Dynamic Lighting - Updates, Bugs, & Feedback

DM Eddie said: I mean all they have to do is run an adblocker and they can see the whole map and you'd never know so really the whole UDL system is an opt in feature.  You have to want it to use it.  Client by client.  Should they fix it?  I don't think they can unless they moved out of the browser sadly.  I run an adblocker (ublock origin) all the time and can use udl just fine.

Kraynic said: DM Eddie said: I mean all they have to do is run an adblocker and they can see the whole map and you'd never know so really the whole UDL system is an opt in feature.  You have to want it to use it.  Client by client.  Should they fix it?  I don't think they can unless they moved out of the browser sadly.  I run an adblocker (ublock origin) all the time and can use udl just fine. This has always mystified me to. If I log in under my dummy account, I can see DL just fine with Adblocker on. Always have. DM Eddie, is there a specific browser/extension/platform that you can repeat this with? If so, it might be helpful to the devs.

Latest push to UDL seems to have cleared up the odd little keyhole issue on re-sized lines. It also seems to have cleared up a long-standing issue that few mention: the odd effect where you used to see the inside of a line while crossing it. Much cleaner experience. In fact, it feels really nice right now. Thanks Dev team! Great new feature.

Is it at all possible to get the old color picker on the DL layer? It provides a few benefits: It is much easier to choose a consistent color by using the presets. We can fill shapes/polygons for moveable elements like doors. A filled version is easer to select for moving the door out of the way.

Brian C. said: Is it at all possible to get the old color picker on the DL layer? It provides a few benefits: It is much easier to choose a consistent color by using the presets. We can fill shapes/polygons for moveable elements like doors. A filled version is easer to select for moving the door out of the way. I strongly, strongly second this! For some tasks (module conversion, API scripts) an exact and consistent color definition is essential!

keithcurtis said: Latest push to UDL seems to have cleared up the odd little keyhole issue on re-sized lines. It also seems to have cleared up a long-standing issue that few mention: the odd effect where you used to see the inside of a line while crossing it. Much cleaner experience. In fact, it feels really nice right now. Thanks Dev team! Great new feature. The keyhole is fixed for all situations except resizing from thin to extra large lines which isn't very common. What's happening is that the original line thickness is being used for collision detection instead of the current line thickness. So going from smaller to larger has the token ending up partially in the line, and going from larger to smaller has the token ending up stopping before it hits the line. Is it possible to have collision detection use the current line thickness instead of the original one?

Man, using rectangles for doors is a treat. Much easier to align, much easier to see the dang door.

keithcurtis said: Brian C. said: Is it at all possible to get the old color picker on the DL layer? It provides a few benefits: It is much easier to choose a consistent color by using the presets. We can fill shapes/polygons for moveable elements like doors. A filled version is easer to select for moving the door out of the way. I strongly, strongly second this! For some tasks (module conversion, API scripts) an exact and consistent color definition is essential! Yes, please!!! Very irritating getting colors to exactly match now for scripts (and/or OCD haha). I appreciate the general idea to make it easier to use custom colors, but not at the expense of removing presets that save time/effort for 99% of real use cases. 

SHHHH, don't let then know or they will try to sunset it again........   And we all know how that went with the parity LDL to UDL promise and what we still have today in that regards. Tom :)

Tom said: And we all know how that went with the parity LDL to UDL promise and what we still have today in that regards. You mean more features in UDL, such that I haven't touched LDL in well over a year?  Yep, know exactly what you mean.

keithcurtis said: Brian C. said: Is it at all possible to get the old color picker on the DL layer? It provides a few benefits: It is much easier to choose a consistent color by using the presets. We can fill shapes/polygons for moveable elements like doors. A filled version is easer to select for moving the door out of the way. I strongly, strongly second this! For some tasks (module conversion, API scripts) an exact and consistent color definition is essential! Another issue with the new color picker that is not so much a DL problem, but would be a distinct loss were it to be integrated into the other layers, is that it cannot handle rgb a , and would disallow control of transparency.

keithcurtis said: keithcurtis said: Brian C. said: Is it at all possible to get the old color picker on the DL layer? It provides a few benefits: It is much easier to choose a consistent color by using the presets. We can fill shapes/polygons for moveable elements like doors. A filled version is easer to select for moving the door out of the way. I strongly, strongly second this! For some tasks (module conversion, API scripts) an exact and consistent color definition is essential! Another issue with the new color picker that is not so much a DL problem, but would be a distinct loss were it to be integrated into the other layers, is that it cannot handle rgb a , and would disallow control of transparency. To be fair, I tell myself weekly never to use an invisible line, but I still do, and it still burns me as I lose them constantly all over the place.  I get the value in them cause I do use them, but my god I must have 1000 lines just hiding all over the place in my various sessions that I just could never find again, same with invisible tokens lol.  I lost one last night when I accidentally sent a breadcrumb to map layer instead of Token layer and I swear somehow it must have moved a few squares but I just could not multiselect and find the bugger.  

DM Eddie said: keithcurtis said: keithcurtis said: Brian C. said: Is it at all possible to get the old color picker on the DL layer? It provides a few benefits: It is much easier to choose a consistent color by using the presets. We can fill shapes/polygons for moveable elements like doors. A filled version is easer to select for moving the door out of the way. I strongly, strongly second this! For some tasks (module conversion, API scripts) an exact and consistent color definition is essential! Another issue with the new color picker that is not so much a DL problem, but would be a distinct loss were it to be integrated into the other layers, is that it cannot handle rgb a , and would disallow control of transparency. To be fair, I tell myself weekly never to use an invisible line, but I still do, and it still burns me as I lose them constantly all over the place.  I get the value in them cause I do use them, but my god I must have 1000 lines just hiding all over the place in my various sessions that I just could never find again, same with invisible tokens lol.  I lost one last night when I accidentally sent a breadcrumb to map layer instead of Token layer and I swear somehow it must have moved a few squares but I just could not multiselect and find the bugger.   This maybe a workaround for you: If the token is hidden under the Map, right click on the map and then choose: "to back". So the Map itself is put in the background. After this, you should be able to see the hidden token...

DM Eddie said: To be fair, I tell myself weekly never to use an invisible line, but I still do, and it still burns me as I lose them constantly all over the place.  I get the value in them cause I do use them, but my god I must have 1000 lines just hiding all over the place in my various sessions that I just could never find again, same with invisible tokens lol.  I lost one last night when I accidentally sent a breadcrumb to map layer instead of Token layer and I swear somehow it must have moved a few squares but I just could not multiselect and find the bugger.   The really sneaky thing is hidden text object. That happens when you click somewhere else after making a text object, then realize that doesn't just finalize the old text object, but creates a new one, and then you close out properly. But now there's a no-character invisible text object (or five if you keep forgetting). I actually wrote a script command into Survey to find and kill them all.

keithcurtis said: DM Eddie said: To be fair, I tell myself weekly never to use an invisible line, but I still do, and it still burns me as I lose them constantly all over the place.  I get the value in them cause I do use them, but my god I must have 1000 lines just hiding all over the place in my various sessions that I just could never find again, same with invisible tokens lol.  I lost one last night when I accidentally sent a breadcrumb to map layer instead of Token layer and I swear somehow it must have moved a few squares but I just could not multiselect and find the bugger.   The really sneaky thing is hidden text object. That happens when you click somewhere else after making a text object, then realize that doesn't just finalize the old text object, but creates a new one, and then you close out properly. But now there's a no-character invisible text object (or five if you keep forgetting). I actually wrote a script command into Survey to find and kill them all. Do you want to share this script for everyone else here in the forum? It sounds really useful...

keithcurtis said: Man, using rectangles for doors is a treat. Much easier to align, much easier to see the dang door. That's a great idea - making sure doors can be seen clearly from both sides has been a pain for years. -Adam

Kraynic said: Tom said: And we all know how that went with the parity LDL to UDL promise and what we still have today in that regards. You mean more features in UDL, such that I haven't touched LDL in well over a year?  Yep, know exactly what you mean. This was a "funny" reply to this post bud, thought I hit the quote for it but did'nt go through :( " DM Eddie  Pro Permalink   Quote   Report My god, I know you guys are only working on UDL now but you somehow managed to make LDL and AFOW perform pristinely.  I know we'll have to wait and see how it performs under stress but I got 2 players to come and look and we all agree, you guys have done something that has VASTLY improved LDL." Tom

TheMarkus1204 said: Do you want to share this script for everyone else here in the forum? It sounds really useful... It's buried in the Survey script in the help text for texts. It looks like I disabled it for the one-click, because I didn't trust my coding skills to destroy objects in another person's campaign. I'd feel terrible and lose sleep for days. Nevertheless, if you want to try it, grab the survey script from Github, or do an Import from OneClick rather than Install, so you have all the code, and delete line 457:                 helpLabel = helpTexts; Then in the game issue the command: !survey --deleteemptytexts It will go through the game and find and kill them. The function is pretty simple if you don't want to use the whole script: let texts = findObjs({         type: 'text' }); texts.forEach(t => {         if (t.get("text") === '') {         t.remove()       } }); Contact me in a PM if you want more details, since I've probably derailed this thread enough. :)

keithcurtis said: Brian C. said: Is it at all possible to get the old color picker on the DL layer? It provides a few benefits: It is much easier to choose a consistent color by using the presets. We can fill shapes/polygons for moveable elements like doors. A filled version is easer to select for moving the door out of the way. I strongly, strongly second this! For some tasks (module conversion, API scripts) an exact and consistent color definition is essential! I am also am for keeping the old color picker! The new version makes it far too difficult and time consuming to pick the same color I've used before for walls, doors and barriers. 

keithcurtis said: Man, using rectangles for doors is a treat. Much easier to align, much easier to see the dang door. This does not work for me at all. The box (with arrows pointing inward) just blocks all light; its a big shaded area. In fact, the one-way walls don't work for me at all. They seem to work like an ordinary 'wall', blocking all light from getting through.  Is there some special technique to getting a one-way wall to work so that light shines through one side?

Some things to try (since I don't know how you got to where you are). Some are obvious, but I'm trying to be thorough: Make sure you are drawing the lines from scratch Make sure everything is in agreement on lighting system: page and tokens are on UDL Try refreshing the page and/or game. If this is a page you have converted to UDL from LDL instead of from scratch, try duplicating it Make sure the token on the visible side has either night vision or a visible light source. In the meantime, I'll load my game for this page and make sure it is still working (just to rule out a code push).

In case it helps here are my page and token settings, along with a quick gif. The DL lines are as in the previous screen shot Click to animate:

keithcurtis said: In case it helps here are my page and token settings, along with a quick gif. The DL lines are as in the previous screen shot Click to animate: Thanks for responding to my inquiry, Keith, and taking the time to post screenshots. It was helpful, as I immediately realized why the one-way light walls were not working for me. I don't use UDL because it causes massive lag issues, and also, at times, reveals the map to my players. I only use LDL, as that works 100% of the time for my games with no issues or problems whatsoever. I am thinking the new one-way walls only work for those who are somehow able to get UDL to work properly? That would be my guess anyway. It was the same thing when the new Torch button was added to the toolbox a few months back - it would not work for anyone using LDL. Thanks again for your time. It is much appreciated.

That makes sense. Yeah, the only changes to LDL from now on will be incidental. DM Eddie reports that LDL performance has improved after recent updates. I feel the same is true for UDL. I think some of the line ray tracing code might have been optimized a bit. I won't try to convert anyone away from what works for them, but it might be worthwhile to test UDL from time to time. Eventually, some day, in the future, it will be the only game, and it would be good to not be sandbagged when it does. I think it has become far more stable and robust in the last year, and particularly the last six months.

keithcurtis said: That makes sense. Yeah, the only changes to LDL from now on will be incidental. DM Eddie reports that LDL performance has improved after recent updates. I feel the same is true for UDL. I think some of the line ray tracing code might have been optimized a bit. I won't try to convert anyone away from what works for them, but it might be worthwhile to test UDL from time to time. Eventually, some day, in the future, it will be the only game, and it would be good to not be sandbagged when it does. I think it has become far more stable and robust in the last year, and particularly the last six months. Very specifically the AFOW while LDL is on has improved dramatically I feel.  Specially if you have update on drop turned off.  I'm crossing my fingers they don't do anything for a few years with it and it stays as it is right now cause our party loved it when I used it Saturday night.  Even the !flicker commands from torch api looked sexy as hell with the settings and no lag.  

AND now LDL is just plain busted as it randomly changes from wall to one way as others have said, this very well could be thee last straw for me as now lighting has become a complete nightmare for LDL,  Good one Roll20 you just may have lost 50+ customers in one blow,  FIX THIS ASAP PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so friggin pissed right now, giving it til friday and once I recheck and if it is still the same, I think I'm done here, no joke. Tom

Tom said: AND now LDL is just plain busted as it randomly changes from wall to one way as others have said, this very well could be thee last straw for me as now lighting has become a complete nightmare for LDL,  Good one Roll20 you just may have lost 50+ customers in one blow,  FIX THIS ASAP PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so friggin pissed right now, giving it til friday and once I recheck and if it is still the same, I think I'm done here, no joke. Tom I have not experienced this AT ALL.  My sessions perform very well, infact better than before, but its important to know that the new UI on the line drawing should not be used at all or you will get bad interactions.  LDL and even afow perform 10x better since the patch that introduced oneway lighting for some reason.  

Is anyone else getting random LOS blocks? There was a "wall" right down the center of the map on our DMs map. There is no corresponding line on the dynamic lighting page. I had this come up in my game as well. I deleted the main wall and redrew it and the problem went away, but it was causing a line that not there.

Dranik, I had a similar issue recently, but at least for me (after some investigation) it seemed to be caused by a very sharp acute angle in my DL polygon for an odd-shaped object. Here's a sketch showing the approximate geometry that caused my issue. Weird that the "phantom" LoS blocking line did not correspond to the part of the polygon that seemed to cause it. This might not be your issue, but thought I'd share just in case. I should note that I still use LDL, so not sure if it also is an issue for UDL.      

Brian C. said: Is it at all possible to get the old color picker on the DL layer? It provides a few benefits: It is much easier to choose a consistent color by using the presets. We can fill shapes/polygons for moveable elements like doors. A filled version is easer to select for moving the door out of the way. Another +1 for this request! 

Hello, Does anyone else have any issues with one-way dynamic lighting just working as regular dynamic lighting? I have changed the lines from 'walls' to 'one way' and it makes no difference to my players. I am currently running on Legacy Dynamic Lighting after issues with the updated version on a Plus account.  I may be missing something really simple in the set up or token settings, but have looked and cant find anything obvious. Any help appreciated Thanks Mike

Hi, Mike. Sadly, one-way lighting is only available using Updated Dynamic Lighting; although the tool is visible in Legacy Dynamic Lighting, it only produces ordinary barriers, as you have discovered. Roll20 has ceased development of Legacy Dynamic Lighting.

This issue is back! All the maps are broken. Nothing changed just logged in after new update. Seriously...I don't want to have to redo all of the dynamic lighting lines when each map takes 30+ minutes to redo XD This slice of lighting cuts across the entire map in many of my maps. From the top left corner to the bottom right. Edit: Issue was resolved by finding the stray sharp angle as what was posted/mentioned by:  David M. and Dranik.

Mike A. said: Hello, Does anyone else have any issues with one-way dynamic lighting just working as regular dynamic lighting? I have changed the lines from 'walls' to 'one way' and it makes no difference to my players. I am currently running on Legacy Dynamic Lighting after issues with the updated version on a Plus account.  I may be missing something really simple in the set up or token settings, but have looked and cant find anything obvious. Any help appreciated Thanks Mike The new dl features are for UDL only, there is an api script that works with LDL called One Way Dynamic Lighting.  I personally use it for things the players can climb up on and for cliffs. The window bug that many used has been patched away.  Personally, I feel that legacy dynamic lighting gets the job done and the amount of pure frustration that starts happening at the table when players can't get UDL to work properly is so bad that I will never ever touch UDL and when they sunset LDL, My foundry key will get more mileage and roll20 will have 1 less pro sub.  They, and the folks talking up UDL, do not trully understand the frustration of a DM managing multiple tables busting hours of troubleshooting for an unreliable feature.  LDL works fine, it should stay as an alternative just like fog of war has all this time.  

After testing for a bit I found out what causes it an I can replicate it pretty consistently. Whenever I close a square or any form with a sharp angle, the exactly point where the two lines joined create a fake shadow that extends indefinitely. If I do the same square, but in two steps (make three sides of the square, press esc, make the last side) it doesn't do that. Here's a video of it because it's hard to explain <a href="https://webmshare.com/play/9x1RP" rel="nofollow">https://webmshare.com/play/9x1RP</a>

I am having similar problem with the updated maps on ToA.&nbsp; Its pretty chaotic and it seems like I would have to recreate the entire map's dynamic lighting to fix it. Escama said: After testing for a bit I found out what causes it an I can replicate it pretty consistently. Whenever I close a square or any form with a sharp angle, the exactly point where the two lines joined create a fake shadow that extends indefinitely. If I do the same square, but in two steps (make three sides of the square, press esc, make the last side) it doesn't do that. Here's a video of it because it's hard to explain <a href="https://webmshare.com/play/9x1RP" rel="nofollow">https://webmshare.com/play/9x1RP</a>

Please tell me you guys are seeing this issue with the latest version of roll20: Running Doorknocker, I have LDL enabled in the entire session, am noticing random locked doors and secret walls just suddenly being opened when I load into the session, I know they are being opened and not just missing because I drag out a token to the door and pop it closed with a DM command.&nbsp; The players have never even explored the content and its the first time I'm using the map.&nbsp; I can't even concieve how I would have drawn the line and then decided to plop down a token to then leave them all open during the build phase of my campaign.&nbsp;&nbsp; My only thought is that how they changed how the pages work, that maybe doorknockers somehow applying the door command on all the pages at once or something sorta how that duplicated page bug was happening where windows functions were working on every page.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Remember Doorknocker is not part of Roll20 it was a script created by someone in the community it is not guaranteed all scripts with work with updates. It is up to the creator to update them with the changes.

I run doorknocker, but haven't run into that bit of unexpected behavior.

DM Eddie said: Please tell me you guys are seeing this issue with the latest version of roll20: Running Doorknocker, I have LDL enabled in the entire session, am noticing random locked doors and secret walls just suddenly being opened when I load into the session, I know they are being opened and not just missing because I drag out a token to the door and pop it closed with a DM command.&nbsp; The players have never even explored the content and its the first time I'm using the map.&nbsp; I can't even concieve how I would have drawn the line and then decided to plop down a token to then leave them all open during the build phase of my campaign.&nbsp;&nbsp; My only thought is that how they changed how the pages work, that maybe doorknockers somehow applying the door command on all the pages at once or something sorta how that duplicated page bug was happening where windows functions were working on every page.&nbsp;&nbsp; Does this happen with the currently supported lighting system?

Sean G. said: DM Eddie said: Please tell me you guys are seeing this issue with the latest version of roll20: Running Doorknocker, I have LDL enabled in the entire session, am noticing random locked doors and secret walls just suddenly being opened when I load into the session, I know they are being opened and not just missing because I drag out a token to the door and pop it closed with a DM command.&nbsp; The players have never even explored the content and its the first time I'm using the map.&nbsp; I can't even concieve how I would have drawn the line and then decided to plop down a token to then leave them all open during the build phase of my campaign.&nbsp;&nbsp; My only thought is that how they changed how the pages work, that maybe doorknockers somehow applying the door command on all the pages at once or something sorta how that duplicated page bug was happening where windows functions were working on every page.&nbsp;&nbsp; Does this happen with the currently supported lighting system? I will never pass up a chance to state how much I hate UDL and will walk away from this company the day LDL is sunsetted, however, I believe this seems DL agnostic as the actual lines denoting locked, unlocked, and secret are not removed, they are just toggled as if someone opened them on the never-explored new to the players map and the only way a DM could open them after making them is to drag out a token and run the doorknocker commands on them.&nbsp; Its random which ones are toggled.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The person running my game of phandelver, on Firefox, is getting weird graphics when we have nightvision on, I don't have all the info, but it is very weird and only happens with nightvision, it doesn't happen with my browser (on Chrome)

Are you by any chance using tinted nightvision or tinted light? If so, turn that off. In moderation (i.e. one instance on a page), it generally works fine. But when they intersect, they produce highly variable and undesirable effects. My personal recommendation would be to never, ever use them.

My biggest issue with the UDL, and the reason I will likely never use it - opting to go without any dynamic lighting over using it, in fact - is simply the amount of lag it produces.&nbsp; Even just loading up a map with DL, before any tokens with sight are introduced, takes significantly longer than loading a map that doesn't use it, and once tokens are put on the map it becomes a nightmare just trying to move them.&nbsp; This has been an issue from day 1 of UDL, and is still an issue today.

The Bard said: My biggest issue with the UDL, and the reason I will likely never use it - opting to go without any dynamic lighting over using it, in fact - is simply the amount of lag it produces.&nbsp; Even just loading up a map with DL, before any tokens with sight are introduced, takes significantly longer than loading a map that doesn't use it, and once tokens are put on the map it becomes a nightmare just trying to move them.&nbsp; This has been an issue from day 1 of UDL, and is still an issue today. Most people have no issues with lag. Have you checked to make sure that Hardware Acceleration is turned on in your browser?

It's probably been gone over a hundred times already, but I just started using DL and one player in my group could see the entire map, including the light sources (pretty much what I see on the DL layer.&nbsp; I had him turn off hardware acceleration (I saw something from 2 years ago about that) and it fixed this issue for him but made loading maps, moving his character, updates to his screen when I move something, incredibly slow.&nbsp; Is there another fix for this?

LDL could be affected by lag for some folks with HA on, and others with HA off. The advice back then was to "toggle" it and see if the lag went away. AFAIK, the recommendation for UDL is HA on. I have seen enough reports of map revealing to know that it happens, but the only time it has happened to me was once, years ago under LDL. I don't know what the cause is. There are anecdotal reports, but nothing reclipable.

I've only had a few instances where a player (the same one) could see the entire map while using UDL and Explorer mode on. His laptop is old and his household wifi shared with others that use up bandwidth. I stopped using Explorer mode and he hasn't had the problem since. But even on big maps like the half grid maps that Roll20 provides in modules, we all experienced significant lag that I don't even use DL on them. Come to think of it, his issue might have only been on the half grid maps. Yes, his hardware acceleration was on, as was mine, as was all the players. So far, (knock on wood) we haven't had any major issues. Occasionally, we get the 'lights emitting black instead of bright light' for tokens with nightvision (no tint) issue. And one of my games we use UDL with Explorer mode on and have had no issues. The maps are rather small in comparison, though. Of course, there have been updates to make loading faster.

Doug E. said: Occasionally, we get the 'lights emitting black instead of bright light' for tokens with nightvision (no tint) issue. That is the only bug that really happens enough for us to notice. Usually a reload, editing the token or moving it, or some combination clears that up. The only person in our group who reported DL lag had it go away after I walked him through HA activation.

Still having extremely jagged lines in my UDL games, still having extreme amounts of lag, and am now running into an issue post one-way barrier update, where my LDL games are experiencing an issue where there are invisible dynamic lighting lines fanning out in diagonals across the entire ma from a single map corner point, despite there being no lines there that exsit. Swapping to UDL removes these invisible fanning sight blocking lines, but introduces extreme amounts of lag, and the usual, still persisting, extremely jagged shadow lines.