Light and dark rooms

It would be nice to have the possibility to set an entire page as dark. This means, no one could see anything in that page. Then, add a special aura to players and tokens as well: Light source. This aura needs a flag: Player only or everyone. This way we could manage things like lanterns and infra vision as well. This new aura should work in combination with FOW. That means, the aura does not reveal anything that is hidden by FOW. I know, when taking a closer look, there are many more requirements for such an aura, but I think just implementing this very basic aura will enrich the play experience much.

This is actually a very interesting and simple bit of smoke and mirrors for a pretty significant effect. We already have the FoW, which wouldn't even need to be changed as long as its layer (in the window) was higher than the actual game layers, then under the FoW, you have a second conditional layer that is all black except where the Light Aura is occupying space. Kind of like making a negative image, or using a Layer Mask in an art program. It -would- require a whole new layer, but not a layer anyone would have to be able to augment. Could just call it 'Darkness' or something... may or may not be easy to make work, but it is conceptually simple and clean. You get my vote.

Interesting idea...

+1!

Adding this as another layer may be an issue as Riley has said layer additions cause major performance hits. Cool idea though.

Well, it wouldn't really add a whole layer; right now, a layer requires we be able to edit it. This is automated from the background, and might even only be visible on the player's end, if you think about it. I see it more of a wishful thinking, honestly. heh

Only problem with vision revealing FOW is then having to use vision blocking tools, which - depending on the complexity of your map - can take a long time (even worse, it's tempting to so for the effect!). I like the idea of using this for light sources and darkness, but maybe without the option to reveal FOW.

The road map laid out by the DEV team talks about "special effects" and "dynamic lights and shadows." This might be already in the works...slated late beta June/July

Abd, bad ass suggestion. Thank you :)

For the Line of Sight/Light-blocking tools, couldn't this be something simple as a special tool that allows you to place gm-only-visable lines/squares/circles that you could "draw over" tall walls/buildings/large natural objects etc. It could even be a toggle in the existing drawing tools that lets you switch from normal tools to LoS blocking tools and back again (or even a 3rd option combing both for drawing a line that also blocks LOS so if you're drawing a section of map freehand you dont have to draw over it again with the LOS tool) - so you would have your Pen, Line, Box, Circle and whatever else may get added in the future, and either above or below have the LOS toggle button. As for scripting how individual LoS would work... Quick! Somebody break open 'Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines' and steal the code! Just my 2p thrown in. XD Edit: Reflecting this probably belongs more with Line of Sight thread I saw a while ago... but I saw that LoS could be an issue here if the auto-reveal starts lighting up areas behind walls that should remain hidden.

Well, things that should stay hidden are covered by FOW. And if the light source lights a room thru a wall, which is already explored, i realy don't care.

I've proposed something similar here, I don't know if the ideas could at all be combined: <a href="http://community.roll20.net/discussion/237/limited-line-of-sight-fog-of-war-revealing#Item_2" rel="nofollow">http://community.roll20.net/discussion/237/limited-line-of-sight-fog-of-war-revealing#Item_2</a>

@Abd al Rahman Sorry Abd, misread your OP. Mia Culpa! @Samael Butterdragon That sounds like something I could get behind, especially if combined with this. Voted up.

Sounds great! Thank you for the information!

Awesome! Hopefully the team finds an efficient way to implement this. Maptools has dynamic lighting but its way too tasking on most computers.

Ohhh ... that is pretty.

Sounds great :) THank you

Something feels off in that picture... I think it is in the light adding, If I remember correctly adding them by "max(a,b)+0.85*min(a,b)" gives results that look more natural than just "a+b". "max(a,b)+min(a,b)*(1-min(a,b)/max(a,b))" might also work, but I think it requires ambient lighting, secondary sources and a hotspot enhancer to not collapse.

Also, I should point out that the goal here isn't to create photo-realistic amazing lighting. It's basically to let you do simple dynamic lights/shadows, with calculations for line of sight on a per-player basis. Yep. It's a diagram, a sketch map. For it to auto-reveal based on lighting and line-of-sight blocking is or would be a fantastic luxury. Natural-looking lighting, background tiles, and even to some extent character tokens are chrome.

from a certain standpoint, this Lantern-radius effect should be easier to code/process than fog of war. Simply show a black plane with grid, and crop-display the map background region that the player token is at and the other tokens that are in radius. Whereas a fog of war model tends to be "reveal the map as I explore it" which requires tracking every square the PC has touched, and applying that to crop-display the visible map. Sounds like Fog is done, but if this Lantern effect had been done instead, that probably could have been good enough, and it would have put the onus on the players to actually map the dungeon, just like in old-school D&D...