Recently I made a post majorly talking up my plans for development, and how I promise I’m going to be better. Surprisingly, that post was actually how I motivated myself to continue working. This is my latest motivation inducing post. Selfish, I know.
Voicechat! Despite some reservations others and myself have, after a lengthy conversation about the path I want this game to take; I eventually concluded that this and some additional multiplayer features would be beneficial for the game’s future.
Primarily, I’m detailing adding voicechat through Vivox, a service recently acquired by Unity that allows for peer-to-peer audio communications that don’t use radio-waves. This works by sending direct audio codes to a server or servers that then distribute these messages to users on a private game client. Implementing such a feature has proven to be a daunting task with a host of difficulties that I never could have imagined.
I spent hours attempting to implement a simple voice menu feature. In this menu, you can select your input device, adjust your input levels, mute your microphone, and most importantly test your mic. This feature gave me so much hell. I first tried to use outdated api’s from Vivox that would echo the user’s audio input back through a channel tap. Unfortunately, despite every attempt to get this to work, nothing would play my audio back. (@AdamLeGeek can attest). “Hello?” “Mic Test”, “Blablablablaahh.. Mic test 1 2 3”.
This didn’t work, and after a few recompiles of trying to get a basic mic test feature to work using Unity’s direct audio API, I gave up. No progression has been made, I merely have a faux menu with absolutely no functionality. I need to get back to work, I’m so sorry to put this project on hold for this long. I know you, the community, understand my disposition. Motivation (or lack of thereof) is the leading cause of death for indie game development projects. Understanding this, I can try to be better than my peers who have quit before me.
“I have a plan, I just need some time[ic]”
– Dutch Van Der Lyne
But seriously. I do have a plan. I will try to keep this community updated, you guys really have been so accommodating and not pushy at all. (Good thing…?)… I do a lot of thinking, daydreaming during class and in my free time, about exactly how I’ll implement features. I’ll consider APIs, services, libraries; think about how scripts will function and loop in other scripts, how I’ll get everything to work when I sync it to multiplayer. Even right now as I’m writing this, the gears inside my mind are turning. When I sit down and see the gloomy backdrop of an empty visual studio project sitting in front of me, these concepts will spill from the depths of my mind into categories of code that will hopefully make everything work smoothly.
“My motivation is an art form, and it’s not to be rushed.”
– Me, professional procrastinator.
See you guys soon. Will make another post this week talking about my other plans for the game. Thanks for reading, see you guys again soon.
– Lua, out.