South by Southwest Interactive is a conference that stands at the crossroads of music, movies, video games, startups, design and technology. Products like Twitter launched into the stratosphere starting at SXSW in 2007.

I’ll be posting photos and videos on Flickr and Youtube from the event. If you are attending SXSWi send us at note at imVOX support and we can meetup!

Upcoming imVOX Software Changes

First up, we’ve been working on the main imVOX client quite a bit. Aside from adding features, one of our goals is to further streaminline the client from a workflow perspective, and also from a memory footprint and performance perspective.

Upcoming imVOX concept preview

The customizable background may be removed so we can take out the transparent sections of the client which cause many of the performance issues that you currently see when the screen draws.

Friends are slated to make a comeback soon and overall we hope that the client will be easier than ever to use.

Overlays have been a frequent topic of discussion here. Some companies like Valve have done a great job with overlays and we rather like the functionality they have built into Steam games. You also see a great deal of this on the Xbox and Playstation 3 and it works rather well. An overlay would allow you to access crucial imVOX UI elements while in game and also see who is talking, see text chat, kick people from the server, etc. It needs to be smooth however and have almost zero impact to the performance of your game. Drawing the interface natively in OpenGL and DirectX will be likely needed.

Another discussion we’ve been having involves forking our codebase slightly to take advantage of the newest version of .NET. The main imVOX client for Windows is build on Microsoft’s .NET 2.0 framework. This provides us a rapid development environment and gives us a lot of great tools to use. Version 2.0 is a bit old a 4.0 is on the horizon. Moving to a newer version would allow us greater performance, greater stability and new features.

Unfortunately there is a downside to this. The Mac client is built in Mono which only supports compatibility with .NET 2.0. We would have to maintain two code branches for most of our .NET components because of this, although our underlying voice engine written in C++ would remain unchanged and could still cross-compile.

Mac Client Development Underway

The Mac client is again being actively developed. We’ve contracted a developer who is hard at work on it and has already fixed several issues. Those changes will hopefully be pushing live this week.

South by Southwest!

I (David) will be attending SXSW and representing imVOX from March 11- 17th in Austin, Texas. If you are attending SXSW please drop me a message so we can meetup. I will be attending sessions on game industry, social media and UI subjects in addition to speaking with hundreds of people and enjoying the far warmer weather.

I’ll blog as much as I can about SXSW and post photos to flickr and videos to YouTube. I’ve got my cameras charged and memory cards ready to go!

New Website Design

The current imVOX site could be better. It is slow, very graphically heavy, doesn’t display well on mobile phones, has coding errors and contains a great deal of non-semantic HTML. Information is hard to find it doesn’t offer the best user experience. Before SXSW, I’ll be working on this and you can see the realtime changes at http://imvox.com/beta All content on the beta site is simply a placeholder and none of it should be assumed to reflect actual features, functionality, pricing or changes to imVOX.

The cause of the downtime was that we ran out of disk space on our database server. We found our when our always vigilant Pro user Rev Lazaro (@revlazaro on Twitter) let us know that his group was unable to log into imVOX via Twitter.

We run our Oracle database on Amazon’s EC2 service, using their Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for storage on the database. We use four 100GB EBS units in a RAID configuration, keeping one for parity which gives us 300GB of usable space for our database. This can easily scale up size-wise and is perfect for our database size. They are also monitored by Amazon’s Cloudwatch service, letting us know instantly if something goes wrong or we run out of space.

So how did we run out of space? Log files.

The EC2 instance only had 10GB of storage which is normally enough. Cloudwatch isn’t watching the EC2 instance for space and the log files from the database transactions got rather large and filled the disk. This instantly locked up the database from executing additional transactions- halting the imVOX service completely.

Thankfully we had a user notice quickly and we were able to move the log files and restart the database without issue.

Lessons Learned:

1. Database logs can get big
2. Just because your database has space, doesn’t mean your db server does
3. Cloudwatch might not catch something like your EC2 instance running out of space

How we almost didn’t go Mac

I (David/tibbon) am a Mac user. Everyone else at imVOX is a Windows/PC user for the most part and historically this is a very Windows oriented shop. We were using Visual Source Safe for our version control and we’ve been using C#/.NET for our development. Many of the servers are running on Windows. Microsoft runs deep through this company.

I knew that we would need a Mac client early on if we wanted to grab some of the larger MMO markets like World of Warcraft. Yet, management wasn’t totally sold on a Mac client. It might be expensive and although it made sense it wasn’t a large marketshare. Couldn’t we just go after other games and markets? I pleaded that we really needed one and at one point we estimated that it would only take a month to get one off the ground. We were slightly wrong on that. Ok- very wrong.

Mono to the Rescue?

Mono is an open-source, cross platform implementation of Microsoft’s .NET 2.0. It appeared at first as the answer to our problems and would save us a ton of time, money and resources.

What we thought would be easy and a time-saver just wasn’t. The long-term concept here was that we didn’t have the resources to maintain two separate code-bases and using Mono would make it so that the code shipped to Windows users was the exact same as to the Mac users. We’d be able to (in theory) have a Linux client too with minimal effort. We didn’t have the expertise as Mac developers and this diverted heavily from the development of our Windows client.

One of the biggest issues is the interface. Aside from the obvious Mac vs Windows design styles, .NET and Mono seem to handle graphics rather differently. The way we draw our display is rather intense compared to most other .NET applications which makes development very difficult vs using a native interface.

Where are we now?

As seen in prior blog posts, we’ve been trying to find Mac developers to work with us to make imVOX work on the Mac, and continue development on the Windows side. When I say work on the Windows side however that isn’t fully true. Since the code is shared things that go into the Windows side help out the Mac side too. If we fix a bug there, it will likely help everyone out. However fixing something on the Mac side likely doesn’t do much for Windows users since the code is probably in a big if statement that is specific to the Mac.

Finding Mac developers isn’t easy however. We’re looking for individuals with very specific skills and talents to work on a unique program that delves off into unknown realms quite often.

We’ve spent the last week patching up version .27 for the Windows side. As soon as we get the updater running properly on the Mac then many of those changes will trickle down to the Mac side as well. Next week we’ve got one Mac guy starting with us. We’ll have to see how it goes really. I can’t honestly say how long it will be to get it up and running fully.

I’ll be blogging here about some of the more technical details of the Mac release soon.

So what do you do when you hit a bug? You’ve crashed. Gotten an error, or something isn’t working as expected? Maybe the audio just isn’t working right? Here’s a few simple steps that will help us with your problem.

1. Take a deep breathe and don’t panic. We’re here to help.
2. Check the forums- It is likely that others have encountered your issue. You may find some help or acknowledgment of the issue there. If not, calmly posting about the issue with as many details as possible will help other users as well. Post all support issues in the Issues/Bugs/Support Forum.
3. Windows Users: Run the following command from your Run menu:
   dxdiag /t c:\imvox.txt
   Mac Users: Go to About This Mac from the Apple menu in the upper left corner. Click the ‘More Info’ button that appears. Then go to File->Save As and choose RTF/Rich Text Format as the format to export. This by default saves in your ~/Documents directory.
4. Find the imVOX Log file- It is called imvox.log and should be in the directory where you installed imVOX
5. Prepare an email to support@imvox.com – Attach the imvox.txt (if Windows) or the System Profiler log (if Mac) and imvox.log file to the email. Describe clearly what was happening when you encountered the issue. Are you able to repeat the issue? Has the issue always occurred or is it something new? What is the name of the server you were connected to (if any).
   Perfect English isn’t needed but a certain amount of clarity goes a long way in us being able to help you.
   
6. Be Patient- Even after we acknowledge your issue, we may need additional details from you, or may have found a huge issue that we need to fix. Some issues (such as many on the Mac) are known by us, but we don’t yet have the resources yet to fix all of them properly. Feel free however to continue to ping us on the issues and see if any progress has been made.
7. Reply to All- When emailing us, please please hit the Reply to All button so that everyone on the team continues to see the messages. If you reply to only Misha, then Mike doesn’t see it and he might have know how to fix the issue.
   

What not to do:

1. Nothing- If you simply stop using imVOX and don’t tell us about the issues then we can’t help you. Your issue may have helped thousands of people have a better experience.
2. Post Elsewhere about it- If you hit an issue and only post stuff about it to your own private forums with friends, then we don’t know about it and can’t help you. I try to keep an eye out for this using Google Alerts, but many imVOX users post to private forums and then I have no idea what issues were had.
3. Get Frustrated- We want to help and take all issues seriously. If yours isn’t at the top of the list, there is probably a good reason for it and the issues in front of you are either more fixable or effect more people. Making imVOX rock is literally our job and we take it seriously. There’s a reason my Main in WoW is only a level 74 (no time for WoW, only time for imVOX).
4. Fail to provide details- “It didn’t work for me”, “It crashed”, “My guild mates can’t get it working”; These type of posts don’t help without more information.

We’re a small team with somewhat limited resources. In spite of that we are confident that we can make the best voice product for gaming possible- that is, with your help and feedback of course.

Better yet, how can we better help provide you with the best service possible? A dedicated imVOX Support server? An IRC channel? Weekly Q&A session? Let us know in the comments!

Bug Fixes

• Bug #16: Text Chat refresh problem
• Bug #33: Mac: Users cannot create accounts
• Bug #53: Updating display name broken
• Bug #55: Volume control effects all applications
• Bug #56: Client ignores voice chat disconnect message
• Bug #63: Stressing the GearPlatform will cause deadlock due to Platform Invoke calls

Features

• Feature #10: PTT Confirmation Sound (set under Preferences->General)
• Feature #12: Remove the Pro upgrade nag screen
• Feature #22: Detect missing registry entries
• Feature #27: Switch users without closing client – Needs additional testing
• Feature #54: Swap Mic and PTT graphics/controls

We’ve also noted that you can in fact promote users to admin of your server. You must be the owner of the server to promote someone.

As a preview for .28 here’s what I’ve got in the tracker right now. Surely not all of these issues will make the release and some things might/will change in the next week.

• Bug #32: Mac: Can’t get past loading screen
• Bug #35: Mac: No audio devices visible (color issue)
• Bug #36: User Profile doesn’t show anything
• Bug #41: Mac: Memory Leak
• Bug #45: Mac: Odd icon when tab switching between applications
• Bug #57: Leaving application doesn’t always disconnect
• Bug #58: Application startup taking a long time
• Bug #64: Need splash screen for slow client launch
• Feature #5: Text Chat: Email and URL parsing
• Feature #11: Shorter channel switching time
• Feature #13: Voice Activated PTT trigger
• Feature #14: Better looking startup screen
• Feature #18: Server MOTD
• Feature #23: Ban user by computer or IP
• Feature #24: Private text chat with individual users
• Feature #26: Bring back user Aliases
• Feature #44: Mac: Make the updater work properly
• Feature #46: Digitally sign installer/program
• Feature #72: Sync error logs between server/clients

Some new Mac developers are coming onboard over the next week to help us with issues that the imVOX team isn’t experienced in specific to the Mac. If you know of any additional Mac people that know C#/Mono, please send them our way.

After this release many new cool features will start to be added. First however the stability issues and bugs need to be addressed.

Additional discussion can be found on the forums on this release.

We’re looking for someone to help make the Mac version of imVOX more stable and Mac-like. It will probably be 40-80 hours of contract work up front, and if you’re good I’m sure we can find more hours in the future.

The developer needs to have experience in using Mono (C#) for Mac development. Additional experience in C++ and Objective-C might be handy. We use Git for version control and Redmine for project/task management. We developed our main code branch initially in just .NET/C#, but we are using Mono for cross platform compatibility and maintaining one code base. Needless to say, we’ve got some lose ends to tie up.

The rate is negotiable, and we’d like to get this going ASAP. Location isn’t really important, but communication skills and being able to get the job done are. Send us an email to support@imvox.com if you’re interested or can refer someone.

An imVOX member recently asked me to recommend a good host for their guild site. There’s a lot of bad hosting out there and they had recently had a poor experience with one. They were curious of which service imVOX uses for hosting as well. Here’s my best advice for hosting based on my personal experiences.

We use Amazon AWS for hosting with their EC2 platform as our web and voice servers. However it is quite pricy at approximately $100/month to get started and probably way overkill for most guilds except super large ones like Fires of Heaven or Elitist Jerks (neither of which actually use EC2. To the best of my knowledge they are hosted in a Cambridge-area facility on ‘real’ hardware). With my knowledge about most guild’s size- I wouldn’t use AWS for what you’ve got yet.

There’s a few other really great market options. I’ve had a great deal of experience with Slicehost in hosting my own personal blog and other websites. It gives you full access to your own virtual private server (VPS) which is almost never effected by other people using the service. The 256 or 512 slice is sufficient for most people’s needs and I run 3 blogs on a 256 slice. It is more expensive than your current service slightly but is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. The 256 slice is $20/month and the 512 slice is $38/month.

Another VPS that gives you more for your money is called Linode. By some claims are faster than Slicehost and cheaper when counted by memory. You geta  360MB slice for $20/month which is a nice deal. I’ve had serveral friends use it and speak well of it even for fairly large dynamic sites like InstantWatcher which I believe is a Rails app.

Shared hosting offerings are always a tricky proposition. Companies like Dreamhost, Bluehost and A Small Orange offer it for very low prices. I’ve personally found the stability of these to be low and the customer support to be substandard (at least for Dreamhost which I used for a year, I can’t speak to the others). You couldn’t pay me to go back to them.

Another thing hosting-wise I might consider is buying your own hardware server and finding somewhere to put it. Hardware these days is dirt cheap and there’s always some good deal on eBay or Craigslist to be had. You don’t need much for most websites as long as they are well written. Finding somewhere to put it is the hard part. One place I might start your search is at a local university. They generally have a ton of extra rackspace, plenty of extra bandwidth and no one notices an extra server. At some places like MIT every computer actually gets a ‘real IP’ on the internet and there are literally dozens of servers for every floor of many dorms. If you’ve got a friend there, I’m almost certain you could throw your server in there and no one would notice or mess with it too much. Of course play nice on their network and maybe make a donation to the university in lieu of hosting payments. I’ve got 6 servers racked at a local university with the consent of the administration and it works out great. If you go the commercial route for hosting your rack server you’ll pay dearly for it, starting around $200/month per server from what I’ve seen.

My best recommendation if you can’t find somewhere cheap to install a server, is to use a VPS host like Slicehost. Backup your database frequently (using a cron job), and check everything into a private Github repo so if you need to revert your website or move to a new server then the migration will take only an hour or so. Download your database backups and burn them to CDs or keep them on a flash drive, or better yet- backup to other servers or a service like Mozy.

Disclaimer: imVOX has no ownership, management or stake in any of the mentioned companies here. We haven’t been paid to blog about them and aside from standard customer support emails we haven’t been in touch with them either. These are just our (David’s) opinions on service based on personal experience.

The download is somewhat bigger than the PC version due to the fact that it includes the Mono Framework that we’re using instead of Microsoft’s .NET for Windows.

Go ahead- download it. Mount the image, and give it a shot. You’ll have to install Mono before running it, but doing so is quick and painless. Then just drag imVOX to your Applications folder and you’re good to go.

You might- no, you will hit bugs. When you do, please go to the imVOX Support Forums and give us a shout there, or shoot us an email at support@imvox.com. We’re going to keep improving it and releasing patches soon of course. Provide us as many details as possible, including the imvox.log file which is located inside of the application. Just right click on imVOX’s icon in Finder and go to “Show Package Contents”. Then browse through Contents/Resources and you’ll find the log file. It is really helpful for us to have this if you hit problems.

Having a single network lets us do some cool things, helps certain efficiencies and dodges some problems that other services might have.

Patches and Updating

Since we run a single network, all of our servers are always running the same server software. We don’t have to worry about one out of twenty servers being on an older version of the software. Nor do we have to worry about the clients being of the incorrect version. When you launch imVOX the software checks with our update server and sees if a new version is available. Like most MMOs, there isn’t the option to run an older version and you’re automatically updated to the newest software. We are soon implementing a ‘nightly build’ option that you have switch on and off to always have the most super recent, but potentially unstable version and switch back. This will help us in knowing that our deployed versions always function properly.

Support

Since we operate the network and wrote the code, we are able to answer support questions a lot easier. We also have full logs from our servers and can quickly see the effects of changes on latency, processing power, etc. This enables us to innovate quickly as well since it makes our testing process faster.

If we had hosting companies running the software, getting the feedback would be a lot harder. Also the factors such as hardware and operating system would start to add complexity to the system and make diagnosis more expensive and more difficult. Not only would we need to support you the consumer, but provide support to the hosting company.

Search

With a single network, you can search the assets in the network fairly easily. This means that you can search for servers and soon other users of the service with ease. You don’t have to hand out IP addresses for various servers because everything is mapped internally to our system.

Social Networking

You generally chat with your friends. You want to share your gaming experiences with your friends too! Since we maintain the network, soon you’ll be able to have us search your Twitter followers and recommend friends in the system. You can have a single profile that works across all servers, but also has aliases for various games and servers.

Cost

Most of these also help keep our costs down. Also it is far cheaper to run one company than 100 smaller companies. These costs are passed along directly to you.