (again, modulo the _NOSPAM_).
- Rei
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
Have you considered taking a gpl'ed mp3 encoder and ripping out some of its (slow) frequency masking and hearing sensitivity calculations? That would take almost no effort. You'll take a quality/size hit (unimportant for speech), but it should be fast enough for real-time encoding without a significant CPU signature; then all you have to deal with is streaming. Also, given that this is speach we're dealing with, you can expect most of the frequencies in question to *not* be masking each other out or be outside the human hearing range (what point would there be to humans being able to make sounds like that? ;) ).
- Karen
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
You could just hack your own protocol to do it Why not do it the open standards based way? Use SIP - it is good for voice and there is substantial work to build instant messaging and presence stuff on it. Someone, sipforum I think, showed Quake with SIP. I have worked on the SIP stuff at www.vovida.org and it is open source.
A guy called Simon Morlat apparently hacked a VoIP solution for Linux together.
Some spoilage: LinPhone is a web-phone, (or Voice over IP software), running under Linux. It lets you phone to your friends using IP networks such as the internet...
It has the capacity to eventually work together with other VoIP software on other platforms (cause they're using a common protocol I guess).
Try RAT (robust audio tool) too.
No spoilage this time (cause redundantWill this matter once games begin including voice as a feature within the game? Tribes 2, for example, includes its own built in voice communication system.
Granted, external programs like GameVoice and Roger Wilco offer some additional feature, but will the average gamer care? I would expect every game that has a team play element to include its own voice technology within a year or two.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
If only Miranda America Online would just port a version of ICQ for Linux, that includes ICQPhone, it would be something that Linux users would want to use...
I've tried both Roger Wilco and Battletech.. and ICQPhone has them both beat pretty good... it sounds like I'm using a regular phone with ICQPhone.
The ITU has standardized on the G.728 (16 kbps) and G.729 (8 kbps) voice compression algorithms, which have been shown to work better than GSM, especially in concatenated situations (i.e. one hop with G.728 compression, another hop with the same or another kind of compression). Plus they have known, bounded CPU requirements.
Tell us more.
One simple rule for its versus it's
I'd debate this point. First, the article text specificially said "Voice over IP" (with voice being capitalized for no other reason). That, to me, implies a proper name rather than a general technology label, not unlike if someone where to say "File Transfer Protocol".
Second, the phrase "Voice over IP" is frequently used when referring to (what you call) "VoIP". For some reason, you seem to use "file transfer protocol" (FTP) versus "a file transfer protocol" (anything to move a file), but create an artificially more relaxed standard where the expansion of "VoIP" is the generic term. This simply isn't the case.
Also, while I hesitate to use pointing out popular usage as a means of winning this argument (and I'm sure it'll come back and bite me when the next cracker vs. hacker argument pops up), a quick google search on "voice over IP" appears to turn up links that're all about VoIP, rather than "use the Internet to talk to your friends". Again, while I'm loathe to normally invoke the popular definition, it's worth pointing out that it seems to coincide with the technical one, providing a much more compelling case.
Overall, I suspect your problem is that you've fixated on the fact that "voice over IP" is an overly broad term that, when analyzed, could apply to a broader set of items than what it's actually intended for. On the other hand, we've already got the afore-mentioned example of "file transfer protocol", we know that a "personal video recorder" is a TiVo-like device rather than just any video recorder owned by an individual, we know that a "television" (literally: far seeing) isn't just any device that lets you see far away -- telescopes and binoculars certainly aren't part of that group. When it comes down to it, a name is really just an arbitrary designator that just happens to usually have some relevance. If you want names that're complete descriptions, you might want to switch from English to German.
"If I were more of an avid gamer, I would demand that software companies make their games function on linux systems just as good as on windows boxes. I can see it now: the OS Equaltiy Act."
I don't mean this to sound like a flame, but that is ridiculous. You can't expect developers to do such a thing. They develop effectively for whatever platform they know how to. Why not BeOS? Why not Solaris? Are you also upset that console games aren't running on Linux as well? Video game makers probably enjoy what they make, but they are also getting paid for it. Right now, making games for Windows makes money. So they do.
{sigh} Don't get me wrong. I like Linux, and having more games for it would be nice, but without market share, you either need to dual-boot, or deal without that game.
There is a fine line between having a strong like for an OS, and zealotry.
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
http://lumumba.luc.ac.be/jori/jvoiplib/jvoiplib.ht ml.
Don't know if it's really what the person is looking for, but it's worth a shot.
>To the point: game publishers need to get off >their arse and provide a linux version for each >release.
Ridiculous! You take a community of people who essentially want Free Software, and think that software should be Free and Open, combine that with gaming capabilities (I'm talking API-wise and compatibility wise) behind that of windows and you get....*drumroll* TERRIBLE SALES!
and that's why most game developers don't care about ports.
With the exception of the more "nerdy" (and I mean that in the BEST possible way! Being a computer nerd is a great thing) minded developers such as Carmack, most people don't give a hoot.
Scott
I cited Carmack as a developer who is into linux. Look at other prominent developers, such as Sweeney--they don't care nearly as much. Nor do most game developers i think. MOST people don't need or want to have to have an opinion in the OS wars. It's enough to make money and do what works.
Whether the constraints of multiplatformism are benefitial? Most likely (looking at it structurally, and assuming that at least ONE profitable and worthwhile port will be made). However the platform that makes up for this cost deficit, ISN'T *nix.
The "bottlenecks" are managers--I guess you are correctin saying this, though i wouldn't use the term bottleneck. Programmers create a product, managers make money.
Scott
I have tried several voice over IP programs for Linux. Most users need to be able to talk with windows users of Roger Wilco, Netmeeting, Buddyphone or something else... I have tried Speak Freely and it's rather good, but the windows version is far too complicated for most users..
Excellent, I was hoping to get a reply from a developer.
1) Do you use Linux much? Have you used it for any game/non-game development? It is definitely capable of running games. Windows is only worthy of games because of the huge marketshare, not because it is a better gaming platform. It is also obvious that the Linux community wants games. Are you part of that community? Do you not agree?
2) Still, using OpenGL would make a Mac port easier. Choosing OpenGL over DirectX is mainly a portability decision. Do you not want your game to run on Mac either?
3) True. Any game worth its salt has its own GUI library. I meant to bring up Qt as a reference to application developers, broadening my argument for crossplatform programming to include all types of software. I must say Qt may be a good in-house tool at a game company though, for developing map editors, game editors, etc if you have a heterogenous development environment. It may encourage a crossplatform mindset in your company as well. Do any of your developers wish they could be working in Linux?
I understand what you mean though. It all comes down to whether or not you consider portability important, and whether or not it would turn a profit.
That's why there is SDL. It uses DirectX on Windows and DRI on X (as well as many other graphics layers / OS's).
I think the problem with Windows developers in general is that they don't think of coding crossplatform in the first place. It's easy to understand why: they are taught DirectX and MFC, and Windows has a huge percent of the desktop market. Also, some games are coded so horribly (compare the duct-tape-that-is-EverQuest to any Blizzard product) that porting certain games look like they would be a nightmare.
On the other hand, I think Linux developers are more trained to code portably. With all the unix flavors out there, source portability is already a must. It also seems that these developers care about porting to Windows. Many apps for X are available on Windows (like a lot of the Gtk stuff), but not the other way around.
So Linux developers actually care about portability, but Windows developers do not. Maybe we can convince them to change their ways?
Surely the Windows developers out there don't thoroughly enjoy Windows-only programming, do they? I've used DirectX, and it was ludicrous. It isn't direct at all (Come on, DirectMusic? DirectPlay? Direct is just a buzzword..) and the classes are a mess. I haven't heard much good about MFC either, but I've heard only good about Qt (and I've used both).
Qt works on Windows. There's no reason to use MFC. Yes it does cost money, but aren't we talking about real game companies here? SDL works on Windows. There's no reason to use DirectX "directly" (whatever that means). You know how long it would take to port Windows apps/games to Linux that were all written in Qt and SDL? All of a recompile.
I wasn't able to get Speak Freely to operate with an echo server. There is no evidence of a connection.
The local echo loopback feature works fine.
Could it be that there are problems being behind a NAT firewall?
Bush's education improvements were
VAT/RAT for audio SDR For session directories Now all you need is a multicast tunnel into your networks and it all just works. Now lets see These tools were old 5 years ago, so I guess nothing new here, but they work great on any Unix that I have ever used
There is a pretty comprehensive list of VoIP and multimedia applications at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/rtp and http://www.cs.columbia.edu/sip (under 'implementations') These applications are all interoperable, at either the media or call set up level. Among others, our sipc application runs on Linux (and Solaris, FreeBSD, etc.).
Here's what you want in VOIP games: If you whisper into the mike, the players far away can't hear you, but the players closeby can. If you scream into the mike, the players far away can hear you, the players closeby will hold their ears, animals will run off, and loose snow will fall. If you chant a spell into the mike, you'll cast it.
Might be a good idea to look into Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3 for streaming becuase it by default uses VBR which would be better for bandwidth...and it's open source which makes it much nicer not having to pay those German's. www.vorbis.com
-----
Kenny Sabarese
Left Ear Music
AIM: kfs27
irc.openprojects.net #windowmaker
Kenny Sabarese
www.kennysabarese.com
Its targeted at game programmers, to be integrated in-game, as a cross-platform alternative to Microsoft's DirectPlay and DirectPlay voice, but could be used to do a stand-alone VOIP app as well (though I am not aware of any currently).
You are right, game publishers do not see much of a demand for Linux games and they do need to see interest. Interest in the form of cash money for games purchased. Game publishers are not Open Source developers and need revenue, not petitions, to pay for development. The only signatures that will help commercial Linux game publishers are the Treasury Secretary's signature on legal tender.
I've been playing this game for two months now and I've only once seen the little chatty mic icon once during that whole time. Not too many people using it...
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Linux would have to get in line way, way, way behind Mac, anyway...
And just how much effort would developers have to make to ensure they don't end up with 1 in 3 calling their help line to make sure they don't have to do Linux's equivalent of making sure you have at least 593k of ram free, set dos=high, umb, whatever, boy this game sucks can't they even make it install without me having to edit all these files myself what a stupid system!
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Upon further investigation, it was determined McVeigh engaged in extremely risky behavior that would likely and knowingly lead to his eventual death, so the death was ruled suicide.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
> These [Direct3D and DirectX] libraries are not portable
By intent.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
"HawkVoice (http://www.hawksoft.com/hawkvoice/) is a game oriented, multiplayer voice over network API released under the LGPL, with support for Linux/Unix and Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000."
It has 7 different codecs from 64kbps down to 1.2kbps and can even do encryption of the stream.
Part of it is HawkVoiceDI which is a low level packet & utility library if all you want is the codecs without the fluff.
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
If there is no money involved, then why would someone make it? Nowadays, due to inflation, time is money. without money, you can't run your computers to make free software.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
-Matt
I notice all the gaming VoIP software is PC only. But all the talk here is about Linux. Any software available for the Macintosh?
Well, voip isn't very complicated. If you're unsatisfied with the currently available solutions like those available at LinuxTelephony or OpenPhone you can always roll your own. I know I'd lay down a couple bucks for a satisfactory one, so you can probably sell it and make a couple quick bucks from your effort, too. Stop whining and make a difference!
Being Liberal should be a Crime!
I wonder how succesfull it would be to have such a 'gamenet', any reactions? Obviously it would be hellishly difficult since playing games is something entirely different than IRC (chat) or Napster (filetransmission on top of IRC).
Is an opensource SIP stack. It's an overkill if you just want to chat during games, but it's there.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
To the point: game publishers need to get off their arse and provide a linux version for each release.
This is the only way I can see we can solve the problem of not having the "latest and greatest" windows games on Linux. Also, by the time one completes porting a game from Windows to Linux, it is likely the game is passe (except maybe for halflife (the game will not die)).
Is there a petition I can sign? A list of game publisher email addresses to send an email to? I think part of the problem is that game publishers do not see a demand on Linux platforms. Perhaps if publishers were communicated a significant interest, then they should at least think about providing for Linux versions.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
I am amazed at how you and your friends have migrated from windows to linux. I get MUCH higher framerates in linux quake than in windows.
I'm not sure where to find linux VoIP software (at least open source, anyway) If I were more of an avid gamer, I would demand that software companies make their games function on linux systems just as good as on windows boxes. I can see it now: the OS Equaltiy Act.
All software must work equally well on all operating systems, regardless of race, ethnic background, or the amount of money that was put into its development...
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
You are exactly right!
I can't belive that someone thought I was serious. Making software woirk on all OSes would be a HUGE pain.
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Most modern computer games uses Direct3D and DirectX a great deal. These libraries are not portable, and they are what most developers have experience with. You are asking, in essence, for developers to either have two devteams working in parellel, or one team programming both versions. In either case, the game company can either completely rewrite the game engine for each OS, or it can create one highly portable engine. The problem with the latter option is that DirectX in particular really is the backbone of Windows gaming. It would be very hard to convince developers to give it up, and I'm not sure "DirectX free" windows games could match the perfomance of their windows-only counterparts.
Alos, have you considered the expense of training all these developers in Linux? Remember, most of them do not have Linux experience.
Finally, when you consider that Windows controls 90something percent of the desktop gamer market, it just doesn't make sense for a company to pour massive resources into developing Linux and Windows games simultaneously that only a relatively small number of people would buy. At least a dedicated porting company like Loki doesn't have to worry about graphic artists, level designers, story writers, or game design as a whole.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I wrote this a while back - seems like some of this may be a reality...
Sometime in the near future first person and third person games will combine to form a more spectator like environment. The public spends how much $$$ on sports entertainment? Soon a game will come out with a much wider spectrum of roles. Imagine playing Unreal as a coach that has fly and invisible powers, but can't participate in the carnage. You could only instruct players on your team. Your view would be like Black & White - player names\statistics above characters, ability to see through walls, ability to talk (voice over IP) directly to players and advise their movements. Clans will turn into teams with one distinguished leader\coach. Possibly owners as well.
Spectators would come in different flavors. Karma points to those who notice/follow the best action. Spectators would work their way up to music coordinators, camera\view operators, announcers, and finally referees. Players and coaches have the option of listening to the announcers. I see this environment replacing sports as we have it today. Eventually, all those football, soccer, baseball, hockey players are just going to be too boring to watch. We'll want something quicker with more carnage. Imagine it: Unreal Tournament broadcasts on TV.
Remember children - there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.