The Principles of Discord

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Hello U-Con attendees! It’s just about two weeks out until Virtual U-Con 2020 hits the streets so here is an important informational post about How U-Con will be communicating throughout the con.  Virtual U-Con is using Discord as their communication platform during the convention and we wanted to give you a highlights reel on how to get around. You don’t have to use Discord for gaming but I would highly recommend creating an account so that if something goes wrong, if you have a question, or if you just need to connect with somebody about something you will already have access to where U-Con will be handling this sort of thing in the virtual world. 

If you have ever walked up to OPs for information in years past, you will be doing it virtually on Discord this year.  Think of Discord as where virtual OPs will be located (along with table assignments and places to generally chit-chat). 

STEP 1: Follow this invite link U-Con (https://discord.gg/GqNq5j3) to join the server. The easiest way to get to the U-Con Discord is to follow the invitation (SmitheeNinja is my Discord Username BTW).

STEP 2: [Skip if you are already a member of a Discord Server because you will have already created an account] Create an account: Discord will prompt you to “Claim your account” which is really them asking you to create an account. Follow the prompts.

After Discord has sent a confirmation email to you, it will give you a pop up option to download the Discord application. Do that. It’s a pretty standard download. The apop has a lot more functionality than the web browser so although you can use the browser version, all the whistles and bells will be in the app..

STEP 4: Welcome to U-Con!

…So. You’ve ended up here. Do not despair! You are in exactly the right place but in order to unlock the Discord you need to click on the rules-and-welcome page. 

Read Laura’s Welcome note, familiarize yourself with the linked U-Con Conduct Policy, and then go give the MEE6 bot a thumbs up! (click on the thumb icon, the counter should go up by one). Once you have done that, MEE6 will let you into the rest of the server which will look like this:

ANATOMY OF A DISCORD SERVER: 

  • Off to the far left are all the discord servers you are a member of – GamesLibrarian is a brand new account so it only has access to the U-Con Discord server. If someone is running a game on their own Discord and they have sent an invite to you, that server’s icon will also appear on the left. You can also go looking for Discord servers if you like.
  • Next is a column of all the rooms/channels on the server you can get into.  At the very bottom of that column is a section with your name and some other icons. We will get to that later but note that it lives here.
  • The Middle section is whatever is happening in the channel you are currently in. Above is the welcome channel that you are first funneled into, but if you click on a chat or video room you will enter that room and the center will change to whatever is in that room. 
  • Finally, the far right column is a list of the U-Con people who are members of this server, their status on the server, and whether they are online or not. A Note: If you belong to other Discord servers and are currently logged into one of those, Discord will show you as “Online” even though you aren’t actually hanging out in U-Con’s server. 

CHAT ROOMS

Here I have left clicked the “general” channel under the CHATS heading and popped into that channel and left a message. Text chat rooms (prefaced with a #) will have a reply bar at the bottom; you can reply to everyone in general by typing and hitting return.  You can call out people specifically in the general chat by “@username” or “@Nickname” (for instance if you type, @SmitheeNinja you will get me but it will come up as JQ because I changed my nickname so people would know who I was. More on that later). This will alert the person that someone has a specific question that they are addressing to that person in the chat channel. 

You can also type just @ to get a list of people you can choose from and at the very bottom you will find groups you can @ to: Moderators and OPs-Captains will show up here if you need to get the attention of a U-Con staff member.

If you need to private message someone so only they see what you are typing, click on their name. That box at the bottom that says Message… is private.

And here I am talking to myself in a video/voice chat channel (prefaced by a speaker icon).  I got in the same way I did the text chat channel, by left clicking (double clicking will pull up the display of who is in the room versus single clicking which will just put your icon in that room. This way you can talk to people in the voice chat room and read a text chat room elsewhere), but if you want to leave voice chat all together you will need to disconnect from that room. Look for the icon of the headset with the X down near the very bottom of the channels column on the left. Click that and it will remove you from voice chat rooms. This is also where your video and audio mute live.

You can hop from voice channel to voice channel and the server will log you out of the one you were in and let you into the one you go to afterwards, but if you jump to a text chat channel, you will still be logged into the last voice channel you were in.

NOTE: If you are inactive on the server for quite a while (more than an hour), you will be put into an AFK room. It is a muted voice channel and you can leave by hanging up from it or jumping to another voice chat room.

PART 2: I Have an Account – How do I modify it?

Excellent Question! First, let’s look at your own personal settings. Remember when I said there was a section at the very bottom of the rooms column that has your name and some icons that we’d get back to?

We’re back.  There are a couple things you can change from this little box. Clicking on your Avatar icon brings up a pretty standard message settings window:

And then there are the Mic mute icon and the headphones mute icon (technically called deafen). The last icon is the gear wheel that will take you to your account settings.

There is a LOT of stuff going on here. This is where you will be able to change your Avatar, change your name, etc. Feel free to explore the other options on your left but in particular, go to the “Voice and Video” option.

Here is where you will find the controls for your Input/output devices, a place to check if your mic is working, the place that determines if you are speaking with voice activation or push to talk and your video settings

Lastly, if you are not keen on a dark setting or you want a dark setting, that is under “Appearance”.

Get out of your settings by clicking the “Esc X” circle in the upper right or hitting your escape key.

You will notice that nowhere in settings is there an option to change your nickname. If you would like to do that, find a chat of yours and right click your name. A pop up will appear with a “Change nickname” option.

Part 2A: Other people

If you left click on the name of a person in a chat or off to the side where all the members of U-Con are listed, you get a pop up which lets you do a couple things. First, maybe you don’t know my last name so whenever JQ pops up you have no idea who that is. You can add a “note” with whatever name you know me by and when JQ says something, you can look at the note and know who it is. You can also message me. Right clicking the name will get you most of the same options but also the option to mention the person (versus only messaging them). 

If you find a person is really quiet or really loud in comparison to the rest of the server, there is an option to adjust their volume individually. From the members menu on the far right, right click the nickname, or their icon (if they are in a video or voice room you can click on their video)  You will get this pop up, which has some familiar options but also a volume control. I am really loud!

These are the basics that should get you by. Go out, have fun and remember to play all the games!