Link

= Linking a game to Mumble =

If you can change the sourcecode of the game you want to add positional audio support to you can save yourself the trouble of creating your own plugin by using the facilities supplied by the link plugin.

All code listed below is in the public domain and can be used, shared or modified freely.

Note: Please don't forget to add your game to the list of link plugin supported games.

Initialization
Somewhere in your game initalization, add these lines of code:

struct LinkedMem { UINT32	uiVersion; DWORD	uiTick; uint32_t uiVersion; uint32_t uiTick; float	fAvatarPosition[3]; float	fAvatarFront[3]; float	fAvatarTop[3]; wchar_t	name[256]; float	fCameraPosition[3]; float	fCameraFront[3]; float	fCameraTop[3]; wchar_t	identity[256]; UINT32	context_len; uint32_t context_len; unsigned char context[256]; wchar_t description[2048]; };
 * 1) ifdef WIN32
 * 1) else
 * 1) endif
 * 1) ifdef WIN32
 * 1) else
 * 1) endif

LinkedMem *lm = NULL;

void initMumble {

HANDLE hMapObject = OpenFileMappingW(FILE_MAP_ALL_ACCESS, FALSE, L"MumbleLink"); if (hMapObject == NULL) return;
 * 1) ifdef WIN32

lm = (LinkedMem *) MapViewOfFile(hMapObject, FILE_MAP_ALL_ACCESS, 0, 0, sizeof(LinkedMem)); if (lm == NULL) { CloseHandle(hMapObject); hMapObject = NULL; return; }	char memname[256]; snprintf(memname, 256, "/MumbleLink.%d", getuid);
 * 1) else

int shmfd = shm_open(memname, O_RDWR, S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR);

if (shmfd < 0) { return; }

lm = (LinkedMem *)(mmap(NULL, sizeof(struct LinkedMem), PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, shmfd,0));

if (lm == (void *)(-1)) { lm = NULL; return; } }
 * 1) endif

Then, for each frame, do the following:

void updateMumble { if (! lm) return;

if(lm->uiVersion != 2) { wcsncpy(lm->name, L"TestLink", 256); wcsncpy(lm->description, L"TestLink is a test of the Link plugin.", 2048); lm->uiVersion = 2; }	lm->uiTick++;

// Left handed coordinate system. // X positive towards "right". // Y positive towards "up". // Z positive towards "front". //	// 1 unit = 1 meter

// Unit vector pointing out of the avatars eyes (here Front looks into scene). lm->fAvatarFront[0] = 0.0f; lm->fAvatarFront[1] = 0.0f; lm->fAvatarFront[2] = 1.0f;

// Unit vector pointing out of the top of the avatars head (here Top looks straight up). lm->fAvatarTop[0] = 0.0f; lm->fAvatarTop[1] = 1.0f; lm->fAvatarTop[2] = 0.0f;

// Position of the avatar (here standing slightly off the origin) lm->fAvatarPosition[0] += 0.001f; lm->fAvatarPosition[1] = 0.0f; lm->fAvatarPosition[2] = 0.5f;

// Same as avatar but for the camera. lm->fCameraPosition[0] = 0.0f; lm->fCameraPosition[1] = 0.0f; lm->fCameraPosition[2] = 0.0f;

lm->fCameraFront[0] = 0.0f; lm->fCameraFront[1] = 0.0f; lm->fCameraFront[2] = 1.0f;

lm->fCameraTop[0] = 0.0f; lm->fCameraTop[1] = 1.0f; lm->fCameraTop[2] = 0.0f;

// Identifier which uniquely identifies a certain player in a context (e.g. the ingame Name). wcsncpy(lm->identity, L"Unique ID", 256); // Context should be equal for players which should be able to hear each other positional and // differ for those who shouldn't (e.g. it could contain the server+port and team) memcpy(lm->context, "ContextBlob\x00\x01\x02\x03\x04", 16); lm->context_len = 16; }

Coordinate system
Mumble, like most sound systems, uses a left handed coordinate system (see this for a visual representation). If you imagine yourself looking over a large empty field; X increases towards your right, Y increases above your head, and Z increases in front of you. In other words, if we place origin in your chest and you stretch your arms out to your sides, your right hand will be (1,0,0), your left hand will be (-1,0,0) and your head will be (0,0.2,0). If you then stretch your arms out in front of you instead, they'll become (0,0,1).

We need three vectors. First is the position vector. This should be in meters, so you may need to scale it. The reason: If it is not in meters, distance attenuation will be different to the other games/plugins, meaning users will have a bad experience with positional audio (audio configuration is dependant on a common distance measurement).

The next two vectors are the heading. These should be unit vectors (length one), and should be perpendicular (to one another). The first vector is the front vector, which is simply the direction you are looking in. The second is the top vector, which is an imaginary vector pointing straight out the top of your head. If you do not supply a top vector, Mumble will assume you have a “Y-is-up” coordinate system and that the user can not tilt his head, and then compute the top vector based on that.

f* variables
fAvatarPosition should be the player position in 3D space, to disable the transmission of positional information alongside audio without unlinking the plugin set x,y,z of the tuple to zero. fAvatarTop and fAvatarFront should be the orientation. The coordinate system is a left-handed one, and the units are in meters.

If the camera of your game is not independent of the avatar be sure to copy the avatar values over to the fCameraPosition|Top|Front variables. If the camera moves independent of the avatar these values should contain the position, top- and front-vector of the camera.

Context
The context string is used to determine which users on a Mumble server should hear each other positionally. If context between two mumble user does not match the positional audio data is stripped server-side and voice will be received as non-positional.

Accordingly the context should only match for players on the same server in the same game on the same map. Whether to include things like team in this string depends on the game itself. When in doubt err on the side of including less. This gives more flexibility later on.

Identity
Identity should contain a string which uniquely identifies the player in the given context. This is usually satisfied by the in-game player name or the players ID (player-/connection-ID on the server or a global ID).

Additionally the identity can contain any additional information about the player that might be interesting for the mumble server.

For example by including team information in the identity a script on the mumble server can move players into team channels automatically. Additional information like squad number, squad leader status and so on can be used to trigger even more behavior like automatically maintaining a leadership structure inside mumble which is kept in-sync with in-game state. E.g. someone is elected squad leader and now can whisper to all other squad leaders and the team leader. For an example of such a server-side script see the Battlefield 2 MuMo plugin.

We recommend using an easily parseable format like JSON or CSV for encoding the information but this is up to the game. Remember that the link structures only allow for 256 characters of identity data.