DirectX window

[RG_Lunatic]

It would be very cool if TS could be made to open a small "window" on the games DX screen (most games use DX/D3D) where you could see either the server hiarachy (or a portion thereof with up down scrolling) or your current channel/sub-channel members. A keybind would open the window, and another would flip between those two modes.

The FRAP's frame rate counter was/is able to hijack an area on the game screen so I know it can be done.

=S=

Lunatic

[m&m's]

are you talking like this does ? http://www.teamspeakoverlay.com/ so you can see whos talking

[RG_Lunatic]

Yes!

Though I think if integrated into TS itself, it might be able to have more functionality.

Thank you, I'll have to give that a try.

=S=

Lunatic

[RG_Lunatic]

Well, I checked out TSO and it is not bad.

But it really needs quite a few more features, which might be rather difficult for a 3rd party program to offer. It needs to be able to show who the members of the current channel are, whether they are speaking or not. It would be nice if another player could somehow be highlighted for a private whisper as well (it is inconvienient to have to have all of them on keybinds).

And it needs to be able to show the server's channel hiarchy, and ideally to allow the user to scroll through it and move between channels.

=S=

Lunatic

[m&m's]

well i dont see that getting done with the channels being shown , or all the users in a channel being shown , it could on bigger servers lots of players block a big chunk of your view . the overlay was ment to only show you who is chatting at that time and be no-obstructive on your moniter . i would post a question there at teamspeak overlay and ask if the person who made it if they could modify it to fit your needs ??? you never know till ya ask

[RG_Lunatic]

well i dont see that getting done with the channels being shown , or all the users in a channel being shown , it could on bigger servers lots of players block a big chunk of your view . the overlay was ment to only show you who is chatting at that time and be no-obstructive on your moniter . i would post a question there at teamspeak overlay and ask if the person who made it if they could modify it to fit your needs ??? you never know till ya ask

Well, I might make a post at TSO, but I don't think it is likely. I'm not sure the TSO program knows who's in the channel, just who's speaking (nick in packet???).

As for the obscuring of the window, this is easily handled by limiting the number of entries viewable at one time, settable in options. You could then scroll the list.

The whole point is to make it more reasonable to do real time reorganization of channels. In most games, you die and respawn. The problem is that if you have 10 players in a TS channel, and 3 get killed, they either sit at the spawn point waiting for the rest, or the channel ends up fragmented with different sub groups who are not together in the game anymore. What needs to happen is for those killed to move to another channel, but this is not so easy when you cannot see other channels or who's in them while in-game. A means of seeing who's in what channels and moving between channels w/o tabbing to the desktop (which many players cannot do reliably) would solve this and allow real time formation of new groups into new channels.

This is best done from within TS, where all the data for the server is readily availalbe and any support communications can be facilitated directly and efficiently.

=S=

Lunatic

[pbarrette]

Hi RG_Lunatic,

Actually, TSO reads the entire Teamspeak window programmatically. So it does know exactly who is in which channel at all times. My program only grabs the list of players currently speaking, because it doesn't care who is in the other channels.

The problem with your idea is in the interaction with that window. How do you propose to start selecting new channels in the window without your game also responding to those mouse movements?

The point of TSO and my program is to show you pertinent information (who's speaking, who joined, left) without getting in the way of the game.

What you might be looking for instead, is a server side player management program, much like October is asking for in another thread here. Something like that would force the dead players into a specific channel, so you wouldn't have to try to track them down. You would know what channel they were in already, because they're dead.

It seems to me that a game-integrated server management program would be the right way to handle this, instead of a massive toggled window which requires frequent interaction..

pb

[RG_Lunatic]

Very good points.

As for mouse moves, yes I can see the problem there. But there is a simple answer - use the keyboard.

I agree with the basic functionality of TSO. A player would generally use that format, but they'd have the option of selecting between two other formats as well, so there would be 3 choices:

1) As is - only show who is speaking and who joined or left the current channel (or sub-channel)

2) Show all (or some) members of the current channel (or sub-channel), highlighting (bold) or otherwise indicating who's speaking. Scroll keys could be used to select a specific player for a private whisper.

3) Show the server's channel hiarchy (or part of it) in a scrolling list. Scroll keys could be used to select a channel (or sub-channel) and then the chosen channel could be moved to or whispered to, or expanded to show the members as per 2 above to allow private whispers.

The maximum size of the veiwable list would be set in the options. The user would have a single key to cycle the three layouts, two keys for scrolling, one key for channel expansion from mode 3 to mode 2 for w.r.t a foriegn channel or collapsing back to mode 3 from a foriegn channel, one key for moving to the selected channel (in mode 3), and one key for private whispering to the currently selected player or channel.

TSO is a very cool little program. I've only started messing with it but it seems to work very well. One immeadiate improvement I can see would be to offer more placement choices. The current choices work perfectly for me, but I can see how having 8 choices (centered at sides, centered top/bottom, corners) would make it more likely a user could find a suitable location for just about any game. Or even some kind of x,y offests for the upper left corner of the TSO text area, allowing its placement anywhere.

=S=

Lunatic

[m&m's]

that would be cool to move it like you can in fraps you pick the corner you want .

along with your idea above , but how about keeping the names of the people that have keyed there mic for X amount of time "x is set by the user" up on the screen so if 3 players have talked / keyed mic there name stays for 1 min or a preset time , so you have in sorts a curent list of players in your channel then after the time is up they disapear and return when they speak again for the time you set