Hey!
Enjoying Syrinscape for the ease with which I can share audio with my friends when playing via roll20, and for the wide variety in sounds available to me. However, I find it very clunky to use.
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I use it to play online only, so my only reason for entering this website is to get to something called the “Master Interface”. It’s really my only interface with Syrinscape 95% of the time so it’s confusingly named and confusingly hidden behind a meny where I get to choose between User Dashboard and Online Control Panel - none of these choices are the interface I want to use, but a link to that interface is behind one of these links. All these three interfaces have confusingly similar names, and I don’t know why it should be easier for me to access the interface for changing my first name, than to access the interface where I play sounds.
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In the master interface, it just took me a long time to sort out the stuff that I don’t want from my visual focus. Global one-shots are just there as a ton of buttons which I’ll rarely ever use, maybe at some point for a joke. The search bar on the left side has a little trap button on top: Soundsets+. If I try to click out of the campaign selection menu or something else, I’ll more likely than not create an empty soundset for whatever reason. Now what I do is I search for a sound set, I play a mood, I manipulate the elements a bit, I prepare for my next scene: I search for the next sound set and BAM. My control over the first sound set is suddenly partially gone, because the sound set menu and the search menu (the two I use the most) take the same space. So I click into a new sound set, and my control over the previous sound set is absolutely gone, even though it’s still playing. Now imagine I have aliens creeping up on the PCs in an engine room, and the PCs move into the bridge for a less industrial, more electric beepy boopy background sound - but the aliens follow. If I go to a new sound set for the bridge, then I’ll have the option of letting the engine room sounds continue, or stopping everything including alien sounds. Or navigating back through the search menu (which has me losing control over the bridge sound set) to activate the alien once again. The interface simply uses about 33% of the browser window for the functions I constantly use, and the rest of the space is empty areas and some sort of advanced tools. I get to search for sounds on the left side, but I can ALSO search for sounds on the right side, only the right hand menu is somehow very, very different. So whatever I learn and find on the left side, I cannot use on the right side.
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Campaign menu. It’s very cool getting to add sound sets to my campaigns. But I cannot search for sound sets in the same way I do inside the Master Interface (remember, my only interface with Syrinscape 95% of the time. Then one I search in, have open when role playing, use for prepping, etc). So I have to get lucky to find the same sound sets there as in the Master Interface. I also see all my campaigns once I open the campaign menu, but I can’t make a new campaign unless I select a subset of my campaigns.
Hope my experiences will help with designing a better, more noob-friendly UI. I just want to play ambient sounds and music for my roleplaying. I don’t want to DJ and remix or any such thing.