Hangouts Updated 2016

Google System Requirements for Hangouts

JUST VOICE
300kbps (kilobit) (35KBps or KiloByte/s) uploading just voice and downloading just 1 other participant for a total of 600kbps (70KBps)

For every additional participant you download more data. So if you are talking to 3 other people then you will be download 300kbps (35KBps) per participant for a total of 900kbps (105KBps). Don't forget to add yourself for a total of 900kbps down and 300kps up for a total of 1.2mbps or (140KBps).

Like Marching you can move only as fast as the slowest member. This means that the user experience is by the person with the worse internet. This can translate to a bunch of you being affected.

Hardware Matters!
Noise Cancelling Headphones is just plain basic Courtesy in Voice/Video over IP. Even the robust Iphone Earbuds are pretty good noise cancelling. The more ambient sounds you have the get into your mic the harder it is to be understood.

Latency, like in Online Game, Matters
So PING or MS matters. I normally use my Steam PING measures to see how things are by loading Insurgency and see how the Ping is per

or you can use a PING test  to see how is the MS of your country or region with your players/gm's region.

DSLReports is the Bandwidth tester I use these days. It tells me my Ping as well.

Latency Benchmarks are those you need for an FPS, about more than 200 becomes noticeably difficult and blow 100 becomes easy and undetectable. (Check the MS rating for the location)

DDOS Attack Map: Checking the Internet Weather.
Check the Digital Attack Map to see if your Country and Backbones are experiencing any irregular attacks.

Google Alerts ISP Outage and Conditions 
If you use Google Alerts than make an alert sends alerts before your game day about Outages, Interruptions, Maintenance, and Servicing. (Use those words as key words).

VOICE and VIDEO
2.6mbps (megabit) (350KBps) up or down with video.
So in a Game of 4 other players, thats 10.4mbps (1.4MegaByte/sec). This can even be more if the Video is in HD.

Example.
My internet at home is measured at 100KBps. This means I can talk to 2 other people in a voice only Google Hangout. I have a "advertised" 4mbps aka 500KBps. 

If PLDT FINALLY comes up with 50mbps (60usd/mo) and PLDT delivers only 1/5 of promised at 10mbps (1.25MBps) I need to still do the Hangout on Audio to maximize the user experience. 

GM and Players need to MATCH Bandwidth.
If I run a game with 4 other players EVERYONE will need about 1.4MB and a latency of about below 300ms.

Roll20
Roll20 needs about 400kbps to 800kbps (50-100KB/s) to add on. Again check the latency of this all.  Here is Roll20's image best practices and my Optimized Combat Mapping Post

Turn Off Mic if not Speaking
You will learn that turning off the Mic when its not your turn (and to comment on the chat or send whispers) is better to minimize confusion and maximize everyone's Mental and ISP bandwidth. More Voice Streams of data the more Download the system needs.
If you find it Rude for the GM or Other players to mute you, then be aware when its not your turn and your Mic is on.
The GM may make a disclaimer - Will mute you if its not your turn to talk to limit noise and bandwidth. 

Computer CPU and RAM.
Browsers can surprisingly eat up a lot of ram, and when I have it on my CPU monitor shows all 4 cores firing at max in my i3 computer. So if you can divide tasks by devices it would help. I ran a hangout from my phone and Roll20 on my laptop to help with the responsiveness.

In Closing
Hopefully one day someone can make a Chrome or Firefox Plug-in to automate all this. I'm sure someone would have figured out this pain point and

Second - Skype and Hangouts can have a dashboard for matching.
If all VOIP services can have a way to test and measure. like my tested bandwidth quality, capacity, and beside each name the PING/MS/Latency I have with each player updated every couple of minutes would be AWESOME!

Allow us to Search by Hubs and Discussion on User Experience.
If we can find gamers to play with online by the Quality of the Connection it would also be awesome. Breaking it down to "Hubs" would be ok and an opt in system. As well as informing people how they can improve their User Experience. In my area X is the best way, as I've tried Z, Y and B!

The Philippine Condition
It seems my timing leaving Roll20 is not so bad since I've been downgraded and will need to look for a good ISP. The example is true that If I do get to move to a new ISP at BEST I have only 1.25MB/s to look forward to or 4 player slots in only Voice.

But I'm not getting that until PLDT gets a fiber backbone in our area (by the experience of them just setting up a leased line in our provincial plant may mean x2-3 the amount of time, for a project that should have taken 60 days), I can only get 8mbps which is sobering 200KBs (remember 1/5 of the advertised rate) and that means Voice only and latency problems. Thats probably 2 years away (2018) or never.

Behind the Scenes: GURPS Modern Fantasy Prep

I think you can click to enlarge. This Layout is from my "ranging" in the most crowded areas in Divisoria. A little background: divisoria is where you get the best deals for knock-offs, direct-from-suppliers and hard to find goods and not a place tourists should go to without an experienced guide. I stick out like a sore thumb even as a local, especially since my first language is not filipino.

As you can see there are a ton of crates, crates are tricky because they can hide areas and can be red herrings. Players can basically waste time trying to check out a what is behind each create. Its common for interesting stuff to be behind these creates a bunch of baddies shooting or monsters can make the decision making processes easier. 

By the time I've posted this the map has been already used up. I'm drawing mostly my experience with bldgs for map making and how in 3rd world countries many buildings don't exactly follow the building code. 

If your interested to talk, call me up in Hangouts and we can have a chat about modern map making. I can set up GIMP and we can go step by step in making something like this. 

You can see I stopped drawing doors, if its an open passage way and LoS is blocked then its a door. It saves on space. You can also see how Modern Places can be as maze like as a dungeon and very dangerous. It was so easy to get lost in Divisoria especially since I can just pull out my phone without risking it getting snatched (good thing my brother came with me and we were able to watch each others backs). 

The yellow blocks are easier to make than lines, because lines require precision and the blocks don't. In the end stacking a bunch of yellow blocks is easier than carving out a layout. 

The interior hollow is supposed have windows but I'll just narrate it, allowing visibility is too time consuming compared to the GM just describing it.  I wish Roll20 had a way to copy a Done Map so that I can make variations of floors. 

I will have a "walled" City encounter (based on the Kowloon Walled City and movies like the Raid or Dredd where its urban warfare. Such maps will fall under a template which I flip and move around the parts. I'll post it when its done. I get to play out my Airsoft frustration when making such a map lolz. 

This map is a Tracing of Old Manila and there was no City Planning. The roads are still wide enough for 4 lanes for carts but 2 lanes for cars. I plan to have running battles in these maps, mostly narrating whats happening instead of second by second combat. Its easier if the players trust me or work towards tinkering the rules to fit this kind of encounter. I've been here and did a lot of walking around and research because of the Military Gear shop that I frequent that is over here. 

For another game, I just flipped the map to represent another terrain. Corners and directions are what matter. A to B and going through this whole mess in the terrible traffic and overcrowded city makes for a scary and action packed encounter. 

Note that I like sharing my work, I share can share my pix and maps you can copy them off this post. 

Hangouts Basics

Some tips using Hangout, this is basically my experience so pardon for the lack of sources. 

Hangouts seems to work even with just 40 kbps (40 max download or upload). Note that bandwidth can be unreliable dropping off when more people in the area use up internet. The 40kbps is my PLDT (isp) copper wire Internet that is parallel my land line for about $20usd/month. A good wifi router is also a factor, from experience of trying various other brands (TP link and D link) Cisco has performed the best. Remember to reset your router and if you don't secure it beyond password, change the password when there is an inconsistency to it on wifi versus direct hard wire connection. 

Of course the more bandwidth the better but there are some little things that improve the experience.

Note: sound is data, reduce it and you reduce the bandwidth you need. Reducing ambient noise reduces the data you need, so Noise Canceling Mics are very handy and when you speak into your phone you may want to put the phone close to your face (and turn off the face camera). 

Self mute yourself when your not talking, it prevents noise from creeping in. Feedback can build up slowly and steadily, I've seen it happen in games glad I took Audio mixing in college since the science of this is pretty hard to default from other skills. 

Earphones prevent the sound from your speakers that will build up feed backing into the discussion and overloading the system. Background noise is bad, I've learned not to take it badly if the guys have to mute me when I could not mute myself when I have to do somethings. I don't like muting people, but sometimes I find it that its needed because of the feed back.  the technical requirement of earphones is strange because its prevents feedback but many don't want to impose the technical requirement. 

If people can't hear you, maybe turn off your face cam or ask them to turn off their face cam. The camera does add to the bandwidth requirement, both upload and downloads. 

Often I just used the PLDT internet when I'm using G+ and will have my Roll20 app open. Of course I have to cut down on tabs and in many other things. Our Philcom internet is MUCH faster being able to have a consistent 300kbps and allows me to run my games with little lag. I run my games at 7am on Saturday so I get to use the best internet for the day despite the Huge maps I use in my games. 

Internet is pretty much about Luck or Bureaucracy. Some places have really good internet because they area has good infra because of BPOs here in the Philippines. Some have really good internet because its just so profitable, like our building here and 3 ISP providers are offering internet. 

Some places have good internet even they are pretty far from all these ideals, while I have a friend who's family and residences is supposed to be a premier living place for Expats but has crap for internet (I bet the residences lost a lot of clients this way). The way I know how he could fix his situation is have his building put pressure on their ISP (yup the development company also owns the ISP that is giving crap internet). You need to know the org chart and roles, and be on top of that until they deliver (by on top, detailed report why they failed to deliver). 

Other places and the friend of mine can benefit from a Potato Mesh ($99+ delivery cost cheaper when bought in bulk). Particularly having two Potato Mesh devices (up to 3MBps), making a wireless connection. Although its wastefull for my friend, since the building should have good internet in the first place. 

  

Comedy of Errors: Screwing around with On Air

A bunch of hangout virgins fumbling around. Well there were a lot of lessons learned. Many will be going to the invite notes. The new Hangouts Layout complicated things a bit. I have to say who I'm talking to and I have to keep notes... which i did  in past interviews... but this time it didn't work because one needs someone to keep things moving while another guy answers the technical problems of the others while someone filled dead air. 

Also Project! Don't be shy to get close to the mic and the camera with a full facial close up and PROJECT  Lolz. I guess this should not be any different from all my on air games but I don't know why I went back to my shell. 

Anyway, I think the juggling was it, yup it was JUGGLING too many things not some inherent incompetence that maybe staring me in the face right now (or a toddler wondering where is daddy in 11pm). 

Thanks to +BJ Recio  +Phil Corpuz +jose arjuna +Tobie Abad and +Jay Dugger 

I guess its a cheap shot having my toddler around for likes/+1s/ and 5 stars. 

Below is a crashed attempt. 

Epic Combat in Vaclav's GURPS Gladiator Game

+Vaclav Tofl 's GURPS Gladiator Arena Game just ended, playing was myself,  +Jessie Foster playing Lucius Aggripa and +Martin Davis playing Parmenion.

Jia, my Paper Tiger who is actually a Horse Archer (23 points sunk in that) survived fighting with Spear-14, Move-8, and with luck (no critical fails that entire 130min game).   We fought a Dire Wolf and several strong wolves.

I have to say my heart was actually racing, because there were too many close calls. I played a conservative strategy and burned through my FP with Feverish Defense almost every time it was my turn.

I just practiced the fundamentals: Waited, Kept Close to my Allies and Supported them by forcing a Retreat and when the position was excellent tried to Feint (and failed) and got really luck of a botched attack which allowed me to use Telescopic Attack at severely wound the Direwolf. It was a Critical Fail on his Death check that killed him, with such great "Dramatic" Timing.

It was a long but very dramatic combat, and I was very lucky and I even got a lot of the crowd's cheers. Too much excitement LOL! So many close calls, and it was easy to forget special plans and techniques when its not our turn. I really need to write it down in note pad.

Lessons:
I copied Vaclav's Technique and pre-written all my cut+paste notes for my actions.

• /me Free Action - drop shield, Ready Action Remove and Drop Helmet, Free Action (Grip Mastery) Ready Spear for Reach 2 and Defensive Grip
• /me Wait, when a target charges into me or my allies, Stop Thrust  
• /me Wait, when a target with in reach tries to attack me or my allies attack (rear) leg (-2)
• /me Wait, when a target with in reach tries to attack me or my allies attack torso (0)

I need to formulate a one word way to instruct an ally, what does "Latis!" (Flank)! mean? If I say "Latis!" in my turn, and try to Flank, does that mean my ally should do the same? 

Since my character has some Latin "mecum!" when we go into formation? hasta mura or scuta mura?

 

Traveller: Merchant Rising Session 4

This is my 2nd game playing Jia or Baron Jia. We had a slow start due to some key characters being unable to join, still we soldiered on and had a lot of fun.

The cast:
+Mark Knights (GM), +Matt Guyder (Darrok the Marine), +duncan mcphedran (Moloch the Engineer), and newly joining us is +Tom Tyson (Blue Tyson? the Medic).

Filipino English has some buried filipino-isms that need editing-out, so I find myself struggling sometimes because I catch myself about to say that and realize, "they won't get that". So i have to edit myself a bit. This game, is the smoothest I found myself being with less of the stops and self-edits.

We are at RUIE and have just recently survived a pirate hijack. Since the Captain was not available, we had to take initiative, so we were looking for something to do. Fortunately there was something to do, we had to go to Elly Archer and check if the delivery of Drilling Rigs contract is still available.

Jia made the usual introductions and correspondences with Elly. He had prepared gifts and the letter of introduction, and in return Elly invited the crew to a concert. Jia took the opportunity to get to know his crewmates better and to look for potential business deals.

This is where "The Accountant" starts looking like more of a schmoozing nobleman, but instead of pulling rank he wears clothes of his job title and rank. In actuality the lack of pomp allows him to dress practically - ballistic "work" clothes and a concealed carry 1911.

There was a limo, and a lot of typical social niceties, that had happened on the way and up on arriving at the concert. Jia was fussing about the dress and make of his crewmates making sure they no detail was "off" and assumed they were ill versed in business etiquette and took the lead by exaggerating a bit so that his team can follow.

The night proved entertaining and fruitful for others. Elly introduced Jules Bain and her body guard Walker-"I-forget-his-first-name". Jia chatted up the business partner and Jules, by lauding Darroks accomplishments and giving him full credit for saving their asses. There was an opportunity for business, since getting the word out of their daring success could means potential business.

Jules took special interest in Moloch, and excusing herself took him and had their own entertainment. When she leaves with him, he hands Walker his card, knowing that its the "servant" who accepts the card.

While Moloch and Jules were having their entertainment, Darrok was chatting up Walker while Jia was chatting up Elly. He gets wind that there will be trouble, and begins preparing himself for it. Catching a glance at Jia, he motions to a few people who are very out of place in the concert. Darrok gives dagger looks at him and points at the scary people, who seem to be now talking to Elly.

Jia, makes the excuse to Elly that he should introduce him to more people as beginning with those around him. Elly uses subtlety to point out the "private nature" of his associates. Jia very much agrees and takes this as an opportunity and spins a quick anecdote about "privacy" and how much he values providing such discretion and service to clients and partners. He uses the tale to get a better look, a mental game of 20 questions where when nothing is plainly visible he assumes a threat when information is lacking.

Two men, one woman. One appears like a Cowboy without the hat, instead a trench coat and jeans. Another man in a asian round colar with curly hair and masked expersession. then a athletic lady with platinum blond hair. Quickly it becomes obvious that these are not "social" creatures and when one of them, was called Lauren, is called to talk to Jia. Jia quickly ends his tale and excuses himself.

Jia is walking back, making very obvious handsignals of danger and mouthing "Dangerous" when Lauren slips to his side and begins talking and taking him another direction. Jia uses social niceties to entertain her but then she wrenches his finger. Jia visible weakens (ST2) and Darrok approaches, only to be stunned for no plausible reason. At this point Jia is let go, Lauren telling him to take care of his friend.

Jia qickly leaves her, heading to Darrok but makes sure all his things are with him, and nothing is planted before he arrives. Before he arrives, Blue comes to Darroks aid, and was able to deduce the possibility of a psionic assault.

Their leader, the Cowboy, makes a big show as he stands to leave. The party watches as this group heads out, but Walker tells them trouble is not yet over.

Lauren ? (F, ?) - Cyber--ed dangerous woman with an athletic build and platinum blond hair.

Jules Bane (F, Entertainer) - an Imperial entertainer who has a head for business. She is a high status entertainer, with a very universal demographic. Come to think of it more of a Tori Amos, she also happens to be a very attractive red-head.

Elly Archer (M, Merchant; Introduced by Bryce Redcalf) - bought the diamond shipment, works for Exo-tech, which produces Drilling Rigs.  Elly has a very strange group of "business partners" and approached Jia regarding some "Logistics" challenges. He has some goods that have challenges getting from one point to another he wants help in.

? Walker (M, Marine) Jules' body guard. Cybered up.

Gaps on my notes:
The name of the Pirate we scared near-death?
and the lacking first and last names.

Games I've Commited to because of Hangout and G+

+Mark Knights Merchant's Rising (Manila Wed 5pm)
+Vaclav Tofl GURPS Gladiator Arena  (Manila Tuesday 10am)
+Christian Blouin Return to Kazadum (Manila Sat 9am)
+Michael Keenan Adventurer's and Adversaries (Manila Friday 1pm)
+Tobie Abad and Various other GM's in the Gamer Meet-ups (Manila Thursday 8pm)

Freaking 5 games, and thanks to Roll20 and G+ Hangout. If your a Table-top Gamer with work life balance needs then G+ games are the way to go.

I have mandarin classes on April 16 Tuesday and Thursday 6-9pm for 8 weeks (15 lessons). Which kills my face to face game.

Update:
+Erich Lichnock ran Dungeon Worlds for us this Thursday Night

+Matthew Roman ran a GURPS Lite "end of the world scenario" for us: +King Mathew Von Schuck, +Nikos Ong, +rossel miranda, and myself included.

I guess when you get back into something there are instances we over-do it. I overdid it.