GWJ Ventrilo Server FAQ

Our old group disbanded recently. I don't think any of the newer groups are using vent.

LiquidMantis wrote:

I'm going to throw out a list of channels for a first round clean up pass.

(And I don't personally think we should put games as a sub of the dev/publisher)

Comments? I'll wait until the weekend and if there is no dissention I'll go ahead and nuke those or whatever cull list we narrow down to by then.

Bring in the hot knife and get this thing pared down! I agree with all of them.

Doesn't L4D have it's own voice chat like TF2?
I also think Shattered Horizon should be on that list.

Is there a way in the admin console to see channel activity? That would make it really easy to make some of these decisions.

As for the dev/publisher thing I would say whatever we do it should be consistent, all or none. I vote none it'll just be confusing to do the other way.

MonoCheli wrote:

Doesn't L4D have it's own voice chat like TF2?
I also think Shattered Horizon should be on that list.

It does, but I'm of the opinion that most if not all in-game voice sucks. Plus it's doesn't show that people are playing.

Shattered Horizon was one I missed and thought about adding to the list. Along with Star Trek Online and Warhammer.

LiquidMantis wrote:
MonoCheli wrote:

Doesn't L4D have it's own voice chat like TF2?
I also think Shattered Horizon should be on that list.

It does, but I'm of the opinion that most if not all in-game voice sucks. Plus it's doesn't show that people are playing.

I don't know anyone who plays L4D and doesn't use in-game voice. You can see if people are playing in your Steam friends list or friends server list. You certainly won't be able to tell who's playing L4D from Vent because no L4D player uses Vent.

Ok, so updated list is as follows:

Arma II
Borderlands -> Team 1 (meaning delete the sub-channel)
DDO: Unlimited
GWJRPG
IL2
Lead & Gold
Monster Hunter
Operation Flashpoint
Red Faction: Guerrilla
Rise of Nations -> Two if not all three sub-channels
Stardock -> SoaSE -> Two if not all three sub-channels (And I don't personally think we should put games as a sub of the dev/publisher)
Unreal Tournament
L4D
Shattered Horizon
Star Trek Online
Warhammer
TF2

LiquidMantis wrote:

Ok, so updated list is as follows:

Arma II
Borderlands -> Team 1 (meaning delete the sub-channel)
DDO: Unlimited
GWJRPG
IL2
Lead & Gold
Monster Hunter
Operation Flashpoint
Red Faction: Guerrilla
Rise of Nations -> Two if not all three sub-channels
Stardock -> SoaSE -> Two if not all three sub-channels (And I don't personally think we should put games as a sub of the dev/publisher)
Unreal Tournament
L4D
Shattered Horizon
Star Trek Online
Warhammer
TF2

Looks good for a first swag.

The only thing I would add is can you break apart the Relic channels and just have Dow2 and CoH have their own channels?

Ok, I forgot about doing this so there was a stay of execution. No one complained about that list so the first round cleanup pass is done now.

Here's a few considerations for a second round pass:

Medal of Honor
Mount & Blade Warband
Rise of Nations
Unreal Tournament

If I deleted a channel that gets needed in an emergency, I can be IM'ed (MSN or GTalk) or emailed at my username @ gmail.

I agree that publisher channels should go. Totally unintuitive and they create another layer that adds to the length of the list.

LiquidMantis wrote:

Ok, I forgot about doing this so there was a stay of execution. No one complained about that list so the first round cleanup pass is done now.

Here's a few considerations for a second round pass:

Medal of Honor
Mount & Blade Warband
Rise of Nations
Unreal Tournament

If I deleted a channel that gets needed in an emergency, I can be IM'ed (MSN or GTalk) or emailed at my username @ gmail.

Looks good, much cleaner.

Those look good except the next MoH comes out 10-12 so there may be a few people playing it then...

I nuked UT and RoN. The M&B:W thread has recent activity so I left that channel and MoH. I think the list is fairly kruft-free at this point. Do we still need so many WoW and LoL sub-channels? I guess the WoW ones aren't a big deal since that's currently the bottom anyway.

LiquidMantis wrote:

I nuked UT and RoN. The M&B:W thread has recent activity so I left that channel and MoH. I think the list is fairly kruft-free at this point. Do we still need so many WoW and LoL sub-channels? I guess the WoW ones aren't a big deal since that's currently the bottom anyway.

I think we need the LoL channels, we had 20+ people in there on Saturday and all the channels used and a couple people playing in other channels... I agree WoW is at the bottom so who cares.

The WoW channels have actually been reduced in number over time. It's not unusual to see three of them in use at once, and on Monday nights it may top that.

With Cataclysm reportedly coming November 2, we should probably leave 'em and may even need to add some temporarily. Plus, the bottom of the page thing y'all mentioned.

There was some trouble with the server today. It seems to be having some lag or something, I can only rarely hear anyone. Connecting seems to be ok but then that's it. This was a our whole group in League of Legends today not just me.

Is this the way trouble should be reported here? I don't want to seem like I am whining about the service just report what went on.

Well I rebooted it just now and it didn't improve. They show their status as being okay but it might be network issues on their end. Minecraft updates are bringing down the Internet now.

Just a thought and not something that needs action right away but next time our subscription is up for paying on the vent server.... Last night I played a bit with Tals and used his Mumble server and I really liked Mumble over vent. I guess it is also cheaper because the servers are cheaper. I am not saying we need to leave Vent, but it maybe worth looking in to next time around, it has some more features and a nicer interface.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mumble/files/

It's really up to TheWalt, imho, but I will say this: Cheap, with nice features and interface does sound delightful, but one thing Vent has going for it is that it currently seems to be the online gaming standard. Now, I could be wrong there, because my gaming world is somewhat limited - but it is the only voice chat program used on the WoW server that the GWJ guild plays on, so it's very convenient for people to use Vent for GWJ gaming in general, and be able to use it in any WoW PUG that they join.

That said, I'm not in love with Vent or anything, and if the gaming world starts shifting to another program and we follow suit, fine by me.

I need help...

I was on vent with a friend, just joined, hadn't moved to a sc2 server, and we were talking in spanish, just as we decided to move to one of the sc2 servers, i got kicked and banned, claiming something about me being russian.

I don't understand, hadn't had any warnings whatsoever, just banned. I closed and reopened, tried connecting, and it says i'm on the ban list. Anyone know if i did something wrong? and if there's a way to clear this up and unban me?

I'll let the admin that banned you speak up if he wants but I went ahead and lifted the ban. Not sure what the trigger was but I know a long time ago my brother and I had a couple of Russian guys that were jerks. That may have been a common issue that left a bad taste with some people causing them to jump the gun when people ain't speakin' uhmuhricuhn.

Since the vent server info is published on the forums, people who search the web sometimes find the GWJ server. Once they get in, they usually stay in the main channel and use our server. They aren't necessarily malicious but they are leeching our service. Sometimes the admins will go in and ban these people so we keep slots open for goodjers. It is possible the admin thought you were one of these people. Probably an honest mistake.

Note to fellow admins: Please make sure you are banning the right people. If you don't have the time to question suspicious users, you don't have the time to ban them.

Thank you for the quick responses, and obviously, the lift of the ban. I do understand that some previous malicious behavior would trigger an admin to instaban people, I was just worried I actually did something wrong or against the rules.

Thanks a bunch, I'll keep my evil spanish speaking to a minimum on the main channel.

Can we have a channel created for Call of Duty (Black Ops)?

Done.

Any chance that we could get three new channels added under WoW? I don't care what they are named or what the PWs are. Need a lot more room for the Monday night groups, and fear we'll be spilling over into other game's channels. Thanks!

ELewis17 wrote:

Any chance that we could get three new channels added under WoW? I don't care what they are named or what the PWs are. Need a lot more room for the Monday night groups, and fear we'll be spilling over into other game's channels. Thanks!

Done. Added Leveling Groups, Blue, Green, Purple

Thanks a ton Richy!

Question for the general Ventrilo populace:

How are we doing?

With Cataclysm and BF:BC2 both kickin right now, how's our capacity been lately with the 50-slot Vent server?

It's been a while since I've used Ventrilo on a regular basis (in fact, I just now upgraded my client from 3.0.4 to 3.0.7 :P), but the GWJ community seems to be doing a pretty good job of sharing the collective responsibilities of administration.

Our server billing renewal is coming up in February, and we're covered for another year (with the excess donations from last years generosity), but if there has been any capacity issues, this would be the time to correct that.

I'll keep an eye on this thread through January and do what the Goodjer consensus commands.

I imagine Cataclysm is definitely a serious force, but the BFBC2 regulars use their own server.

Is the vent server down? I can't seem to log on. The Pod 6 one is fine for me.

edit:\ Apparently PeerBlock started blocking it. Hmph.

For Android users: I've been using Ventriloid on my Evo to do vent for the last couple of weeks, and it's run beautifully. It's got all the same functionality as the windows clients as far as I can tell, but doesn't use any of my CPU's bandwidth.