IDEA: Voice chat software

[Sp3culuM]

A few of us were talking in the 'office' the other day, and most of it was on the subject of professional gaming. That somehow snowballed on to the amount people pay for games servers, and then I mentioned people paying for voice servers. That moved on to the voice chat software most CS gamers (including myself and my clan) use.. (which is called [url=\"http://ventrilo.com\"]Ventrilo[/url]). So naturally, the idea came up that we should have one. There's definately a market for it out there, and although Ventrilo is mainly free , even a free voice chat program to rival this would gain us a lot of traffic. I say mainly free, because you have to pay for a license to have over a certain amount of people on your server.

I'm pretty sure we have some capable programmers on here that could more than easily do this. Feel free to download vent yourself to see what kind of features it has, if you want to test it just post here.. i'll give you some server details to connect to so we can have a chat and you can see all the features at work /smile.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':)\' />

I think it's a really good idea if we can include some amazing features because there's already quite a lot of good competition out there for it. Let me know what you think..!

[Josh]

Well this aint my subject /blink.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':blink:\' /> I don't have a mic unfortunatly. Would me kind of hard to code without a mic /blum.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':P\' />

It's a good idea and yes it should bring some traffic..which would be nice /smile.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':)\' /> We've been getting quite a few users lately so if we were to do this program it should be what we've been getting as users times at least 50

[Trinity]

I play Americas Army, and most of the people on that use a program called [url=\"http://www.goteamspeak.com/news.php\"]TeamSpeak.[/url] The client is free but the servers are not. I think its a great idea, the potential market is huge.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that with the new Unreal techonology, VO-IP (voice over IP) might be included in some games, such as Americas Army and others who share the engine. Maybe we should target IRC users as well, market it as "the next level of online chat" or something like that.

[FlyingDoggyJake]

interesting idea /good.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(Y)\' />

[Josh]

If we could brainstorm and think of a way to get voice chat in IRC we'd start a new revolution to IRC. That'd be awesome!

[Tami]

As I said to Sp3c, I think it's a great idea. Our numbers are growing, and with the new gaming site going live soon (I hope) we might see that number increase 10 fold. The exposure will be there, and when word starts getting out, look out world /biggrin.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':D\' />

If we take our time with programme development and make the product high quality yet affordable (in some cases maybe free or free up to a point, like mentioned above), then your reputation as programmers will also steadily grow, and hopefully so will your incomes lol.

Keep up the good work, guys /biggrin.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':D\' />

[Josh]

Well I thought of this today at school, but a lot of things baffled me.

How do you transfer sound waves from an input device to another users computer?
How would you get VisualBasic or even C++ to send sounds to another location?

then some development things popped into mind..

Do you think we could use more than one coding language?
Are we going to work on this project as a "team" (;s eww at that word) or is someone just going to do it by theirselves?
How much quality are we wanting to have the sound?
Would we create our own system to pick up sounds from the input device and then send them or would we use some componet included with winblows?

Donno just some questions I've thought of today /smile.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':)\' />

[NightStorm]

Well, MSN at one point had a sort of voice chat plugged into their IRC Clients (anyone remember NetMeeting?). it was a bit of a fad more than anything else... Yahoo has voice chat in their rooms now, and you tend to find that it's more noise than actual conversation (10 people trying to take over everyone else... yay!).
On the flipside, Google is about to release it's own VoIP service (Voice Over IP) to allow broadband users to place calls to phones over their PC... there are others that offer the same service, but Google is pretty well recognised already, and will likely take a good chunk of the userbase. They offer free PC-to-PC calls, and small fees for calls to landlines/cells.
Honestly, as great of an idea as this is, you might work better if you could develop something that every other company in the world is not already releasing or marketting... because honestly (again), you won't be able to compete with Google.

[Endo]

Obviously the better quality sound, the better reviews from users we would get.

But nightstorm is right, we cant compete with a billion dollar company that can update on the fly, ns explained it all; the only other alt. would be to charge, but whos going to pay for something that will be offered for free?

[Sp3culuM]

I was thinking more of something aimed at the gaming community, and I can't imagine the entire community of CS switching to something Google produce. We want stuff that's fast and easy to use with great quality sound.. none of this phone calls to landlines crap that you say google will be doing. You didn't really "shoot down" the idea, I stick by my guns and say again that there's a big market for it out there. A few sponsorship or affiliation deals with some big players in the gaming world could set this thing on fire.

[Josh]

^^^ Agreed ^^^

[Tami]

I say go ahead and start on the project; should we get into gaming development, or other things we've been tossing around in some informal admin sessions, we're going to need it. If we should start down the path of gaming development for various platforms, the knowledge will come in handy and it may be adaptable for other platforms. Michael won't even look at a PS2 game unless it has online capabilities now. For him, if it doesn't go online, it better be a kick-ass game or it stays in the store.

[Josh]

yeah, I've noticed that about games now. Games sell better if they have internet capabilities and stuff..

[Kobra]

I don't know nearly enough C++ to do a project with..
I do know Visual Basic, however, and would love to contribute to the project /good.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(Y)\' />
I'm not good enough to do it alone, though, so we would need more people to work on it.
And Josh, [url=\"http://visualbasicforum.com\"]Visualbasicforum.com[/url] has some stuff on how to do it with Visual Basic, but I haven't looked into it.
But I guess I should finish the project I've already started before making any promises, eh? /blush.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(blush)\' />

[Sp3culuM]

gogogogo!