Sure there are programs out there like Roger Wilco (Its kind of like a "Walky-Talky that lets you set up voice chat for any game) that do a great job and actually do "work." But its much easier if the voice-chat was built in, as you can't just join a random game and start chatting, and the software can be a little frustrating to use at times So what's the point of this post? To get voice-chat into AoM! Hearing an explanation from me doesn't do it justice, to really "feel" it, you need to experience it for yourself. This was my first game using Roger Wilco on AoK: The map was Arabia, 3v3, Defend the wonder. I'm on the defense team. Once the headphones were on it was a totally new experience. I heard everything from what the guys had for lunch that day to where each of us should go. Someone said, "We need some archers by those walls." Then someone answered, "Got it, I'll send some." It really took a life of it's own. Just as the game was about the heat up, one of the guys says, "Alright men, this is it!". Then all hell broke loose…"THEY'RE RUSHING LEFT!!! WATCH THE TREBUCHETS!!!! I NEED SOME HELP OVER HERE!!! QUICK GUARD THE WONDER!!! KNIGHTS LEFT SIDE!!!!" It truly was war, and to hear your team-mates calling for assistance and calling out enemy attacking points made the whole experience that much more compelling. IMO, voice chat adds a second layer to the games, and being able to move and co-ordinate at the same time rather than stop, type and carry on, has an absolutely awesome advantage to it. My ideas for voice chat? Screw my ideas, Valve are much better at doing this than me ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was really quite easy, in the config screen; there is an option for "Use Voice Communication." After you assign a key, that's it. Now whenever you hit that key, you're able to talk in the game. After you hit the key to start talking, a small nametag appears on the right-hand side of your team-mates screen. That way you know who is talking at all times. They actually dimmed the outside noises during conversation. So when you're in the midst of battle, instead of swords clashing going off and not your team-mates, that sound is toned down a bit so you can actually hear your friends. Another cool feature was that you had the ability to mute talkative players. Nothing is as worse as some idiot during a game screaming down the server, so what do you do? Simple. The player can bring up a Voice Properties dialog box where they can click on a player and mute them for the rest of the game. So, you can literally shut him up. Also, they used a great low-bandwith codec, which doesn't lag on a 56k, but still sounds pretty damn clear ------------------------------ But don't take my word for it folks; you can try it out for yourselves! Head on over to the Oh - ES, if yere feeling lazy, Roger Wilco is actually advertising there voice-chat technology to game developers (Current slogan is "20 minutes, no bull") Stone_Giant [This message has been edited by Stone_Giant (edited 01-20-2002 @ 05:03 AM).]
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