Voice Chat with TeamSpeak

Greetings fellow gamers -

For the past year we have been using Skype as our voice communication system. Skype works fairly well, but has the following problems:

• Crashes on occasion (which is very disruptive)
  
• Limited to 6 people
• Cumbersome to "invite" people
• Large overhead in memory
• Can't move easily between tables
  

I think it is time to try an alternative. I have been testing TeamSpeak, and find it to be a pretty solid system. It has the following advantages:

• Remote server (low overhead to users)
• Small memory footprint
• Doesn't crash
• Channels, allowing users to just join a chat channel (what we call a table)
  
• create new channels
  
• move between channels
  
• Free
• Easy

I would like to try this for a future VBGG session! So, without further ado, here's what you need to do!

Step 1: Download client

http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads

Select the Teamspeak2 client for Windows. (The first one. For windows. The 5 meg or so one)


Step 2: Install and Run program

Y'all know how to install a program, don't you?

Step 3: Connect to Pete's Server

See the Teamspeak status box on the right? Click on the server name or channel to connect.

If all went well, you just heard "Link Engaged". Woot!

Step 4: Set your audio and push to talk

• Click Settings -> sound input/output settings from the menu
• Select push to talk radio button
• click the set key
• press the Ctrl key (this is your push to talk button)

Nice! Whenever you want to talk, just press and hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard.

Step 5: Test (if there's nobody online to test with)

• Put on your headset
• On the same settings panel above, click Activate local test mode
• hold down the ctrl key
• say "I'm so cool! I r leet haxor!"

It worked! Click deactivate test mode, and close. You are done!

When you join Pete's TeamSpeak sever, you will be in the Default Channel. You could move to other channels, or create your own.

Note that Teamspeak is a simplex chat system. That you must press push to talk to chat. This will help us get a quieter chat session, as we won't have to listen to room noise or ukulele music.

Hope it works well for us! If not, well, we'll go back to Skype.

Pete's TeamSpeak server is up 24 hours a day. Just IM Pete, and he can try to meet you there for a test!

THANK YOU!



Note -

You may want to add the server to your teamspeak client directly, so you don't have to visit the vbgg page here to connect. Try this in your teamspeak client:

• Click Connection
• Click Connect
• Right Click Servers, and select Add Server
• Give it a name, like VBGG
• set server address to www.hoffswell.com
• Set nickname to your name
• Click Connect