Hi there!
I’m aRestless, the lead developer of Markers, Who’s Talking and the SweetFX Preset Selector. The last few months, we worked really hard to turn Who’s Talking, which started as a contribution to one of the Overwolf/Guild Wars 2 app contests, into a really polished and stable application, that doesn’t suffer from usability problems anymore.
We are very close to release of our version 2.0, but because we really want to polish the application before putting it on the official, public channels, we are eager to have a serious open beta phase. That’s where you come in! We really need your help.
What’s Who’s Talking?
If you and your friends on TeamSpeak use this application, it will display a customizable icon over their character’s head, so it’s easy to keep track of each other, not getting lost in giant zergs and being able to help each other. Remember the last time you and a guildmate on TeamSpeak went to an event, they got downed and you couldn’t find them in the clutter? Or someone said “there’s X at my position”, but you didn’t know which of the blue dots on the minimap that was? Yeah, that doesn’t happen anymore with Who’s Talking. Instead, it looks like this.
When this icon is shown above your character is completely customizable. It defaults to when TS detects you talking, but can also be set to “always” or only when pressing a customizable hotkey.
Who’s Talking is an application for Overwolf.
What’s new in 2.0?
A lot. Here are some of the changes:
- Who’s Talking now works truly out of the box. By default, it automatically starts when GW2 and TeamSpeak are running (of course you can turn that off), and automatically detects and connects to other Who’s Talking users on your TeamSpeak channel. No more manual sending of invitations and other shenanigans, it just works.
- No big, obtrusive menu bar anymore. The menu is hidden in a small icon, that can be dragged anywhere on the screen, so it doesn’t bother you.
- More customization. You already could pick the color of your icon before, and now we have all (base) profession icons built in. You can even configure Who’s Talking to automatically detect the profession you’re playing and adjust the icon accordingly. And, what’s even better, you can pick your own icons from your harddrive and use them as position icon (although the coloring option won’t work then).
- Drastic increases in performance. We spent many, many hours to make Who’s Talking run as smoothly as possible, and worked hard at not burdening your CPU when we don’t have to.
- Last but not least, we also hide all icons now when they don’t make sense: We automatically detect cutscenes, loading screens, the character select screen and the world map and stop rendering our icons.
Twitch Stream
If you want to look at moving pictures first (before you decide if you want to use the application), we’re having a short-ish Twitch stream today where we show off the current beta version. The stream starts at 7pm UTC, (approximately 3 hours from this post) at twitch.tv/aRestless. This is also a great place to come if you have any questions.
Participating in the beta and rewards
If you’re interested now, you should check out our beta page. It includes all information you need to get started and how you can send reports and suggestions.
And because we know you want to be bribed, we’re giving away one weapon each from the Improvised , Gallant and Dwayna BLTC weapon sets. The winner of one weapon set will be able to pick an arbitrary weapon from that set.
To qualify for the giveaway, just include your Guild Wars 2 account name in one of your mails to wtbeta{at}smartech.info. If you’re sending us feedback, suggestions or bugreports, you’ll qualify automatically – otherwise just send a screenshot of you using Who’s Talking, so we know you actually participated in the beta.
FAQ
Is using Who’s Talking bannable?
No. Who’s Talking was awarded second place of the “Player Experience Category” of last year’s Overwolf Guild Wars 2 App Challenge . The winners of that contest were picked by ArenaNet developers. So yes, they are okay with it.
Is it free?
Yes. Our promise is that Markers and Who’s Talking will always be free for Guild Wars 2 players, because we see this as our contribution to this community. If you want to make our lives a little easier, you are welcome to donate though.
Does Who’s Talking work in fullscreen?
Yes. Who’s Talking works in fullscreen and windowed fullscreen. It does not work properly in windowed mode, but that’s something we might change if there’s demand for it.
Will Who’s Talking affect my performance?
Maybe. We’re rendering an additional 3D projection on top of your game, so if your PC is already struggling to run GW2, and on top of that you’re watching a Twitch stream on your second monitor, don’t expect Who’s Talking to run smoothly. But you’ll most likely see Who’s Talking having issues with the limited computing power, not GW2. (For the tech nerds: Overwolf windows are background processes, so when resources are tight, foreground applications like GW2 will have priority.)
To ensure that Who’s Talking has enough computing power left, we strongly recommend to limit GW2’s FPS at least to 60, because otherwise GW2 just takes all computing power it can get. On top of that, you can adjust Who’s Talking’s FPS in the “Performance” menu.
On top of all that, we put in a lot of development effort to make sure Who’s Talking only uses resources if it actually has to.