Federation Commander

Just to find out what type of voice or chat option people prefer.

I had one of the "Other" votes. It was for Ventrilo.

JimDauphinais wrote:I had one of the "Other" votes. It was for Ventrilo.

My "Other" was for Ventrilo as well.

Vent.
For me any of the others are resource hogs on my system. Granted, I have a crummy old computer that barely runs sometimes.

Vent is great has a push to talk feature and is designed for lots of people... downside is that it can be tricky to set up, confusing for people who aren't familiar with it, and it requires an outside server to run.

I went with skype because it is more accesible to more people. I acttually prefer ventrillo (mostly due to my world of warcraft habit) but I think it would be harder to make work unless there was a dedicated SFU server.

I chose YIM... simply 'cause it's small, un-obtrusive and easy to learn.

We (Battlegroup Murfreesboro) use YIM for all of our online gaming.
We typically set-up three chats... one for team A, one for team B, and a third for everybody.
This allows each side to have private strategic discussions and still allows an interactive environment for hte whole group.

And it doesn't require a dedicated server.

Skype for my vote. Seems fairly well used and easy to set up.

Garrett

XFire does push to talk as well, and it works on both Macs and Windows. And it requires no server.

Ventrilo does require a server. I have spent too much time with Teamspeak trying to find free servers. Unless someone wants to rent a server, I am not for those clients that need one.

That's another one I forgot... YIM also does "push to talk" or "hot vox". Your choice.

Savedfromwhat wrote:Vent is great has a push to talk feature and is designed for lots of people... downside is that it can be tricky to set up, confusing for people who aren't familiar with it, and it requires an outside server to run.

I went with skype because it is more accesible to more people. I acttually prefer ventrillo (mostly due to my world of warcraft habit) but I think it would be harder to make work unless there was a dedicated SFU server.

One feature Vent has that many other tools do not is the ability to individually turn up and down other user's volume. This is amazingly valuable.

Vent has push to talk and voice activated modes. Pretty much all of the proposed have those options, it's standard.

Dirk I totally agree vent is the best comm suite for gaming... it is just very complex for people who aren't already familiar with it or who already don't like using the computer. I think people who are already tech savvy should be able to sacrafice our preferences for someone elses accessibility. But I will use whatever (especially if we have a dedicated server).

Savedfromwhat wrote:Dirk I totally agree vent is the best comm suite for gaming... it is just very complex for people who aren't already familiar with it or who already don't like using the computer. I think people who are already tech savvy should be able to sacrafice our preferences for someone elses accessibility. But I will use whatever (especially if we have a dedicated server).

I'll use whatever as well, though my preference is vent. I have used teamspeak many times. The IM based ones (yahoo, aim, whatever) are all fine choices. I have never used skype but it might be fun to learn.

I personally strongly dislike xfire as I find it invades my entire computer and all my games in ways that I don't want/like.

Ultimately, we just need to identify a default for voice communications.

Players in a particular match could mutually agree to an alternate method or to not use any voice communication at all. However, if they cannot agree on an alternative to the default, they would be required to use the default voice communications method.

Considering this, while my preference in the poll was Vent and I do not feel Vent is that complex (GMT runs a server for demos and there have never been complaints about its complexity), I can see merit to the default being a non-server option like Skype or YIM.

How easy is it to set up a room without running a server with Ventrilo?

Not sure, I do have a Teamspeak server I can start back up it people want to use it.

I don't have a Ventrillo server available...