Updated Dynamic Lighting - Feedback Thread

PaOx said: Is there a known issues log and missing functionality list for UDL anywhere? Actually a known issues log for all functionality would be nice. Like most people using this service I don't really have the time to sort through hundreds of posts and replies to compile the list myself. Thanks As Kraynic said check the first post, although I know for sure the first post is missing several things brought up by people, including myself, in this thread.

This seems as apropos a place as any to ask (and I didn't see it mentioned in the known issues/bugs at the beginning of this thread), but is anyone else's players able to freely move through Dynamic Lighting barriers? I've seen some older posts mentioning it, but nothing more recent. It happens in every single one of my groups. Players don't even have to try. They may just get to close to a door, and will just slide right into the next room, spoiling any element of surprise/reveal. Just seems to be one of the most basic functions/perks of using Dynamic Lighting, but is restricting movement just not going to be a feature of Updated Dynamic Lighting?

Restrict Movement was separated out onto the main tab since it applies to both LDL and UDL.

Brian C. said: Restrict Movement was separated out onto the main tab since it applies to both LDL and UDL. **Thank you so much!** I had just not scrolled down far enough on the main tab. You're awesome!

I've discovered a temporary work-around for those having memory issues with UDL as GM.  Test this yourself on a copy of your dungeon, use at your own risk, etc. I'm running Dungeon of the Mad Mage and am on Level 3, which is huge.  We switched from LDL with Advanced Fog of War to UDL with Explorer Mode due to the high lag with LDL for the players. After the players had explored for a session and mapped a bunch of it out, and we quit, then I later reconnected, I found that my browser tab (latest Chrome or Firefox, Windows 10, 16GB, 1080ti) would "Awe Snap!" with an Error code: SBOX_FATAL_MEMORY_EXCEEDED.  It was just hours before our next session, so in my rush to get things working I "upgraded" one of my backup copies of the dungeon to current events, copied over all scripts, etc., gave the players a new URL, and told them that this was going to be the dungeon we would use from now on.  After that session was over, I quit and rejoined and I got the SBOX_FATAL_MEMORY_EXCEEDED error again!  I spent a few hours tinkering and discovered that it seems to be related to Explorer Mode.  The following work-around allows me to load the map again with little effort/time.  I will reference "level 3" as my high memory map: Start to load the dungeon as GM, then immediately click the Page Toolbar and switch to the Start/Landing page rather than finish loading level 3.  Log out and close/open the browser and log in.  Drag the Players Ribbon to the start page as well (if you don't and they are logged in the next steps can reveal the entire map to them).  Click the Page Toolbar, go to settings for level 3, Dynamic Lighting tab, turn off Explorer Mode.  This doesn't seem to zero out previously seen portions of the map, it just stops adding new areas.  Then switch yourself as GM to level 3 and you can load it without any memory errors!  Once you are on level 3, you can re-enable Explorer mode and memory use will not go through the roof.  Drag the players ribbon to level 3 as well and the players can join normally and can still see areas they had previously explored.  Play your session! Once you exit the game and re-join, the memory use will go through the roof again...  So before leaving, switch yourself and the players to the Start/Landing page to make it easier to repeat this process next time. This has saved me considerable pain.  I hope it helps someone else!  Hopefully the memory bug will be fixed soon and we won't have to do this for long.

Updated Dynamic Lighting is barely even functional for Mac users. I've just tried to get a map working with UDL for over an hour between two browsers, going as far as deleting the entire page and starting over again, which worked very briefly until I started testing individual tokens. WHEN is this going to finally be working properly? I've had a Pro account with Roll20 for almost a year now and I'm not so sure my constant battling with dynamic lighting, a key feature for Pro users, is worth the near $200 I've paid to use the service.

@Remul. Yeah, I've found that when things start getting laggier than normal, I can often fix it just by turning off explorer, dynamic lighting, refreshing, then reenabling them. If I do it during the middle of a session, the players see the map, but I could move them off if I didn't trust them. I just tell them, "Look away a moment," because I do. That often resets things to the base level of lagginess, whatever that might be for that map.

i can confirm the lag as well. Disabling UDL fixed it so I know that was the cause.

I've had to just turn UDL and LDL off entirely for the last chapter of my Pathfinder Shattered Star campaign. One player's laptop could not handle the increased lag and strain on the CPU and RAM. Her computer kept crashing and wouldn't turn on until it was looked at.

/Done, Moving to Foundry VTT. Good Luck friends !

Al Pacino said: /Done, Moving to Foundry VTT. Good Luck friends ! Welcome to the community Al, PM me if you have any questions.  

Quite probably related to the Ghosting of animated tokens with darkvision for GMs, I'm seeing also that if two animated tokens with dark vision can "see" each other, their motion stops. It's not a functional stop (as if I clicked the pause button on the token) and looking closely, I can see weird animated edges peeking out. Oddly enough, if I click the stage or move another token, they begin animating, until I release the mouse cursor. I can confirm that disabling UDL for the token resolves the issue. Additionally, if I ctrl-L the token, its animation kicks back in, but the others are stopped. Looking at the dev console, there's no error. Here's the issue in action: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/quZCvdb" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/quZCvdb</a>

Had a session last night where one of my maps just completely lost all of my lighting layer drawings. So that was a nice surprise when my players were able to see far more of the map than they should have. Thankfully dynamic lighting was still on so it was only as far as their darkvision allowed, but still. Maybe I somehow forgot to actually draw the shapes, but I am 99.99999999% sure that's not the case. I distinctly remember drawing shapes around the building that is present on that map... so pretty sure they just randomly got deleted. Otherwise, as I've said before, outside of the yellow turn tracker box (which I've worked around using API), I've thankfully had nothing but good experiences with UDL thus far.

Haven't heard of that as a known UDL bug. If they were grouped, did you accidentally move them to the map layer (behind your map) or something? Unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

Tried the updated DL and found the following issue. When a player (well, me as a DM, connected as a player to check lightnings) controls 2 token &nbsp;-&nbsp; token A: emits light 20ft bright + 20ft low, light multiplier of 100% &nbsp;-&nbsp; token B: no light emission, light multiplier of 150% Even when token B has no line of sight towards the area token A is, vision is clear 60 ft around token A (see screenshot)

Any news on a fix for Explorer Mode not working on zoom out?&nbsp; This is in Dungeon of the Mad Mage, after using the conversion tool.

Ran a session of D&amp;D Friday night with our first attempt to use Advanced Fog of War with Legacy Dynamic Lighting. All five of us using Windows 10 and Firefox. The result was so much lag that we would barely move the tokens around, and some users would lock up and then have Firefox crash. I disabled AFoW and then the game ran more smoothly. At this point my friends and I have come to the conclusion that pretty much none of the features advertise to be used on Roll20 work correctly. Incredibly frustrating.

Irondrake said: Ran a session of D&amp;D Friday night with our first attempt to use Advanced Fog of War with Legacy Dynamic Lighting. All five of us using Windows 10 and Firefox. The result was so much lag that we would barely move the tokens around, and some users would lock up and then have Firefox crash. I disabled AFoW and then the game ran more smoothly. At this point my friends and I have come to the conclusion that pretty much none of the features advertise to be used on Roll20 work correctly. Incredibly frustrating. AFOW + legacy lighting is very slow when "global illumination" is enabled. Not so bad if you disable global illumination.

Farling said: Irondrake said: Ran a session of D&amp;D Friday night with our first attempt to use Advanced Fog of War with Legacy Dynamic Lighting. All five of us using Windows 10 and Firefox. The result was so much lag that we would barely move the tokens around, and some users would lock up and then have Firefox crash. I disabled AFoW and then the game ran more smoothly. At this point my friends and I have come to the conclusion that pretty much none of the features advertise to be used on Roll20 work correctly. Incredibly frustrating. AFOW + legacy lighting is very slow when "global illumination" is enabled. Not so bad if you disable global illumination. I disagree. It’s become unusable most of the time on my “dark” maps as well...

Titus said: Farling said: Irondrake said: Ran a session of D&amp;D Friday night with our first attempt to use Advanced Fog of War with Legacy Dynamic Lighting. All five of us using Windows 10 and Firefox. The result was so much lag that we would barely move the tokens around, and some users would lock up and then have Firefox crash. I disabled AFoW and then the game ran more smoothly. At this point my friends and I have come to the conclusion that pretty much none of the features advertise to be used on Roll20 work correctly. Incredibly frustrating. AFOW + legacy lighting is very slow when "global illumination" is enabled. Not so bad if you disable global illumination. I disagree. It’s become unusable most of the time on my “dark” maps as well... This has been my experience as well. "Dark" maps are nearly impossible to use when AFoW and LDL are both active.

I think it got worse. Now I can't even open a simple sandbox map I use when UDL is enabled. I keep a couple of tokens on there for testing purposes and now when I move to that map the game never resolves the map. When I disable UDL and refresh, I see the map. When I enable again I'm stuck unless I disable and refresh.

I was experiencing considerable lag running UDL as GM with everything turned on on a fairly simple map a few days ago (Chromium on Ubuntu). I occasionally had to restart the browser as the system was grinding to a halt. Looking at 'top', Chromium had reserved 160GB of virtual RAM which seemed a bit excessive... obviously it hadn't actually tried to use it (Linux doesn't actually allocate RAM until it gets used) but I have 48GB of RAM in my new, fast, laptop (AMD Ryzen 7 4750U Pro, 48GB RAM, SSD) so something is not right somewhere... Also occasionally as GM the dynamic lighting stuff would disappear and the whole map would appear evenly illuminated (so you couldn't see which bits of map had been 'revealed'). Also also one player reported they couldn't see where they had been (in Explorer mode); they could only see where they were. But they are running Windows 7 on an ancient laptop so the solution there is probably a new laptop.

I am GM for a Dragon Heist campaign with 5 players. There are in Brazil, England, Iran, Syria, Oregon. I am in Vancouver Washington. I don't know if this is related directly to UDL or not but I had a couple of new players join the game and one from Iran seemed to have no problems but the one from Syria could not see anything and also had control over a third players Token (third player on west coast of USA). Also there was really bad lag for all players. Another thing that has happened is some of my macros are not working correctly, specifically a power card macro is displaying gobbledy goop. I think that a couple of my players will not come back because of the Tech issues.

Hi There, Zoom-Out Exporer-Mode Bug. Two of Five Players. All Windows Machines. Ruined Dungeon Crawl. Unhappy Customer. &nbsp;

Map is so laggy with updated dynamic lighting it isn't really usable.&nbsp;&nbsp;

So is it possible to unlink the Vision and Night Vision options. Some monsters are blind upto a certain vision limit through senses like tremorsense in D&amp;D. So real light doesn't matter. But if I make something and there is light, there is no limit. But if I throw it as "Darksense" it would function the same. tl/dr, can you make vision and darkvision separate independent settings? Or add a limit to vision?

Roll20:&nbsp; Is there anywhere to read status updates on overall state of these bugs and features?&nbsp; It's very frustrating to have the tool be in a deeply broken state for weeks with no responses.

Game Master said: Roll20:&nbsp; Is there anywhere to read status updates on overall state of these bugs and features?&nbsp; It's very frustrating to have the tool be in a deeply broken state for weeks with no responses. Agree with him, we need a place to know about the status of the tools we paid for. Without DL, the pro subscription is nearly useless. The only API you really need is the 5th OGL, but if you dont play D&amp;D 5th, you dont need a pro subscription really.

Hi all, Running a Dungeon of the mad Mage campaign with UDL without explore mode on!! . It works perfect for DM and all players. explore mode = very laggy. almost unplayable. What i do is, have a light token all players can see and control with 40 ft. dim light. And just add it to where the players have been. works perfectly. Keep up the good work Roll20. But work on that preformance. its a killer :)&nbsp;

The low vision of the new update is very weak, I can't see it. In the old version the low vision was perfect.&nbsp;They should fix the low vision of the new update to look like the old version. Image 1: Updated Image 2: Legacy

I've been reporting this for months.... and no acknowledgement from developers. Losing this distinction makes using low-light vision useless. :-/ Mestre said: The low vision of the new update is very weak, I can't see it. In the old version the low vision was perfect.&nbsp;They should fix the low vision of the new update to look like the old version. Image 1: Updated Image 2: Legacy

Craig said: I've been reporting this for months.... and no acknowledgement from developers. Losing this distinction makes using low-light vision useless. :-/ Mestre said: The low vision of the new update is very weak, I can't see it. In the old version the low vision was perfect.&nbsp;They should fix the low vision of the new update to look like the old version. Image 1: Updated Image 2: Legacy I feel you. It's virtually impossible to tell the boundary between low/dim light and regular light in UDL. It should be fixed.

I test it again yesterday, and found that as you add new light sources the lag increase. No light source on map, no lag, count for both, Legacy and UDP Only 1 light source and lag started to be perceptible When you start adding new light sources to the map, the lag goes up rapidly. Maybe this help you to find out the problem

Continue having issues with the map being revealed when zoomed all the way out, on a MacBook Air. The reveal begins at 40% zoom distance. This has never NOT been a bug with UDL.

UDL works so damn slow! If you will shut down legacy dynamic lightning without making the UDL work as smoothly as legacy lightning did then I'll unsubscribe since so many of my players struggle with how slow UDL is.

I'm a frustrated customer.&nbsp; I updated a few games to the new dynamic lighting.&nbsp; First off, the Ctrl+L no longer works correctly, so I have no idea what my players can see.&nbsp; If I give a NPC vision same thing.&nbsp; I had a token set to emit light 20/20, and it actually emitted darkness.&nbsp; Players with night vision seemed OK.&nbsp; Players without night vision couldn't see a token next to them that had light shining on them, but were able to see a token on the other side of the map behind a wall.&nbsp; It was borked before.&nbsp; It's still borked.&nbsp; I'd give pictures and specifics, but there are so many issues it isn't even worth that time.&nbsp; PLEASE DO NOT FORCE THIS.&nbsp; KEEP LEGACY FOREVER. Thanks.

I'm also having major issues with UDL and vision differences. I'm not seeing any differentiation. Also the light multiplier doesn't seem to work either I have UDL setup in my game&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/2778244" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/2778244</a> &nbsp;on the 'Barakus Level 5 map' Jay R. said: Craig said: I've been reporting this for months.... and no acknowledgement from developers. Losing this distinction makes using low-light vision useless. :-/ Mestre said: The low vision of the new update is very weak, I can't see it. In the old version the low vision was perfect.&nbsp;They should fix the low vision of the new update to look like the old version. Image 1: Updated Image 2: Legacy I feel you. It's virtually impossible to tell the boundary between low/dim light and regular light in UDL. It should be fixed.

I'll echo what was said above. My group all pitched in to buy a month of Plus to try out Dynamic Lighting. I started with UDL and issues made it unusable: night vision tints stack (making it impossible to see as GM); CTL+L doesn't work properly; lag for some players on older machines made it completely unusable; adding light sources slowed things down further; glitches when moving multiple tokens. For now I've converted each page and character to Legacy, moving AWAY from UDL after reading that these issues were common. As long as Legacy exists, I'm perfectly fine with things how they are. If Roll20 drops support for Legacy before UDL has been way more stable for a good amount of time, I'll definitely drop the subscription as I won't be able to use UDL at my table at all.

I played a game today and had some issues with UDL.&nbsp; First, restrict movement did not work.&nbsp; Everyone could walk through walls.&nbsp; Secondly, using "Draw Shape" did not work to block lighting at all.&nbsp; I needed some circles for columns, and it's like they weren't drawn at all. Thanks for allowing feedback!&nbsp; Please fix these things, though.

Craig S. said: I played a game today and had some issues with UDL.&nbsp; First, restrict movement did not work.&nbsp; Everyone could walk through walls.&nbsp; Secondly, using "Draw Shape" did not work to block lighting at all.&nbsp; I needed some circles for columns, and it's like they weren't drawn at all. Thanks for allowing feedback!&nbsp; Please fix these things, though. Circles do not block light with UDL. The best thing for columns is to draw an X with two straight lines.

Farling said: Craig S. said: I played a game today and had some issues with UDL.&nbsp; First, restrict movement did not work.&nbsp; Everyone could walk through walls.&nbsp; Secondly, using "Draw Shape" did not work to block lighting at all.&nbsp; I needed some circles for columns, and it's like they weren't drawn at all. Thanks for allowing feedback!&nbsp; Please fix these things, though. Circles do not block light with UDL. The best thing for columns is to draw an X with two straight lines. Quick note: this is also true of LDL.

Hi, New/OLD bug repport. I try to use "Dynamic Lighting conversion" but the result it's just unplayable. See below the bug in attached file : Legacy light player point of view : New light player point of view : GM View : As you can seen, player can see through light wall, the "at view" option is broken. Also all tokens have a radius of light now. The problem seens to come from to the convert of dynamic light token. Legacy option : New option (all others are off) : If I turn of this two settings, player can't see this token through light wall, but I have more than 100 tokens on many maps, just impossible. Hope this bug can improve the automatic conversion. Caos

This dynamic lighting update was a big, unwelcome surprise today when I was trying to get my game ready. When adding new dynamic lighting, the white translucent overlay makes it very hard to see my map, making it very challenging (next to impossible) to place the dynamic lightning. Getting the game ready will be extremely difficult under these conditions. Edit 1: Having read through the comments above, I'm honestly speechless that you rolled this out with so many bugs. I'm a developer and I get wanting to rolloff old technical debt to the new system, but you don't break a key feature of your product to do that. This should have been rock solid before it went to production. So frustrated right now. Edit 2: This just keeps getting worse. I enabled dynamic lighting and got this:&nbsp; <a href="https://www.screencast.com/t/GzpZM77r0" rel="nofollow">https://www.screencast.com/t/GzpZM77r0</a> Edit 3: Why is the toggle for using dynamic lighting barriers not in the dynamic lighting section of the map settings? Edit 4: Fortunately, it looks like there's the ability to switch back to legacy lighting and that works? At least it does at first glance. Edit 5: It looks like after switching from new lightning, back to legacy, and back to new again, the white translucent overlay issue goes away. Edit 6: Enabling daylight mode gets rid of the big black blob in the middle, but seems to break dynamic lighting entirely. So the blob goes away, but my players tokens do not see any of the dynamic lightning lines at all. Edit 7: Tokens with legacy dynamic lighting being pasted into a map with new dynamic lighting also creates the black blob, and it covers up the tokens so I have to blind click and drag to delete them in order to see again.&nbsp; I haven't tested other combinations of legacy / new combinations between tokens and maps, but it seems like they don't resolve conflicts gracefully.

Caos, are you using Ctrl+L to test the player view? Ctrl+L showing shared vision of all tokens is a well known and reported bug for UDL. The best way to accurately test vision is through a dummy account until this is resolved.&nbsp;&nbsp;

David M. said: Caos, are you using Ctrl+L to test the player view? Ctrl+L showing shared vision of all tokens is a well known and reported bug for UDL. The best way to accurately test vision is through a dummy account until this is resolved.&nbsp;&nbsp; Yes, I use CTRL + L to test. I have try with dummy account and I dont have this problem. Thanks à lot. For information, If I convert manualy a map to dynamic light, I dont have this problem with CTRL+L.

TheWebCoder said: This dynamic lighting update was a big, unwelcome surprise today when I was trying to get my game ready. When adding new dynamic lighting, the white translucent overlay makes it very hard to see my map, making it very challenging (next to impossible) to place the dynamic lightning. Getting the game ready will be extremely difficult under these conditions. Edit 1: Having read through the comments above, I'm honestly speechless that you rolled this out with so many bugs. I'm a developer and I get wanting to rolloff old technical debt to the new system, but you don't break a key feature of your product to do that. This should have been rock solid before it went to production. So frustrated right now. Edit 2: This just keeps getting worse. I enabled dynamic lighting and got this:&nbsp; <a href="https://www.screencast.com/t/GzpZM77r0" rel="nofollow">https://www.screencast.com/t/GzpZM77r0</a> Edit 3: Why is the toggle for using dynamic lighting barriers not in the dynamic lighting section of the map settings? Edit 4: Fortunately, it looks like there's the ability to switch back to legacy lighting and that works? At least it does at first glance. Edit 5: It looks like after switching from new lightning, back to legacy, and back to new again, the white translucent overlay issue goes away. Edit 6: Enabling daylight mode gets rid of the big black blob in the middle, but seems to break dynamic lighting entirely. So the blob goes away, but my players tokens do not see any of the dynamic lightning lines at all. Edit 7: Tokens with legacy dynamic lighting being pasted into a map with new dynamic lighting also creates the black blob, and it covers up the tokens so I have to blind click and drag to delete them in order to see again.&nbsp; I haven't tested other combinations of legacy / new combinations between tokens and maps, but it seems like they don't resolve conflicts gracefully. To bring you up to speed on a few items: 2. This bug occurs with multiple tokens that create overlapping fields of night vision. 3. The Restrict Movement option was separated out because it applied to lines under both LDL and UDL. And I completely agree with #1.

keithcurtis said: Farling said: Craig S. said: I played a game today and had some issues with UDL.&nbsp; First, restrict movement did not work.&nbsp; Everyone could walk through walls.&nbsp; Secondly, using "Draw Shape" did not work to block lighting at all.&nbsp; I needed some circles for columns, and it's like they weren't drawn at all. Thanks for allowing feedback!&nbsp; Please fix these things, though. Circles do not block light with UDL. The best thing for columns is to draw an X with two straight lines. Quick note: this is also true of LDL. Actually circles do block light in LDL, as long as they're on the Dynamic lighting layer. For best results though, polygonal line shapes you draw (like an octagon) look better.