NS Meeting in Finland!

As you may have noticed, Syntax of Limbo is organizing an upcoming meeting of NS players in Finland this summer. Everyone is invited. This newspost should have the crucial facts, for more info see the links below.

When?

9-11th of July

Where?

In Helsinki. Most people will be staying at cabins in Vuosaari camping , so most of the activity will probably be around the camping site.

What will it cost me?

If you're going to stay in a cabin, it's 32 euros. If you find your own place to stay overnight, it's 10 euros.

Where can I get more info?

The best source for up to date information is probably the blog.

Also check out the following:

The thread on ENSL Forums

Steamgroup

Irc: #nsmeetingfinland2010

P.S. Syntax mentioned me that the sooner he gets they payments from participants, the sooner he can organise things, so please don't dally too long if you've already decided to participate.

P.P.S Note that this is Syntax' project, so direct your questions to him. The ENSL staff isn't involved in organizing in any direct way, so you won't get that good answers from us.

NS2 Engine Release!

As man of you know, today in the early morning of European Time, NS2 Engine was released. You can download it directly from our host.

You can jump around in the NS2 Engine Test and shoot dummy targets. Console comes up with tilde and r_stats shows your FPS. Have Fun. LUA Api is coming soon apparently so we'd be able to start making mods.

Post your thoughts, go check out quick "fragmovie" Aleksi managed to make up and post your FPS'es in this topic!

NS2 is coming and we have several candidates for the voice communication standard of NS2. Ventrilo 2.1 doesn't work with Windows 7 properly and is not getting updated anymore. Sooner or later we have to switch.

Teamspeak 3

The newest Teamspeak is very easy to setup with the wizard which is even easier than in Mumble. Servers which are for non-commercial purposes can obtain free license to host unlimited clients. It has huge number of features, some of which are useful (such as per-client volume) and some which are not (3D sound). Only downside I can think of is the lack of comments, but you can send text messages to channels. Other thing is the huge number of features which clutter the menus a bit. This is my personal favourite for next generation voice communication software for NS2.

Mumble 1.2

Mumble 1.2 is the newest stable version. The voice, atleast in earlier release had occasional glitches and the password-system (token system) is unintuitive. Both TS3 and Mumble use the same CELT voice-codec which is very clear albeit adding a bit of metallic sound (barely noticeable in TS). Biggest drawback is probably the engineer type of user interface (mainly settings, other menus are good). Also some reported problems with NS losing sound but this was fixable. Mumble has in-game list of nicks which is useful in gather where you may not know whos talking.

Shockvoice

Shockvoice is yet another voice communication client which has many more-or-less useful plugins. Its rather easy to set up, but requires .NET which most computers have nowadays, but is a big drawback for those who don't.

Ventrilo 3

Well we all know Ventrilo, and its newest version. Great features but commercial. Hosting costs strawberries. Since we already have the network and CPU capacity to host voice communication server on our own hardware, its unlikely we're going to host any Ventrilo 3 servers. If NS2 would bring up new players, it'd be the admins and donators who would have to pay for any extra slots required (now it would be 50-100 euros per 6 months).

Currently there is a TS3 server hosted at: ensl.org

Hello,

Mumble's bleeding next version (1.2) is going to have all kinds of nice features such as

• Channel passwords
• User comments
• Better codec (CELT) and codec rates up to 128k
• Temporary channels
• More user-friendly menus
• Overlay (shows who are talking) which is an old feature
• Skins, an old feature too
• I can also implement channel creation over the website
• In the future, it might have video streaming. Now think if your NS looked like this!

In the current situation, a person who wants to play NS competitively will need to install like two packages of Ventrilo, maybe mumble and TS. Also versions need to changed between servers which breaks passwords. Having played some other multiplayer games, all these extra gimmicks may well be enough to put off new players.

In my opinion, anything we could do to have less steps to start playing competitively, should be encouraged. So it might be a good idea to unify all NS-related voicecom servers. A free program would be a lot better than a commercial one. Also Vent 2.1 is not developed anymore, which means, that people who have some audio problems (I know atleast some) with it, cannot expect to get a fix. It still works well but the current version maze is counter-productive, besides single voice come server would help people to find players for a mix or clan more easily.

The bleeding edge mumble (download) is currently installed on our server at ensl.org:65000

What do you think about the idea?