Playing music for players in FG?

[Amerisun]

I think you massively underestimate the power, flexibility and ease of the new sound solution...

I'm not sure what you mean by just 'press a button and play music'. Where is this music coming from? What player is being used? How is this getting to your players? What costs are involved that makes it prohibitive? Have you looked at how sound integration in FG works? Have you tried it? What issues did you find and we may be able to help - assuming that you are really interested of course and not just making posts for the sake of making them.

The current sound implementation of FG is powerful, and many people will use it (me included). It's also a great foundation for future growth. If you have a Syrinscape subscription and are playing any of the pre-built sound link packs, it will be fantastic to have the adventure or monster easily play sounds or music and have all that work done ahead of time with a small investment in the sound sets/adventures / etc. for prepackaged adventures.

I will try to encapsulate what I think user DownedCreation was attempting to articulate but failed to do so. Also being critical and trying to offer some constructive criticism as well. I am slightly disappointed in the current implementation. It will not allow you to play a sound or music in FG and everyone connected hear it. Some other VTT's can do this. If you want to do this you either need Syrinscape or local files with some technical implementation like VB Virtual Audio Cable, Discord Bots, or VLC configurations (or others) so your players can hear it.

I know also that the foundation of FG is Unity, and it's not meant for audio streaming to everyone connected. Something that you could do with TCP / HTTP streaming technology bolted onto the side. Then you still have the same problems that Syrinscape already has with lag/caching and other issues. That's a lot of work to get this feature working, and should they put the work here instead of other features that would be excellent for a VTT?

Unfortunately, I know it's not a question of whether it can be done, but should it, when and then how. I manage a dev team building B2B software, so an ROI and business case are needed in combination with priorities on development tasks that would allow your platform to be compelling in the marketplace. IMHO if FG wants its platform to appeal to the most extensive user base, they need to make it as easy to onboard new customers as possible. FG currently requires specialized skills to use it. The coding for automation, the creation of sound sets, the understanding of local vs. remote, image sizes, VP8 vs VP9, slow connectivity, etc. Users that have been using FG for a long time find some of the new features a challenge to learn and need to work at it to understand and use its full power. It's not intuitive right out of the gate. I see it in the groups I play with and the questions they ask. Why it takes so long to receive images from a DM? Why is that WEBM I uploaded grey and not working? Wait, why can't you hear the local file I am playing? Quite a few users will complain or simply leave because of problems like this if other platforms are easier to use. How do you give ultimate power to your users to the platform so they can do anything they want but make it easy to use simultaneously? It takes a lot of work to solve. It would be best to have some guardrails to protect someone from shooting themselves in the foot without removing the platform's power.

So even though there are a lot of challenges, and I understand them, I am happy with the direction it's going. I want FG to flourish; I prefer it over other VTT's. But it would be nice to have some focus on usability and guardrails. Also with all that said, as a customer I wish I could stream audio straight from FG to my players without the need for anything else. :-)

[drownedcreation]

I'm not sure what you mean by just 'press a button and play music'. Where is this music coming from? What player is being used? How is this getting to your players? What costs are involved that makes it prohibitive? Have you looked at how sound integration in FG works? Have you tried it? What issues did you find and we may be able to help - assuming that you are really interested of course and not just making posts for the sake of making them.

I am not really interested and I am just making posts for the sake of making them. I already canceled my FG subscription and went back to tabletop simulator, with prejudice.

[drownedcreation]

I think you massively underestimate the power, flexibility and ease of the new sound solution - and very much underestimate the amount of people that will use it. I see a lot of people using it, especially with the sound link modules - open a Bugbear NPC (or add it to the CT) and immediately have access to all of the sounds related to that creature - no searching, they're just there in the sound context window. Add a goblin and a spider to the CT and all related sounds are ready to go (see screenshot below). I'm going to be using this all of the time in my FG games and, judging by the fact that the PHB and MM sound links are currently 3rd and 4th in the recent top sellers chart, so will lots of others FG users.

You'll use it a few times and never again, because who cares about "bugbear sounds"??

[drownedcreation]

The current sound implementation of FG is powerful, and many people will use it (me included). It's also a great foundation for future growth. If you have a Syrinscape subscription and are playing any of the pre-built sound link packs, it will be fantastic to have the adventure or monster easily play sounds or music and have all that work done ahead of time with a small investment in the sound sets/adventures / etc. for prepackaged adventures.

I will try to encapsulate what I think user DownedCreation was attempting to articulate but failed to do so. Also being critical and trying to offer some constructive criticism as well. I am slightly disappointed in the current implementation. It will not allow you to play a sound or music in FG and everyone connected hear it. Some other VTT's can do this. If you want to do this you either need Syrinscape or local files with some technical implementation like VB Virtual Audio Cable, Discord Bots, or VLC configurations (or others) so your players can hear it.

I know also that the foundation of FG is Unity, and it's not meant for audio streaming to everyone connected. Something that you could do with TCP / HTTP streaming technology bolted onto the side. Then you still have the same problems that Syrinscape already has with lag/caching and other issues. That's a lot of work to get this feature working, and should they put the work here instead of other features that would be excellent for a VTT?

Yes that is was I was implying without spending the time to articulate it, since I already canceled my FG subscription and no longer care. I have no intention of subscribing to Syrinscape or jumping through hoops to play music that my players can hear. It's absurd.

[Trenloe]

You'll use it a few times and never again, because who cares about "bugbear sounds"??

Excuse me, but what do you know what I'll actually do or what I care about? I've been using music/SFX in my Fantasy Grounds games for 5 years now and I can tell you with 100% confidence that I will use the new functionality regularly. Just because you don't care about the quick, convenient access to relevant context based sounds in Fantasy Grounds doesn't mean that a lot of other people won't care about it and use it.

Every group plays RPGs a little differently than the next group, and that's no difference with playing RPGs on VTTs. Your "TTS setup absolutely crushes with all the mods" you showed us in post #24 for example - it looks cool (kinda) but that is definitely something I'd try a few times and not use - because that's not what I'm looking for in my online RPG gaming. Does it make either of us wrong? No, of course not - but don't assume that other people won't care about something that you don't care about. You're looking for something that Fantasy Grounds can't do - and you've moved on to something that's better for you; that's not "absurd" or "ridiculous", that's your choice and I respect that. I politely ask you to do the same.

[Gwydion]

I was about to post something similar to what Trenloe just did. For me, the new sound implementation is really well done and much more integrated. I, like Trenloe, will be using the sounds consistently as I have done without this implementation for 5+ yrs. That being said, sounds like TTS is a great fit for you so that is awesome. Happy Gaming!

[HywelPhillips]

I have been using Syrinscape in FGU for a couple of years. I upload music to their servers for my playlists (legally - I have a subscription to a huge music library because I am a film-maker by profession) and trigger a combination of atmospheric sounds and music directly inside FGU. I have been using MatteKurre's excellent extension to do this to date, which also automated a bunch of chat trigger stuff.

Who cares about bugbear noises? I do. I've programmed a whole bunch of triggers for common foes, and for a lot of my player's stuff too so when the shaman summons a nature spirit there's a sound effect, when the warlock Eldritch blasts there's a sound effect, when there's a critical hit or a fumble or a wolf makes a bite attack there's a sound effect. The Weird Science healing sound FX in my Deadlands game is different from the Life Cleric sound FX in my D&D game.

The new FGU functionality expands upon this extension's functionality, with the new "smart" self-assembling mood board in particular being a significant step up in ease of use for triggering complex sounds whilst GM'ing. I'll be moving my stuff over from the old extension to the new functionality in chunks, because the new FGU way of doings an improvement for me.

If all I wanted was a simple way of playing a track from my computer, it would probably be frustrating. But having discovered Syrinscape I REALLY don't want to let it go, and the FGU way of tying in to their functionality gives me personally a great deal of bang for the buck.

Would I like synchronised sound delivery to players with range-sensing ambient sounds a la Foundry in FGU? Sure.

Is what they've implemented thus far a waste of time? For me, emphatically not. I'll be using it every session.

Cheers, Hywel

P.S. As others have said, it's also a big win in terms of development team manpower and costs compared with what we would ideally have, which is a Syrinscape competitor level of sound control plus Foundry levels of interactivity on a player-by-player basis. I'm a big believer in the 80:20 rule - you can often get 80% of the effect of the perfect solution by implementing the most straightforward 20% of the functionality.

Syrinscape provided an API with all the relevant hooks in to able to implement this in a straightforward way. It's clear from discussions elsewhere that implementing a whole synchronised multiplayer sound delivery subsystem in Unity is NOT the quick win one might imagine. So while it looks to us as though "all I want is a playlist of tracks like Roll20" is the simplest thing to ask for, it was actually more cost effective to hook into the Syrinscape APIs and also work with the Syrinscape and FGU existing licencees to allow stuff like the LMOP, PHB and MM sounds.

[drownedcreation]

Excuse me, but what do you know what I'll actually do or what I care about? I've been using music/SFX in my Fantasy Grounds games for 5 years now and I can tell you with 100% confidence that I will use the new functionality regularly. Just because you don't care about the quick, convenient access to relevant context based sounds in Fantasy Grounds doesn't mean that a lot of other people won't care about it and use it.

Every group plays RPGs a little differently than the next group, and that's no difference with playing RPGs on VTTs. Your "TTS setup absolutely crushes with all the mods" you showed us in post #24 for example - it looks cool (kinda) but that is definitely something I'd try a few times and not use - because that's not what I'm looking for in my online RPG gaming. Does it make either of us wrong? No, of course not - but don't assume that other people won't care about something that you don't care about. You're looking for something that Fantasy Grounds can't do - and you've moved on to something that's better for you; that's not "absurd" or "ridiculous", that's your choice and I respect that. I politely ask you to do the same.

I forgive you, but you will absolutely stop using it after the novelty quickly wears off. It is ONE HUNDRED percent absurd that fantasy grounds doesn't have a built-in way to play music to connected players.


Edit:
forgiveness please.PNG

[drownedcreation]

I have been using Syrinscape in FGU for a couple of years. I upload music to their servers for my playlists (legally - I have a subscription to a huge music library because I am a film-maker by profession) and trigger a combination of atmospheric sounds and music directly inside FGU. I have been using MatteKurre's excellent extension to do this to date, which also automated a bunch of chat trigger stuff.

Who cares about bugbear noises? I do. I've programmed a whole bunch of triggers for common foes, and for a lot of my player's stuff too so when the shaman summons a nature spirit there's a sound effect, when the warlock Eldritch blasts there's a sound effect, when there's a critical hit or a fumble or a wolf makes a bite attack there's a sound effect. The Weird Science healing sound FX in my Deadlands game is different from the Life Cleric sound FX in my D&D game.

The new FGU functionality expands upon this extension's functionality, with the new "smart" self-assembling mood board in particular being a significant step up in ease of use for triggering complex sounds whilst GM'ing. I'll be moving my stuff over from the old extension to the new functionality in chunks, because the new FGU way of doings an improvement for me.

If all I wanted was a simple way of playing a track from my computer, it would probably be frustrating. But having discovered Syrinscape I REALLY don't want to let it go, and the FGU way of tying in to their functionality gives me personally a great deal of bang for the buck.

Would I like synchronised sound delivery to players with range-sensing ambient sounds a la Foundry in FGU? Sure.

Is what they've implemented thus far a waste of time? For me, emphatically not. I'll be using it every session.

Cheers, Hywel

P.S. As others have said, it's also a big win in terms of development team manpower and costs compared with what we would ideally have, which is a Syrinscape competitor level of sound control plus Foundry levels of interactivity on a player-by-player basis. I'm a big believer in the 80:20 rule - you can often get 80% of the effect of the perfect solution by implementing the most straightforward 20% of the functionality.

Syrinscape provided an API with all the relevant hooks in to able to implement this in a straightforward way. It's clear from discussions elsewhere that implementing a whole synchronised multiplayer sound delivery subsystem in Unity is NOT the quick win one might imagine. So while it looks to us as though "all I want is a playlist of tracks like Roll20" is the simplest thing to ask for, it was actually more cost effective to hook into the Syrinscape APIs and also work with the Syrinscape and FGU existing licencees to allow stuff like the LMOP, PHB and MM sounds.

Lot of stockholm syndrome going on in this place. Glad I got out.

[Trenloe]

I forgive you, but you will absolutely stop using it after the novelty quickly wears off.

You obviously don't understand how it works and how easy it will be to integrate sounds into my games; as pointed out you also have no idea how I run my games - so for you to state this as absolute is what's absurd here. As has already been stated - we look for different things in our games, you go do your thing and I'll stay here and be very happy doing mine and don't arrogantly attempt to predict what I will and won't do. Have fun on the other side. See ya!