Idea: Proximity voice chat for large groups

[MrHug]

So... This may be an absolutely insane idea, but I was thinking about this recently and wanted to bounce it off of you

For groups with > 5 people working on different things, voice chat can quickly become chaotic imho and for even larger groups (10+), even more so. I was wondering, would it be feasible in some way to have something like "local voice chat" based on your characters position in the game (googling tells me "proximity voice chat" maybe more common?). I don't necessarily mean that the voice chat should be through the game (obviously that is not a built in feature ) but if the character locations can be exposed to some other application, that could be sufficient?

I was thinking that a "squad like" structure (like in the game Squad), with local voice chat, global "squad-based" voice chat (and possibly a "squad leader" voice chat channel too), you could reshape the way the game can be played with > 10 people (and it might even help/be a fun addition to large multiplayer speed runs?)

What do you think? A) Would this be any fun at all, and B) would it be feasible at all?

[PFQNiet]

That sounds cool. I've never had more than one person to play with at a time so I can't say I've experienced the problem of crowded voice chat, but I could definitely see uses for this.

I imagine an implementation would make use of LuaRCON, broadcasting player positions every so often to whatever external program handles the voice chat. I imagine once you have the positions, the voice chat part itself would be fairly straightforward.

[eradicator]

I was thinking that a "squad like" structure (like in the game Squad), with local voice chat, global "squad-based" voice chat (and possibly a "squad leader" voice chat channel too),

I don't know that game. Can you explain how that works exactly? Sounds extremely annoying to me if there's one "leader" guy who can just shout into any communication but you can't answer to them? Or if it's just "channels" for different "ranks"...how is that different from how any channel based voip tool already works?

Proximity based voice as auch isn't a new idea. I thought mumble/teamspeak could already do it but couldn't find anything except for a mincraft plugin that seems to re-implements mumble in itself. AS @PFQNiet already said: Factorio already has support to output player positions. So it's up to the Voip client to act on them.

[MrHug]

I don't know that game. Can you explain how that works exactly? Sounds extremely annoying to me if there's one "leader" guy who can just shout into any communication but you can't answer to them? Or if it's just "channels" for different "ranks"...how is that different from how any channel based voip tool already works?

The idea is that most people are in two "channels" (if you want to call it that). Local proximity chat and a chat with their full squad. Each squad has a leader and they are in one more channel the "squad leader" channel.

In large party speeds runs I can imagine you might have a squad for "expansion" (killing biters), "mining", "ore processing", "science", etc.

Thanks for the suggestions both, I'll see if I can cook up something with those

[eradicator]

The idea is that most people are in two "channels" (if you want to call it that). Local proximity chat and a chat with their full squad. Each squad has a leader and they are in one more channel the "squad leader" channel.

Hm...i can't really imagine how being in two different channels works. Do you have two different push-to-talk buttons? What happens if people on both channels speak simultaenously? As far as i understand you they can't hear each other, but you would hear both of them (and thus understand neither as they mix into gibberish).

[MrHug]

Two different buttons indeed, and squad volume is typically louder than local.