Bardic Tools Update - October 2024

Hey folks!

Borja here. It's been a full few months of exciting developments in Bardic Tools. With the feedback from our wonderful Discord (https://bardic.tools/discord), Bardic Tools is really shaping up to be the sleekest, easiest to use TTRPG soundboard out there.

So, what's new?

Cross-Fade Between Tracks

One of the most requested features for a while (both in the Discord and on Reddit) has been the ability to smoothly cross-fade between tracks. Well, now it's here!

By enabling a setting, you can now smoothly transition between sounds during gameplay, so that music doesn't skip a beat.

This feature is currently experimental, so you can enable it in our new scene settings menu.

Enjoy!

PS: I'm still tweaking the knobs and figuring out what the best timings are for the smoothest cross-fading, so please shoot your feedback my way if you do try it!

Moving on!

The Play Button!

This is not a YouTube thing (currently, the Bardic Tools channel sits at a glorious 2 subscribers, bless their hearts). But rather, a button that you can press to "just play the scene, please".

Have you ever had your players be super cozy in a tavern, and then you blink, and then they're in a full fight? Well, now you don't have to scramble for music. If you have a "fight" scene ready (as any DM should), you can now switch between scenes without having to even open them!

It's been super useful in my games, and I hope it is in yours as well.

Next!

Library Search Just Got Better

So, searching in the Library is very important. The faster you can find what you're looking for, the faster you can move on to prepping other things. Based on feedback by the community, I've implemented a couple of quality of life improvements to The Library:

Tag Autocomplete

Every sound and scene is tagged for easy searching, but it's really hard to know which tags are available. Now, you just have to start typing and a set of suggestions will appear. Click on the one you want, and it will be added to your search. You've seen this kind of interface a million times, and now it's in Bardic Tools!

Awesome!

Preview Player

This one was a pet peeve of mine. Often I'd start listening to a song in The Library, and then I'd continue scrolling as I listened to it looking for the next one. If I decide I actually liked that first song after all, it was hard for me to scroll up and find it again.

No more!

Now, the current song is displayed in a convenient, draggable box at the bottom of The Library for easy access.

Cool! What else?

A Butt-Ton of Content!

I've added 3 new scenes to The Library, complete with all-new hand-picked sounds:

This brings the total amount of sounds in The Library to over 200!

I plan to add many more scenes in the future, so let me know if you have suggestions!

In the meantime, I've been working on...

Tons of Bugfixes!

There are so many to mention, but suffices to say that:

Before, I couldn't go a full session without having to refresh the page.

Now, I can! And have! And it's glorious!

If you had found issues before, please give Bardic Tools another shot! It's much more stable now.

What else...

Oh yeah!

Building in Public

Since the community, especially on Discord, has been so great at giving me tons of cool ideas to make Bardic Tools better, I wanted to make sure these stayed recorded somehow.

Furthermore, I wanted you to know what I'll be working on next, so that you know what to expect!

So, I'm very pleased to introduce...

• The Roadmap, at https://bardic.tools/roadmap: Where I list what I'll be working on next. If an item is in the "Next" column, I'm committing myself to doing it as soon as I can.
• The Feature Requests lists, at https://bardic.tools/feature-request: Where I will capture all the requests that come from various sources (email, Discord, etc.). If you made a cool suggestion, that's where it will end up. I'll pull things from that list when I decide what to work on next.

That's it! Please give me ideas, let's make Bardic Tools the best soundboard out there!

And last but not least...

Cool People Using Bardic Tools

Ayeej

This month, I was super excited to see streamer Ayeej (https://www.twitch.tv/ayeej) do a full stream where she used Bardic Tools to prepare for her new campaign.

We laughed, enjoyed the music, got some cool suggestions, found some bugs (some of which I fixed during the stream), and had a great time. My favourite moment? This one:

Go give her a follow and a sub, she's awesome.

Us!

So, this month we decided to actually try and free our schedules to finish our game of Curse of Strahd. I've been DMing that campaign for almost 4 years now, and it was honestly the original reason I started building Bardic Tools.

Because of scheduling, we hadn't played for a while, so I hadn't actually used the new Bardic Tools in-game yet. And, let me tell you... it's pretty good!

The game was butter-smooth to run, and my players really enjoyed the ambience and sound effects. Best of all, sound prep took me like 10 minutes!

Here's a picture of us playing, taken by my wonderful fiancee: