UDL 1.0 Updates, Bugs, & Feedback

Roll20 might have grown to the point where they need a dedicated PR department, because these statements are really, really , REALLY missing the mark. I've read Drespar's post like five times, trying to wrap my brain around it. You have worried a large part of your loyal, long term paying customer base so you'd have a line in the sand internally for your development team? If so, consider a different approach: Internally, have whatever conversation you like, while recognizing that part of the loyal, long term paying customer base does not share your confidence, and that needs to be addressed. Externally, instead of a sunset post, assure said customer base that you understand that the new lighting is flawed to the point where the game has extremely frustrating or even unplayable, you're working on it, and the old lighting will be available indefinitely until the new lighting's issues are worked through. This would result in the desired, "yay, Roll20 hears us." If you haven't already, you might also start thinking of compensation for some of the amazing people who have been QA'ing for you for free. Like contact them and offer them a number of free months of service for lending their time so generously.  As it is, basically what I'm hearing is: "having to support both lighting systems on products that we sell negatively impacts our developer resources and our bottom line so we're deprecating the old system in three months. Regardless of these endless posts on the forums saying it's broken, trust us, it's going to be awesome." This has resulted in the undesired, "boo, Roll20 does not hear us." To be totally clear... I want Roll20 to be successful. I want the new lighting to work, and I look forward to using it... when it's truly ready and actually works! Member since 05/15/14 \/  G  GM of 6 games \/ 3747 Hours Played \/ 437 Forum Posts Drespar said: Hey everyone, Wanted to take a moment in here to talk about why we felt it was important and appropriate to set this sunset date.  It is important to set a target date to hold ourselves accountable for getting UDL to a good place on a transparent timetable. The remaining bugs are not acceptable. We still have work that needs to get done to make sure we’ve addressed these issues before sunset. Setting this date is about much more than giving users and other partners a heads-up--it also helps us to set the pace for how UDL will progress. We are confident that, within the upcoming 90 days, we can reach that target before we retire LDL.

I'm running into a unique bug I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet (although I may have just missed it, I didnt read every post). Specifically, when I place multiple tokens with darkvision on an unilluminated map the grid disappears from both my own and the players perspective. I do not experience this bug with UDL disabled nor with global illumination enabled, but on a dark map the moment I place a second token with darkvision the grid disappears.  Here's a clip of how the map appears with one token with darkvision And one with two tokens only one of which has darkvision But once you add a second token with darkvision the grid simply disappears (ignore the hex grid thats built into the background image) This is obviously frustrating and extremely disappointing to discover while doing my final testing before tonight's session. Honestly the fact that I have to devote time before every one of my weekly sessions to bug testing to make sure nothing has broken between sessions is well below what I expect for on a subscription based service. The lighting engine is a primary reason I chose to run my games on roll20 but if things stay this erratic and inconsistent I will likely migrate to another service that better serves my needs. If anyone has run into this and has any workarounds or solutions besides just turning on global illumination (or using LDL which I'm trying to ween myself off of given its upcoming deprecation) I'd love to hear them. 

Hi, Matt T. It looks like you're experiencing bullet point three on the list of known issues below (from the UDL 1.0 blog post). As far as I know, the communication about it so far is "report it in our bug forum", which you've just done. Roll20 says they "are investigating the best way to fix" it and will "address" it either "before" or "sometime soon after" the LDL sunset. I'm not sure what the solution is other than to wait for the fix, if one is forthcoming. (In the meantime, does anyone else have any ideas for workarounds?) From the blog post: We also have a few issues that we’re still collecting info on. While these bugs are high priority, we’re still investigating the best way to fix them. If you are experiencing any of these, please report it in our bug forum. The following is a list of fixes that will be addressed either before sunsetting LDL or sometime soon after: RING/BULLSEYE EFFECT : There is a documented issue where some light sources have a ring/bullseye effect to them. PAGE FREEZING : There have been a handful of reports of UDL freezing games. We’re currently determining the root cause of these freezes. This is the bug we currently need the most information on. If you’ve experienced it, please let us know through our Help Center . GRID : We’ve received reports of Players and GMs losing sight of the grid when using characters with Night Vision. VISIBILITY : We’ve received reports of Players and GMs losing their sight, or experiencing tokens disappearing after moving specific tokens.

So there was never a plan to provide actual feature parity between UDL and LDL (using the general English definition of parity, rather than the roll20 version that was mentioned in a previous thread)? Having light boundaries which reveal the location of secret doors is not a good thing. Katie Mae said: As it stands, adding a feature that can replicate the line functionality of LDL is not in our current plan. Such a request would align more fully with a feature update for a later time after sunset. I would encourage you to submit a suggestion , and feel free to drop a link back here for visibility.

Peter said: UDL just doesn't work.  Tried to use it with brand new "Thrown to the Wolves" from your online store, created as new game and  then Game Settings/Convert to UDL UDL can't see anything, with a token, yes has 'Vision' enabled on the 'Updated' UDL tab.  Yes I added some lights, including the token itself as well as a separate light token. Struggled with it trying all manner of things for about an hour - can get reveal of map layer in greyscale only. I'd be curious to see the settings panels for your tokens and pages (offering a hand). I created a test game with that addon and ran the conversion just now, and turned on vision and night vision for a random NPC token with no issues. UDL still has bugs, but it shouldn't take that much effort just to see something.

Farling said: So there was never a plan to provide actual feature parity between UDL and LDL (using the general English definition of parity, rather than the roll20 version that was mentioned in a previous thread)? Having light boundaries which reveal the location of secret doors is not a good thing. Lolsob. "We're forcing you to switch to UDL to satisfy an arbitrary deadline because our dev team doesn't know how to work to a schedule. Your complaints about missing functionality from LDL? Well, after months of silence we'll tell you we never planned to add that feature anyway. So you can shout some more into the void in the Suggestions area. Maybe in three years we'll give you the feature we took away from our new lighting system. Oh by the way, continue to do unpaid QA for this broken product you're already paying for. Bye!"

Farling said: So there was never a plan to provide actual feature parity between UDL and LDL (using the general English definition of parity, rather than the roll20 version that was mentioned in a previous thread)? In common English this is called lying.

Katie Mae said: Hi folks!  I have two things to clarify:  1. D&D selects their product release dates independently. We strive to sync our releases up to their schedule when possible. In this case, D&D’s release of Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft happened to line up with our announced sunset date after we had already locked in our plans. The release of Roll20 Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft is unrelated and will not affect sunset in any way. I don't believe you.  A. This is too much of a coincidence and B. You've already broken my trust by telling me DIRECTLY in another thread that you were going to keep LDL until UDL was usable. It's nowhere near usable, and I don't trust that it will be by this sunset date. You haven't demonstrated enough progress for me to expect that you will be able to make this date.  We would be more then happy to test this in beta phase, but you are pushing this release out early and you all know it.  I would think that you would at least make sure it was decent before even announcing a date.   I would also like to point out Kate's wording of "locked in our plans." Sounds like this is the date, and it's not going to be changed regardless of how bad UDL is.  Is this an assumption on my part? Perhaps- but I think the evidence points towards it being the reality.  

TheWebCoder said: Roll20 might have grown to the point where they need a dedicated PR department, because these statements are really, really , REALLY missing the mark. I've read Drespar's post like five times, trying to wrap my brain around it. You have worried a large part of your loyal, long term paying customer base so you'd have a line in the sand internally for your development team? If so, consider a different approach: Internally, have whatever conversation you like, while recognizing that part of the loyal, long term paying customer base does not share your confidence, and that needs to be addressed. Externally, instead of a sunset post, assure said customer base that you understand that the new lighting is flawed to the point where the game has extremely frustrating or even unplayable, you're working on it, and the old lighting will be available indefinitely until the new lighting's issues are worked through. This would result in the desired, "yay, Roll20 hears us." If you haven't already, you might also start thinking of compensation for some of the amazing people who have been QA'ing for you for free. Like contact them and offer them a number of free months of service for lending their time so generously.  As it is, basically what I'm hearing is: "having to support both lighting systems on products that we sell negatively impacts our developer resources and our bottom line so we're deprecating the old system in three months. Regardless of these endless posts on the forums saying it's broken, trust us, it's going to be awesome." This has resulted in the undesired, "boo, Roll20 does not hear us." To be totally clear... I want Roll20 to be successful. I want the new lighting to work, and I look forward to using it... when it's truly ready and actually works! This puts it very neatly. This thread and the issue of UDL shines a light on several aspects of roll20s business practices that are failing the company and more importantly its most loyal customers.

hi, Come on, guys and girls! :) All this talk of lying, and second agendas and mistrust is just not constructive in anyway. Could this have been handled with more finesse from the beginning from Roll20. Definitely!! Is it worth screaming about still. Definitively not. And i think they got the message. :) We need to give all the help we can (and many sure do make great feedback) to get a great product. My humble suggestion is for this community to focus on give honest, precise and valuable feedback here, so when come May 18, we will have a great product. For me that is loyalty. Go Dev team. :) 

Katie Mae  said: Hi folks!  I have two things to clarify:  2. The fact that lines block light from the edge of the line, instead of being blocked from the center like in LDL, was a deliberate decision.  This decision was based on our data surrounding user confusion that a solid visual element (of a line) was not blocking as if it was solid. The line blocking from the center was a frequent source of confusion for users new to Dynamic Lighting, and we want to take measured steps toward making Roll20's learning curve less steep.  As it stands, adding a feature that can replicate the line functionality of LDL is not in our current plan. Such a request would align more fully with a feature update for a later time after sunset. I would encourage you to submit a suggestion , and feel free to drop a link back here for visibility. Eight months of silence just to say it was a deliberate decision to cripple a portion of Dynamic Lighting so a tiny fraction of the user base would not be confused when they were starting out? It's not like this was a design decision out of the gate. It was only brought into being as part of the fix to tokens seeing across DL lines after UDL had already been released for over two months. It is highly likely this was not a measured change. A measured change would have been introduced at the beginning of UDL. A measured change would have been announced so that Roll20 could say how it benefitted users. This is a breaking change that was introduced in an apparently cavalier manner in an emergency situation to fix a game-breaking bug. A bug that was introduced because of a change to where vision was calculated from on a token. The change was included without any announcement, and questions about it were met with silence. I brought up this issue immediately after the breaking change was first introduced, outlining the loss of functionality and additional work this would require to fix maps on released marketplace products. I also brought up that some maps with thin walls and doors just will not work well with the  breaking change because thin lines are hard to select for movable doors. Instead of addressing this back in June when the change was on the Dev server and I brought it up, there was silence. The same when I brought up the issues when the breaking change was moved to live. Or after sunsetting was first announced. Or late last year. Or when this thread was started. People can easily learn how to cope with vision being blocked by the center of lines. But the loss in functionality brought by this change might as well be permanent, because anything added to the Suggestions forum will likely take years to be added if it is ever done. We get to look forward to a system that is slower (4x the lines to calculate against), works with fewer maps (DL lines block more of the art, too much in some cases), and will take several hours per product for creators to redo their maps to accommodate this deficiency. That is time lost for creating new products. UDL started with vision blocked from the center of DL lines. Suggesting that we make an entry in the suggestions forum to restore the original functionality in UDL is backwards. The correct course would have been to add the changed vision blocking as an option later if it was really about helping new users. However, the timing and silence don't point to helping new users being the likely reason for the change, and making a breaking change that makes the DL system worse for a hypothetical aid for new users is disappointing.

TheWebCoder said: Roll20 might have grown to the point where they need a dedicated PR department, because these statements are really, really , REALLY missing the mark. This is spot-on.  When Roll20 was brand new no one expected complete professionalism from the company.  As the user base has grown and the company certainly seems to be making a significant amount of money, expectations rise.  Having a dedicated team that's responsible for communications and fostering community relations would be very helpful. Xeno said: hi, Come on, guys and girls! :) All this talk of lying, and second agendas and mistrust is just not constructive in anyway. Could this have been handled with more finesse from the beginning from Roll20. Definitely!! Is it worth screaming about still. Definitively not. And i think they got the message. :) While the personal attacks could certainly be toned down, I do find it helpful seeing everyone's complaints as it makes me realize that my experiences with UDL and Roll20 in general are not isolated incidents.  My frustration with how things are rolled out/communicated has been growing for a while now and I can see that sentiment is shared by many users posting in this thread. Xeno said: We need to give all the help we can (and many sure do make great feedback) to get a great product. My humble suggestion is for this community to focus on give honest, precise and valuable feedback here, so when come May 18, we will have a great product. For me that is loyalty. This is not a classroom project where we are all contributing as a team.  This is a product that we pay for - performing free QA work for Roll20 is not something I'm willing to do. So far LDL has met my gaming needs and it was the main feature why I selected Roll20 over other VTTs several years ago.  Once LDL goes away and we are stuck with UDL I will give it a fair attempt (I'm using it in one campaign so far but have definitely encountered issues.)  Hopefully they will have smoothed out all of the issues by then, but based on past history with these kind of communications, I have a lot of doubt that they will be able to meet the mark. -Adam

Player pages go black when *different* page's UDL dynamic lighting enabled: Multiple players logged in, and can see map on "page 1", which is fully lit without dynamic lighting.  As GM, opened the page bar and went into the settings for "page 2" and turned on dynamic lighting.  The players views all went black and stayed that way until they refreshed (reloaded the page) in their browsers.  Ditto when turning on dynamic lighting for "page 3"... seems like a bug.  [technical: this was in the Nihaltan game under my login] - - - - - - - In addition, for two of three players, UDL was working when their tokens were on a page; for the 3rd player, all they could see was black.  We confirmed that their token had vision turned on, and the page had daylight turned on.  We deleted and recreated their token, same effect; we also dragged an arbitrary art to the map, set their login to control it, and gave that token vision.  No success.  They were on a mac / Safari and the other players were on windows PCs / Chrome. Quirky reverse effect: when we tried to revert a map to LDL with fog of war... if Adv FoW was off, all players saw black (even with an area dragged out); with Adv FoW on, the two PC players saw a dim black-and-white view of areas that had Reveal rectangles drawn out... while the Mac player saw the revealed area in full color as intended.  Weird.

Katie Mae said: (Snipped) You strive to sync them up but, it does not affect the sunsetting date when it just so happens to be on a major release? You are telling everyone, a VTT would not know of when a particular module was going to come out ahead of time despite the negotiation and planning that goes into such? It may have not been you that made the decision, but there is absolutely somebody at the top that did want to finalize the solution, for a module(s) that may or may not benefit from UDL. Nobody is blaming you, however it is disingenuous to state such things. The point people were concerned of was missed entirely with regards to the date. Everyone would like to know that if  UDL is not stable  will you force the sunsetting of LDL regardless or will the date be pushed back. Committing to a date was reasonable, however, if you cannot make such date every GM/Player must  be well informed if they should expect bugs on release or flexible sunset date for their own planning/scheduling. Please reassure us that existing/known bugs on sunset date will push the release back rather than send out a imperfect product. Where is this large majority of people that have been confused by how lines worked in LDL? What I can see is a huge amount of people constantly bringing up the issues that the alteration of calculations makes. In every thread regarding UDL, people are pointing out the issues this causes with existing modules, previously made maps, and currently made maps. LDL to UDL conversion does not take this difference into account, nor will several player or company made modules that used LDL to begin with. Exactly why is this the best solution when it ends up forcing longtime users to alter their maps due to a change none seem to have requested? Please do  point us in the direction of the suggestion that requested lines block from the edge rather than center and if said suggestion went through the voting process. Alternatively, the data that has so indicated this as the best solution, I can't recall there being any polls or similar put out for this change so it must be internal. Lastly asking people to post a Suggestion for adding in an LDL standard is absolutely absurd. Suggestions in the thread can take up to a decade  to implement if we're going by dark mode requests (not fulfilled), map organization (no folders and still ongoing), or token updates (broken, still no way to address default tokens as player). This is also absolutely not  feature parity, changing a basic function then saying you can add it in later does not count as parity. The sole fact a conversion tool  is necessary is a problem in it's own right, it still routinely breaks games, causes black screens and irreparable damage without rolling back the game. Lag is a huge issue, it needs fixing right after  line calculations are fixed as it's likely the new calculation methods are causing such lag (along with numerous brute forced methods for lighting on a brief glance). Another issue is the game straight up not opening on several users computers, that isn't lag nor page freezing, but it's not properly listed so... all that's left might be minimum specs for the platform going up (which users absolutely need to know asap). There needs to be some larger testing front on Roll20 for game breaking issues, it's hard to determine if lower spec computers, computers without non-internal GPUs, or some other combination of factors like processing capability or ram is causing them. The large frustration people are also having is that Roll20 itself, the company is not seeming to find new bugs, it's only on the User end. While user known bugs are wonderful to list and address, it might be in the best interest to demonstrate that the Userbase in itself is not the sole QA testers for the company. Announcements are good, adding them to this thread might be best along with any immediate comments users may make such as a "patch" not solving the problem listed as it has a few times, with lag especially. A much, much more clear indication for all users in these fixes would be exactly what hardware/software it was tested on as all reports from the user end are asked for such, why shouldn't the fixes have the same listing? Additionally, why is the UDL list of bugs to fix so terribly prioritized and non-committal? Page Freezing, Grids Disappearing, and Visibility  are "fixes that will be addressed either before sunsetting LDL or sometime soon after", despite being completely game breaking . They are listed in their own separate area and seemingly  can't  be 100% finished before the sunsetting despite constant pressure. If major game breaking bugs  can't be fixed before sunsetting, then why sunset on that date at the potential cost of users ?

TheWebCoder said: I've read Drespar's post like five times, trying to wrap my brain around it. You have worried a large part of your loyal, long term paying customer base so you'd have a line in the sand internally for your development team? If so, consider a different approach: I had the exact same reaction when I read that post.  This is totally tail wagging the dog.  In software development, one usually sets internal goals in order to meet external targets, not vice versa. There is one thing I'm not clear on, though: My understanding of the sunset date is that it will no longer be possible to make new maps with LDL, but existing maps with LDL will continue to function.  Will this be true indefinitely, or will there be a later date by which existing maps with LDL must be converted?  If existing maps will function indefinitely, then concerns raised about the breaking of existing assets may be moot.

I've been trying to use the Updated Dynamic Lighting over the Legacy for my upcoming campaign, however, there are some serious lag issues at times.  The worst of it is when I zoom in, the lag getting to the point where the game basically freezes until I zoom back out.  I know this system is going to replace the Legacy system in May, but if this issue isn't going to be resolved before then I would hope you keep the Legacy system as it works so much better.

Will there be Secret Door support in UDL? Farling said: Having light boundaries which reveal the location of secret doors is not a good thing.

Sticking with the positivity thing as I have looked at Foundry and cannot be bothered with making that work, might as well go back to MapTools (which was great until I found Roll20).  UDL was working fine for us as a group until we hit the snag with the grid disappearing.  We had absolutely no lag, no loss of sight.  Initially had the cone of sight problem, but that was sorted swiftly.  We remain with the grid problem and I was about to suggest to Matt T that altering the opacity of the grid can sometimes help, but I find 3 tokens with night sight is the breakover point when even that can't help.  I was experimenting with a map and found that with night vision off and grid at 100% opacity, the grid is heavy (yuch!) but visible, as we would expect (bottom image).  With night vision active for 3 tokens and even at 100% opacity, the grid is gone (top RH image) BUT remove the map [yeah, I know that is not a playable solution : )) ] and the grid is back (top LH image).  Can anyone shed any light on why the map layer should make that difference? Tokens are on token layer and map is definitely on map, all LDL setting are off and all boxes on LDL wiped of any entries.

Thank you for offering to help Keith I'm wondering if problem is that I added the module; then Launched the game, decided I needed to convert the lighting and closed game, ran convert and then tried starting again... And it failed.. This time it worked: OK... So I did this: Create new game (with roll20 5e charsheet); Add module to game; Settings/Convert lighting; Launch game - for first time Drag copy of the Alice token; make it generic and assign to my user; give it Vision and NIght vision 30'/green Drag my user token from bottom left onto map page; "Rejoin as player" and it seems to work fine ! Thank you for getting me to have another go. keithcurtis said: Peter said: UDL just doesn't work.  Tried to use it with brand new "Thrown to the Wolves" from your online store, created as new game and  then Game Settings/Convert to UDL UDL can't see anything, with a token, yes has 'Vision' enabled on the 'Updated' UDL tab.  Yes I added some lights, including the token itself as well as a separate light token. Struggled with it trying all manner of things for about an hour - can get reveal of map layer in greyscale only. I'd be curious to see the settings panels for your tokens and pages (offering a hand). I created a test game with that addon and ran the conversion just now, and turned on vision and night vision for a random NPC token with no issues. UDL still has bugs, but it shouldn't take that much effort just to see something.

Hello, I've had troubles with UDL since 2-3 weeks, relating to the visibility issue : when I (GM) or a random player selects and/or moves a random token, all tokens sometimes disappear, and the background layer goes grey. Some other times, everything goes black (like in no light source and totaly unexplored). It happens randomly regardless of the maps, I'm using firefox and the settings of the pages are : UDL enabled (obviously) explorer mode some tokens generate light no token has night vision enabled As a GM I ended up running a fight totaly blind (no PC nor NPC token displayed on the map) which is quite annoying. I hope you'll get rid of these bugs ASAP because the game is barely playable when you never can tell whether each player or the GM will be able to see anything at all and when.

Xeno said: hi, Come on, guys and girls! :) All this talk of lying, and second agendas and mistrust is just not constructive in anyway. Could this have been handled with more finesse from the beginning from Roll20. Definitely!! Is it worth screaming about still. Definitively not. And i think they got the message. :) We need to give all the help we can (and many sure do make great feedback) to get a great product. My humble suggestion is for this community to focus on give honest, precise and valuable feedback here, so when come May 18, we will have a great product. For me that is loyalty. Go Dev team. :)  You're probably a really nice person and the type of person who tries to stay positive. I hope you keep that quality in life. I am quite jaded when it comes to most things.  I totally agree with you that my posts (only speaking for myself) were not productive, but I think they do express how many people feel. To some extent I think Roll20 needs to hear it. I don't think you're wrong about giving honest feedback, but at the same time, I also don't think we're getting enough from them in return- specifically when it comes to shutting down UDL.  Hopefully they reconsider, but I have my doubts.   So Roll20 team- consider moving the date?  Or reimbursing us some of the money we've spent on a bad product?

I have very little patience for toxic positivity. If you want to remain positive about this product when Roll20 has given us no earthly reason to be positive, that's your affair, not mine. The latest announcement -- that a key piece of functionality from LDL lost in UDL through a sloppy patch job last summer is now permanently lost, and will be consigned to the dustbin of the Suggestions & Ideas section, and that Roll20, after months of silence on the issue, now tells us it never had any intention of putting it back in -- is the final nail in the coffin. This company, incredibly, is subtracting functionality from its product and asking paying customers not only to like it but to provide unpaid QA to assist in said subtraction . I've never seen a company that treated its customers like this and survived in the long term. So I am done posting in this thread, and will be checking out Roll20 alternatives from now on. Be well, all of you.

Katie Mae said: ... 2. The fact that lines block light from the edge of the line, instead of being blocked from the center like in LDL, was a deliberate decision.  This decision was based on our data surrounding user confusion that a solid visual element (of a line) was not blocking as if it was solid. The line blocking from the center was a frequent source of confusion for users new to Dynamic Lighting, and we want to take measured steps toward making Roll20's learning curve less steep.  As it stands, adding a feature that can replicate the line functionality of LDL is not in our current plan. Such a request would align more fully with a feature update for a later time after sunset. I would encourage you to submit a suggestion , and feel free to drop a link back here for visibility. ... Want to echo that this is explicitly not feature parity. It does not give me confidence that any of the outstanding issues will be fixed by the sunset date. What other missing or broken features are we never going to get because of Roll20's arbitrary definition of parity? Will 5e darkvision ever be possible? Will secret doors ever be secret again? (this part isn't just about secret doors, it has major implications for map art in general) Is Roll20 simply not going to run on a huge portion of low-end hardware? It would genuinely be sad to see how badly things are going here if it weren't so infuriating instead. Especially the fact that they can pay someone for the purpose of gaslighting us in these threads but not get any of this stuff figured out. I am going to cancel my subscription today. This feels like thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars down the drain with how Roll20 treats us on this issue.

Josh said: Will secret doors ever be secret again? (this part isn't just about secret doors, it has major implications for map art in general) I just want to point out that this is overstating the case.  Secret doors can be secret if you use the same width line for the secret door as you use for the walls.  It's only if you use a different width line that they become obvious.  Personally, I've never used different width lines for secret doors, so any maps I have made are unaffected. This may be small comfort for those who have invested a lot of time in assets that use different width lines, or for those who have some important reason for using different width lines.  But saying that secret doors can no longer be done is inaccurate.

Ken C. said: Josh said: Will secret doors ever be secret again? (this part isn't just about secret doors, it has major implications for map art in general) I just want to point out that this is overstating the case.  Secret doors can be secret if you use the same width line for the secret door as you use for the walls.  It's only if you use a different width line that they become obvious.  Personally, I've never used different width lines for secret doors, so any maps I have made are unaffected. This may be small comfort for those who have invested a lot of time in assets that use different width lines, or for those who have some important reason for using different width lines.  But saying that secret doors can no longer be done is inaccurate. Agreed.  It's unfortunate that this change will require re-doing a lot of maps, but it's not removing functionality. It's unfortunate that it leaves weird black lines on the maps once you've seen both sides of a DL line in explorer mode, but that's just kind of ugly, not really gamebreaking. And the real fix would be to make it so that we can actually select and move lines most of the time when we click on them, without having to make them weirdly large.

Do we have word yet on when there will be full API support for UDL? I still can't assign or modify the dimming/sharpening effect.

Josh  said: Is Roll20 simply not going to run on a huge portion of low-end hardware? I don't think low-end is the issue. There may be specific settings required, but I can run UDL on a Chromebook with no significant performance issues. Joshua V. said: Do we have word yet on when there will be full API support for UDL? I still can't assign or modify the dimming/sharpening effect. This is important. We are still waiting on some key token settings to be exposed after well over a year, despite repeated requests.

Joshua V. said: Do we have word yet on when there will be full API support for UDL? I still can't assign or modify the dimming/sharpening effect. +1 are you planning on adding API support before sunsetting LDL?

Hi, Just updated a copy of my game to UDL and ran into a couple of problems right off the bat: 1) In a map without "Daylight mode" on, a token without night vision is acting strange. Whenever the token stops on a space, then moves on it leaves a "shadow". Looking from the token's perspective, those shadows can be seen as though they are lit up. Using the "hide explorable darkness" tool has gotten rid of them 2) Having two or more characters with "nightvision" causes the grid to disappear. Does anyone know what is causing these issues and how I can deal with them? Thanks Tom

OK so thinking positive thoughts, what's the worst can happen right ? I converted one page in my campaign using the converter tool OK, we have light, tokens have vision,  the token I'm using as a test seems to have already seen most of the map so I try to reset the explorer vision end up here  putting it back to LDL ...  honestly ... this is beginner stuff ... I'm PAYING for this !

Ken C. said: TheWebCoder said: I've read Drespar's post like five times, trying to wrap my brain around it. You have worried a large part of your loyal, long term paying customer base so you'd have a line in the sand internally for your development team? If so, consider a different approach: In software development, one usually sets internal goals in order to meet external targets, not vice versa. True. Moreover, the thing that should hold them accountable should not be some arbitrary date, but rather high quality standards for the end product long before any public review. That is a matter of personal pride in workmanship and a desire for the company to be the best. R20 should want to put out the best and most polished product on the market. That is how you keep competition at bay and there is a good bit of competition out there putting out superior product at competitive rates. Alas, R20 tosses half baked updates/features that have flaws that the development team can see and then tries to tell us it is wonderful. R20, stop gaslighting your users. Instead, put together a really polished feature, build some buzz, then enjoy the glow of the wonderful feedback you get on the reveal. I can't believe the negative feedback you received on UDL, Zoom, Voice/VIdeo, and other things over the years is particularly pleasant. There is a way to do this where everybody wins.  It was said best above but worth repeating. I come (and pay) to enjoy my hobby with some really great people, not perform free QA work for R20. If R20 wants user input (and it should), set up a voluntary and well structured UAT program and do it on the dev server with formal feedback. Reward those volunteers who do a good job with a free subscription or market place items.  Like others, I am rooting for R20 to succeed. Like others, my patience has limits and I am already aware of other options. I wish you the best of luck making this fly and hope you will learn/grow from this. 

After reading all of the posts on here, I decided to copy one of my games to the Dev server and test out UDL once more. Last time I tried, eight or nine months ago, UDL would bring my computer to a standstill till the game just crashed (exiting the browser was the only way to get it to do anything). I copied the game, with about 50 pages/maps, and selected convert lighting. That took about three minutes. Now I did not go looking for it yet but what does "convert lighting" actually do? All of the maps and tokens were still set to LDL. Using the game with some players to look at the character sheet changes (a minor mess), I changed one map to UDL with Explorer Mode and it automatically converted the player token from LDL to UDL for vision. Is that what convert lighting allows for? After an hour and a half of moving about the map, this is just one player though, I am happy to say my machine did not freeze or show any signs of lagging, missing grids, or weird black shapes.  My first reason years ago of paying for Pro was the dynamic lighting (scripts and character sheets came later). I am glad to see my first test was successful.

I can add to that and say that i ran a DotMM session for 5 hours yesterday with 2 players with full UDL nightvision and explore mode on the page, without any performance issues. Still some cosmetic stuff and the deal with overlapping night vision. But overall a good stable experience.

For last night's session, I tried using UDL again and it didn't work. Emits Lights didn't work, other times, players couldn't see...none of it worked until I switched back to Legacy DL! Thank goodness its still there or they'd be no Dynamic Lightning for my group. Here's hoping for resolutions! Happy Gaming To you! <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/publisher/170/patrick-von-raven" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/publisher/170/patrick-von-raven</a>

Hi All, I'm a long-time Roll20 player, soon to be first-time-Roll20-GM. I've been building out my campaign as a free user but figured I'd upgrade to try out DL since I was having a hard time designing map reveals with the free tools. These probably won't be the most revelatory comments in the thread but I wanted to share what I've noticed as someone who literally learned UDL yesterday. Also, if I'm an idiot and am doing things way wrong to cause these problems, maybe someone can correct me. The biggest things I've noticed were Noticeable lag in relatively simple settings - i.e. one round chamber with a central pillar, 8 torches and three characters with vision. Explorer mode seems really cool but is completely unusable due to lag. It completely crashed my browser (Chrome) on a more complex map and token movement slows to a crawl. UDL didn't seem to work well/at all with shapes - especially ellipses. I did think it was a great feature for atmosphere and I hope one day it's a fully functional tool. I didn't notice any significant game-breaking bugs like erroneous map reveal, but I was just working by myself. I'll probably have my players load in to a test map and see if it's feasible to use, but in the meantime, I'll be making a backup with black polygons and basic fog of war.

Hi, Kevin. As to the last bullet point: Circles and ellipses are not reccomended as dynamic lighting barriers for either form of dynamic lighting. (The system expects straight lines). You'll get better results with either a polygon or an "X" blocking line of sight through a pillar.

Something I've been noticing while working with the API is that the token doesn't seem to be getting updates properly. Some examples besides changing the lighting values are GM Notes and showing the name plate. In some cases I've unchecked show nameplate and saved but it blinks right back on. Lighting has been the same way. I grant a token vision from the normal front-end settings but they don't take affect right away. Sometimes I have to trigger a change from another part of the token UI and wait for it to trigger. Patrick Von Raven said: For last night's session, I tried using UDL again and it didn't work. Emits Lights didn't work, other times, players couldn't see...none of it worked until I switched back to Legacy DL! Thank goodness its still there or they'd be no Dynamic Lightning for my group. Here's hoping for resolutions! Happy Gaming To you! <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/publisher/170/patrick-von-raven" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/publisher/170/patrick-von-raven</a>

For the nameplate issue, check if you are running HealthColorAuras. It frequently overrides that with it default settings.

I realized that I missed a few more bugs in the Convert Lighting tool. It converts dim lights to bright lights (items #2 and #3). <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/9743305/" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/9743305/</a>

keithcurtis said: For the nameplate issue, check if you are running HealthColorAuras. It frequently overrides that with it default settings. That's probably it!

I'm testing UDL now, and I'm having three major issues (that have already been report by some other users): 1. When two or more tokens with night vision are together, the grid desapear for me (the GM) 2. It is really hard to see where bright light ends and where dim light begins (this was pretty clear with LDL) 3. The explorer mode: I don't know if it will work correctly with players, I haven't played UDL yet. But in my GM vision of a token (Ctrl+L) I see the "explored" path of every token with Vision, rather then only the one selected. I believe this was handle with the Enforce Line of Sight op in LDL, but can't find where to fix this in UDL. This is confusing once it becames hard to track each PC movement. If I'm missing some option, please, help me... I hope LDL isn't shutted down before UDL is working better. Thanks in advance.

João Luiz G. said: 2. It is really hard to see where bright light ends and where dim light begins (this was pretty clear with LDL) With Updated Dynamic Lighting, you can choose the brightness level that works best for your preference. Katie Mae says more about that earlier in this thread. &nbsp;

Brian C. said: Katie Mae &nbsp;said: Hi folks!&nbsp; I have two things to clarify:&nbsp; 2. The fact that lines block light from the edge of the line, instead of being blocked from the center like in LDL, was a deliberate decision.&nbsp; This decision was based on our data surrounding user confusion that a solid visual element (of a line) was not blocking as if it was solid. The line blocking from the center was a frequent source of confusion for users new to Dynamic Lighting, and we want to take measured steps toward making Roll20's learning curve less steep.&nbsp; As it stands, adding a feature that can replicate the line functionality of LDL is not in our current plan. Such a request would align more fully with a feature update for a later time after sunset. I would encourage you to submit a suggestion , and feel free to drop a link back here for visibility. Eight months of silence just to say it was a deliberate decision to cripple a portion of Dynamic Lighting so a tiny fraction of the user base would not be confused when they were starting out? It's not like this was a design decision out of the gate. It was only brought into being as part of the fix to tokens seeing across DL lines after UDL had already been released for over two months. It is highly likely this was not a measured change. A measured change would have been introduced at the beginning of UDL. A measured change would have been announced so that Roll20 could say how it benefitted users. This is a breaking change that was introduced in an apparently cavalier manner in an emergency situation to fix a game-breaking bug. A bug that was introduced because of a change to where vision was calculated from on a token. The change was included without any announcement, and questions about it were met with silence. I brought up this issue immediately after the breaking change was first introduced, outlining the loss of functionality and additional work this would require to fix maps on released marketplace products. I also brought up that some maps with thin walls and doors just will not work well with the&nbsp; breaking change because thin lines are hard to select for movable doors. Instead of addressing this back in June when the change was on the Dev server and I brought it up, there was silence. The same when I brought up the issues when the breaking change was moved to live. Or after sunsetting was first announced. Or late last year. Or when this thread was started. People can easily learn how to cope with vision being blocked by the center of lines. But the loss in functionality brought by this change might as well be permanent, because anything added to the Suggestions forum will likely take years to be added if it is ever done. We get to look forward to a system that is slower (4x the lines to calculate against), works with fewer maps (DL lines block more of the art, too much in some cases), and will take several hours per product for creators to redo their maps to accommodate this deficiency. That is time lost for creating new products. UDL started with vision blocked from the center of DL lines. Suggesting that we make an entry in the suggestions forum to restore the original functionality in UDL is backwards. The correct course would have been to add the changed vision blocking as an option later if it was really about helping new users. However, the timing and silence don't point to helping new users being the likely reason for the change, and making a breaking change that makes the DL system worse for a hypothetical aid for new users is disappointing. Dear Roll20 Team, Listen to this man. Don't make UDL worse by removing this feature that has been here from the start, and that actually works as intended.

Items on the map layer with Vision and Night Vision will affect the display for the GM of any page using UDL.&nbsp; Repro method Select map, turn on Vision and give it any amount of Night Vision. Set the page settings for UDL on.&nbsp; You will see LOS indication for the map. Vision of any element on the Map layer should have no effect on the play experience. Only token and DL layers. Page settings Token (map on map layer) settings Play experience

Isn't that intended, that you can put building lights on the Map Layer? You're wanting to make every Campfire &amp; Street Lamp &amp; Chandalier &amp; Spotlight into a Token and not a map object? (Asking Keith) keithcurtis said: Vision and light settings of any element on the Map layer should have no effect on the play experience. Only token and DL layers.

Had a similar experience just tonight. Map had Dynamic Lighting turned on, all Legacy settings turned off. Set GM Darkness Opacity to 0 so I can see the whole map clearly. Player Tokens had Vision and Night Vision turned on 60/blue/Dimness/30, legacy features off. Looked fine when I tested it solo in Player Mode (Ctrl-L). Only thing I would have said was off was that the alpha channels of the night vision for all the players were additive, contributing to an almost solid blue night vision colour so I could only see their section of the map when viewing from Player Mode (Ctrl-L). Which I could live with if... the rest worked. The evening of, my players log on, and the map shows up fine for them... until someone moves their character token. Then the only thing that everyone can see is a greyscale area (no saturation) where there should be a blue alpha overlay, and no one can see any tokens at all, including their own. The effect resets for the players and works if they refresh their browser tab; for me the GM it resets to what it's supposed to be if I tab to another map and back again. Until... just one person or the GM moves a token... then everything is messed up again, no blue overlay only greyscale, and no one can see any tokens. So I would say that this is not feature complete. This is not a 1.0 release. Please let us know when it is.