TeamSpeak

Teamspeak (TS for short) is a program that Allegiance players use to communicate with each other by voice. This allows people to say commands to their team, not type them. This increases your situational awareness allowing you to respond more quickly.

Even if you don't have a microphone or the desire to speak, connecting to your team's Teamspeak channel helps shorten the learning curve. You will hear your teammates report intelligence and give commands to eachother using Allegiance vocabulary allowing you to learn the names of technology and tactics more quickly.

TeamSpeak download page

Setting Up TS

Adding a Server to your Address Book

Once you have installed both programs, run Teamspeak. In the upper left hand corner, click “Connection” and then “Connect”.

When you click "Connect" you will go to this screen:

Now that you are at the servers main page, right click “Servers” and left click “Add Server”.

It will create a new server on your list and ask for a name. You can name it anything you want, but I recommend something that you can recognize.

Now you need to enter the info relating to this server. The instructions are on this picture.:

When you have entered the info in, left click somewhere on the TS window to deselect everything. It will attempt to connect, but prees “Cancel”, we aren't ready for that yet.

Setting the Bandwidth

At the top right hand corner of TS, click “Settings” and then “Options”

Once in that menu go to the third tab, “Bandwidth”. The first two tabs won't do much for you. If you are on Cable or DSL, change both the upload and download speeds to “Unlimited”. If you are on 56k, you will need to do some testing later and decide which option is the best for you. Obviously the higher the bandwidth alloted to ts the clearer you will be heard and be able to hear other players.

Setting your Name

Now go to the “Other” tab under "Options". In there, type your name as you want it to appear in TS. Remember how you typed it though, you will need it later.

Click “Apply”.

Setting your Sound Level

Now go to the “Settings” menu and click “Sound Input/Output Settings”

Make sure the output volume is maxed - it will make it easier for other players to hear you. Below that, choose the “Push to talk option”. Pick a key that will not interfere with your Alleg gameplay. If you have an extra button on your mouse I recommend using that.

If you do not have a mic, I will cover that later.

Running TS

You should be set up now. Go ahead and connect to the server that you created earlier. Do this by double clicking “Main Alleg TS Server” as seen in the 3rd picture.

When you are connected, you should see a screen like this:

In the pic, here are some things that you need to learn:

• The different channels are: General Allegiance, GW, ogame, and Palidor’s Knights. The last channel has two subchannels Attack and Defense.
• Adaven@XT and Lykguros both have their mics muted, they cannot speak to anyone.
• (U) means a standard user
• (R) means a registered user. This is a person that the Server Admin(Aarmstrong) knows. If he knows its you talking, he may allow you to register which reserves the name for you on the server.
• (CA) means Channel Admin. This person can edit the channel and boot people from it if they are being disruptive.

If you want to mute your own mic or headphones, the option is in the “Self” menu at the top of the window.

To join a channel, double click the channels name. If a password is required, TS will ask for it then.

Connecting the Quick Way

Go "Connect" then "Quick Connect". It will come up with a small screen asking for info, similar to creating a Server. Simply fill that in and hit 'Connect'.

The Even Quicker Way

Create a shortcut to TeamSpeak on your desktop or taskbar. Right click on it and go to properties. Go to the "Shortcut" Tab and then look for the "Target" window. At the end of this command line insert the address of the teamspeak server, seperated by a space and outside the quotation marks. ie like this:

"C:\Program Files\Teamspeak2_RC2\TeamSpeak.exe" ts.dras.us

Now whenever you click on that shortcut it will automatically join that server using the Username you inputted in "Setting your Name" described above.

Creating and Running a Channel

To create your own channel, click “Channels” and then “Create Channel”. That will bring you to this window:

If you want to make a password for the channel, type it in there.

Note that the codec used is “Speex 9.3 Kbit” THIS IS CRUCIAL. If you do not choose this codec, your channel will sound like crap.

If you want to do something to a player, right click their name and select what you want to do. You can boot a player, send them a PM, give them CA rights, and other things.

Troubleshooting

If people say you are 'echoing' that means your mic is too sensitive and is picking up sound effects from your speakers and broadcasting them over TeamSpeak. You need to go to "Settings" - "Sound Output/Input settings and move the sensitivity slider towards 'Shout'.

If people are saying that your mic is feeding back, that means that your mic is recording all outbound audio. i.e. whenever a sound effect is played your computer doesn't just send it to your speakers, but to everyone else on TeamSpeak too. You need to change it to your mic only.

Do this by going to your Control Panel, double click “Sound and Audio Devices”, under “Sound Recording”, click “Volume”, then check the box below Microphone. The pic below illustrates this.

Other

• TeamSpeak has options to disable sounds such as 'Player joined channel', 'Player left channel'.
• You can setup Key Combos to do a multitude of things, such as muting your mic or changing channels, which will work even if Teamspeak is minimised.