The Problem
- Most games do not offer integrated voice chat, yet having it simplifies logistics and improves the social experience.
- Real-time communication can improve productivity in collaborative tasks unrelated to gaming.
Rejected Candidates (and Rationale)
- Ventrilo is a popular option, but does not have an officially-supported client for Linux (acknowledging that Mangler exists as an unofficial hack to solve this), which is the platform of choice for many WhatTheFork.org members. While it does support the open Speex codec, the server software is subject to significant restrictions (including an upper limit of 8 users), and that doesn’t align with how we do things around here.
- Skype does run natively on Linux, but is largely proprietary. Latency is consistently higher than other options, and while quality is generally good, the bandwidth requirements are more substantial. Additionally, it doesn’t address group chat as elegantly as the other options.
- TeamSpeak is cross-platform, supports the Speex and CELT open audio codecs, and is generally well-regarded. Latency tends to be higher than Ventrilo or Mumble, but less than Skype. However, the license terms are somewhat restrictive regarding commercial use (their definition of which is broad enough to include us).
The Solution
Mumble is an open source (BSD-licensed) voice chat system with cross-platform support. It uses the same high-quality codecs as TeamSpeak (Speex and CELT), with latency equal to (or better than) Ventrilo. Being BSD-licensed, there are no restrictions on how we can use it.
Additionally, the implementation chosen for WhatTheFork.org (uMurmur) has the smallest resource impact of any of the options considered, requiring roughly half a meg of RAM for each connected user, and around 17KB/sec of bandwidth during transmission.
Connecting
Point your Mumble client at mumble.whatthefork.org, on the default port 64738.