VOIP in Brink

**iravedic** · 07-21-11, 05:40 PM

So as many of you have noticed, the VOIP in Brink is pretty broken. Some of it is through conscious decisions made by SD, some of it is by oversight, but all of it causes problems. Here's a handy guide to how VOIP works in Brink, and how to get it working.
The first thing that you're going to have to to is to open your console and set a couple of variables. By default the developers set the volume for VOIP in and VOIP out to -6, which is way too quiet for anyone to be able to hear.
To enable your console, right click the game in your steam library, click properties, under the general tab click set launch options. In the launch options box that appears type "+com_allowconsole 1" (with no quotation marks). This will allow you to open the game's console by pressing ` (it's above the tab key on US keyboards) in game.
Once your console is enabled, open the console inside the game and type the following two commands: s_volume_voipin_db 0
s_volume_voipout_db 0
Note: You can also add these to your launch options by typing in +s_volume_voipin_db 0 +s_volume_voipout_db 0 in the same place that you enabled the console.
A note by Kryhavok: Just a reminder that s_xxx_dB variables are in decibels, a logarithmic scale. A change of 3 dB is double (if positive) the volume, half if negative.
Another note by Tarqon: He had to put quotes around the number. So s_volume_voipout_db "0" I didn't have to do this, so it may only be necessary for some users.
You can tweak the 0 in the above commands to your liking, if people say you're too quiet you may need to make voipout higher, if others are too quiet you may need to make voipin higher.
Now your volume should be set correctly!
The way that Brink's VOIP system works is that there are two VOIP channels, public and fireteam. Following the CoDMW2 idea that most random VOIP chatters are 12 year olds hurling racial slurs, SD disabled public VOIP on servers by default, so most Brink servers won't allow you to use public VOIP regardless of your own settings. Luckily, fireteam VOIP is enabled on servers by default, so you can use that as your main voice chat.
Here's the part where you say "But wtf is a fireteam?" SD managed to skimp on the explanation of fireteams, and it's frankly downright unintuitive and difficult to even find a mention of them anywhere in the game. The best way to describe a fireteam is that it's kind of like a squad in Bad Company 2. Only it supports an unlimited number of people, and the only benefit you gain from it is being able to use fireteam VOIP and fireteam member's names will be purple on the screen.
To start a fireteam, join a game, then open up the menu by pressing esc. Open the scoreboard so that you can see all the members of your team. If you then click on a name on the scoreboard, you get the option to create a fireteam with that person. You can also join already existing fireteams the same way. Keep in mind when selecting fireteam members that anyone with a headset will have a headset icon next to their score, and bots will have a person icon next to their score.
Once you create a fireteam, you will be able to chat with them using your fireteam VOIP hotkey. Voice chat makes the game a lot more entertaining, and I hope to see more people using it in the future.

Brink VOIP guide! (get it workin, yo!) : brink

Take this for what it's worth - try it and lets see if we can get it to function correctly.