Syrinscape Nova EARLY ACCESS is live

You all struck gold. Super excited in how this proceeds!

1. If music-by-feeling will randomly pick new tracks from the library instead of repeating a single track, will it “normalize” the tracks by BPM; Either based on a set target or whatever the first played track happens to be with a overlap fade automatically?
2. Will we be able to tag or somehow label tracks and sound effects with either ratings or some kind of filtering mechanism so that the interface will either always include or omit them?
3. I pretty much run all my games in Foundry now with LiveKit AVClient, as friends have grown old and are scattered across the globe. Will integration with Foundry be a dedicated focus of this product, or still only a good-faith desire to help anyone who tries to make the integration themselves?
4. One of my favorite parts of the module-based sets in OG was the speech acting for NPCs… and one of the absolute worst parts is the automatic ordering / figuring out which of the identical buttons I needed to press for different conditional or multi-part blocks and no way to preview it before it played live. Even in the rare times I had time to prep them, I would forget or accidently click the wrong button very commonly. :frowning:
4.1. Will these types of narrations be continued and available in Nova?
4.2. Some method to record character voices with customizable voice transformations for your own games would be awesome.
5. If being able to add my own music files into the process is intended to be a thing, I would love to be able to create multiple “virtual” entries from a single mp3 or other sound file target by setting a name and the time codes for the start and end of the virtual track/sound from the same file.
5.1. Example: Say I have a 4 minute long song I want to use because the majority is really creepy but the first 15 seconds and the last 30 seconds kind of “resolve” the feeling and I don’t want that to randomly play.

A possible scenario: To start, I would select something like “Create Music Track” and make the file available (however needed… saved locally, online, whatever). By default, it takes the file name without extension, sets the start at 0s and the end at whatever the length is. I overwrite the defaults to name it “Mega Creepshow”, set the start at 0m:15s, and the end at 3m:30s and check off to add fade in / out for the cuts with a 5s setting on each. Now in my library of music options under the category, I have Mega Creepshow that starts at that 15s mark by fading in over 5s to full volume at 20s and fades out starting at 3m:25s, to end at 3m:30s. I can further refine the categorization from the existing controlled metadata to classify it for use, so that it is available in the right contexts.

Later, I can select “Create Effect Track” and select the pre-existing base file I uploaded already as the source. This time I set the name to “Combat Resolution” and mark the start at 3m:30s, leaving the end at the default it automatically reads of 4m. This time, no fade in. I now have a new Effect that I can play as a one-off from a sound board to celebrate the resolution of a combat that only plays the last 30s.

Yay! Glad u r enjoying. I’ve read everything you’ve written and it is all in my brain now.

A couple of useful infos for you… these are the ways I am thinking about things atm. PLEASE let me know if these concepts work for you, or if you can think of better solutions.

  • Soundboards = so the idea of these is actually you will ONLY be using ONE at a time. A Soundboard will correspond to everything you might need in a single session of gaming. You collect a handful of locations, the different musics you might want, there’ll be combat so you add those monsters, grab the usual effects you always like and you are done. If you discover you want something EXTRA, you quickly edit your Soundboard (add in some new things). You won’t be jumping in between different Soundboards. The Soundboards you already see in the UI and not ways of organising the content, but rather EXAMPLES of Soundboards people might build.

Makes sense?

  • Search = YES! When you suddenly decide you need a Gnoll. You won’t search around in different Soundboards. You will hit + or something to edit your current SoundBoard, sort by Creatures, type Gno… and click a little button to add that creature to your Creatures section of your current Soundboard.

  • Player integration = yes! Players being able to trigger their own sounds is a DEFINITE must! NOTE: they CAN already do this, in the same ways they can trigger sounds in normal Web Player sessions (links you share, stream deck buttons etc). Do you know these ways already?

  • Bug = there are definitely some performance issues for us to hunt! :slight_smile:

Give me some replies to some of these… and then KEEP sharing as you gain more insights! This thing is only going to be (near) perfect if everyone continues getting stuck into it!!! :slight_smile: :robot: :hammer: :fire: :telescope: :pizza: :beers:

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This is so lovely and encouraging to read! THANK YOU! :slight_smile:

Some replies from me (please reply to my replies with more thoughts):

  1. Musics are 100% curated sets of about 45-60 mins of music each. So yes, you’ll always get a mood+bpm+instrumentation matched set of stuff playing. In normal Syrinscape random order. We WILL add the ability to select a specific track and/or make up your own playlists in the future.

  2. Yes, favourites were a thing in some of our earlier alpha, and will be here in some kind of a way. When you are searching for things in the full Library to make a a Soundboard (Remember the current Soundboards are just examples of the kinds of things YOU might build)… when you are searching there will be various different ways of filtering (by favourites, by text search, by genre).

  3. We paid for the current Foundry Integration to be built = do people not know that?! :smiley: Either way, yes, the idea will be that VTT integrations will take advantage of this new concept of sound. I’m sure you can imagine (with me) how incredibly relevant this way of thinking about sound suits VTTS = Location tied to map, adding effects over the top, creatures tied to encounter trackers, music an emotion thing that is controlled separately.

  4. Yes, OneShots are definitely a thing that will be in Nova. Quite how to present them is a thing that needs LOTS of good thinking about… that I haven’t gone far into yet. :slight_smile:

4.2 Yes, the plan is for people to be able to bring custom content they build for themselves in the Master UI of the Web Player INTO Nova. So yes, anything you can built atm in the Web Player, you should be able to play in NOVA at some time in the future.

5.1 Interesting thoughts… our current tactic, of just upload differently edited versions will probably be around for a long time yet. But it’s a cool idea = and of course, anything is possible. Just need the dev time and for it to be the top priority! :smiley:

I hope some of those answers are useful! Please KEEP giving feedback!

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Hello Benjamin.

I have a couple questions in relation to Nova.

  • Is/Will there capability to create Elgato hooks for Nova, similar to how we can for the online player? This has become a huge part of my GM workflow.
  • Is Nova going to be the flagship syrinscape feature going forward? Right now, it feels like if both the online player and Nova are competing for development, we might end up in a situation where neither gets the attention it deserves.
  • How will our ability for Nova to allow us to upload our own files differ from the online player, if at all?

I like what I see so far, but I’ve grown to use Syrinscape in such a specific manner, building setpiece elements and moods, that I’m worried that Nova will not be customizable enough for my use case.

I’ll try to answer these for you @blaine.hewett.

  • I presume the Elgato hooks you are referring to are the URLs that control the audio session via the start/stop links available in our API. These will continue to work, and the Web Player inside the Nova interface should respect the changes as has always been the case. The big difference with Nova is the way it can mix different components of sound together, and stop just the Music, or change just the Location, etc. This functionality is no yet exposed in our API, but we have every intention of doing so once we actually feel like we are happy with the right direction to with there, which probably means Nova being considerably more tested in the wild, hopefully informing us along the way.
  • Right now Nova is our shiny new thing that we are developing, experimenting with something of a different way of doing “Syrinscape”. Over time, we intend for it to grow in functionality, and imagine it will at some point rival the Master Interface for its flexibility and ability to control your session, but first we want to get the simple stuff solid - and nothing is stopping you continue to use the Master Interface, it’s not going away any time soon.
  • I am not sure I understand this question. I think the answer is that functionally, it won’t differ, but the way to go about doing it likely will. The day when we expose the ability to upload samples in the Nova interface, I don’t yet know what it will look like :slight_smile: Until that day though, you can continue uploading your custom sounds to the Master Interface, and when we unlock access to private content in Nova, you should have the power to mix it with other Nova content.

Hopefully that helps, and I appreciate your interest! :partying_face:

Hello There, is the remote volume of the different categories working now ? Can we, for example, put the volume down for music and up for ambiances or SFX ?

Not working yet.

Order of features coming will probably be:

  • customising Soundboards (making up your own versions of those ones we have made in the left hand column)
  • fixing remote volumes (and a few other things for remote play.
  • lots of other things.

Thank you for your patience, we are clicking as quickly (and carefully) as we can! :smiley:

I appreciate your input here. I’m curious about quesiton #1 specifically because on the master dashboard you have the option to enable or disable start/stop links as clickable copy to clipboard buttons. I’m curious if this exists in nova or will exists for quickly creating url hooks for elements for an elgato streamdeck.

The Nova content and concept is still in quite a bit of flux, so we are trying to not rush Nova-specific public APIs out that we will have to support forever, but we have every intention of doing something very similar for Nova content, yes. If we offered this “copy-control-link” in the interface, there is the implicit understanding that we won’t intentionally break the functionality of that link on you.

That said, right now, Nova sounds are a curated list of Elements and Moods, that the Nova client knows how to start and stop itself, so if you were keen you could potentially work out what it is doing and make the same requests yourself - but as of today, there is no guarantee that those links won’t change at any moment :slight_smile:

I love to hear your feedback, keep it coming :wink:

I’ve been demoing Nova for roughly three months now, and I want to start by saying I genuinely love the direction this is going. The interface is a huge win. It feels purpose built for on the fly scene tuning, and I’ve noticed a clear improvement in responsiveness compared to the current online player.

I fully understand that Nova is still in development, and I’m comfortable with features rolling out over time. That said, I would really encourage the team to consider sharing a rough development roadmap or timeline with the community.

Right now, many of us are checking back frequently, trying to piece together what is coming next. Even a high level, non binding roadmap would make a big difference. It helps users understand what to expect and when, decide when to fully transition to Nova, and stay engaged without feeling like they are guessing.

There are a few key features that feel especially important for adoption, such as custom soundboards, sound search functionality, and access to previously purchased libraries.

For example, I have purchased the full Curse of Strahd library, which I absolutely love, but I am currently not using it so I can focus on testing Nova. I am fine making that tradeoff in the short term, but having visibility into when that content might be usable in Nova would really help guide that decision.

Overall, Nova feels incredibly promising, and I’m very excited to see where it’s headed!

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Yes. I’m totally sympathetic to this concept. We’ve had long debates among ourselves about what the best approach is here (not wanting to create unrealistic expectations and frustration etc).

Perhaps we can workshop something here and I can get some feedback as to what might actually be useful? :slight_smile:

Sooo…

What I do know specifically is this:
Before UKGE (end of May) we are on track to:

  • make it so that people can create and manage their own Soundboards (At the moment you can only use the example ones that come built in. Note: these will only be preserved on the machine (in the browser profile) where they are created. Soundboards being saved to user account on our servers comes later.
  • add remote playback that respects the volume settings they GM sets in Nova (Music vs Location vs Creatures vs Effects vs Weather)

So, yes, we have actually had a date in mind for these MOST important features for a while, and we might have shared that with everybody. :smiley:

After that (in a less clear order) (on a less clear timeline)

  • adding OneShots as a category like the others. OneShots will shot that are: global OneShots of the logged in user PLUS OneShots associated with each of the currently playing things (e.g. if you are playing bugbear sounds, then bugear growls and curse will be available. if you are playing a storm then lightning will be available.
  • making Soundboard customisation stay attached to a user whereEVER they are logged in
  • showing Soundboards of official adventure content (i.e. you load up “Curse of Strahd” and you get a whole board of locations (each which corresponds to a SoundSet) each of which has the moods of that SoundSet as a playback option. And as above, the OneShots associated with that SoundSet will be available as OneShots.

Maybe we should do a roadmap made of Milestones, sort of like Arc Raiders does.

Something that deals with the fact that things always take:
a) longer than the dev thought it would
b) longer than Ben hoped it might have.

Thinks?

Also, what do you think of our specific actual plans? What other features would you be pushing to add asap?