Setting Up HLDJ

Ever been playing TF2 when that one douche joins the server and decides to put his mic next to his speaker playing really low quality and staticy rap music?  And yes, it is always rap music.

Don't be that guy.  If you are going to spam people in games, make sure you do it right.

HLDJ is a rising star and becoming a popular alternative to HLSS.  I already did a quick tutorial on HLSS with the promise of putting up an HLDJ tutorial later.

HLDJ is very similar to HLSS in its function, but HLDJ adds a good bit more to the mixture.  The primary function is to allow the user to play amusing sound clips or just music from their library.  Sometimes it is used to heckle or even harass other players, but in an ideal world it is to have fun times with people who try not to take the game too seriously.  It does share a key problem with HLSS and that is the inflexibility of audio files, forcing conversion to WAV files. 

Set Up

1. Go to the hldj downloader page here and simply download the file most suited for you.
2. Run the set up, creating a folder somewhere you'll remember to hold onto files.
3. Set up a hotkey you know you wont use.  A lot of servers these days use all the Function keys to browse their music library and vote for new maps.  Just use the Delete key since it wont be used for anything else.  

Straightforward right?  Much easier to use than the somewhat contrived method HLSS uses that requires you to modify it for each game, and to modify settings within the games themselves.

The program should now look something like this:

The program interface is rather simple and you should be able to figure it out by just playing around with it.  The fourth button down on the right is what manages audio conversions.  That's right, the program natively has the ability to convert audio.  Just a word of warning hitting the play button will also boot up the game.

Audio Conversions

Maybe you never had to use HLSS but audio conversion was incredibly annoying.  It required booting up and running a separate program to convert every audio file.  With HLDJ, you have the ability to convert whole directories.  Thats right, instead of booting up dBpowerAMP for each file you can easily convert whole folders.  

In Game

In game you can still interact with HLDJ.  Just enable the console, triggered by the tilde "~" key.  

Enter "la" or "listaudio" in the console to bring up the audio list.  Now simply navigate and then hit the Play Audio Key to get things started.

There are additional basic commands that can be used.  These are all ripped from the manual that comes with the game but I'll post them for reference.

Basic Commands:

• "hldjn", "hldjp", "hldjr" - loads the next / previous / random audio file.
• "hldjca", "hldjcd" - displays the current audio file / directory in console and on-screen.
• "hldjsca", "hldjstca" - displays the current audio file in public / team chat.
• "hldjsq", "hldjqa" - stops HLDJ and quits the current game / quits both.
• "hldj", "hldj1", "hldj2", "hldj3" - displays quick-start guide / commands list / help / advanced help

These let you navigate quick and easily.

Summary

As a long time user of HLSS, after playing around with HLDJ just a little I was instantly converted.  HLDJ is pretty easy and lets you put in a whole lot more without having to worry about running out of free keys to bind .

Speaking of key bindings, I do plan to do a quick tutorial on managing key bindings and shortcuts later but for now you can just use the useful tutorial that is part of the current manual.