Dev Update: Connection quality monitoring, smarter reconnects, and a lot of polish

RPG Audio Stream — March 2026

RPG Audio Stream is a free browser tool that lets GMs stream ambient audio directly to players during online sessions. No installs, no accounts, just a link.

Since the last update I've been focused on observability and resilience — being able to actually see what's happening during a session, and handling edge cases more gracefully.

What's new:

• Per-player connection quality dashboard — The GM page now shows real-time RTT, jitter, packet loss, and bitrate for each connected player. Color coded: green/orange/red. You can see at a glance who has a rough connection before it becomes a problem.
• Browser/OS per player — The dashboard logs each player's browser and OS (simplified — Chrome/Windows, Safari/iOS, etc.) which has already been useful for diagnosing platform-specific issues.
• Ghost peer reconnect system — When a player drops briefly, their row stays visible in the GM dashboard with a "reconnecting" state rather than disappearing and reappearing. If they come back within 60 seconds they slot back into the same position with a reconnect count.
• Smarter player status UI — Players now see one of five clear states: Waiting, Blocked (audio needs a tap), Connected, Reconnecting, or Failed. No more ambiguity about whether audio is actually playing.
• Firefox autoplay fix — Firefox sometimes grants autoplay permission silently without the user clicking Enable Audio. The player page now detects this and handles it correctly.
• Quality presets — GM can now choose Stable (96kbps), Music (160kbps), or Data Saver (48kbps) depending on their table's needs.
• Display names — Players can optionally set a name so the GM knows who's who in the quality dashboard.

On the architecture side:

Still fully P2P — audio never touches the server. The signaling server just brokers the WebRTC handshake. TURN relay is available for networks that need it but most home users connect direct.

The metrics system logs connection quality to a private append-only log. No personal data, no accounts — just technical measurements. There's a privacy policy now too.

Try it:

itch.io: https://gwydione.itch.io/rpg-audio-stream
GM page: https://radio.solorpgday.com/gm.html
Player page: https://radio.solorpgday.com/player.html

Always looking for feedback, especially from larger tables or unusual network setups (corporate networks, mobile hotspots, etc.).