Network Replication Advice

When dealing with multiplayer games, bandwidth and packet sizes have to be considered.

Sending too much too quickly (multi cast events on Event Tick) impacts network performance and prevents voice chat from being sent as the network is too saturated.

Make sure you consider every replicated variable, event and blueprint node that is run over the network.

Many problems can be fixed by optimizing your networking replication!

Common Issues and Fixes

Players can’t hear voice chat after joining (UE 4.25)

• Run the “Register Remote Talker” function on begin play for your character actors. Suggested by CouchLearn user pftq

This can be done with C++ or the Advanced Sessions Plugin.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/API/Plugins/OnlineSubsystem/Interfaces/IOnlineVoice/RegisterRemoteTalker/index.html

Voice chat audio is not following the character

• Check your character/pawn is replicated and has replicate movement enabled.

No voice chat audio

• Follow our voice chat tutorial exactly and make sure to double check each step.
• Make sure you are using the multiplayer session system.
• Make sure that both players have a working microphone plugged in.
  
  If those steps didn’t fix the problem try:
• Following the “Stuttering or Robotic Sounding Voices” steps.

Stuttering or Robotic Sounding Voices

• Reducing the number of replicated events running on Event Tick and on timers.
• Make sure only essential events are replicated.
• Reduce the amount of multi cast events.
• Remove redundant parameters from replicated events.
• Remove audio and texture parameters from multi cast events.
• Lower your mic threshold value by -5

Voice chat only works on certain levels

• Make sure your other maps have an actor that is setup for voice chat on a key press.
• When changing levels make sure to use the servertravel command
  
  If those steps didn’t fix the problem try:
• Following the “Stuttering or Robotic Sounding Voices” steps.
  – Some levels in your game may include actors have poor replication performance.

Positional voice chat isn’t working

• Follow our positional voice chat tutorial exactly and make sure to double check each step.
• Make sure you are using the multiplayer session system.
• Lower your mic threshold value by -5
• Make sure that both players have a working microphone plugged in.
• Increase the volume of the VOIP audio class.
• Ensure your VOIPTalker’s attach to component is set.
• Replicated your VOIPTalker enabled actor.
• Make sure your VOIPTalker sound attenuation is assigned and setup correctly.
  
  If those steps didn’t fix the problem try:
• Following the “Stuttering or Robotic Sounding Voices” steps.

The post Common Voice Chat Fixes in Unreal Engine 4 appeared first on Couch Learn.

Is VOIPTalker Voice Chat Difficult?

No, not at all!

Implementing Positional Voice Chat into your UE4 multiplayer game only using blueprints is simple and requires very little knowledge of how the backend C++ code works.

Adding this system to my own project initially was very difficult due to the lack of resources available from both the community and Epic themselves on their wiki.

As I don’t want anyone to follow the painful nights of troubleshooting like it did, I have created this guide for the UE4 community to enhance their own projects.

Examples of proximity and positional voice chat 

• Rust https://rust.facepunch.com/ developed by Facepunch Studios
• PUBG https://www.pubg.com/ developed by PUBG Corporation
• Fortnite https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/home developed by Epic Games

Requirements

• Unreal Engine’s basic voice chat system fully working.

• Unreal Engine version 4.19 and above.

• The new audio mixer and associated plugins be enabled. (If not using Unreal Engine 4.24)

Complete these requirements to move onto adding the VOIPTalker component.

The VOIPTalker Component

Adding the Component

The VOIPTalker component intercepts voice data and runs it through any effects or attenuation thus preventing player voices playing directly to the players.

Firstly, on your character blueprint, type create the blueprint node named Add VOIPTalker and attach it to your Begin Play event.

From the return value pin, promote the new VOIPTalker to a new variable. Call this variable something relevant as we will use this again soon. I named this VOIP.

Validating the Player State

Next, connected to your Add VOIPTalker node, we need check if the PlayerState is valid and as a result, preventing failure during VOIPTalker’s initialisation.

There are far more pretty ways of doing this check but reliability and simplicity is key for understanding how this system works.

At this step, the code should look like this.

Registering Voice Chat data to the Player State

VOIPTalker in its current setup, can’t receive any voice data.

We now need to assign the correct PlayerState.

Using the Register with Player State node, we can assign the target pin to the promoted variable we created earlier. In the earlier steps we named this VOIP.

In the owning state pin, the PlayerState variable needs to be connected.

Microphone Sensitivity

When using this system I found that the microphone sensitivity was far to low to sustain voice chat without stuttering or cutting out entirely.

To fix this simply create a Set Mic Threshold node and set it to -1.

VOIPTalker Voice Settings

We are almost there!

VOIPTalker by default has no effects, location for the sound to originate from or attenuation preset.

From the VOIP variable, drag and type set settings to create this node shown below.

This node gives us the ability to define the settings we want for our voice chat.

Set Component to Attach to a reference to the player’s camera. This will appear to make the audio originate from the player’s mouth.

I created a specific attenuation class for VOIP which will more accurately reduce volume over distance in the context of speech. You can create and set your own Attenuation class in here and tweak till it sounds right.

If you don’t know how to setup Audio Attenuation in Unreal Engine 4 click here for a simple guide.

In the content browser create a new source effect chain class and leave it empty. Assign the source effect chain setting option to this new class.

Completed Blueprint

The entire system is fairly simple. The lack of documentation is the difficult part.

Here is the complete blueprint nodes all inside my player character blueprint.

Example Video

Download the Project Files

Conclusion

Positional Voice Chat should be well documented and developed considering how many games use this feature.

If you found this tutorial useful please share to other developers, family and friends because I believe that this takes very little time to set up and adds a whole dimension of gameplay.

Developers should not have to rely on custom C++ solutions for basic multiplayer features.

The post How to use VOIPTalker Proximity Voice Chat using only Blueprints in your Multiplayer Unreal Engine 4 game appeared first on Couch Learn.

With only a small amount of setup you can add fully working voice chat using only blueprints into your game without any C++ knowledge using any version of  Unreal Engine 4.

Before we Start

Unreal Engine’s voice chat only works correctly when your multiplayer game uses the session system. To learn about the session system in Unreal Engine 4 click here.

Setting up Voice Chat

Config Files

To tell the engine that we want to enable the voice chat features there are a few configuration files (.ini) that need to be changed. The files we need to change are DefaultGame.ini and DefaultEngine.ini. No additional software is needed to change these files. Notepad works fine.

To find these files open your project folder and navigate to the config folder.

Here are the two files we need to edit:

To edit them, right click the file and select open with then click notepad:

DefaultEngine.ini

Once open, scroll down to the end of the DefaultEngine.ini file and copy and paste this section to enable the voice system on the engine. Save and exit this file.

[Voice] 
bEnabled=true

[OnlineSubsystem] 
bHasVoiceEnabled=true

DefaultGame.ini

DefaultGame.ini is last file that needs to be changed. Open this using the same method as DefaultEngine.ini and paste one of the sections below to enable or disable push to talk.

Enabling push to talk gives your players the ability to only send their voice when pressing a button down.

Disabling push to talk sends voice data all the time regardless if the player wants to send their voice or not.

It is recommended that you enable this as most players prefer their voice data only being sent when they are ready to talk.

To enable push to talk, copy and paste this section:

[/Script/Engine.GameSession]
bRequiresPushToTalk=true

To disable push to talk, copy and paste this section:

[/Script/Engine.GameSession]
bRequiresPushToTalk=false

Save and close the file.

Open your project from the .uproject file in your project folder and wait for the engine to load.

Finishing Touches

Blueprint Setup

If you have enabled push to talk in the DefaultGame.ini file in the above step, you will need to setup key press input to start and stop push to talk. If you did not enable push to talk you can skip to the conclusion.

The first step is to open your player controller blueprint. In my project I have created a new player controller named PlayerControllerVoice.

If you do not have a custom player controller, simply create one from the content browser and assign it to your game mode.

Adding the Voice Chat Key

Once your player controller blueprint is open on the event graph right click anywhere on the empty space and type the name of the key you want your players to press in order to talk. In my case I used the V key.

From the pressed and released pins of the input key event create two “Execute Console Command” nodes.

At this stage it should look like this:

In the command input of the pressed “Execute Console Command” node type:

ToggleSpeaking 1

In the command input of the released “Execute Console Command” node type:

ToggleSpeaking 0

Now when your players press the input key (in my case V) they will start sending voice chat information. When they release the key they will stop sending voice chat information.

Example Video

Download the Project Files

These example projects have fully working voice chat using the Steam online system using Unreal Engine 4.23.

Conclusion

Voice Chat is now fully working. Completing the additional steps gives you the option of enabling and disabling sending your player’s voice through push to talk!

To improve this system you could do the following:

• Add positional voice chat to your system.
• Add the Advanced Sessions Plugin which gives access to blueprint nodes of many C++ only voice and online features (muting other players, friends lists, inviting players) found here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/community-content-tools-and-tutorials/41043-advanced-sessions-plugin
• Use Input actions for push to talk allowing players to rebind their keys

The post The easy way to add Voice Chat into your multiplayer Unreal Engine 4 Game appeared first on Couch Learn.