GWJ Community Voice Comms

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Welcome to the brave new world of 2016 where a new generation of voice communication platforms have risen up to challenge the aging giants. Skype has become a common vector for DDOS attacks, the Ventrilo desktop client hasn't seen an update in many years, and our own community Ventrilo server has been retired as of February 2017.

TL;DR. How do I chat with the GWJ community?

By clicking this link: https://discord.com/invite/HfYNSdP

Discord is the dominant platform of the next generation of communication apps, combining the best parts of Slack (persistent, rich group chat) and Skype (high quality voice calls). They have a nice mobile app giving convenient access to people playing from consoles, and their website functions nearly as well as the desktop app so you don't have to install anything if you prefer things that way. The link above will invite you to join the GWJ community server which has a ongoing text chat about games and voice rooms to hop into while you're playing.

I'll also mention with a tear in my eye that the Twitch Desktop app (formerly Curse) still exists for the time being. It offers similar features to Discord and had been adopted as a voice platform of choice for many Goodjers. Unfortunately, the voice communication features are only lasting until Februrary. If you're interesting in joining the Twitch server while it lasts, you can do that here: https://invite.twitch.tv/zDS9uyiR00uXjmvw0VX1Wg

Disclaimer: My day job was formerly building the Curse/Twitch Desktop app. Credit to Bombsfall for the banner art.

If you are playing with one or two people, the Steam voice chat works quite well. I've run into a few folks when playing that are like "I have a mic but never set it up", so...

Suggestion: set up your microphone today, even if you're not playing anything. You can probably just message someone on your friends list with 'Hey, I'm testing my mic, do you have a moment to help?' and the answer will probably be yes. If you're me, ask them what their favourite sandwich is to know if you can hear each other XD

If you have two people in Steam voice chat, you can invite a third that isn't friends with the second person and it's fine.

Loving me some Curse Voice

Cathadan wrote:
  • Discord operates larger multi-room servers in the style of Ventrilo and seems to be the choice platform among fighting game devotees. You can join an unofficial GWJ community group with the following link: https://discord.gg/0mxyGtb1jkiPYRHY

So it looks like that invite link is not working. I get a message saying "The instant invite is invalid or has expired."

J.C. wrote:

So it looks like that invite link is not working. I get a message saying "The instant invite is invalid or has expired."

Huh, I guess we'll need to keep refreshing the invite link periodically? Someone will have to post a new one here and I can update the OP.

Sounds like Discord is booty

Heyo, when you make an instant invite, hit the 'advanced settings' in the lower left corner and set it to Never Expire.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/NEifvNA.png)

I do not know how the ventrilo server was since I never used it, but the public-facing discord servers I participate on need constant moderating due to spammers and such.

On Vent server a number of senior GWJ members were given admin rights so that at any point in time there is someone who can make new channels, boot/ban spammers, etc.

I prefer Discord over Curse. The problem with Curse is that you need to distribute the link whenever you are doing something, which limits being able to just drop in if you happen to be interested; you have to have some way to contact someone already in the channel and ask for an invite.

You have to be invited to the Discord channel originally, but once you are in you can drop in and out as interested. I'm using it for the Elite Distant Worlds expedition and it seems to be working quite well for us.

Just my 0.02 cents worth (0.07 cents adjusted for inflation).

I'm also very impressed by Discord. It functions perfectly as a replacement for Ventrilo or Teamspeak while simultaneously providing a superior (IMO) replacement for IRC and/or Slack.

As taanstaafl noted, Discord also has the advantage of being linked on a webpage allowing people to join and depart at will. Unfortunately this thread lacks any valid permanent invite link so the GWJ community is inaccessible to most.

The only thing that worries me about Discord is concern about what their eventual monetization model may be.

Don't mind me, just tagging the thread, might come in handy. Curse seemed pretty cool when is installed it on my phone, but I think I've only really used Ventrilo up til now.

Also tagging to discover the eventual consensus.

That new version of Curse Voice is sounding even more crystal clear. It's like Squee is next to me. *hugs squee body pillow*

Yup, you can finally see the tip of the iceburg on the new Curse alpha branch. Go to the about screen, type the letters 'alpha', see the future.

Cathadan wrote:

Yup, you can finally see the tip of the iceburg on the new Curse alpha branch. Go to the about screen, type the letters 'alpha', see the future.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/0Snq5WW.png)

I'm just tagging too until I'm ready to talk.

Cathadan wrote:

Yup, you can finally see the tip of the iceburg on the new Curse alpha branch. Go to the about screen, type the letters 'alpha', see the future.

My search-fu is weak. Could not find this link you speak of.

No link needed. Just the regular "About Curse" page in your existing Curse app.

Ok, maybe I'm just too old and daft for this (even though I make software for living). I can't seem to figure out how to usefully operate either Curse or Discord.

Discord is being utterly {ableist slur} by starting in some wizard mode that gives me no input on consequences of my actions. And the worst part of it, I can't access any sort of settings to disable the auto-start on Windows boot, which is in my opinion an offence deserving of a ball crushing.

While curse promises lots, but delivers none of it. How the hell do I link my Steam account? I guess I need to know individual people's names on Curse. But it's kind of hard to know people's names, if I can't get in touch with them for them to tell me those names. :eyeroll:

MoonDragon wrote:

While curse promises lots, but delivers none of it. How the hell do I link my Steam account? I guess I need to know individual people's names on Curse. But it's kind of hard to know people's names, if I can't get in touch with them for them to tell me those names. :eyeroll:

As long as you're running everything on windows, Curse should have a steam account prompt "automagically" appear and offer to sync your friends shortly after having both curse and steam running at the same time. I'll double check things on the alpha client tomorrow, and if you submit a bug report through the curse app I can track things down for you. PM me your curse username and I can follow up.

Yeah, I can't remember what I did in Curse to import Battle.net and Steam friends, but it was pretty simple.

I like both but I probably prefer Discord because I think it's better designed to support a community like this one. Curse seems more tailored for spontaneous small conversations while Discord has very nice group/room support and everyone is auto-included once you're in the GWJ server.

So I just installed Curse on my pc. Turns out I already had an account (I sign up for a lot of services to get the user name) and as soon as I fired it up and synced my Steam account I got insta-invites from Amoebic and Certis.

How did that happen?

They might look the same at a glance, but Curse will show you both incoming friend requests and friend suggestions based on people you're already friends with on other platforms. My assumption would that you were seeing the latter. (But hey, maybe they both just searched for PaladinTom and sent you friend requests at some point in the past?)

Didn't see if Cathadan created an infinite invite to Discord.
Here
https://discord.gg/0mxyGtb1jkec8jho

That one does not expire.

And that is some sexy banner art.

Thanks for the link and banner compliments! It's in the OP now.

I am looking forward to trying out Discord. Looks interesting.

I just signed up for both like a billionaire giving campaign contributions. I'll be ready once I see who wins.

Updated OP with curse community invite link.

I've installed both Discord and Curse and they both have nice looking interfaces. Struggling a bit to work out the functionality in Curse, I'm always seeing icons with a (1) or something and nothing happens when I click on them. Also I could only join the GWJ group by clicking on the URL in the OP in-browser and restarting the desktop app, pasting the link directly into the program didn't work (join button was greyed out). Not sure if that's by design and I just misunderstood something or what.

Now I get to sit back and lament that no-one new is playing the same games in the same timezone as me.

I used Curse for a while but it was crashing The Division, so I haven't been running it. I suppose I need to look into how to disable the in-game overlay.

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