Party Stuff

[garrynewman]

So parties are working right now in my local tests

• Can invite a friend to a party
• They'll get a popup in game
• If they accept they'll join the party
• You can make someone else the party leader
• If you start a game the party will follow you
• If you leave a game the party will leave

s.box.2021-06-25.14-51-14.mp4

I have some questions to ask.

Text Chat

• Should we have text chat among the party
• Should the text chat work only in the menu
• Should we try to get in game chat to support the blizzard style PARTY/TEAM/GLOBAL tabbing style?
• Is the blizzard way the standard way to deal with this?

Voice Chat

• Voice chat between party in the menu, right?
• In game, how do you decide whether the whole came can hear you, or just the party?
• Is this handled well in any games you know? How?
• Is this the standard way of dealing with this?

[Nebual]

Party text chat is nice (might not all be on Discord/the same Discord). Having a backup chat in the Menu might be useful in case the Gamemode does something funky with normal in-game chat.

Blizzard-style tabbing between (and /p[arty] or /t[eam] or /g[lobal]) chat audiences, with colour coded text, seems the clearest way to handle text rooms.

Not sure if you'd want to enforce a standardized chat, or just have a good default implementation (eg. in sandbox gamemode) that everyone copies unless they have niche needs (eg. proximity chat?)

[SebbeJohansson]

I personally would prefer to see buttons for specific chats rather than with commands and tabbing. You could theoretically still have tabbig, but that might interfere with other stuff.

[ogniK5377]

I think a ready system should be put in place, most games like overwatch, CSGO etc end up using this so people aren't suddenly dragged into a game against their will. Kicking people from a party would also be a nice feature to have.

Having the ability to have a Party/Global chat would be nice. Getting people to get into a party with you would be nice for more of the team-based games. This also brings up the issue of having more control over matchmaking. Allowing game modes to specify the max party count for searching & add restrictions to the matchmaking would be nice too. (Eg in a team-based game, everyone should be on the same team and only servers with a spare slot should account for this).

[garrynewman]

In some ways it might be better for us to treat the chat box as game ui, and have it totally implemented in menu code. We could let the game change the stylesheets and hook into things, but it would be fundamentally under our control. This is maybe not what a lot of gamemodes would want, but also I could imagine that a lot more gamemodes don't even want to fuck with it.

[ubre]

Voice chat would need to have an overlay similar to Discord as to not get confusing in games with proximity chat, as long as the gamemode allows it (Which could be counted as cheating in some, but there really isn't a way to stop this since there are other ways for a party to talk to eachother).

[garrynewman]

I think there's no way to stop parties cheating by talking to each other outside the game, so the fairest thing to do is to never restrict them in game either. Best thing to do is indicate who is in a party together so people will be able to call that then it happens and make it an honour thing.

[handsomematt]

* In game, how do you decide whether the whole came can hear you, or just the party?

In Dota they do it with 2 different binds - when you hold either bind down you get a different voice icon on your screen depending on if you're currently talking to party or game.

Nice and KISS.

[garrynewman]

are there standard keys for this?

[handsomematt]

nah just G assigned to team chat by default

[ceitine]

I honestly think a party system should have both a text chat and a voice chat.

You could prevent the "cheating" on party voice chat by adding a convar or option for the gamemode to not allow speaking to party while playing that gamemode. The ability to change that through code would also open up a lot of possibilities (ex. TTT but you can only talk and hear your party once you're dead.)

I personally think the party voice chat should be just 2D at all times.

Also having a global/party chat would be pretty cool and it would probably make it easier to find people to play with.

[Alf21]

I like the of having a party, team and global chat, but imo the add-on creator should always be able interacting with / restricting it. As @ceitine already mentioned, in TTT (e.g.) it is a base functionality being able to handle the voice chat (who can hear whom). According to this, it would also be necessary to have a team chat as well as a global chat (traitors can talk with another). Maybe there are other ways I can't think of currently, that's why I'd be okay if we would just have a restrictable party and global chat with the possibility, to add channels on our own to the global chat (currently possible with who can hear whom, but still bound to the Voice key so you can't open different channels if you have the "permissions" to do so. A way to trigger the speaking function / open mic if a clientside bound key is pressed could help as well).

[Ardivaba]

It is important that game modes can disable party text chat and voice chat, otherwise when people join servers that have game modes similar to TTT they will start sharing information gameplay critical information with their party members that they shouldn't have.

It would help if lobby owners can see which game modes disable party communications and which do not prior to joining.

[AdamSai]

Text Chat

• Should we have text chat among the party
  Definitely! Sometimes people mute themselves cus they're on the phone or someone is in the room, but they still type on Discord. Would be nice to have this ingame as well.
• Should the text chat work only in the menu
  No. An ingame party chat would be nice to have
• Should we try to get in game chat to support the blizzard style PARTY/TEAM/GLOBAL tabbing style?
  Yeah, I really like this. A Global chat in the main menu can be hit or miss. Sometimes fun memes come around, but without moderation it just becomes a cesspool. One addition which I think would be nice, would be to create Clans/Guilds ingame and have a chat for that. It seems to work really well in all Blizzard games.
• Is the blizzard way the standard way to deal with this?
  I think so. I've played Blizzard games for years, and their text chat is amazing.

Voice Chat

• Voice chat between party in the menu, right?
  Absolutely
• In game, how do you decide whether the whole came can hear you, or just the party?
  As matt stated, having a keybind for each voice chat would be a good idea imo. Alternatively, a "switch" key could be used to switch between the two voice chats.
• Is this handled well in any games you know? How?
  Most games I've played only has 1 voice chat.. It would be nice to have one for the Party and one for the Gamemode so we could skip Discord sometimes.

[SupinePandora43]

Should we try to get in game chat to support the blizzard style PARTY/TEAM/GLOBAL tabbing style?

TF2 have that:
Y - global chat
U - team chat
P - party chay