By: Peter 'Fighterjock' Waddell
Date: October 12th, 1998
In my previous series (click HERE) we talked about what you need to enjoy real time voice comms with other gamers while in multiplayer games. Pretty soon you should have the ability to speak to your whole team or most, if not all, of your squadron mates as you go into action against other teams on line. This is what the developers of Battlefield Communicator, Shadowfactor Software have set as the goal for the upcoming release of their voice communications program. You will only be limited by what your connection can handle.
This writer has spent a considerable time in the last six months trying to track down a voice communications solution or the most likely technology for online multiplayer games, Flight Simulation games to be precise. It seemed to me it was sort of like the old six million dollar man situation "We have the technology so let's (re)build him." Whether we do have the technology or not is a matter of some debate, taking into account esoterica like bandwidth, tcp packets, routing etc. But for us optimists , we knew it MUST be possible. We have had , after all, Internet telephony for about 18 or so months now. So why not multi player voice?
Myself and a few other Netizens naturally put two and two together and began trying to marry online flying with real time voice communications. Eventually , I did find a way to do this in almost any game with a hardware solution involving either a Diamond Monster M-80, Orchid NuSound 3d card or any similar sound card. This, of course, was a solution for one to one comms but it can be complicated, tricky to configure and will cost you about $100 for one of the cards. Not the ideal solution.
Since I've been looking, many new telephony products have appeared on the market but up until recently they all ignored the online gaming market. However , during this time , all was not lost nor inactive, and unknown to most, a group of four graduates of the University of Waterloo students had started to put the idea into action.
The group, starting as a bunch of keen online gamers (mostly Quake 2 and real time strategy players), thought it would really enhance their gaming enjoyment if they could talk to their teammates as they played. Once they got the idea, (as they put it . . . ) "it took us about two seconds to realize that Quake was not the only game that could benefit from voice communications." They decided they could and would do something about it.
In late 1997 , the group members, Isabella Carniato, Rod Toll, Paul Newson and Joanne Toll formed Shadowfactor Software (http://www.shadowfactor.com) "to explore new possibilities for games, and to turn those possibilities into reality." Their backgrounds range from Architecture and Political Science to Math, Engineering and Computer Science and all are from the University of Waterloo. Battlefield Communicator is their first project to reach fruition through ShadowFactor Software.
They spent the next few months developing and testing their software to get it working and figuring out ways to deal with the demands of the Internet (and LAN) gaming environment. In early July , they sent out a few press releases and solicited names for a private beta test. In 48hrs , they received more than seven hundred applications! The size of the response surprised them . Obviously , they were not the only ones who thought this was a good idea.
Initial target for BattleField Communicator was that it would allow you to use any full duplex sound card for voice communications. So far this has been achieved for many popular games (see the list below). It also has its own very well implemented vox (voice activated, hands free) activation code which makes sure that you only send voice when you talk. This can be tuned to fit your specific background noise levels. Futhermore, the program has the capability to have keys bound to any specific application.
Since then work has proceeded and BFC is now confirmed to support a growing list of Sims and other Multi player Online Games, here is a partial list: Jane's F15, F22 ADF, F22 Raptor, F/A-18 Hornet Korea and Hornet 3, MS Fighter Ace (Marginal), Flight Simulator 98, Flying Circus, Jane's Fighter Anthology, Longbow 2, Red Baron 3D, Super EF 2000 and Warbirds. The full list is available HERE.
Because this application is designed specifically for MPOG the programming algorithms are being continuously tuned and refined by the developers to meet the unique problems of the Internet and gaming coexistence.
Next on the drawing board is conference capability, IE. Multiple player voice connections, ("the Holy Grail" for squad communications ) this is slated to begin beta testing mid to late October 98. Meantime you can download the latest beta at their Web site and try it out.