1. Voice Chat Configuration

Open up settings in the main menu or after pressing esc in a game, and click on the audio tab. You'll see a lot of options about game sounds, announcer and text-to-speech, but these won't be covered in this guide as they don't matter with voice communication. For now, you'll just have to make sure that the voice chat checkbox is checked (it should be with the white cross, like in the screenshot above), and click on the configure button in the lower-right corner of the screen. A new window will open:

Let's have a look at what all these options do and what we're interested in.

Voice Chat Volume - pretty self explanatory, this should be set to maximum in most cases or the voice chat may be too quiet and you wouldn't understand much of what your teammates are trying to tell you.

Autojoin Public Channel, autojoin local channel, autojoin team channel - these options allow you to automatically join a channel when you connect to a server. Public can be heard by all players and spectators. It's good for saying "Hi" when you join the game and "GG" or "WOOT" when you win the match, but doesn't have much use apart from that. Team is the one we're really interested in. It can only be heard by players on your team, and is used to inform them of important events on the map. You can say "get node 4 - destroy it now" or "enemy leviathan approaching node 5" etc. This is A LOT faster than typing the text, and you can play and speak at the same time, so it is essential to maintain good teamwork and coordination. That's where you'll want to spend most of the time when using voice chat.

The local channel can be heard by anyone near your current location, and the further you are from somebody, the lower will be the volume of what you're saying. It is hardly functional in MASSIVE OUTDOOR AREAS of Onslaught, so you won't be using it much on this server. It is somewhat good to taunting enemies before smashing them to dust in DeathMatch games though Wink. These should be set to personal taste, if you want to have full control on where you're speaking just disable them all and use the keybinds (which will be covered later).

Internet quality is probably the most important setting. Setting it to "better quality" is a must because otherwise nobody will be able to understand what you're trying to say... and neither will you be able to hear them clearly. I noticed almost no ping variation after changing this option to "better quality".

LAN quality should be self-explanatory after you've read the text about internet quality above. It will never matter when playing on this server anyway.

2. Keybinds

Congratulations, you're done with the voice chat part! Now bind some keys to the most important functions and you're set. Click the Input tab in settings and click on the configure controls button. A new window will open:

You'll want to bind some easily accessible keys to the most important functions, which are speak in team channel and of course activate microphone. It is a good idea to keep them in easy reach because you'll be using them often. Keys for speaking on the public and local channel are useful, but not so necessary so you might assign them to some keys that are not close to basic movement and attack keys. The controls for toggling team, public and local channels are obsolete at this point, so you may just unbind any keys from them.

3. Speaking!
Ok, you're set to go! Join the server, join the channel you want to speak on, press and hold the activate microphone key, and clearly speak what you want to say. An icon should appear showing how loudly your speech is transmitted and what channel you're speaking on:

The bar should normally get orange or red all the time. If it's only a few squares tall and is green, then you're probably speaking too quietly so move your mouth closer to the microphone. If the bar stays green and only 1 or 2 squares high, something does not work. You have either not configured voice chat in-game correctly (in that case, read this guide again), or there is a hardware problem, e.g. you have not plugged in your microphone correctly.

Useful Stuff to Say...

Useful things include stuff like "Node 6 will be up in a couple of seconds." or "Node 4 will be down in a couple of seconds.". These allow people to think "that node's fine", and go somewhere else where they're more useful. Letting your team know the position of the enemy is also good, things like "There's a tank camping the hill near node 1" for example.

If you're in the leviathan, say so, and tell people where you're going. If you're in a manta/raptor, don't tell people what you're doing until you're actually doing it. If you say "attacking node 4", then die before you get there, chances are that no one will attack node 4 at all.

Have fun in-game!

Suggestions for Speech

Useful things you could say include phrases such as "Node 6 will be up in a couple of seconds" or "Node 4 will be down in a couple of seconds". These allow people to think "That node's fine", and go somewhere else where they're more useful. Letting your team know the position of the enemy is also good, things like "There's a tank camping the hill near node 1" or similar.

If you're in the leviathan, say so, and tell people where you're going. If you're in a manta/raptor, don't tell people what you're doing until you're actually doing it. If you say "attacking node 4", then die before you get there, chances are that no one will attack node 4 at all. Be economical with your use of voicechat.

This guide written by Owoc and Spoonman of the Titan Internet forum.