GWJ Ventrilo Server FAQ

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UPDATE [2-8-16]:
GWJ is paid through February 2017 due to overly generous donations last year (you guys are too good). However, usage of the Ventrilo server has dramatically declined as in-game chat, Steamchat, and other options (Curse, etc) have diluted the userbase. Fedaykin brought up the question about whether or not to continue the Ventrilo service, which is a great question, but will need to be answered no later than January 2017. So unless there is a vociferous demand for Ventrilo to continue, and if anyone wants to take the reins on managing the service (I've long since been an Xbox One gamer, and haven't logged into Ventrilo myself in quite a long time), the GWJ Ventrilo Service will cease and desist on February 10, 2017. Feel free to voice your opinion on this thread

Ventrilo can be downloaded at The Ventrilo download page.

Ventrilo (50 slot):
Server Address: v22.darkstarllc.com (those are lower case L's)
Port: 4018
Password: mmmkay

1) Start the ventrilo program. Click on the Start button, click on Programs and then click on Ventrilo. This will display another menu option called Ventrilo that will start the actual program.

2) Click on the "->" button that is next to the first pulldown window called "User Name". This will open a new window where you can create a logon name to be used when connecting to a server.

3) Click the "New" button. This will open a small window where you can enter your logon name. The name you enter is entirely up to you. It can be your real name or a nick name, but preferably your GWJ Forum name ;).

4) Click the "OK" button. You can come back to this window and click on the help button later on if you want more detailed information about what the other options mean and how to use them.

5) Now that we are back to the main window click on the "->" button that is next to the pulldown window called "Server". This will open a new window where you can enter the details about the server you would like to connect to.

6) Click the "New" button. This will open a small window where you can enter a name that will describe the new server definition. The name can be anything you want it to be like: "My server" or "Joe's server". When entering a server name you don't need the quotes around it. These server names will show up in the main Ventrilo window.

7) Click "OK".

8) Click on the "Hostname or IP" input box and enter the server address v22.darkstarllc.com (those are lower case L's)

9) Click on the "Port number" input box and enter the servers port number 4018.

10) Click on the "Password" input box and enter the servers password as defined by the server administrator "mmmkay" (no quotes).

11) Click "OK" to return to the Ventrilo main window.

12) Click "Connect" to establish a connection between you and the server you just defined.

13) You should also click on the Setup button and configure all of the different options that control Ventrilo. This is very important when it comes to controlling the microphone or input source. Once in the Setup dialog click on the "Help" button. Be sure to read what all of the options are and what they mean. This is very important for the Voice page

13a) A good option to check is the 'Silent connections when in a channel' box under the Misc. tab. This will keep audio notifications of people who enter and leave your room, but you don't have to listen when the other 49 people on the server are getting on and off the server (griefers sometimes server hop... why? I have no idea, it's what makes them griefers...)

-TheWalt

ps. To manage the Google-griefers on the Ventrilo server, I'm going to grant admin priveleges to 'tagged' GWJ members who aren't afraid to use the ban stick every once in a while. PM me if you're interested.

If you're experiencing technical difficulties, here's a link to the Ventrilo User's Forum

Vent Normalization makes everyone's voice the exact same volume. In essence, you won't blow your ears out or have difficulty hearing people.
Here's how:
Go to Setup
Enable Direct Sound
Select the SFX Button
Select Compressor and click Add.
Under Compressor Properties use the following settings
Gain = Adjust for how loud you want people to be. (Try 15)
Attack = 0.01
Release = Around 500
Threshold = Around -30
Ratio = 100
Pre delay = 4.0

What the settings do:

Gain: How much volume you feed into the compressor. Not really relevant unless everyone is too quiet, then you can turn this up a little; turning it up too much will sound EXTREMELY bad.

Attack: How fast volume change will happen. Example: setting this to 500 means that anything coming in will only be dropped in volume after a half a second. For vent this should be set as low as possible.

Release: How fast the compressor stops changing things. Not really that relevant with vent, setting it around 500 is good for voice material.

Threshold: This sets the point where we actually start changing what’s coming in. Whereas 0 is the absolute loudest you can have for an input, -60 is super quiet. Average users will probably come in somewhere around -25 to -15, with the occasional few being really quiet, which is why I have this set so low.

Ratio: How much any sound below the set threshold gets compressed and/or modified in the volume department. If you still want to hear SOME volume variation then set this lower (2-4). The higher you set it the closer in volume everyone will be.

Pre delay: Mostly just deals with processing; with computer and digital processors they can look ahead a few milliseconds to see what needs to be dropped in volume or changed before it actually comes through the speakers. Highest is ideal.

So far this has made a world of difference for me.

Made sticky! Let me know if you make any changes. I think that removes the sticky feature for some reason and needs to be re-applied.

Cool deal... when I have some new info to post, I'll test out the 'stickyness' and PM you if it goes away.

Thanks for the donation Edwin!

New info on the Clan Pay system... I think you just have to click on the link at the bottom of the FAQ. It looks like $1 is the minimum donation size (either credit card or Paypal). It doesn't look like you need to PM me your email after all (that's yesteryears antiquidated way they used to do it... looks like we're getting some upgrades for the increase in costs... ;))

EDIT: It has been confirmed that all you have to do to make a donation is click on the link and follow the instructions. Thanks for the confirmation Edwin!

Good-O. Donation sent for this year!

Thanks for the donation RichyR... super generous!!

Thanks for the donation jonnypolite!

You guys rule!

More people to thank for their donations:

Fedaykin98
Trowan

Thanks guys

Could someone post their setup configuration? Right now a good deal of us are too loud and break-up causing some charming headache inducing distortion.

For me a sensitivity of 20 seemed to take care of the distortion. Had to play with the local loop test thing a bit to get it right though. Hopefully it sounds ok to you guys...hard to say.

FYI-
The GWJ Ventrilo server has been paid thru Feb. 11, 2008. Thanks again to those generous goodjer donors who helped make the impact on my credit card minimal this year, and enjoy another year of crispity clear internet communications!

Seems like we've had a lot of moochers lately. Maybe it's time to change the password.

I promise, this time I won't tell Jarhead the new password.

A few of those "moochers" may be myself and friends. We play DotA nightly, and there are normally four or five of us on in the War3 channel.

We have had a handful of late night spammers come in though, normally pretty early morning.

If the 'moochers' are a problem, I'm giving admin p/w to a few goodjers to take care of them. (let me know if you want to be an 'enforcer'.

Admins can also put passwords on channels to keep out riff raff.

We can look into changing the p/w if everyone's on board with it though.

-TheWalt

Fedaykin did some 'enforcing' today. If there are any other regular Goodjers (i.e. tagged) who use Ventrilo and would like to keep the griefers (people who actively disturb others use of the server) off Ventrilo, PM me.

We've got griefers on the Ventrilo server? Holy cow.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

We've got griefers on the Ventrilo server? Holy cow.

You weren't on when it happened?

Nope. Was it last night during BF2? Remember, I didn't get on until around 10:15. (And thanks to wife's downloads, slow login server, getting kicked, crashing to desktop, and computer mysteriously going dark and locking up, I didn't even really get to play until after 10:30).

2 different people logged on and started blasting music loudly, to where conversation was impossible. I banned them. A third person got banned without ever actually blasting the music because he wouldn't identify himself to me, and kept jumping from channel to channel. And then I nearly banned Monolei (a GWJ Alliance WoW player) because I didn't recognize the name he logged on with. Doh!

It might be a good idea for everyone's name that shows on Vent to be their GWJ name (or WoW name - whatever name people know you by), for ease of moderation.

I have seen lots of suspected freeloaders (not mmmburrito and friends) over time, but I haven't bothered to investigate them if they aren't bothering anyone.

Again, if anyone is concerned about their group being mistaken for freeloaders/griefers/etc., make sure at least one person in the room is using their GWJ name.

Yeah, passive freeloaders are one thing. Active griefers are another...

VERY IMPORTANT VENTRILO NOTICE:

More griefers this past Saturday during a WoW instance run; luckily none of them came on while we were in a serious fight.

After thinking about how to solve these issues, I came up with a couple of ideas short of the "nuclear option" of changing the password.

1) I believe individual channels can be password-protected. I also believe that this can only be done by someone with admin access. If you are participating in a regular gaming event that wants its own passworded channel and no one in the group has admin access, PM me and I'll be happy to make you one - at which point you will privately or publicly distribute the password as you like. For instance, I've been running groups out of a particular WoW channel, so I'm just going to throw a password on it and only give that out to people who are going on the runs with me.

This is a much more elegant solution than changing the server password, because it doesn't cause anyone who isn't reading this and keeping up with the latest developments to get entirely shut out of Ventrilo - for instance, if there's still an irregularly occurring Dawn of War game and none (or not enough) of the attendees read this, they can still use Vent, but they'll still be subject to griefers. This solution also allows for ease of password change if that becomes necessary for any reason - say you decide to post your channel password publicly in your event's thread, and the griefers discover that.

2) Some griefers have fun just joining the server and leaving the server repeatedly, because it generates a notification sound that is louder than the voices of the players. The solution to this is to go into your Setup and turn server notifications off - I believe you can do this while still leaving channel notifications on.

Between these two steps, I believe that you can proof yourself against griefers without the necessity of TheWalt changing the server password.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

2) Some griefers have fun just joining the server and leaving the server repeatedly, because it generates a notification sound that is louder than the voices of the players. The solution to this is to go into your Setup and turn server notifications off - I believe you can do this while still leaving channel notifications on.

Added the comment under 13a in the original post on Ventrilo Setup about checking the 'Silent connections while in channel' under the Misc tab.

I like your plan Fedaykin.

PWing the dota channel I use cured the griefer problem that rose up a few months ago. I couldn't catch half of them with a ban hammer, as they were logging in and off in a second or less, and zipped up the channel. Not a single problem since!

Did updating the thread/original post unsticky it? Can we get a mod to re-sticky it?

TheWalt wrote:

Fedaykin did some 'enforcing' today. If there are any other regular Goodjers (i.e. tagged) who use Ventrilo and would like to keep the griefers (people who actively disturb others use of the server) off Ventrilo, PM me.

I sir, am insulted by your uppity 'tagged only' discriminatory statement and as a server admin will most certainly ban you upon our next encounter.

Good day.

BabaGanoush wrote:

Good day.

We had a couple griefers on Monday night. They were unable to enter the majority of the channels because they are now passworded, but the BF2142 channel remains unprotected. If someone wants to take charge of getting the word out about a pw for that channel, I'll be glad to add whatever pw y'all want.

That said, the two griefers on Monday night were still able to bother people in passworded channels because Vent by default announces when someone joins or leaves the server - and it does so by announcing whatever the person has typed in. On this night, they were joining and leaving quickly, which is annoying all by itself, and also using naughty language for their announcements, which was very bothersome to a father-young daughter duo that was playing WoW at the time, which leads to:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Whatever you set as your server announcement name needs to be relatively clean. I don't think there are any problems with this within GWJ, but I figured I'd better mention it, because when trying to ban the griefers the moderators have to do it very quickly due to the speed with which the offenders log off. Monday night two people logged in with utterly pornographic announcements and I immediately banned them; I doubt they were GWJ or friends of GWJ, but there isn't enough time to ask.

All of which is not an issue if you

1) Are in a passworded channel

2) Have disabled sign-on and sign-off notices

The latter can be done through the Setup Menu, under Events - there are two settings that need to be changed from "Play Custom Wave" to "None".

I know I've said this stuff before, but I wanted to also make sure I gave people fair warning about totally inappropriate announcements.

Same thing happened Tuesday night. I think I was able to ban one of them though. I still think we should consider changing the password and PMing it to the interested goodjers.

The 2142 channel needs a password. We had some guy come in and grief us this week, probably the same time he was bothering Fletch's group. You could try posting it on the 2142 thread at the permanent Thursday night game announcement and see if that solves the problem rather than have to go through the PM route.

BTW, I'm surprised people keep the announcements for entering or leaving the servers set. I generally want to know when someone enters a channel, but the server announcements are something I turn off in Vent. At least, I think I was able to do that.

I think it's easier to distribute a channel password to the dozen or less who need it than to get the server password to the fifty or so who probably use Vent on a weekly basis. The Starcraft and WoW crowds have no need of server announcements anyway, imho.

Just my 2 cents, it's TheWalt's call obviously.

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