Communication bug

After the last patch we noticed (community servers), serious problems with radio and proximity communication. Seems broken. In the beginning, everything works fine, everybody can hear each other, but it deteriorates quickly. After 30 sec. first players are ... muted? or something, because you can see they press their PTT (small name box appears), but you can't hear them anymore. Up until the point where nobody can hear each other or max. some players can hear each other.

This must be fixed quickly, because it's the CORE gameplay to communicate with your team!
Yeah, we could get to Teamspeak or Discord, but this would kinda kill open gameservers with randoms.

(Perhaps it has something to do with the MG-firing-endlessly-bug as well, still a problem in 1.3)

Seen this as well. Players trying to talk but not coming through at all. Proximity voice chat is also just incredibly quiet!

Hello @tacplay and @Olanov ,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The team is investigating this issue. Meanwhile, can you tell us what kind of headset were you using when this issue happened?

last edited by chaton

@chaton said in Communication bug:

Hello @tacplay and @Olanov ,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The team is investigating this issue. Meanwhile, can you tell us what kind of headset were you using when this issue happened?

Sennheiser Gamer Zero here, but I doubt it had something to do with that, as the player I couldn't hear was similarly silent to other people on the instance, even though the VOIP box was appearing. No doubt they were using different headsets. Happened in a few different instances.

last edited by Olanov

Hi chaton,

thanks for your reply.

Steam and ingame voip are okay, wasn't very loud before the update, but working.
Both are maxed out.
There's no mic, windows, or sounddevice error as far as I know.

This evening we could hear a lot of "beep" from the mics, but no voices.
It's deteriorating faster if more people are online it seems.

My Headset: Beyerdynamics MMX300

Had this as well tonight. Yeti Blue USB microphone. Other players heard me beeping instead of talking. The issue was gone after the next map loaded. Discord was working fine during this issue.

last edited by JoeK5142

Yup. I've been on both sides of this issue.

@chaton said in Communication bug:

Meanwhile, can you tell us what kind of headset were you using when this issue happened?

Headset doesn't matter. In fact, none of your PC specs matter. It's purely a bug with Sandstorm that wasn't a thing until 1.13.

I swear, can't NWI just fix the goddamn bugs without adding in more of them? This issue completely fucks up communication in Hardcore Checkpoint and Frenzy, and that can easily lead to dead players in both gamemodes.

Schroeder told me, it might be connected to the client side configuration of the voice over radio beep (he switch them off).
Will try this out the next days and report it here.

Hmm. Doesn't help, turning off the beeps. Still the same issue through the whole evening.
Guys, I know, bugs are hard to fight, but this one is really killing the fun if you play with randoms. There's no useful tactical teamplay possible without communication. Hope this is somewhere at the top of the list.
If you need any further information, please say so, happy to help.

One thing Schroeder found out:
If you restart the round (admin-menue), the bug is temporarily gone, but appears again some minutes into the game.

@tacplay Thanks for the further information. I'll pass the details on to the team again.

Thanks @chaton - would be nice to know if the team is on it. It's a pity we have to use discord now. Specially for randoms who don't hear us anymore.

You can merge this thread with this one, it's practically the same issue: https://forums.focus-home.com/topic/40305/bug-team-radio-causes-series-of-radio-beeps-does-not-transmit-voice

Cheers.

@tacplay I'm still waiting for more information on their end. When I have some, I'll keep you updated.

Long time no hear, but I have another tip from reddit for the devs, if they’re interested:

Someone wrote, he had this annoying beeping instead of voip and fixed it:

  • turned off beeps in settings
  • installed voicemod.net
  • routed his mic in windows through voicemod
  • problem gone

Reddit post

Hope this helps to find a solution.

@chaton -

Something a little out-of-the-box, looking at bandwidth issues. My characterisations:

  • v1.3 problem, but loss of voice problem predates v1.2 at lesser extent
  • You can turn off radio beep tone on client settings, but still no voice is heard after the bug trigger
  • Once the bug is triggered it seems to spread to other players, but not to everyone
  • "Who-can-hear-whom" is random (or not?). Sometimes A can hear B but not C.
  • Direction is not symmetric: A can hear B, but B cannot hear A is possible. (I have not checked for condition both parties cannot hear each other.)
  • Once the bug is triggeeed it doesn't seem to clear itself unless you disconnect and re-connect to the server (others have said map change will clear - I didn't check this)
  • I can't correlate this to the overloaded server CPU - I've seen this happen even with very few people playing, 50% CPU load.
  • Related issue: Proximity vs Radio audio attentuation seems to be buggy - I noticed sometimes Radio voice attenuates at distance.

1) Client Bandwidth (drops) or Pings (jitter buffer)?

It feels as though few specific clients seem to trigger it - I'm one of them. My very slow home/client is DSL 5.0/0.8mbps, and my server is at Vultr VPS 100ms away. I have joined my server and not speak for an hour, others had no voice issues for that session (possibly that everyone else had high bandwidth on that session). I seem to run into this voice problem more, whenever I start conversation with a specific friend with extremely fast home Internet and low-ping to the server.

But all this may be a coincidence as I don't have a very controlled environment for QC testing.

2) Server Side Possibilities:

I get this on my SERVER log very often -- but last I checked I could not correlate time of the messages to the moment people started to lose VON. I can revisit this issue again in a better controlled environment but I have to recruit several volunteers -- taking no further actions unless requested.

[2019.07.09-17.10.18:021][250]LogNet: Dropped 1 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:438][714]LogNet: Dropped 2 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:438][714]LogNet: Dropped 2 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:438][714]LogNet: Dropped 2 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:438][714]LogNet: Dropped 2 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:438][714]LogNet: Dropped 2 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:438][714]LogNet: Dropped 2 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:438][714]LogNet: Dropped 2 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:438][714]LogNet: Dropped 2 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:438][714]LogNet: Dropped 2 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:521][716]LogNet: Dropped 1 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:521][716]LogNet: Dropped 1 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:521][716]LogNet: Dropped 1 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:521][716]LogNet: Dropped 1 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:521][716]LogNet: Dropped 1 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:522][716]LogNet: Dropped 1 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:522][716]LogNet: Dropped 1 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel
[2019.07.09-17.10.45:522][716]LogNet: Dropped 1 packets due to congestion in the voicechannel

3) You seem to be interested in Client configurations

I run analog mic, analog headphone into a Realtek (mobo built-in) soundcard audio ports. Driver
is dated 2010 but Windows/64 thinks this is the latest/best. My audio-in was set to 44KHz/16-bits
instead of 41KHz/16-bits -- will try playing it with 41KHz for a while.

Here's the dump:

Name	Realtek High Definition Audio
Manufacturer	Realtek
Status	OK
PNP Device ID	HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0892&SUBSYS_80862002&REV_1003\4&37464916&0&0001
Driver	C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\RTKVHD64.SYS (6.0.1.6215, 2.40 MB (2,511,464 bytes), Wed/1/13/2016 6:27 PM)
	
Name	NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM)
Manufacturer	NVIDIA
Status	OK
PNP Device ID	ROOT\UNNAMED_DEVICE\0000
Driver	C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\NVVAD64V.SYS (4.13.0.0, 68.20 KB (69,840 bytes), Tue/4/23/2019 8:47 AM)
	
Name	NVIDIA High Definition Audio
Manufacturer	NVIDIA
Status	OK
PNP Device ID	HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10DE&DEV_0080&SUBSYS_38426253&REV_1001\5&27AE4638&0&0001
Driver	C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\NVHDA64V.SYS (1.3.38.13, 223.41 KB (228,768 bytes), Tue/3/5/2019 10:16 AM)

Edit: Added 'asymmetric' observation bullet 2019.07.09 1225PST.

last edited by JS Schroeder

Perhaps related:

The „MG firing endlessly“ bug can be (kinda) fixed by:

  • while hearing it ingame
  • go to settings
  • audio
  • set master volume to any other value
    (works if you set it to 0.1 less or more)
  • resume game

It (MG firing) instantly turns off.

Will test if this works with the audiobug as well (don’t think so, because voip uses the steamclient, but wanted to post this anyway)

More interesting observations:

The problem seems to be on the audio receive side. I waited for a state that I heard 'beep-beep-beep' from two players and no voice. I disconnected from my server, reconnected, and I was able to hear both of them. (The other two players remained connected, and the server did not end round or the game).

@tacplay's advice partially works for this lost comm issue, too! After one or more players starts to beep and no voice, I set to "0" both voice and master volume settings for few seconds then brought them back up to the original level. When I get back in the game, I still get the repeating beep noise from the same persons BUT I can hear their voice.

Hi both,

Thanks for the futher information regarding a potential fix to this issue. I'll share it with the team!