Understanding how PlayFab Party chat works

Articolo
05/16/2023

With PlayFab Party, you can easily add voice and text communication to your game.

PlayFab Party chat is:

Flexible: Gives you full control of how you want your player to communicate.
Powerful: Uses hardware codec acceleration on supported platforms.
Accessible: Powered by Azure Cognitive Services, speech-to-text, text-to-speech and translation features are built-in and easy to enable.
Efficient: Having your chat system tightly integrated with your networking layer means voice data get sent where it needs to go in the most efficient way possible.

Chat basics

To add voice and text communication to your game, you'll first need to create a PartyLocalChatControl object. This PartyLocalChatControl object will act as the management object for chat operations related to a specific local user, allowing you to choose the input and output device, mute state, and accessibility preferences. Each local user can have no more than one chat control. For a local chat control to communicate with another chat control, the following requirements must be met:

The two chat controls must be in the same network.
The chat permissions between the two chat controls must allow audio and/or text communication to flow.

With your local chat control in-hand you're now ready to have it connect to a network by calling PartyNetwork::ConnectChatControl(). Upon connection, other devices in the network will be notified that your chat control has joined the network with a PartyChatControlJoinedNetworkStateChange state change. You'll also receive a PartyChatControlJoinedNetworkStateChange for every other chat control already in the network and will immediately be able to communicate with them.

Audio Inputs and Outputs

Party allows you to choose which audio device(s) will get used by your chat control with the PartyLocalChatControl::SetAudioInput() and PartyLocalChatControl::SetAudioOutput() methods. Use the PartyAudioDeviceSelectionType enum to change the behavior of these methods:

`PartyAudioDeviceSelectionType::None`

When this audio device selection type is chosen, the chat control won't use any audio device. This audio device selection type is the default.

`PartyAudioDeviceSelectionType::SystemDefault`

When this audio device selection type is chosen, the chat control attempts to use the system's default communication device. On Windows, the player can change this device at any time through the Windows Sound Control Panel and Party will respond to those changes automatically. This selection type isn't supported on Xbox One and generally not recommended if you have more than one local user participating in chat simultaneously.

`PartyAudioDeviceSelectionType::PlatformUserDefault`

When this audio device selection type is chosen, PartyLocalChatControl::SetAudioInput() and PartyLocalChatControl::SetAudioOutput() require that the audioDeviceSelectionContext parameter be set to a platform user ID. Party then attempts to use the platform default communication device associated with that user. On Xbox One, the audioDeviceSelectionContext should be the Xbox User ID associated with the user currently tied to the chat control.

`PartyAudioDeviceSelectionType::Manual`

When this audio device selection type is chosen, PartyLocalChatControl::SetAudioInput() and PartyLocalChatControl::SetAudioOutput() will use the audioDeviceSelectionContext parameter as a valid audio device identifier and will attempt to use any device matching that identifier. Refer to the following table to see what kind of identifier PlayFab Party supports:

Platform	What to Use
Windows 10	`IMMDevice` or `Windows.Media.Devices`
Xbox	Refer to the Xbox GDK documentation

Note

We strongly recommend using PartyAudioDeviceSelectionType::PlatformUserDefault on Xbox One and PartyAudioDeviceSelectionType::SystemDefault on Windows platforms.

Chat permissions and muting

Party gives you fine-grained control over how your players can communicate with each other. Rather than specifying teams or channels, Party requires explicitly defining the permissions between each pair of chat controls. To learn more about chat permissions, muting and how to build common chat scenario, refer to the chat permission overview page.

Text chat, translation, and moderation

Party also allows you to send and receive text chat from other chat controls. While the PartyLocalChatControl::SendText() method will allow you to send text messages to an arbitrary number of chat controls, you can rest assured that only the chat controls with the appropriate PartyChatPermissionOptions::ReceiveText chat permission receive the messages.

Text chat translation can also be enabled by calling PartyLocalChatControl::SetTextChatOptions(). By setting the PartyTextChatOptions::TranslateToLocalLanguage option Party will translate incoming text message to the local chat control's language. The chat control's language can optionally be configured during chat control creation and can be accessed by calling PartyLocalChatControl::GetLanguage(). Translation will also be applied to incoming speech-to-text transcription.

Text moderation is also available for text chat. To learn more about this feature, refer to the Using text moderation page.

Accessible chat

Powered by Azure Speech Services, Party can transcribe player voice chat and synthesize speech from text. This functionality has several uses but was primarily designed as an accessibility aide. We recommend tying activation of this capability to an ease-of-access player setting. For more information on how to use the accessibility features provided by Party, see text-to-speech guidelines and the speech-to-text guidelines.

Audio input noise suppression

Party enables you to suppress background noise in captured microphone audio before it's transmitted to remote chat controls. This can significantly increase the quality of your players' voice audio. For more information on how to enable noise suppression, refer to the Using noise suppression page.