Teamspeak is great and all but from practical experience it usually devolves in to a swearing contest. Dont get me wrong, Teamspeak is a great idea (in theory), however, I have only ever seen it used well (for a short time) in the original Freespace. I would HOPE that the VO community would not lower itself to shouting matches and/or complete and utter nonsensical jibberish.

As it is now, VO would probably would pretty well on Teamspeak but as the community grows it will devolve as I mentioned before. The only way in which Teamspeak would work effectivley is if there were guild channels or even channels. This way, they could be moderated more effectively and those that abused it could be punished.

Not to poop on the idea but I just think it needs to be used when and where appropriate. I would love to hear the ramblings of Leber or Mecha audibly rather than in text. :P

Tosh;

I think some form of voice comms would drastically improve the game. I'm not a good enough pilot to engage (especially PvP) while trying to coordinate efforts of my wingmen. Even typing "Help, he's shooting bits off my ass!" takes at least one hand from your piloting.

The problem is threefold: 1) You're absolutely right, most people don't know about teamspeak (until four minutes ago I was one of them). 2) A lot of the people that are interested might not know how to get it working. (I have such a bizarre aura with computers that I'm surprised ANYTHING works around me.) and c) Cost. Even if the service itself is free, there's necessary equipment (headset, etc) that people might not want to go out and buy just for one game.

*I'd* buy it, but until at least some of the guys in my buddylist also have it, it will be sort of pointless for me. I still think it's a great idea, though.

**Edited five minutes later**

I'm at work, but looked up teamspeak. Since it's free and all modern Macs come with microphones built in, I recommend that every Mac user on VO get it and try it out. In fact, Devs, I'd even recommend this or another teamspeak thread be made sticky and labelled as a "game enhancement." When I get home I will download it and see if I cam make it work without smoke and bollowing flames.

~D.
"Nigel the Indecently Dressed"
"Legin the Naked"

okay, I got teamspeak, but I don't see a place to change codecs. i'm running the Mac version, and it's only a beta, but there are no help files or documentation in the software package.

Any other Mac users got advice/input?

~D.
"Nigel the Indecently Dressed"
"Legin the Naked"

Hm, I don't think I had much problems setting up the client. Maybe you need to go look at the Preferences dalog window and look if certain options must be checked.

Oh, and the 'speak' key is space (but can be mapped to anything you like, I think).

The TeamSpeex Mac client only supports one codec (The open source Speex codec), and the codec automagically negotiated by the client and server when you log in and join a channel, so you shouldn't need to worry about that. The available codecs on the server are setup by the server admin when they create a channel, and unless they are feeling misanthropic they will leave several options enabled to allow for a wide range of clients and connection speeds.

The important stuff to tweak are your mic/headset volume and the Voice Activation threshold (so that we hear you, and not your keyboard, cat, washing machine etc). Those settings are all in the preferences, and easy enough to play with until it sounds right.

Thanks, Green. I got it working, but my line in volume was horrible on the mic I bought. Maybe I should just get a headset?

~D.
"Nigel the Indecently Dressed"
"Legin the Naked"