Quick Start

Using the Client

First, download the client from the download page. On Windows, this will be an installer that will set everything up for you. On MacOS, unzip the archive and place it into your applications folder. On Linux, extract the archive to wherever you like.

Now, start up VoiceChatter. You will be greeted by an empty screen. The first thing that you may want to do is configure VoiceChatter. To do this, go to the "Self" menu and select "Config". From here, you can select the audio devices that you want to use, set your push to talk key, and change volume settings.

Note: OSS on Linux is not quite up to par. Therefore, support for OSS is disabled until the problems get worked out.

Once you are satisfied with your settings, you can connect to a server. Go to the Connection menu and choose Connect. From there, you can create a new server then connect to it. The only tricky thing here is the username and password. If you don't know that a username is required, leave this field blank and enter the server password in the password field if there is one. If you are connecting with a non-blank username, you will need to use the password for your user instead of the server password. After you connect, you can then talk to your friends!

Just in case someone does not have a mic, you can also use the bottom pane of VoiceChatter for text chat. You will still only be able to talk to people in the same channel as you.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please submit them on the forums.

Using the Server

The server is very simple, however, there is no good graphical way to configure it. All you should have to do to start a server is to simply run it. If it is the first time running the server, it will ask you some questions about the basic configuration of the server. It will then spit out a configuration file in the same directory. Right now, it is called "vchatserver.conf". If you need to make any advanced configuration changes, you will need to edit this file. Additionally, you can add "--config " to the VoiceChatter server command line to specify an alternate configuration file. It should be pretty self explanatory what each property does, and what valid entries should be. However, here is a (very) brief synopsis:

  • "adminPassword" is the admin password! This is the password that is used to login as an admin. A blank password will disable admin logins.
  • "serverPassword" is the password that is used to connect to the server. A blank password removes the need to enter a password when connecting.
  • serverName" is (guess what?) the name given to the server. This will show up as the lobby channel's name on the clients.
  • "maxConnections" is the maximum number of clients that are allowed to join the server. A value of 0 means that there is no maximum.
  • "listenPort" is the port that VoiceChatter will bind to. VoiceChatter uses UDP for communication, so make sure your ports are open properly.
  • Under [codec], "band" refers to the Speex band. Basically, 0 is 8hz (low quality), 1 is 16hz (good quality), 2 is 32hz (excellent quality). Anything else will result in using 32hz. Bigger bands use more bandwidth, but the impact on bandwidth from different bands is insignificant compared to the quality.
  • Under [codec], "quality" refers to the Speex codec quality. This ranges from 0 to 10, 0 being the lowest (using less bandwidth), and 10 being the highest (using the most bandwidth).

After changing any of the settings, the server will have to be restarted for those settings to take effect.

Again, if you have any questions or suggestions, please submit them on the forums.