What I have noticed on XBox live Gears of War tm was that people can voice chat, THIS FEATURE MUST BE USED IN MULTIPLAYER GAMES. FOR F**K'S SAKE HOW MANY TIMES DID YOU GET FRAGGED WHEN YOU WERE TYPING A MESSAGE!?
THE THING WITH VOICE IS THAT YOU CAN EASLY COMMUNICATE EVEN IN INTENSE ACTION! NO ONE PLEASE TELL ME THAT XFIRE WILL DO BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO PRESS SCROLL + X AND THE INTERFACE COMES UP SO YOU CANNOT PLAY! THIS IDEA USES JUST FIVE KEYS F1, F2, F3, F4 AND THREE CHANNELS. F1 FOR CHAT WITH NEAREST PLAYER FROM YOUR TEAM, TO USE THE CHANNEL YOU DON'T HAVE TO HOLD DOWN THE KEY. F2 TEAM MESSAGE AND F3 FOR OVERALL MESSAGE. F4 TO SWITCH OFF VOICE SO PEOPLE DONT HEAR WHAT YOU SAY TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND OVER THE PHONE.
The thing could be done using VoIP if possible if not, DirectInput (in programs like videoLAN) in MPEG-4 at 1 or 2 KiloByte/s (bytes not bites), it will work cause I was listening to the radio 56k/s and playing a game in multiplayer. To minimise host's bandwitch usage the audio would be sent directly to other peoples Zymotics on a different port to the game. At this point I thought of the problem of using the team and all player message because if there are 13 players overall the message would have to be sent 12 times!!!! So i think of a "pass it on" method e.g. when player a sends a message to all players his computer sends it only to player no. 2's PC but before the actual sound there would be command to send it to player 3 and player 3 plays the sound and at the same moment starts to execute the command to send it to player 4 and so on. Single messages on F1 are just simply sent with no passiong on.