Unfortunately I haven't had any cool things to report lately like Autenil.
However, in response to his blog post about fixing a memory leak, I decided I'd tell everyone what I did today.
I made some blinky lights on the user interface blink on and off today! Ooooh, they are pretty too! :)
Ok, so it doesn't sound as glamorous as reference-counting smart-pointers and unions. I've been splitting my time between Guild Hall functionality and implementing the user-interface for the built-in voice chat. I made a lot of headway in the voice chat system today and I think everyone is really going to like it. Autenil is implementing the server-side code and communications layer to the voice-chat servers. I'm just putting a nice face on it with the goal of it being easy to understand and intuitive to use.
For you UI modders out there, I'm running as much data as I can through the dynamic data system. Since G15 support is a must-have for most Teamspeak and Ventrilo users I plan on shipping a new G15 page that mimics the functionality you'd get from these other voice chat systems.
If you're concerned about added lag, don't be. The voice communication is going through a completely different set of servers and the bandwidth usage should be about the same as using Teamspeak or Ventrilo. The only extra game overhead is determining what channels you should have available when you log in, join a group, etc. We plan on rolling the voice chat system out to the Test Server as far in advance as possible so we can get some good testing on it. When this happens, I'm going to try to recruit as many people as possible to hop on the test server and help us test it out. I really want to get some good feedback from everyone before this goes live.
I'm also really excited about all the cool features you'll get with Guild Halls, so hopefully we'll be able to release more information about them in the near future.
