Hey everyone, this is Chad bringing in another week of State of the Game updates!
So this week I have continued to develop the multiplayer and team aspects of the game, and have brought in an important feature to help.
Voice Chat!
So, now the snap shot build (released late yesterday) has a basic implementation of the voice chat system in place. Please go grab the latest build and give it a try.
Now that the foundation of the chat is in, I am working on some ‘comfort’ methods to make the system a bit more polished. This includes being able to see who is speaking, and the ability to mute individual players (I am looking at you, mister heavy mic breather).
Having voice chat natively supported in the game opens up some cool design abilities as well. Some ideas are for a kind of special scout class that provides electronic warfare. This would be everything from tapping into the other teams communications, jamming radar, or even jamming another players communications to prevent them from calling for help.
Also with voice chat, I know a lot of people are going to ask if I am going to have the same type of system that Chromehounds on the xbox 360 had, and that you had to be in range of a radar tower to be able to talk. The pre-emptive answer to this is, No. While that system was cool, it was also a big enough burden on the players that they ended up circumventing the whole system (using xbox live party chat), which invalidated the entire design of the system. I think I will shot for something that strikes a more lenient balance as so there is not a high up front burden. Having people actually using the voice chat overpowers making the system a little bit cooler.
Don’t take this as a complete write off of the system though. There will be a radar tower type system, but it will be more focused on other gameplay variables (like defense system deployments and actual radar). By keeping the system away from the voice chat and tying it to actual gameplay, I am hoping to increase the usage of both the voice chat and the radar towers.
Well, that is all for this week, check back next week for more updates!