I play in a RPG (old school with dices) with some friends who happen to live several hundred kilometers away from me. So we interact over Videochat.
Now our Game master wants to use music to enhance ambient and our current system doesn't provide a good feature for that (or if if does I don't know it).
We don't care where the system is (so, its fine if I have to setup a server or login to an web-service or whatever - Technology is irrelevant).
We don't mind paying for that system. We payed 200€ for our webcams, so the software should not be massively more expensive.
Our network is rock solid, if the software has problems with dying connections, we don't mind. But our network is sometimes slow (good latency, low throughput) so if the software has good compression etc. that would be nice.
Must have:
- I must be able to choose which camera / microphone I want to use (my laptop has one, but thats crap. My expensive Webcam has a great one.)
- It must be able to accept an audio file (format irrelevant) that then is played on both sides.
- It must be able to let one side adjust volume of that music OR must be able to autoadjust the voice (=input on mic) of the speakers in a way that voice always wins over music.
- If hosted on my server I must be able to do some basic security stuff
- It must be able (by default or configuration) to automatically reduce video quality for better audio quality or otherwise ensuring that the speech gets through (as long as the network permits).
Strongly needed (If your recommendation fulfills all must and some nice to have this point can be ignored):
- There should be a way to interact with it with Windows and Linux. The Linux part may involve technically complex stuff (wine etc.), the Windows part may not.
Nice to have:
- It allows sharing of images.
- It has collaborative editing possibilities. (Draw a line in 3 colors, Erase that line).
- It has a plugin system that allows emulation of dice. (Show 3 random numbers in a given range)
- It allows control of music and other things through a third device (Tablet computer - any technology)
I did some testing around with various solutions a while ago, but none very in-depth so I might have overlooked something. Currently the game master plays the music on his IPad and I hear it along with his speech, but that reduces the quality of the music to around telephone and the understandability of his words to "tricky", so thats why we want a change.