SteamWorks API Support for integrated VoIP

Would you consider supporting the SteamWorks API so we can get free, integrated VoIP in the game, among other features?

Some facts that may quell any concerns over cost or control:

Here are some features that may be of interest:

• Multiplayer matchmaking
• Voice chat
• Free Weekends and Guest Passes

It would be great to have players automatically assigned to the VoIP for their team, with an interface that everyone can get used to, so they don't have to mess around with external software.

Like we've seen with almost every other game, if you don't have integrated VoIP then in practice nobody but groups of friends will easily be able to use VoIP with each other. At the scale this game is going to be at, it will be very handy to talk strategy with your teammates, even if you don't know them.

The one memory I have about this feature is that some game I wanted to play had it always reduced the volume of everything else for weird reasons + disturbed my teamspeak. So please if you do it, do it right and in a way I can simply turn it of ingame. Not in the steamoptions.

The ability to easily mute individual people, or reduce their volume of specific users, is essential.

It's probably supported in the API.

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=35987&p=536622&hilit=SteamWorks#p536622

Even one of the admins already made a thread on this.

I for one prefer my games as dependency free as possible.
From the looks of it, the gain from steamworks is less than the baggage you include.
For voice chat that is even more true than other aspects. Most gamers, who want to use voicechat, have already a preferred third party tool and sometimes existing game independent servers, whether you integrate some own tool into your game or not.
That's just my impression, but I would prefer not to link the game to steam, if it is avoidable.

Please also consider that using steam dependencies would prevent PA from being played on linux (for now at least). And that the three platform support was already confirmed and advertised.

It might have been windows reducing the volume of everything else, if Windows 7 (maybe Vista, I don't remember) thinks you are placing a call on your computer it will reduce the volume of all other sounds by a percentage, I think the default is 80% I don't remember since I turned it off.

also nice sig

^ This. Please make it easy to disable and please please please make push to talk the default. There is nothing more annoying than hearing all sorts of background noise when auto-talk is enabled by default.

If you want builtin VOIP I suggest Mumble. It's lightweight, powerful and open source. It's also well set up to allow the server to run an instance of it's server as well. This would allow for automatic entry into a vioce chat system even in matchmaking during a game.

The SteamWorks API hooks can probably be conditional based on whether you have Steam installed or not, so it shouldn't create a hard dependency. It would even be possible to release a regular build and a SteamWorks build.

As of September 6, 2012, Valve is seeking beta testers for Steam on Linux, so this probably won't even be an issue a year from now.

But they all have to have the same VoIP software, of which there are now three major versions, if not more.

Yes, but players will have to install the VoIP software and manually connect to the correct team channel in games. There is also nothing stopping players from joining the enemy voice chat channel. That's a lot of overhead for every game you play.

If we have SteamWorks support, then it will be as easy as it is in Team Fortress 2 or any other Valve game. It will just work without any extra effort.

It's not about whether it's already possible with existing tools, it's about how easy it is. If you want to use VoIP, it should be as easy as setting up your microphone once forever, and the game should do the rest for you. If it's easy, then people will tend to use it, which will make the game more interesting for all of us. It's hard to type out detailed strategies and have the other players notice while they're doing other things.

If you don't like it, then you can disable it, it's as easy as that.

Wait, what? You can integrate with the steam API without requiring the game to be a steamworks game?

Why doesn't everyone do this? Steam is basically the lord and saviour of PC videogames.

Some of us still consider Steam to be a form of DRM, as nifty as it is.
Let's not have Steam be that closely integrated, shall we? VOIP can be done just fine without requiring Steam.

^

I agree with this. Ventrilo is already something a lot of people already use and pay for. In almost all games where ingame VoIP/chat is optional, I rarely use it, and in many cases people don't use it at all. Let the third party software solve this for you. Save time and money

Technically, yes: http://opensteamworks.org/

Not sure if this is legal though .

No matter how popular this or that 3rd party voice chat solution is, no one will ever go through the hassle of arranging a server IP for everyone to join in one team in every match you play every day with random people.

Integrating the SteamWorks API doesn't require the use of SteamWorks DRM. It's just another feature in the API.

And VoIP can't be done "just fine" without SteamWorks because it would either take a lot of effort to implement VoIP in the game, or take players a whole lot of effort to get organized every time they start a game.

The SteamWorks API is third-party software, and it takes way less effort to implement it. All you'd have to do is send the player and team information to the API and it'll automatically route the voice packets to the right players. It's just a little bit of extra code to call the API, but it's relatively simple.