We all know the situation: You're crouching in a corner somewhere, getting your ninja on. You hear the faint *pitterpatter* of an approaching Skulk, and strain your ears to pinpoint the direction. And then it happens:
"OMG CORNMANDER I NEED SOME TURRENTS AND A SHIRTGUN!!"
As your hearing gradually recovers from the verbal assault, you remember with a start that there is a Skulk nearby. You strain your hearing once more, but the sound is gone. But then, in a horrible moment of realization, you turn around. The last thing you see before the screen goes black is the hideous gaping jaws of the Skulk as it bears down on you. Killed by a mic-screaming nub again...
This is a common problem for people like me, who play with a good set of earphones and use sound to their advantage. But what can you do? Communication is necessary in teamplay games like NS. Spam is not allowed on our server, and you're welcome to alert an admin if anybody is spamming the mic with non-game-related chatter. But sometimes, even the necessary communication will come at the most inopportune moment, blanking out your hearing and making you deaf to your surroundings. This is death if there's a skulk approaching from behind. And you can't very well scream at people to shut up when they're trying to coordinate, can you?
lolfighter to the rescue! I present a simple set of aliases that will get you out of the pinch:
alias voicet "voiceoff"
alias voiceoff "voice_scale 0.05; stopsound; developer 1; echo Voice Off; developer 0; alias voicet voiceon"
alias voiceon "voice_scale 0.30; stopsound; developer 1; echo Voice On; developer 0; alias voicet voiceoff"
Simply bind a key to voicet and you're set. Hitting this key will tone down the volume of all voicechat drastically, hitting it again will return the volume to normal levels. If you want all voice completely muted, adjust the voice_scale in the alias voiceoff to "0". And remember to set the voice_scale in the alias voiceon to what your normal voice_scale is. Although I haven't tried it myself, I imagine you could also replace the voice_scale commands with the command to turn voicecomm on and off completely.
Please note that I haven't been able to verify whether these work in conjunction with mp_blockscripts.
(A little edit: It works fine with blockscripts.)
It may not be perfect, but it beats being deaf. And if anybody ever screams at you to stfu so they can hear what's going on halfway across the map with their superhearing, simply direct them to this thread.
Disclaimer: I, lolfighter, claim no merit for the aliases presented in this thread. To my regret, I do not remember whence I got them. Should you know the original creator of these aliases, I shall happily give full credit where it is due.
