Added initial pile of VoIP documentation.

voip-readme.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,193 @@
+ioquake3 VoIP support documentation.
+Last updated 6/25/2008 by Ryan C. Gordon.
+
+There are two ways to use VoIP in ioquake3. You can either use Mumble as an
+ external program, for which ioq3 now supplies some basic hooks, or you can
+ use the new built-in VoIP support.
+
+Mumble is here: http://mumble.sourceforge.net/  ... ioquake3 can supply it
+ with your in-game position, but everything else is whatever features Mumble
+ offers outside of the game. To use it, start Mumble before you start ioq3,
+ and run the game with +set cl_useMumble 1. This should work on at least
+ Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and probably other platforms Mumble supports
+ in the future.
+
+The built-in stuff offers tighter in-game integration, works on any platform
+ that ioquake3 supports, and doesn't require anything more than a recent build
+ of the game. The rest of this document is concerned with the built-in VoIP
+ support.
+
+
+Quick start for servers:
+    - run a recent build of ioquake3.
+    - Make sure your network settings are set to broadband.
+
+Quick start for clients:
+    - run a recent build of ioquake3.
+    - Make sure your network settings are set to broadband.
+    - +set snd_useOpenAL 1
+    - \bind q "+voiprecord"
+    - Hook up a microphone, connect to a VoIP-supporting server.
+    - hold down 'q' key and talk.
+
+
+Cvars you can set:
+
+sv_voip: set to "1" (the default) to enable server-side VoIP support. Set to
+         "0" to disable. Without this, all VoIP packets are refused by the
+         server, which means no one gets to use in-game VoIP.
+
+voip: set to "1" (the default) to enable client-side VoIP support. Set to "0"
+      to disable. Without this, you will neither be able to transmit voice nor
+      hear other people.
+
+s_alCapture: set to "1" (the default) to have the audio layer open an OpenAL
+             capture device. Without this set on sound startup, you'll never
+             get bits from the microphone. This means you won't transmit, but
+             you can still hear other people.
+
+cl_voipSendTarget: a string: "all" to broadcast to everyone, "none" to send
+                   to no one, "attacker" to send to the last person that hit
+                   you, "crosshair" to send to the people currently in your
+                   crosshair, or a comma-separated list of client numbers, like
+                   "0,7,2,23" ... an empty string is treated like "all". This
+                   is reset to "all" when connecting to a new server.
+                   Presumably mods will manage this cvar, not people, but
+                   keybind could be useful for the general cases. To send to
+                   just your team, or the opposing team, or a buddy list, you
+                   have to set a list of numbers.
+
+cl_voipUseVAD: set to "1" to automatically send audio when the game thinks you
+               are talking, "0" (the default) to require the user to manually
+               start transmitting, presumably with a keybind.
+
+cl_voipVADThreshold: only used if cl_voipUseVAD is "1" ... a value between
+                     0.0 and 1.0 that signifies the volume of recorded audio
+                     that the game considers to be speech. You can use this
+                     to trim out breathing or perhaps the sound of your
+                     fingers tapping the keyboard and only transmit audio
+                     louder than that. You will have to experiment to find the
+                     value that works best for your hardware and play style.
+                     The default is "0.25", with "0.0" being silence and "1.0"
+                     being pretty-darn-loud.
+
+cl_voipSend: when set to "1", the game will capture audio from the microphone
+             and transmit it, when "0", the game will not. The game can
+             optimize for the "0" case (perhaps turning off audio recording).
+             Lots of things set this on and off, including cl_voipUseVAD, so
+             you probably should not touch this directly without knowing what
+             you're doing, but perhaps mods can make use of it.
+
+cl_voipGainDuringCapture: This is the volume ("gain") of audio coming out of
+                          your speakers while you are recording sound for
+                          transmission. This is a value between 0.0 and 1.0,
+                          zero being silence and one being no reduction in
+                          volume. This prevents audio feedback and echo and
+                          such, but if you're listening in headphones that
+                          your mic won't pick up, you don't need to turn down
+                          the gain. Default is 0.2 (20% of normal volume). You
+                          ABSOLUTELY want to make your speakers quiet when you
+                          record, if the microphone might pick it up!
+
+cl_voipShowMeter: Set to "1" (the default) to show a volume meter as you are
+                  recording from the microphone, so you can see how well the
+                  game can "hear" you. Set to "0" to disable the display of
+                  the meter.
+
+
+
+Console commands:
+
+voip ignore <clientnum>
+    Turn off incoming voice from player number <clientnum>. This will refuse to
+     play any incoming audio from that player, and instruct the server to stop
+     sending it, to save bandwidth. Use unignore to reenable. This is reset to
+     unignored when (re)connecting to a server.
+
+voip gain unignore <clientnum>
+    Turn on incoming voice from player number <clientnum>. This will start
+     playing audio from this player again if you've previously done a "voip
+     ignore", and instruct the server to start sending her voice packets to
+     you again.
+
+voip gain muteall
+    Turn off all incoming voice. This will refuse to play any incoming audio,
+     and instruct the server to stop sending it, to save bandwidth. Use
+     unmuteall to reenable. This is reset to unmuted when (re)connecting to
+     a server.
+
+voip gain unmuteall
+    Turn on incoming voice. This will start playing audio again if you've
+     previously done a "voip muteall", and instruct the server to start
+     sending voice packets to you again.
+
+voip gain <clientnum> <gain>
+    Sets the volume ("gain") for player number <clientnum> to <gain> ...
+     A gain of 0.0 is silence, and 2.0 doubles the volume. Use this if someone
+     is too quiet or too loud.
+
+
+
+
+Actions:
+
++voiprecord: The action you should bind to a key to record. This basically
+             toggles cl_voipSend on and off. You don't need this if you're
+             using cl_voipUseVAD, since that'll just record all the time and
+             decide what parts of the recording are worth sending.
+
+
+
+More detailed/technical info:
+
+By default, all of this is enabled. You can build with or without VoIP
+ support explicitly with USE_VOIP=[1|0] on the make command line.
+
+You currently must use OpenAL to speak, as we have ALC_EXT_capture support
+ in place to pull data from the microphone. If you are using the SDL backend,
+ you can still hear people, but not speak.
+
+There is no in-game UI to speak of: we encourage mods to add some. Largely
+ they will just need to set cvars and run console commands for choosing
+ voice targets and ignoring people, etc.
+
+This requires patched builds to be useful, but remains network compatible with
+ legacy quake3 clients and servers. Clients and servers both report in their
+ info strings whether they support VoIP, and won't send VoIP data to those not
+ reporting support. If a stray VoIP packet makes it to a legacy build, it will
+ be ignored without incident.
+
+VoIP packets are saved in demo files! You will be able to playback what you
+ heard and what you said on VoIP-compatible clients. Legacy clients can also
+ play demo files with VoIP packets in them, but just won't play the voice
+ track. For VoIP-supported builds, it's nice to have a record of the
+ trash-talk.
+
+Data is processed using the Speex narrowband codec, and is cross-platform.
+ Bigendian and littleendian systems can speak to each other, as can 32 and
+ 64-bit platforms.
+
+Bandwidth: VoIP data is broken up into 20 millisecond frames (this is a Speex
+ requirement), and we try to push up to 12 Speex frames in one UDP packet
+ (about a quarter of a second of audio)...we're using the narrowband codec:
+ 8000Hz sample rate. In practice, a client should send about 2 kilobytes per
+ second more when speaking, spread over about four bursts per second, plus a
+ few bytes of state information. For comparison, this is less than the server
+ sends when downloading files to the client without an http redirect. The
+ server needs to rebroadcast the packet to all clients that should receive it
+ (which may be less than the total connected players), so servers should
+ assume they'll need to push (number of players speaking at once times number
+ of people that should hear it) * 2 kilobytes per second. It shouldn't be a
+ problem for any client or server on a broadband connection, although it may
+ be painful for dialup users (but then again, everything is. They can just
+ disable the cvar). The game will refuse to enable VoIP support if your have
+ your network settings lower than "Cable/xDSL/LAN", just in case.
+
+The initial VoIP work was done by Ryan C. Gordon <icculus@icculus.org>, and
+ he can be contacted with technical questions, if the ioq3 mailing list or
+ forums aren't helpful.
+
+// end of voip-README.txt ...
+
+
+