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Explorable/Permanent Darkness & (maybe) Explorer Mode

I'm having issues with Darkness, both Explorable and Permanent.  None of the previous posts about similar topics have helped. I'm trying to permanently reveal the outside areas of a map, with a house in the middle.  I want the players to be able to see outside fully, so I though I would click Fog of War > Permanent Darkness > Reveal > Polygon, and then draw the lines that fill with yellow to reveal the outside area I want players to see...but it does nothing for my player's screen (as seen by me on my dummy account on my second screen). So then I tried revealing Explorable Darkness for that area...but it did nothing for my player's screen either. Tokens are set to have 15 feet of light. I have Explorer Mode turned on.  Does that perhaps  interfere with the Explorable/Permanent Darkness? Thanks for any guidance!
1723650292
Gauss
Forum Champion
HI Colby, The Dungeon Mann,  If there are no tokens with sight outside of the house they will not be able to see outside if they are inside the house.  Regarding Explorer Mode, how that works is you move the token to a location and anyone who controls that token sees that location even when the token moves somewhere else.  Note: they have to be present in the game. 
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Edited 1723650402
What are you seeing on your Dummy Account? Nothing at all? My guess is #2, #3, or #10 from my troubleshooting checklist "can't see" section below - make sure the token has vision enabled and is controlled by the Dummy Account, and that the Dummy Account is on the correct page. Here's my standard Dynamic Lighting Troubleshooting checklist: Troubleshooting General: ⁠The game creator needs to have a Roll20 Plus or Pro account to use Dynamic Lighting. ⁠Make sure you are using Chrome or Firefox. ⁠Make sure you are set to only use either Updated Dynamic Lighting or Legacy Dynamic Lighting, not both. ⁠Do not use the Freehand tool to draw Dynamic Lighting lines. Only use the Polygon tool, and make sure that you don't have any lines that create 'sharp' corners. This is the cause of unexplained/invisible lines about 99% of the time. ⁠You should use a ' Dummy Account ' in order to see changes live/instantaneously when you make them as GM. There are other benefits as well (streaming, testing macros and other tricks, resetting the game URL). ⁠ Ctrl-L does not give you a player's view from a token. It shows you the token's 'Line of Sight' as GM. You will see everything on the GM layer, but players will not see anything on the GM layer from the same token. ⁠ 'Rejoin as player' is difficult because it requires logging back and forth into the game. A Dummy Account is free and can be readily toggled between two browser windows or tabs. ⁠ ⁠A player may control several tokens, and may see more or less than the GM sees when using Ctrl-L or 'Rejoin as player'. Do not use colored or tinted lighting effects. Colored light is currently bugged due to how those lighting effects are rendered. ( Here's a good example of Explorer Mode , which is probably similar to how colored light works.) If you want to have a colored/tinted area, use an invisible token with a colored aura instead . ⁠Do not use .webm animated tokens. They are currently bugged and often will not work correctly and prevent visibility. ⁠Check random other page settings, such as 'Restrict Movement' ⁠Clear your browser cache. ⁠Clear the game chat archive. My players can't see: ⁠Token and light source need to be on the correct layers. ⁠Token must have vision enabled. ⁠Token must be 'controlled' by the player who is checking vision. ⁠There needs to be a light source. ⁠ Tokens always emit light from the center of the token -- in LDL it comes from a small point in the center of the image, and in UDL it comes from a circle that is some small percentage of the image size -- so if you set the map image as a light source, you'll get some funky behavior. ⁠Ensure that a token's vision is not blocked by Dynamic Lighting lines. ⁠If a player cannot see, move their token. There was a bug with UDL that prevented player vision from 'activating' until after one of their tokens is moved on a page. ⁠Make sure you don't have a Fog of War/Permanent Darkness layer on. ⁠Make sure you don't have Advanced Fog of War/Explorable Darkness blocking vision. ⁠Make sure the view is centered on a token that has vision enabled and a light source. ⁠Make sure you/your players are on the correct page. Double check that they have not been split from the Party ribbon. My players see too much: ⁠Make sure you don't have 'Daylight' turned on for the page. ⁠Walls need to be placed on the 'walls' (lighting) layer. ⁠ ⁠If a token has "line of sight" to an area illuminated by a light source, then they will be able to see that area. The only thing that blocks line of sight are Dynamic Lighting lines (walls). ⁠ ⁠Tokens cannot block light. ⁠ ⁠Fog of War/Permanent Darkness only cover an area, but do not prevent light from passing through. ⁠Explorable Darkness and Advanced Fog of War are saved for each player. So if a player has control of a token, they will see all of their 'explored area' in greyscale. ⁠Look on the 'walls' (dynamic light) layer for any unexpected light sources. They will show up as small rectangles there. ⁠Confirm which tokens the player controls. Try moving all tokens to the GM layer temporarily and moving individual tokens back to the Objects layer one by one. ⁠Page 'Cell Width' settings can have an affect on a token's vision, especially if the 'light multiplier' is set to something other than 100%. Switch the Cell Width to '1' and see what happens. Token vision isn’t correct when pulled out of the journal: ⁠Make sure to set up a token’s vision how you want it to be, and have the very last step be to save it as the default for that character sheet. ⁠Any changes made after saving as the default token will not be saved as the default unless the default token is saved again. This is intentional to allow for temporary changes. ⁠Make sure you do not have any duplicate character sheet names. ⁠Also check the Journal Archive. ⁠After pulling out the token, check which character sheet it is linked to. ⁠A character’s default token can be linked to a different character sheet.
1723653358
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Also, if you are having problems with any specific tokens not seeing the map as you suspect, the Dynamic Lighting Tool Mod script has a diagnostic feature that runs multiple tests and provides a report listing probable causes.
Can't praise the Dynaic Lighting Tool enough, it's saved probably hours of thrashing around trying to figure out why a token didn't see what I wanted :)
Thank you all for the great info!!!  And I'm going to install that mod now!!