I noticed we haven't decided of which voice client we culd use, and which way we can communicate outside UrT.
As far as I know, Mumble is the voice client the most used by UrT France community, and for several reasons : free, multi-plateform, quite easy to use. I haunted some french IRC channels to have some other advices, but those reasons are the most cited. Something unsaid, but evident either : it has been proven in official competition. Obviously, we need a headset...
I didn't had more experiences with Xfire than advising Palemoon last WE about an aimbot on S.G. So I don't know if there are chatrooms or something like that... But Xfire seems to have other functionalities, as I look to the toolbar it had installed in FF (game launcher, screenshots, videos, etc...). And I don't know if there's a plugin for my Pidgin client,

I think we must also share our e-mail adresses : for simple advices, sharing important news, perhaps some other purposes I hadn't noticed yet but that could be important or usefull. Or simply for seasons greatings, we're on december , no ?

If Xfire doesn't provides private chatrooms, IRC can be a good idea too : there are a lot of IRC clients, and having a "#)ntac(clan" channel could be usefull too, for organising instant games, or all we can imagine around UrT (after match discussions, etc... a way to have what we call, in Belgium, the third half-time, if you see what I mean...). I already thought about that, but it didn't goes further right now. Promised, I'll look at this on following weeks.

We also have the "traditional" channels to communicate : MSN, Yahoo!Messenger, Facebook, I can not list them all, that could take too much place on this thread...:-)

Since I opened the topic, I must lead by example :

- Yahoo : francoisferoumont@yahoo.fr
- Yahoo!Messenger : egopalantir
- MSN/Hotmail : egopalantir@hotmail.com
- "Official" e-mail : francois.feroumont@gmail.com
- Xfire : egopalantir

And for those who ask themselve why I have such a nickname,according with such common name and 1st name, read the following.
"To my nickname is a bit more convoluted : the palantir in The Lord of the Rings is a "stone of vision".
According to Tolkien, there are 7.
We know at least two : that of Sauron and the recovered Orthanc, who was in possession of Saruman.
The others are lost over time. But I recovered one ... Mine, which is translated into Latin by ego : egopalantir"

This is my first nickname. I have never changed since 2002.

Also useless, but funny : InstantTimeZone : shows a little clock on which timezone you want just near the system clock...

Hey Ego,

Yes there is a plugin for Pidgin...this is how I use xfire! But, it only allows for IM chat, that's it.

So let's see here...

xfire: therealpalemoon
googletalk: dragonpalemoon
email: dragonpalemoon@gmail

-P-

Following my little - and short - investigating the possibilities of IM, client Voice and means of communication within a team URT, I expected an opportunity to validate some of this means.
So when New_UrT_Player1 (I would call New for convenience, since that's how we call him on Shooting Gallery) asked me Sunday night to test some free Mumble servers, I signed two hands to do so asap. Anyway, the real world imperatives have meant that we couldn't run this test until this Tuesday.
As I like to resume some aspects of "Bruce Almighty" I wanted to see what effect it was to erase the Atlantic at least by voice, and with New's motivation, we tested two Mumble servers and liaison with XFire. At the outset, I can assure you that both programs work, but we do share things in between, because some aspects of XFire may seem attractive, but they obscure something important: communication "in game" .
And, unfortunately, XFire is not very efficient: as is the normal communication, it did not make problems, but when once in play, the sound of the game mask a lot the voice of the contact, and make some trade inaudible. Even with some settings, it's the sound of the game that take advantage. Of course, there is the small window with the flashing dot indicating who speaks and who does not speak but for little we do a remake of AC130 Gunship decorated with some Nades that follow - there are specialists, lol - it becomes difficult to hear.
On the other side, and that, it may be interesting, the fact of talking together automatically opens an audio chatroom as IM, which will appear in the game through a simple keyboard shortcut to remember. This may provide a security "tactics" that the "enemy" can intercept communications (KGB paranoia mode off). XP . The disadvantage is obviously also need to use the keyboard, which is not easy in the heat of the moment, everybody knows ...

In terms of Mumble, I was pleasantly surprised from the outset: it is very simple to connect, and the quality is really incredible: I feel like next to New, despite the thousands of miles separate us. It was even clearer than normal telephone communication is saying ... And what is the balance between the URT sound and the Mumble sound, it's really well balanced, even in extremely noisy phases: I heard the very voice of New, without being embarrassed, and yet we all know how it can be hellish in Austria or Turnpike. Even in those moments, I really felt no difficulty to hear and understand perfectly what he said is so, tactically speaking, the best "voiceclient" without any contestation. Regarding to display in the game, it does not seem to be a problem either, connected to the channel appearing above the netgraph in a conspicuous color, at about the level of notifications of frags URT server and a little right.
We tried two different servers, a virtual-clan server and a server mumble.de. Even changing the server, one being based in the States, one in Germany, there is no loss of quality. The organization of "rooms" is often dependent on Mumble server administrators , I think, but generally, one can find empty rooms, other rooms to arrange pick-up (1vs1, 2vs2, 5vs5 up ), the German server was well sorted by type of game (CTF, TDM ,...) Ah, the Teutonic efficiency, hihi! The only problem I encountered is that when I disconnect the Mumble server, my system gives me a memory exception and end the process iourbanterror, but hey, it's really incidental, I think ...

My preference is very much Mumble, I do not hide. XFire can also render services (we can not prejudge anything, eh!) But then, in this case we lose contact with Palemoon, and that, I think it is ONLY VERY annoying. Since there is also a teamchat pre-installed in URT, I think the service from XFire is for gamers on other FPS online games (WoW, CoD, MOH, ...) which does have no such luck (both bad for you, simply play Urt). Moreover, the link that Saladin was posted in the News could allow slot free 12 conections, I understand. As I am a little less busy end of this week, I'll see what it returns exactly and I'll keep you posted. On the other side, if we could do without administrate a slot, it would not be worse: I think there must be sufficient Mumbles free servers to enable us to have a room )NTAC( accessible only )NTAC(ers on a simple password, finally, something like that ... and then it's not that I'm lazy, but I prefer the action to the administration ...
Here are two addresses of servers tested:
- Virtual-clan: 88.191.103.133:51603
- Mumble.de: 78.47.171.130:64742
If you want to test, no problem, I'm OK for it. Especially as I'm aware, but not anything that I could speak better English than I thought! (What I suspect New have been particularly lenient with me, lol) Where a small personal note to Milena: go for it : the microphone will not bite you, don't worry !
Finally, I would say it makes me itch more and more to see what it can give in CTF or TDM.

Ah yes, before I forget, I made a few demos, past WE, just to get an idea of how some of us are playing, also demos of me, to see what kind of improvements I can bring to my gameplay. I found this way to be very interesting, but my little collection is not sufficiently expanded, so do not be surprised to see me fairly regularly in SPEC mode : the basic idea is to see how other players are doing, I'd like to gather enough material to make a little video with some great frags... especially NTAC. It's an idea running through my head since I posted on URT France ... (Nihilist, be carefull, i'll found the secret of your skill, haha !)

Edit : much more readable post with size 12, isn't it ?

An uptodate Mumble client, version 1.2.0, here : http://sourceforge.net/projects/mumble/files/Mumble/1.2.0/Mumble-1.2.0.exe/download
Enjoy