Newbie - Experience and Questions

[Trikkitt]

Freestyler notes:

I've been trying to learn Freestyler of late, and wanted to share my experience in the hope it'll make the product better in the future. This isn't intended as a complaint - its a free product and I appreciate it's existance, but I also want to get the most out of it and for others to get the same.

There is a distinct lack of a getting started guide. Just something basic that explains in an easy to understand way what each of the key points parts are, what they are used for and how they work. Coming in from a non-lighting background I found configuring the DMX interface and adding fixtures to be very easy and obvious. I then struggled until I found the sequence editor, and managed to create some sequences. I'm not stuck again because I don't understand how cues, submasters and buttons work, and its all very confusing with nothing telling me how I use each one, and tbh they react in ways I don't expect - that isn't logical compared to other software I've used.

Drag and drop of sequences in to locations is great, but not obvious. I couldn't work out how to assign sequences to cues or buttons in a straight forward way, perhaps a right click option to assign a sequence to a button or cue, or just something that tells you that you can drag and drop the sequences.

When playing a cue the play button changes to a red stop button, but never returns to the play button once the sequence is complete (the sequence is not set to repeat). This is confusing as I would expect that once a sequence has played out and its not going to repeat it'll return to a play icon ready to be run again. Is there something about the cue window I'm not getting?

The Multi-select confused the hell out of me. Having this turned off by default and hidden away in an obscure location really doesn't help. The fact that when I hit the cue buttons to the right multiple cues played, while when I tried to do that manually it failed - that confused me.

Sub-masters - no idea where they fit in! I load a cue list in to them, click Run, but the cue window only ever shows it running the first sequence in the cue list. How should these work?

Override buttons - how they work doesn't make sense to me.

Perhaps someone can give me some basic pointers as to the best way to setup what I need, making the most of the features in FreeStyler. I want this to run the lighting rig of lasertag venue, and controlled from my own software via the TCP/IP control option of Freestyler.

When a game starts it should play and intro sequence then settle in to a loop of effects that run during the game. I want some game events to trigger certain effects, for example hitting a base will cause the whole lighting to strobe the colours of the other team. While some lights will reflect the colour of the winning team. When the game ends I need it to switch to an alternate sequence for about 5 minutes. Finally if the arena hasn't been used for an hour I want it to turn as many lights off as possible. Should I be using cues or submasters, or buttons?

The TCP/IP protocol also confuses me as a lot of things appear to be toggles, but there is no way to know what the current button state is. So I don't know if I'm turning it on or off. Keep in mind that someone may accidently close the app, the server software might need restarting, etc.

Any help appreciated, and I'll repeat my comments are intended to give insight in to a first-time user of the software. What I've seen of it, I think it's great - and you can't knock free software - Thank you!

Mike