OStatic

Interview: Mumble Does OSS VoIP Chats for Online Games

Voice chats have emerged as integral parts of many online games in recent years--part of the social gaming trend--and VoIP solutions such as Teamspeak have been created in response. Mumble is an open source project that has gained an audience in this arena for the low-latency game chatting it facilitates. It offers noise suppression, gain control, and support for multiple audio standards. It's client-server focused, and does need its own dedicated server. We checked in with Thorvald Natvig, lead developer of Mumble, on open source and where Mumble is going.

OStatic: Who is your typical user?  How do you support your users?

Thorvald Natvig: The typical user is a social gamer; someone that enjoys talking and having fun with friends while gaming. We have a support forum and and IRC channel, and luckily there are usually enough other users around that they can answer questions even if none of the official developers are around.

OStatic: What technologies does Mumble use?

Thorvald Natvig: Speex for audio processing and compression. Qt for GUI and abstraction of OS services such as network, databases, file I/O etc.DirectSound, WASAPI, ALSA, OSS, PulseAudio, PortAudio and ASIO for audio backends. Direct3D and OpenGL in-game overlay on Win32, and OpenGL on Linux. SQLite or MySQL for database. DBus and ZeroC ICE for RPC control of the server.

OStatic: What products are your closest alternatives?  What advantages/disadvantages does your product have over these?

Thorvald Natvig: The closest alternatives are Teamspeak and Ventrilo. Our advantages are lower latency and less noise, ability to integrate into existing infrastructure, encryption and the in-game overlay. Their advantages are a larger installed base, and they also have easier to use administration of the server.

OStatic: What motivates you to participate in open source, and give your work away?

Thorvald Natvig: There are many VoIP solutions for gaming out there, but none that optimize for low latency and voice clarity. Most of the in-game VoIP solutions are horrible. I really needed a VoIP solution that worked for me. However, it's also important for me that others can take my code and use it in their programs, whether they're open source or proprietary. If someone uses Mumble's VoIP code in the next great online game, I'd be thrilled. For that to be possible, the code has to be open source, and as freely licensed as possible.

OStatic: Are there any anecdotal comments you can make about any interesting or unusual users of your project?

Thorvald Natvig: I know it's been used for HAM radio, it's been used in a classroom setting with students and instructors, and it's been used for radio interviews.

OStatic: What's coming next for Mumble?

Thorvald Natvig: Video, if we can get it to work on all the platforms. While it's one thing to hear someone laugh, it's much more social to actually see them smile.

OStatic:  How would you say Mumble benefits from being open source?

Thorvald Natvig: Without being open source, it would be much harder to get code contributed to the project. The entire OS X branch wouldn't have happened if the project was closed source.

OStatic: Thanks, Thorvald.

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