DFVoice VoIP - Closed Beta Invitation

It's live on the asset store now - go get it

 

Just bought it! Thanks! Will let you know how it works out.

 

Hey,
Just bought it. Thank you for the efforts. Will put review in asset store as well as will let you know in here as to how it pans out for my project.

 

Just wanted to point out, I was really looking forward to this product as I love, absolutely love DaikonForge and Masaaki has been quite helpful to me in terms of his Multiplayer Networking book for Unity (my first read on networking games in Unity) and his great help on the DF forums.

However, after seeing this: *Requires splash screen display. See included Readme.txt for details* Further details here. I have to say that I do not agree with this practice at all. If you are buying a product, you should NOT be required to display something like this unless you are getting the product open source, for free or through some sort of deal. This is something that you do for trial products and the like, not paid products. A perfect example is the free version of unity. It does this (as well as limiting features) because it is free and the promotion your game brings back (if it does) is compensation in getting the product in this form. This is completely eliminated when you purchase Unity. If you are going to introduce something like this, you should have two versions, a lite (where there is this trade off) and a full in which you can buy the asset for whatever cost and not have to be bound to do something like this.

I will not purchase this product until this is changed.

 

Yeah, the splash screen is definitely not going to happen. And pointing to a Readme.txt that is only accessible after purchase is very bad form. (Both these points make me doubt your seriousness and in turn the quality of your product.) That being said, if DFVoice turns out to be a solid product I wouldn't mind paying more for a version that waives the splahs-screen requirement.

 

I apologize for the confusion about the readme. It only provides instructions on how to integrate the included splashscreens - it doesn't stipulate any further license requirements than what was already stated in the product description.
Splash screen requirements are common in purchased software, even software significantly more expensive than DFVoice. For the moment, we don't have any plans to change it.

 

While I get the impetus for the splash screen thing, and there is precedent for it (load up any AAA game and you might see Bink Video, Speed Tree, Scaleform etc on the splash screen page)...

And indeed, if I release a commercial game under my studio, I'd like to have a splash screen page anyways, even if not required, to acknowledge the people who made this possible, Bolt Networking comes to mind. (and also display a symbol of quality...maybe? - I dunno, when I saw SpeedTree logo as a gamer I thought - cool!)

BUT - this will also not work for me, here's why.

I can actually see this being useful in some of my contract work projects, which is a large chunk of how I make my living right now. I can't expect my clients to put a splash screen on an app for some middleware program that they don't know anything about. Some of these companies I deal with are big, and that would have to go through several departments, lawyers etc. This is already time consuming enough for normal business, no way I would want to add this to the equation.

Hopefully you're not planning this for DF 2.0, or that's immediately out for me as well, for the same reason.

Sorry - I like your stuff, and I see the justification on your end, but it's the Unity asset store after all. How many products actually require this?

Ok friendly question time - How will this integrate with the new Unity 5 features I'm seeing here? Or are there things that this will do that Unity 5 can't? http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/07/24/mixing-sweet-beats-in-unity-5-0/

 

While I hadn't envisioned that particular case, there's some other things that complicate this as well. For instance, DFVoice is licensed per-seat. So, if you were to hand off a project to a client, even without the splash screen it begs the question: would they then need to purchase licenses for DFVoice per seat? I don't know.

As far as friendly questions.
Well, yes it will be something Unity 5 doesn't provide out of the box. As far as how it integrates, I cannot yet say as I don't have Unity 5 in my hands
I do plan on using Unity 5 once it comes out, so I'll take a look at what's required to get DFVoice compatible with Unity 5's new audio system (if anything)

 

Should one asset maker require a splash screen?

What if EVERY asset maker required a splash screen?

I know for myself, just on music I'd have like a dozen splash screens. And then for my Michael O assets, I suppose I'd have to have a splash screen for each pack I use a piece from.

I'm fine with crediting every asset I use, but I'd rather not go the splash screen route.

 

As far as the license per seat things go - this is what I've always assumed and done for every asset (and I could be wrong here!)

Per seat applies to each person who actually actively uses the plugin to develop. So something like an art asset pack of rocks if it had a per-seat model, would need as many licenses as level designers placing those rocks.

DF-GUI would need as many licenses as people actually doing GUI work, etc.

I don't think it would make sense to make it per sear, per employee in the company publishing the app - where do you draw the line there? HR?

In the case of the work for hire vendor work I do, I generally don't have my clients purchase additional seats unless they are doing additional development on a prototype I gave them or something, but in most cases I just deliver a finished build. In some cases they might not even have Unity Pro - and I think (hope) this is all above board, since they never touch development, and all of my licenses are current (and I build those costs into my hourly rate, etc).

If I'm wrong, please let me know! (with cited examples if possible). I may contact UT about it in general actually.

 

If the client doesn't really touch the game files other than publishing, than they wouldn't need to buy any licenses. I think. I'm pretty sure >.>

Curious, what if I modified the splash screen requirement so that you had three options?

1. Splash screen at beginning of game
2. Small logo badge displayed somewhere of your choosing
3. Text section in the credits

Would that work better?

 

Yup.

I initially wrote a few paragraphs on this, but it pretty much boils down to what you've suggested.

My direction on it is that whatever it is, it needs to be something that in principle could be adopted by all other asset makers. Giving game devs flexible options that are easy to comply with is a fine approach.

In my case, I'm going to have a lot of credits to dish, so I'd have to go with a more minimal approach. If an asset maker wants to supply examples of how they'd like to see their credits, I'm fine with that, especially if my job is simplified with a drag and drop type solution.

 

Tentative new guidelines for crediting DaikonForge. Thoughts? Feedback?

 

I've also added a new page to the DFVoice landing site detailing these instructions, that way you don't have to purchase the package to view them.

http://daikonforge.com/dfvoice/

It's the Requirements link in the navigation bar.

 

This looks great to me.

 

When ShaderForge first created his product, he had the same problem.

Initially he imposed that those who bought the product had to ask his permission before selling their shaders. He got a lot of bad feedback so then it became an option - to mention that the shader was made with Shaderforge. As it turned out, after some investigation it was discovered that It is actually Against the rules of the asset store to impose that the buyers have to give credit to the plugin.

It's understandable that you would like for those who bought your plugin give you credit in their finished product. However this is Absolutely against Unity's asset store.

Edit: The rational is simple, in a real project, many plugins could be used, if one has to credit each plugin maker, it would get out of hand. It should be up to the discretion of the app maker and not be forced - especially if it's a paying app. Only certain open source projects need to be credited. Actually in the case of DFVoice, it's a wrapper for unity to work with the NSpeex open source project. Technically, if one had to be forced to give credit, it's makes more sense to credit NSpeex as the core functionality is driven by that project and not the wrapper.

 

No, it isn't. I specifically contacted UT first, and the response was that such a requirement was perfectly fine.
There's also a lot more to DFVoice than just being an NSpeex wrapper. Actually, you can technically use any codec with DFVoice if you wrap it in a class which implements IAudioCodec.

 

So DFVoice is a wrapper that can work with other kinds of Codec.

 

Here's what DFVoice does for you under the hood:

1.) Handles a continuous stream of input data from the microphone
2.) Handles getting that data encoded properly with Speex (or any codec of your choosing)
3.) Wraps that data in a simple container format for sending over the network
4.) - At this point, your code takes over and sends/receives the raw data over the network -
5.) Handles packet loss (missed frames are reported to the audio codec, which handles it - for example the Speex codec attempts to try and mask any dropped frames, or a simpler codec might simply insert silence in order to maintain timing)
6.) Reconstructs incoming audio with no gaps or hitches (under normal network conditions, assuming no packet loss)

It's far more than just a wrapper.

 

It sounds like the plugin is more than a wrapper. Thanks for the clarification.

If the plugin turns out to be useful and solid - I'd second the option of making available a version that doesn't force the user to use any sort of Splash/Credit. Perhaps you should think about the pricing for this PRO version. Similar to Unity Free and Pro.

 

Hey @PhobicGunner : Now that Unity5 beta is open (pre-orders only), have you had chance to use DF voice with new audio system?? I was planning to port my project and DF Voice is only plugin that I am not sure of working. I don't wanna break it, so I came here before upgrading. Please let me know.

 

does it works with Android ?

 

I'd say back up your project and attempt the upgrade, OR alternatively create a new Unity 5 project and import DFVoice by itself, then check the local demo to ensure that it works.

 

Just a note, the splash screen requirement is still in asset store page. I was immediately put off like the users above, but then came here and realized it's not there anymore.
I imagine this being a major issue for most people so you may want to update the page as it's probably hurting sales. I would also streamline the requirements by removing them altogether except for the last one, as it's obviously less intrusive than others and the logical choice for pretty much everyone. Not only it makes things more obvious to everyone, that way you won't scare potential buyers right away.

edit: Reading the reviews on the Asset Store it seems like this it uses massive amounts of RPCS, rendering it basically useless in an actual game environment, specially with lots of players. Can anyone confirm or deny this ?

 

Put it this way, I get worried about performance tanking if 3 players start talking at once, and we're a 64bit/DX11 only game targeting PC, also using Bolt networking, which has highly performant binary streaming.
DFVoice generates a prohibitive amount of garbage, and if your game is going to be on Steam, you may as well use Steam voice (which is apparently very easy to integrate with Steamworks.NET).

 

Hi. Is there any way to move the work of the Speex codex to another thread. To unload the main render thread in Unity?

Lennart