New Roll20 GM looking for advice on creating maps with thin walls, as well as using dynamic lighting or fog of war

Hi, I'm a GM that's new to Roll20. I'm looking for some map advice, specifically: I'd like to create a spaceship map where the interior walls are thin, occupying the grid lines, rather than thick, occupying grid squares. This is of course easy to draw with the polygonal tool, but I'd quite like to use the fancy marketplace assets. Unfortunately, the ones I've looked at and tried to use don't seem designed to easily handle this case. Is this just something I should learn to live with, since it's just easier to create assets that click together using thick walls, or am I overlooking something obvious? I'd be delighted for specific purchase recommendations. Further, I'd like the players to, you know, explore the map. The dynamic lighting system seems nice on paper, but I wonder how annoying it is in practice to, e.g. when opening a door, to have to move the door tile asset and the door dynamic lighting barrier. Is there any way to bind tokens across layers? As a new GM, am I better off using fog of war?

There are numerous scripts that handle the DL operation of doors, but they require the API (a Pro membership) perk. At the Plus level, I would suggest getting used to the hotkeys for switching layers and moving objects between them. Be sure to make doors a different color from walls to aid in finding and selecting.

I second the API solution, if you decide to take the plunge and upgrade.  I use Dynamic Light Recorder, to assign a DL line to a door token, and then rotate it to open and close the doors. If you do have to do it manually, another top tip when moving door lighting lines is to try to draw them with a little "handle" on the end for easier movement, thusly:

Donald B. said: Hi, I'm a GM that's new to Roll20. I'm looking for some map advice, specifically: I'd like to create a spaceship map where the interior walls are thin, occupying the grid lines, rather than thick, occupying grid squares. This is of course easy to draw with the polygonal tool, but I'd quite like to use the fancy marketplace assets. Unfortunately, the ones I've looked at and tried to use don't seem designed to easily handle this case. Is this just something I should learn to live with, since it's just easier to create assets that click together using thick walls, or am I overlooking something obvious? I'd be delighted for specific purchase recommendations. Further, I'd like the players to, you know, explore the map. The dynamic lighting system seems nice on paper, but I wonder how annoying it is in practice to, e.g. when opening a door, to have to move the door tile asset and the door dynamic lighting barrier. Is there any way to bind tokens across layers? As a new GM, am I better off using fog of war? Hi Donald! After reading your use-case and wishes, I thought of this method to recommend. First, set your Page to a nice size (50x50). Set page background color to dark grey. As GM go onto Dynamic Light layer, set your Line-Tool to yellow color. Draw your walls as lines along the grid (there is a button you can press to Snap To Grid as you go). Make your spaceship layout. Back to Token layer, put a Player Token, give it Emits Light and Has Sight. Place it on the map. Walk around the corridors that you made, to test it. Should look fine as an imaginative spaceship floor that is just plain grey on-map. You can describe it to add flavor "Shiny metallic floor" or whatever. Upgrade technique: Buy floor tile art from Marketplace. Not full spaceship layouts (which might have thick walls). Just buy floors, no walls. Put the floor over the grey background, under the yellow walls. Let the Dynamic Light layer BE the creation of your walls. Don't have Art-walls to trace over. Just put your yellow DL walls directly onto a nice floor background.

for your map problems, look in the marketplace for "draft a spacecraft" which offers whole prebuild complexes and some are very modular with single rooms to design it on your own this module <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/set/1110/sla" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/set/1110/sla</a>... has a big collection of different shaped thin walls, they represent normally stone and wood walls but are abstract enough to be used in&nbsp; space ship&nbsp;

e.g. when opening a door, to have to move the door tile asset and the door dynamic lighting barrier. keithcurtis said: There are numerous scripts that handle the DL operation of doors, but they require the API (a Pro membership) perk. At the Plus level, I would suggest getting used to the hotkeys for switching layers and moving objects between them. Be sure to make doors a different color from walls to aid in finding and selecting. Can you recommend script one in particular? Any in the library? I just got into dynamic lighting today for my maps this morning (see this post:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6274436/where-to-start-with-dynamic-lighting-and-using-it-with-fog-of-war" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6274436/where-to-start-with-dynamic-lighting-and-using-it-with-fog-of-war</a> ) Looking for an easy way to handle the door on the map layer and the lighting/collision barrier on the dynamic lighting layer at the same time or in some way that's easier than switching between layers and moving things to gmlayer or out of the maps area.

Many people swear by&nbsp; Matt's Doors script, but I found it to be a bit too finicky for easy use. I don't need the trap-triggering bits, which feel a bit too video-gamish for me. I use one I found by accident,&nbsp; Simple Door . I put invisible tokens over each door, locatable by an aura only the GM can see. I have the macro set up to turn green when the door is open and red when it is closed, to help me remember what the players can see.

Gozer the Gozerian said: If you do have to do it manually, another top tip when moving door lighting lines is to try to draw them with a little "handle" on the end for easier movement, thusly: That's brilliant, and should be in the Stupid Tricks thread. I never thought of that.

Thanks to everyone for the good tips. For the moment, I'm trying to go with the flow and just use thick walls used by the most common map tiles. It does make drawing the sight lines a little annoying, since you really want to snap to half or even quarter grid coordinates, but it's doable. (The next level of marketplace assets should allow sight lines to be embedded in the graphics. Presumably there's a suitable place in the PNG metadata to allow for that.) My next conundrum is trying to figure out how to use the player screen. We play in person with a projected map. Hitherto the GM has just used their own screen, but that's obviously not the best for many reasons. I've read the relevant wiki page and while I might be willing to go up to Pro for an experimental session, I have no idea to install the "players share dynamic lighting view" scripts or, indeed, any of the others folk have suggested. I may content myself with having an observer character login on the projector screen and move around their unobtrusive token myself to provide the view required at the time. I'd welcome any advice on handling this situation though.

Donald B. said: ...It does make drawing the sight lines a little annoying, since you really want to snap to half or even quarter grid coordinates, but it's doable. (The next level of marketplace assets should allow sight lines to be embedded in the graphics. Presumably there's a suitable place in the PNG metadata to allow for that.) To snap to half or quarter grid coordinates, you can (temporarily if desired) set your Grid Size to .5 or .25 and then using line snapping normally.&nbsp; If you don't want such a subdivided grid then reset it to "1" after snapping, before gameplay day. See grid size on wiki, <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Page_Settings#Grid" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Page_Settings#Grid</a> In the Marketplace, the product category Modules can contain Dynamic Lighting walls pre-set. Many modules have it. <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/search/?sort" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/search/?sort</a>... Also another category, Add-Ons, can have it when appropriate depending on the purpose, I know of one that has DL so far. <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/gameaddon/19" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/gameaddon/19</a>...

GIMP Is a great way to create battle maps for your campaign as well.&nbsp; Hit me up with a PM and I'd be glad to go over a short tutorial on creating one.&nbsp; Listed an example below, but you don't have to be super artistic to do something like this.&nbsp; Maybe 30mins tops.&nbsp; A lot of the process is automated.&nbsp; I have a few ideas about how you could go about your space adventure for the map at least.&nbsp; GIMP

Gold said: To snap to half or quarter grid coordinates, you can (temporarily if desired) set your Grid Size to .5 or .25 and then using line snapping normally.&nbsp; If you don't want such a subdivided grid then reset it to "1" after snapping, before gameplay day. See grid size on wiki, <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Page_Settings#Grid" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Page_Settings#Grid</a> Insert Wee Bey dawning realization gif here. Thanks!

If you want some inspiration, there are some neat setups and some tips here:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/3304165/" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/3304165/</a>