Foundry VTT Integration

[Z0D]

[quote=“brodyjohn, post:39, topic:9319”]
” My players are full, real, competent adults between the ages of 25 and 50, and most of them have college degrees and jobs that use computers, daily.[/quote]

This is exactly why I made my first post to these forums in this thread. You just described my group that I’ve been playing with for decades and why I dropped Syrinscape after years of being subscribed. I know everyone here thinks the process is simple, but after I found out that half of my players weren’t even bothering with the SS Online app anymore because it was too confusing/too much of hassle, I ditched it.

They loved the sounds … and hated everything else about the experience. They love (and I love) how easy Foundry is. That’s why earlier in the thread I said that if Syrinscape finds a way to truly integrate with Foundry, I’ll be back in a heartbeat.

[lordgwydione]

@brodyjohn I posted a video yesterday of another free option to stream sounds called obs.ninja. Really powerful but now I have it set up as literally a one click link for my players.

[alaskankare]

The problem i have is syrinscape online requires a player to create an account. I wish it was as easy as Foundry. My players dont beed an account. I send them a link and viola…they are online remotely. If syrinscape did that…awesome. But I also don’t like the monthly fee required for online. Also something not required by Foundry. I have monthly fees costing too much already. $10 here x ten…thats $100 going out the door a month. Watching to see. Remember we dont need access to the dynamic mostly. I’d love the option to download the soundscapes I already purchased. Then I can use them as background noise through Foundry.

[benjamin]

@alaskankare

create an account

Hi @alaskankare, we are working on an easier way for players to join into your games… my current thinking is a zoom-style-link that initiates a download and install (if needed), a run of the Online Player App, and a linking into the game automatically WITHOUT the user needing an account.

Do note however: that getting signed up, and joined for a player takes only 3 minutes (if they follow the instructions reeeeasonably carefully). And then joining back into a game after that first game can be done in a matter of seconds!

As for the cost… the Online Player is high quality stuff, was expensive to develop, and costs money to support, maintain and develop… so it’s definitely a thing for our top level subscribers at the moment.

The soundscapes in Syrinscape are dynamically created, always customisable, mixed carefully by industry professionals, have positioning and acoustics applied dynamically in real time. Stripping the samples out of Syrinscape and running them in another system will NOT get you the experience we know players need to truly benefit from what top level audio immersion can bring to tabletop games.

Why don’t you give the 30-day free trial a go and you may just discover that the added 3 minutes of effort on the part of your players is worth it!

[DrWiFi]

Hello,
I’m starting to prep Dragon Heist, and will be moving into Mad Mage for two groups. I’ve always had an issue with sound because frankly I do not want to be a DJ. It is not worth my stress finding the perfect background music.
Syrinscape looks to be a great option, but I do have to echo some of the ease of use problems and drawbacks that I believe I will see.

I’ve tried several different ways to get sound into my game:

• Using Watch2gether to stream YouTube music to all players.
  The Drawbacks to this solution was getting everyone to click into the page, which did not require any login process. And it was unable to mix multiple sounds

• Groovy Discord Bot
  This was an improvement since everyone automatically heard the background music since they had to be in Discord, and everyone could set individual volume control. It also allowed me to layer up to 3 sounds. However, as a DM it was very annoying to switch playlists due to the interface essentially being text commands in discord.

• Foundry VTT Soundboard
  Again, easy for the players. If they were in the game, they heard the music and are able to adjust the volume. The downside is I cannot just link to a YouTube or Spotify playlist, and therefore have to find the correct theme music. While this may be fun for some, I am not a DJ.

So I stumbled onto Syrinscape, and while I have not subscribed yet, it is something I am very much considering. The drawbacks that I see are users deciding not to open the webpage app, thus not getting the experience. Or me trying to figure out how to get sound from Syrinscape on my Mac into Discord, which most of the solutions seem like a very finicky setup.

So while I believe your upcoming feature for a single link with no login will be a step in the right direction, and a minimum feature for me to join, I would like to know what your current thoughts are on the Foundry integration.
From posts in this thread it looks like you are/were willing to work with the developer, but posts in Foundry’s discord seem to indicate you are not willing due to copyright or some legal jargon.
Perhaps it was due to Foundry not supporting paid modules, but in recent versions it does. There are several modules out there now that require a Patreon activation.

Another option I could think of is somehow linking your online player to an official Syrinscape Discord Bot, instead of the current Frankenstein way of pushing through the DM’s connection. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that the individual players are each streaming from your servers. Theoretically, if there is an official Discord Bot, that one Bot can take the stream and push it via Discord to the players, resulting in a net reduction of server load on your end.

Thank you for your thoughts on this
~DrWiFi

[benjamin]

Hi @DrWiFi,

The Syrinscape Online Player apps actually create the final mix directly on the remote machine, thus the only thing delivered via the internet connection is the first playback of each sample (which are then cached), and the start-to-play command with all the parameters needed…

Soooo… I don’t think this can be streamed through a discord bot? We’d have to mix the sound down on the GM’s machine and then stream that through the bot… which is what we are trying to avoid, because: a) this takes up a big chunk of bandwidth, b) is subject to internet bumps.

I gather a lot of the negative stuff on the Foundry forums came from an integration where a Foundry user asked for us to share the Syrinscape Online Player code so they could build that directly into Foundry. There are lots of reasons why we can do this, which I imagine you can image.

But yes, we are keen to help VTTs integrate with Syrinscape… a number of other big VTTs have made AWESOME stuff happen to make using Syrinscape fun and easy within their environments.

For the moment, yes, remote players will have to run the app… but from my perspective, considering the beautifully crafted, official, immersive, adaptable sounds that Syrinscape creates… running an app doesn’t seem like too much of a high price to pay.

[archaratar]

Love the Idea. Really great direction. This twenty word post thing really make the adjectives come out. Wibbly wobbly.

[AbessiaMalktho]

If it is invisible from the players’ PoV that would alleviate one major pain point. I think the real benefit though would be in a seamless integration with Foundry so the DM isn’t having to toggle back and forth between the soundset creator / master-interface and the VTT. I know that Eadorin had a working prototype that could do that (e.g. creating a Syrinscape UI within Foundry) – if that were combined with the players not having to do anything (or having it follow a known pattern like Zoom), then that might work.

I’m a front-end developer, though a pretty junior one, but I know that both Eadorin and I would be more than happy to sign any and all non-competes, non-disclosures, etc. if it would help make that happen (though I’d have to check in with him if he’s up for trying to re-learn FVTT since the most recent updates have changed the architecture on their code base quite a bit).

I cannot speak for everyone, but for him and me, the issues were: laggy interface on the master, having to flip back and forth between VTT UI and Syrinscape UI, lag in communicating sounds to the various players (which I can say is a lot better now than it was last year), and players having difficulty getting set up (rather than the experience being seamless for them).

The last piece would be the ability to really leverage Foundry’s specific sound features like localized sound effects placed on the map itself, but that’s more of a wishlist than a “let’s make this really work smoothly”.

[daniel.anand]

Currently I use the Discord Audio Pipe bot + Online player solution (which also works with Fantasy Player as well if you are not a SuperSyrin), on Fantasy Grounds with AudioSeer (which just make API calls from the FG application). This solution requires absolutely zero effort from the players, and I have access to great audio quality plus triggered audio based on chat parsing.

All these functionalities could easily be built on Foundry as a module. And even with high quality audio, we are still talking about a third of a megabit per second, so bandwidth issues wouldn’t be happening due to the discord bot.