Tonight on GeekNights, we review Luigi's Mansion 3 on the Nintendo Switch. It's all right, and is probably the best of the Luigi series to date. In the news, we live streamed this episode with a new RTMP setup, Torchbearer 2e will scratch that "old style Dungeons & Dragons but with a modern sensibility" itch, and Mario Maker is finally complete.
Things of the Day
Episode Links
Episode on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/36264075
Episode live streamed with our new three-OBS plus an RTMP server pipeline:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejK0B6khULo
Listening and wondering what challenges Rym is looking at with Blades in the Dark online. I’ll admit, I’m using Roll20, which is adding two tabs you need to keep open in a browser, but it just works.
We have friends who have difficulty connecting independently to the same voice chat. Any service that requires voice chat would be a problem.
Not everyone has multiple separate PCs with separate islolated microphones. Being in the same room makes it impossible.
That make sense. I’ve run into that problem with a couple of people who’d been using their phone as the only internet they had. They connected to the discord on a single phone and both loaded the website on their laptops.
A bit of a silly workaround, so I can understand it being a thing stopping it from getting going.
There’s also an audio fluency problem in general. Very few people seem to realize how they can control their own microphones and volume, nevermind tune everyone else’s. Lots of people end up using the mic on a random webcam, or can’t figure out what mic they’re using.
The basics of computer audio are unknown to most people…
A random webcam mic is fine provided you’re in a quiet place and the mic is of acceptable quality.
I wouldn’t trust it for like… anything where high audio quality is required, but for regular audio chats works a dream.
I find it unacceptable in almost all cases. It’s usually echo hell when other people do it, even if it’s fine when I do it.
I find that a lot of people don’t really understand things like “if you have a microphone and speakers, the microphone will pick up your speakers” and “you can change the volume on your own microphone.”
There’s no magic inherent in being you in this context, you’re just someone who understands the basics of how mics and sound work. Like for instance, you know that if you have a webcam mic, keyboard typing will be very disturbing for anyone else so you either won’t use a keyboard while using one or won’t use a webcam mic in the first place and then happily type away.
You’re not exactly alone there.
Good news on that. Nvidia just released a beta of some software that uses your GPU to process Noise Cancellation, called RTX Voice. I’ve not had the chance to try it out just yet, but apparently it’s pretty good.
I mean Discord has push to talk, its the easiest way to handle that sort of thing in an RPG online setting. There’s nothing that an extra half second to press the transmit key will lose out on vs. online competitive gaming.
I find that most people who don’t play FPSs are incapable of using push-to-talk without constantly cutting themselves off. It’s been a thing in online RPGs and Discords in general.
Discord also just added some noise cancellation algo that is shockingly good at removing typing noise.
Usually what I find is other people will complain about audio problems, but can’t sufficiently describe the problem or their own setup enough for me to assist.
I suppose it’s a difference between needing it to be good VS needing it to be there. I needed something social to reach out and connect with people, so I started there, working with what I had in terms of interest and trying to improve from there. I can work with trying to build a better sound arrangement as we go, including letting people hear what they sound like on a recording.
One of my weaknesses. My hate of how deep my voice is.
I tried this yesterday. Foolishly I realized after trying to install it that it requires a video card with RTX. My 1070 can kickass at Doom: Eternal but is no use at noise cancellation.
Discord, however, has incorporated Krisp™ noise cancellation in beta. You can just activated it with a toggle button. In our experience so far, it kicks ass. Our extremely loud mechanical keyboards are not heard at all.
I do have an RTX card, so hopefully it’ll go well when I give it a shot later on. Though, you can run it on a non-RTX card with a small modification. Of course, run at your own risk, take precautions as I expect you would but I’m mostly saying this for other people who might check it out, etc, etc, but it should work.
I have a policy of not doing shady biz like that to my computer. Thanks to that policy, my computers always work basically perfectly. I also get to criticize other people when their computers have problems because they did not adhere to this same policy.
I mean, you’re an extensively experienced IT professional with a degree from a respected institution, so I figure you kinda get a pass on that anyway, but good to be sure I suppose.
Nah,