VidChat? Plz?

[Leithorin]

have you tried Stickam.com?

It seems pretty basic to me... allows for 1 large video screen and 6 small ones, and all channels allow voice chat. You can also make the channel private so no one but your friends can get in. I don't think it uses too much memory. Also allows for standard chatroom functions, and you can customize your page with the colors you want.

[Orchard]

have you tried Stickam.com?

It seems pretty basic to me... allows for 1 large video screen and 6 small ones, and all channels allow voice chat. You can also make the channel private so no one but your friends can get in. I don't think it uses too much memory. Also allows for standard chatroom functions, and you can customize your page with the colors you want.

I haven't, but I have a serious aversion to a web-based solution for a variety of reasons. One is the serious interface limitations. You are pretty much stuck with whatever the designer gives you. This is also true of stand alone clients, but I have to say the web-based solutions seem to offer a poorer selection in this regard.

Second is that you already have the overhead of the browser, then you stack the player (typically flash) onto that, then you add the communications between 6 people...it gets ugly fast.

Overall, I'm just not a fan. Mebeam was a massive fail, and if they aren't better than that, I'm not interested. Of course, I'll give it a look-see before I pass final judgment, just know that I'm going in with a negative view.

[Benz72]

I'd be a fan of integrated voice, but I can see that some people already have a 'good enough' solution that there are much more important things to spend time on.

BTW is someone who has had success with running ventrillo a/o teamspeak in conjunctino with a MT game could do a 'for dummies' instruction set on setup and usage I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

[brad]

Mebeam was a massive fail. It seemed to have a good future and the customization never came and then it got unreliable. My group just used Stickam.com tonight. It worked great. It would be nice if you could make the 6 visitors windows a little bigger, but it's free. Also the set up with the windows going vertical instead of horizontal really helps with screen space, especially with a wide screen monitor.

Our base setup is MapTool and ventrilo, which works incredibly well. Then whoever has a webcam uses it. Since I would say only maybe 25% of our time is combat, having the voice and visual stuff is really nice. I like seeing the expression on someones face or seeing them laugh. With the the push to talk of ventrilo if someone is laughing they usually don't push it so you don't know. With the webcam you do. Little stuff like that is a definite plus with the webcam. Basically I usually ignore the webcam during combat(looking at the battle map of MapTool) and ignore everything but the chat of MapTool(in our group used for die rolling or smack talk) during role-playing, so it works out well with screen space.

[Big_Mac]

How was the audio with http://stickam.com/ ??

[brad]

Actually we didn't even try to use the audio part. Ventrilo has always worked so well and it has multiple channels we can use as side rooms, that we didn't even consider changing that part.

[Big_Mac]

oh cool, So my group could use Skype for voice and this for vid.

[Big_Mac]

Okay maybe not so cool. It absolutely crushed my machine on medium setting. It was also difficult to figure out how to get someone onto my private session. I may have missed a step. Will definitely try again.

[brad]

That's odd. I had it on highest setting and it was fine. No one else in my group had a problem either. Once during the night it dropped people and they had to reconnect. As for finding your chatroom. In the upper right hand of the screen there is a search box. Have them do a search for your username. It will come up with little icons showing if you are online, live, and so on. Have them click on the one that is for you being "live". That will take them to your chatroom. They have to sign up if they have a webcam, they don't if they are just watching.

[werole]

Checkout weRole.com. It's got a big built in video screen for a shared board display, as well as audio and video chat for each user. Users can also ping areas on the board to indicate a location, as well as share dice rolls.

http://www.weRole.com/tour

[Orchard]

I'm sorry, but one of the major reasons I prefer role-playing with friends to an activity such as World of Warcraft is the distinct lack of monthly payments. I absolutely refuse to pay for continued use of a product that is a part-time hobby. I mean I don't mind paying for services that I will justifiably use on a consistent basis. My phone, electric, and internet all fall into this category. Gaming habits are harder to justify...I personally do not play with enough frequency to justify the expenditure, nor do I have any desire to neglect the other portions of my life to such a point that it becomes a valid outlay of cash.

I'm sure that for some people it is worth-while.

The other major problem with the suggest product above is the distinct lack of information about capabilities. What can it do aside from video chat?

Frankly, unless that website starts offering a lot more information and screenshots, I'm not going to bother looking at it anymore. You'll need to offer much more than that.

[BigO]

Frankly, unless that website starts offering a lot more information and screenshots, I'm not going to bother looking at it anymore. You'll need to offer much more than that.

Well, that and the fact that he clearly just registered here so he could spam us about his competing product. Very tasteless if you ask me. I'm definitely not going to try it, just based on that alone.

[werole]

Sorry guys, I really didn't mean my reply to come of as spam. I'm a roleplayer myself and designed the site primarily so I could play more often with my friends. I'm getting older nowadays and I find that getting to my friends house (or they to mine) for d&d each week is fairly difficult. So for me video chat let's us get in games more often than we otherwise could.

As for the pricing, if I could provide the service for free, I most certainly would. This issue is that bandwidth costs for streaming video aren't cheap and I need to cover my costs. I can tell you as a game master that having spent a fair amount of money on my d&d stuff already (including selling my left kidney for some dwarven forge sets), anything that lets me play more often means the money I already spent was worth it. What's the use in having a $300 tile set if I can only use it maybe once a month.

Anyways... I'm not here trying to convert people to a competing product. I just saw a post about video chat and thought maybe it would be a product someone was interested in. It's a different service all together, and I think people would use it in different circumstances.

And you're right that there could be more screenshots, and I'll try and work on that this weekend so you have a better idea of what to expect. The problem is that I've just setup the site all by myself as a hobby, and don't have marketing gurus designing my website. There is a free trial though, and i thought that trying it out would speak more than screen shots. Also, since it's my site and a hobby, if you've got ideas on features that would make it even better, I can implement them quickly for you.

The game screen has a big high resolution video area to display the board via a camera. On the right there's an area for chat, and for rolling dice, and video images of all the players in the game. Each player can also broadcast their microphone. Players can also click on the board video area to “ping” a location on the screen for all the players to see (for example when telling people where your character is moving).

Again, sorry if this came off as spam. I'm a gamer myself and just thought people would be interested, and thought it was something some people in the gaming community would find useful. So thanks for your time and for the feedback!

[Azhrei]

Again, sorry if this came off as spam. I'm a gamer myself and just thought people would be interested, and thought it was something some people in the gaming community would find useful. So thanks for your time and for the feedback!

When I approved your posts I should've warned you about that, I suppose. I could tell that you were posting only in threads where a video chat application was being discussed, but I could also tell that there were going to be folks who considered it spam.

Since I thought it sounded like a useful tool and not a blatant attempt to spam the forums, I approved the posts. I'm disappointed about the comments referring to weRole.com as spam, though. We have moderators here whose function is to approve all posts by newly registered users. Comments such as seen here are almost insulting to the moderators as it implies they're not doing their job. (Note that I said "almost", as I don't think there was any such intent.)

While I'm on the topic though, I want to say "thanks" to Rumble and palmer because they've been doing a lot of the "post approval" process for me. It's sort of a grunge job -- looking through a bunch of posts and having to read them to decide which are approved and which are not. Thanks, guys.

[palmer]

You're welcome. As I said, I am happy to contribute how I can.

I did leave these posts to you for approval though, just because I knew the S word would come up

Aren't I generous?