Hi,

How do you test or even monitor audio quality in multiplayer games?

Thanks!

What exactly do you mean by 'quality', and what bearing do you think multiplayer has on it?

What exactly do you mean by 'quality', and what bearing do you think multiplayer has on it?

The point is that audio goes through network and depending on players network condition, hardware in use (type of headsets), codec, quality of experience may vary end-to-end from one user to another and from one to many etc. Thanks!

You're talking about VOIP, that sort of thing? In my experience this is handled by external middleware and there's very little you can do to control the quality - or it's just left to players to use a system of their choice, outside of the game entirely. Testing in the former case is often just a matter of the QA department subjectively verifying that the system works and that audio is getting through.

You're talking about VOIP, that sort of thing? In my experience this is handled by external middleware and there's very little you can do to control the quality - or it's just left to players to use a system of their choice, outside of the game entirely. Testing in the former case is often just a matter of the QA department subjectively verifying that the system works and that audio is getting through.

Thank you! Well, I guess it's VoIP that is used to deliver audio, but I wonder if it's an issue in game development? And when a game is being developed how one decides what VoIP stack/engine to use? What codec? There are few stereo codecs available and I guess game players are already used to stereo and HD audio...

VoIP is only used to deliver audio when the game requires voice to be sent between players. Otherwise, audio is just triggered locally, not transmitted across the network.

There are some game-related technologies that do stream the audio - for example the Steam in-home streaming. But that's not part of the game, just the platform the game runs on.

I can't comment on how people choose a VoIP stack for a game since I've never done it myself. I don't think it's very common to have it in-game these days. One example is that RakNet comes with RakVoice but I've never heard of anybody using it.