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 {
#ifdef WIN32
	UINT32	uiVersion;
	DWORD	uiTick;
#else
	uint32_t uiVersion;
	uint32_t uiTick;
#endif
	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];
#ifdef WIN32
	UINT32	context_len;
#else
	uint32_t context_len;
#endif
	unsigned char context[256];
	wchar_t description[2048];
};

LinkedMem *lm = NULL;


void initMumble() {

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

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

	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;
	}
#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 "left".
	// Y positive towards "up".
	// Z positive towards "into screen".
	//
	// 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;
}

f* variables

fAvatarPosition should be the player position in 3D space, to disable the transmission of positional information alongside audio without unlinking the the plugin set x,y,z of 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.

Note:
Mumble fetches these values 50 times a second, so please update them every frame.

Context

Note:
The context does not need to be updated every single frame. It shouldn't change more than a few times per second if at all during a game.

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

Note:
The identity does not need to be updated every single frame. It shouldn't change more than a few times per second if at all during a game.

Identity should contain a string which uniquely identifies the player in the given context. This is usually satisfied by the in-game player name.

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 either using JSON or CSV for encoding the information but this is up to the game. Remember that the link structures only allow for 255 characters of context data.