NEW! See the VTT as Specific Players

This is outstanding! I spent a short time experimenting with it and works well. One minor item - On my PC, using both Chrome and Firefox, when I in the journal tab I can't quite scroll down far enough to see the very last item. It's as if the last bit of the view is cut off. This is not the case when I switch back to the original GM view tab. (I did check my browser zoom level).

It's really a great feature, thanks. {:-)

Love the feature, but still would have liked to view as "All Selected Players" or "View as Party".

Lavi said: EgoreSan - would love to hear how you might find "all selected players" useful and in what context? We've primarily catered this feature to help GMs to troubleshoot by letting GMs see exactly what their Player sees. It sounds like you might be hoping to use this in a slightly different context (broadcasting? in-person-play? something else?), and we'd like to understand! If you are looking for a Party View that's consistent with what your players would experience, it might be accomplished through creating a group token and giving all party members control. EgoreSan said: Love the feature, but still would have liked to view as "All Selected Players" or "View as Party". Would it be possible just to set up a player account separate from your own and then log in as the player? You could quickly add your player account to the controlling player like this screenshot.  Note in this example, it's already All Players (which is what I do) which would include you, anyway.          

Okay... ummm... this might be a Mac issue.  When I use either Firefox or Chrome and hit CMD+L. It appears to be the Preview Token Vision.  Basically all my GM notes disappear.  So check!  I would expect that.   However, how do I turn it off?  CMD+L doesn't do anything to turn it off.  ESC doesn't do anything.  Am I missing something simple?  Is there another command to go back to GM Vision? Inquiring minds and Mac users would like to know. Unlike Rick A.  I am able to scroll all the way back down on my Journal tab and see everything.  So either my Journal is very short, or Rick A.'s is significantly longer or it's a Mac 'browser' interface with Roll20 pro point. Cheers.

Pandarian said: Okay... ummm... this might be a Mac issue.  When I use either Firefox or Chrome and hit CMD+L. It appears to be the Preview Token Vision.  Basically all my GM notes disappear.  So check!  I would expect that.   However, how do I turn it off?  CMD+L doesn't do anything to turn it off.  ESC doesn't do anything.  Am I missing something simple?  Is there another command to go back to GM Vision? Inquiring minds and Mac users would like to know. Unlike Rick A.  I am able to scroll all the way back down on my Journal tab and see everything.  So either my Journal is very short, or Rick A.'s is significantly longer or it's a Mac 'browser' interface with Roll20 pro point. Cheers. Escape should enter your Ctrl+L view. Alternately clicking the Exit Token Vision Preview button at the bottom-center of the screen.  The Journal issue may be browser specific. But basically for Journals that are longer than the browser is tall the "as Player" bar at the top of the VTT is causing an offset that hides the last entry of the Journal. Workarounds are closing the "as Player" bar at the top, or switching your browser to full screen.

Gauss said: Escape should enter your Ctrl+L view. Alternately clicking the Exit Token Vision Preview button at the bottom-center of the screen.  The Journal issue may be browser specific. But basically for Journals that are longer than the browser is tall the "as Player" bar at the top of the VTT is causing an offset that hides the last entry of the Journal. Workarounds are closing the "as Player" bar at the top, or switching your browser to full screen. There's no Exit Token Vision Preview button at the bottom-center of the screen nor does hitting CMD+L, or ESC work when keyed in and neither does selecting the Preview Token Vision in the View Center on the right work.

Lavi said: Pandarian - any chance this may be happening to you when you have no tokens on the page yet? If yes, we're aware of that and should be working on this very shortly. If you add a token to the board, do you still have trouble existing the Ctrl + L view? Hey Lavi, I specifically placed a Token on the VTT Play Area to test it. ( to be honest, I wouldn't have imagined not having a token to test it--but that's me ) I put an image on the Roll20 Discord general-tavern channel of what I see. The token is on the play area and the areas to the right and below the VTT Play Area are blank, so I don't see any of the notes and images i have on the GM layer.  So, I can enter the Token Preview, but there's no means to exit short of exiting the game and re-entering as GM.  It's not a big deal...just wanted to make you'enz all aware that on a Mac in both Firefox and Chrome...there's no way out (sounds more ominous when I say it that way). Cheers.

Additional Note... even when I switch pages...the Token Preview is still active.  So, exiting the game is the only way to exit Token Preview for me (and perhaps other Mac users.)

Hmmm...had a weird experience on a page with a lot of notes... (I'm jumping in and out of my games to test).  When I hit CMD+L, like half the objects disappeared leaving behind the text that sat on many of the objects (you know, like the backgrounds disappeared, but not the text).  Went to a different page and then came back and the text had disappeared.  However, there were still portions of objects (lines mostly) still visible that should have been on the GM layer.

Are macros supposed to work when in Player View?

Excellent new feature, well done.  Does just what I need when setting up convoluted environments. As an aside it's also really useful in the skirmishes/wargames I as LOS is very important in them.

First, I want to say: very nice!  I can see this being quite useful. Now, a couple of observations: 1. If my players are on map A (usually the splash page in between sessions, to keep them from seeing behind the curtain when I'm prepping the next session) if I want to test their vision, I need to move their ribbon to the map I'm building.  This means that if that person happens to launch the game just then, they'll see the in-development page.  It would be good if there was some mechanism to see the player view of map X without moving the player themselves to that map. 2. When you view as player, they show as "online" both in your original game (avatar appears) and in the Player Picker (not grayed out).  It would be nice if there were a way to distinguish from "really online" to "oh that's just me" when testing outside of a normal play session (maybe a "player is online" in the tab's topbar?). 3. There's no apparent way to exit the tab other than simply closing it, as the right sidebar can't select "My Settings" where logout is.  And years of browser use has me conditioned not to simply close tab logged into something.  Perhaps a "close tab" control on the top bar that holds the player's name?  I realize it's not required, but I spent more than a little time looking for a "close" control and I'm sure I won't be the only one. Edit: note that (2) also means that while Player A can't tell that you're spectating them, as noted in the Help Center page, if player A isn't online, but player B is, they will likely be able to figure out that it's you, since the GM cannot see/reply to private messages B sends to A.  I don't see that as a problem, but as a potential source of confusion, particularly just pre-game when players may be joining early and I may be doing some final check-out on the maps pre-session.

I second all three of these points! No. 3 bugs me as well, and for the same reasons :) It might be a generational thing. Ken S. said: First, I want to say: very nice!  I can see this being quite useful. Now, a couple of observations:

Okay...I think I was mixing CMD+L and Open Player View. Some nice person on Roll20 Discord explained to me what to do. HOWEVER, after playing around with Open Player View, I still don't see a means to exit Player View.  It opens up another page, but other than closing that page, I don't see a means to exit it.  Is that the intended means of egress?    AND it seems to automatically add the chosen player to the game--whether the GM wanted said player there or not.  Is that also the intended result of Open Player View?  I mean, might be a fun way to add someone to the game... but I would hate to forget that they were on a specific page that they haven't officially visited/seen yet...and have them be on it the next time they log in.

Lavi, I do agree that the player avatar (bottom left corner) being exactly what the player would be if logged in is a bit...confusing for folks.  If just using it in testing it is fine, but if using it when other folks are in a game it is impossible to know if the player is actually logged in or not.  I'd suggest something like appending the name with the GMs name.

Or Prefixing the avatar name with Viewing As:   Gauss said: Lavi, I do agree that the player avatar (bottom left corner) being exactly what the player would be if logged in is a bit...confusing for folks.  If just using it in testing it is fine, but if using it when other folks are in a game it is impossible to know if the player is actually logged in or not.  I'd suggest something like appending the name with the GMs name.

Another option instead of a verbose prefix would be to add an obvious icon or symbol to the player name, or place it in brackets. This would take up less space (especially in the case of long player names) but still indicate that it's not an actual player logged in, Lavi said: Gauss & Rick - we hear the feedback and thank you. It's thematically on par with what Ken was also saying in a couple t hreads above , which is being able to distinguish when an actual player is online versus being in the view. We're taking it back to explore options. Rick A. said: Or Prefixing the avatar name with Viewing As:   Gauss said: Lavi, I do agree that the player avatar (bottom left corner) being exactly what the player would be if logged in is a bit...confusing for folks.  If just using it in testing it is fine, but if using it when other folks are in a game it is impossible to know if the player is actually logged in or not.  I'd suggest something like appending the name with the GMs name.

Ken S. said: First, I want to say: very nice!  I can see this being quite useful. Now, a couple of observations: 1. If my players are on map A (usually the splash page in between sessions, to keep them from seeing behind the curtain when I'm prepping the next session) if I want to test their vision, I need to move their ribbon to the map I'm building.  This means that if that person happens to launch the game just then, they'll see the in-development page.  It would be good if there was some mechanism to see the player view of map X without moving the player themselves to that map. This is for me the most important point, and probably a reason why I will not use that feature in the end.

One other issue I noticed, is that it is not possible to whisper to the player when in the player's view. This impacts the output of API mods : many outputs are missing in the player's view, so I don't see what the player would see.

Ulti said: One other issue I noticed, is that it is not possible to whisper to the player when in the player's view. This impacts the output of API mods : many outputs are missing in the player's view, so I don't see what the player would see. Hi Ulti! I believe this has been reported and is being investigated.

Ulti said: One other issue I noticed, is that it is not possible to whisper to the player when in the player's view. This impacts the output of API mods : many outputs are missing in the player's view, so I don't see what the player would see. This. I get the privacy aspect of hiding communications from others, but anything the player (or a GM acting as them) initiatites to themselves should be visible, both for testing sheets, macros and APIs when the player isn't on line, and helping them diagnose problems by "looking over their shoulder" when they are.

Thank you.  I'm prepping for my first "use UVTT andl lighting" game in a couple of weeks, and I expect this will all be very useful.

I have the setting "Alphabetically sort token actions" unchecked in my game, but when viewing as a player, their token actions are still shown alphabetized. When in a game as a player, I can change this setting for myself, but as a GM I apparently can't change this for my players? The settings tab in player view is greyed out.

OK, thanks for the reply, I've got a few players that aren't comfortable with changing settings of any kind, but still complain about things (like the order in which their token macros appear) that a setting change would fix.  <shrug> Lavi said: ...  We are keeping our ears to the ground for requests on exposing specific settings, so noting your request on our list for the future.

Lavi said: We are keeping our ears to the ground for requests on exposing specific settings, so noting your request on our list for the future. I have a number of players who only use Roll20 when they play games, and some, even after seven years, still struggle with the user interface, mostly because they are completely focused on their character sheets and tokens on the map when they do use it.  As Rick A said for his players: help is often required, and I've verbally talked a number thorugh using My Settings for various things.  What leaps to mind are: The avatar placement and size ("how do I make those go away?" is a common question). This is, I believe, motivated by sreen size.  My games use large maps (50x50 is common, 100x100 has been used; I wouldn't do lighting on big outdoor tactical combat maps so I expect that to continue).  Players on smaller laptops need every pixel they can get. But even in other player's games, I've heard it come up. Under Graphics & Settings, the "always display controlled tokens on top" setting is something I'd want to be able to set for my players also (I have a couple of people who invariably wind up occupying the same square as someone else and then lose their token; older eyes, zoomed-out screens). Also, and this is somewhat separate: in testing with a real user account, I just noticed that my dual-sheet D&D game's "default character sheet for adding characters", which is set to "Classic" in my game (we play on the 2014 sheet) is set to "No default" on the player account.  That really ought to be a per-game setting.  I use new sheets only for Bastion sheets today, and I create those for players.  I don't want them creating 2024 sheets for characters or henchmen (as we'd just have to replace them for play). On the separate topic of UVTT use: next week I'll be starting the map for my next game, and will post a report.  One thing I noticed in early testing is that there's no obvious way to reload a map. I typically mark-up maps on the GM layer (trap locations, blast ranges, etc), and sometimes add things like chests or other graphics on the map layer.  But I'm also re-doing the map in my mapping program (map design is, for me, an iterative process as I test things and change my mind).  Right now it looks like I'll need to freeze the map at some point before I can add custom map and gm-layer features, which is going to make design take longer.  There really ought to be a way to reload the background map from UVTT and the lighting layer, while preserving non-map details on the map layer and the token and GM (and foreground?) layers.