For The next Patch

[Djmaxx]

I think there should be a built-in voice chat like (Squiggle, Dolby Axon, Teamspeak ext.)

Squiggle is like windows live messenger and it has a voice chat option and it is freewear and is for local network chat so that would probably be the best bet but Dolby or TS3 would work too if you could get the coding right

[JohnD]

Nothing stops us from using voice chat outside of the game; and we can do so for free. Integration like that would require licensing from the originating company and would up the price considerably.

[Trenloe]

Nothing stops us from using voice chat outside of the game; and we can do so for free.

And we do now - using all sorts of products (GMs preference), including the community provided TeamSpeak3 server.

Integration like that would require licensing from the originating company and would up the price considerably.

And would require Smiteworks to keep a voice server running for whichever voice chat product was used - again increasing cost.

[Djmaxx]

Thats why i mentioned Squiggle its free and i dosnt require a server it would run off the gms ip address

[Djmaxx]

i use Squiggle here at home to talk to each computer in the house and i have it setup so i can talk to my buddy down the road and if they merged it with FGII it would run off the gm's machine as long as the players had the update

[damned]

different players/gms have different access to bandwidth. the best thing about using a vent or ts server is that the gm doesnt have all that additional traffic to manage which can interfere with sharing of other in game elements.
it has been raised many times before and the developers preference is not to do voice - there are many perfectly good voice systems out there and it will take away valuable programming time...

[phantomwhale]

FGII is already bandwidth intensive in it's peer-to-peer traffic (there are always 1-2 people with slow upload speeds, no matter how fast your download speeds are; that's the old A of ADSL in action) - so another peer-to-peer bandwidth bolt on wouldn't be a great architectural add on from my perspective.

I play with people 8,500 miles away, and have found the community TS server superb, much better than Skype and a bit better than the free mumble server I was using before. Given the complexity of solutions here, and the lack of "one size fits all" solution, I suspect the effort required to develop VoIP inside the application would be a poor move, compared to focusing on some of the core product areas where FGII is lacking (e.g. image functionality, wider ruleset upgrade support and GUI enhancements).

Just my 2 cents...
(-PW-)

[Griogre]

As has been mentioned, this has been debated before. There are far more failures of adding voice to apps than successful ones. Its a specialized field plus a bandwidth hog if its not done right. I'd much rather FG development time be spent on FG rather than re-inventing the wheel on VoIP. It be different if there weren't so many good VoIP solutions already out there.

[Djmaxx]

Well i have been playing around with the Squiggle app and cause it is a open source program i am able to look at the core structure of the program and it dont look like it would affect the traffic as much as you say it would plus it would give FG2 its on IM service if done right. That would allow people to chat out side of the game and out side of the forums.

Its just a idea that i dont think should be tossed aside so quick

[NeoFax]

While I think VoIP software should remain seperate, Mumble is open source and you can run your own server or a free one on the internet.