Overlay

Status: Phase 2 — design draft.

The VNOX overlay renders a HUD on top of running games and applications, showing voice channel state without alt-tabbing.

What it shows

who is currently speaking (avatar / nickname + audio indicator)
your own mic state (active / muted / push-to-talk held)
current channel name
latency (RTT to node)
hotkey state hints

Architecture

The overlay is a separate process that communicates with the main VNOX client via a local IPC socket (Unix socket / named pipe).

The client pushes state updates to the overlay:

user speaking events (VOICE_STATE)
channel changes
mute state changes

The overlay renders on top of other applications.

Rendering approach

Platform	Method
Windows	DirectX overlay injection or transparent top-level window
Linux (X11)	Shaped transparent window, always-on-top
Linux (Wayland)	Layer shell protocol (wlr-layer-shell)
macOS	CGWindow overlay

Implementation complexity varies significantly by platform. Windows DX injection is the most reliable for full-screen games.

Game integrations

For games that support it, the overlay can receive additional data:

Positional voice (Phase 4)

Games that expose player position data can send it to VNOX, enabling positional audio — players hear each other based on in-game distance and direction.

Integration methods:

Game / Engine	Method
Minecraft	Fabric/Forge mod that sends position via local socket
Source Engine	Client plugin / VScript
Unreal Engine	Plugin exposing position to named pipe
Unity	SDK that writes position to shared memory

Protocol for positional data is TBD (Phase 4 design).

Speaking indicators in-game

Some games support custom HUD elements. Where possible, the overlay will render directly within the game's UI rather than as an external window.

Configuration

[overlay]
enabled = true

# Overlay position on screen
position = "top-right"   # top-left | top-right | bottom-left | bottom-right

# Opacity (0.0–1.0)
opacity = 0.85

# Show latency
show_latency = false

# Hotkey to toggle overlay visibility
toggle_hotkey = "ctrl+shift+o"

Hotkeys

All hotkeys are global (work even when VNOX window is not focused).

Action	Default
Push-to-talk	`mouse4`
Mute toggle	`ctrl+m`
Deafen toggle	`ctrl+d`
Toggle overlay	`ctrl+shift+o`

Configurable in Settings → Keybinds.

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