Dynamic Lighting - Updates, Bugs, & Feedback

Kaiju K. said: So I swapped to Ultimate Dynamic Lighting recently and I noticed that, even without walls, I experience a bit of lag while scrolling up and down the dark map lit by light sources and the five PC's night vision? No tinting has been used. Is this lag normal for UDL, and more importantly, will it affect my players? If I were to hazard a guess, my screen lags because I can see everyone's light as the GM, but I hope the players will be spared of this. Edit: And yes, hardware acceleration is on. Explorer mode usually causes lag for me unless it is on a tiny map.  Check to see if you have it turned on.  If so, turning it off can provide instant lag relief. -Adam

Hello, Is there a way to prevent things like vision and auras stacking on top of each other for the DM? I run a game with 4 players currently who all obviously have their vision enabled, when they are all stood close together, each players field of vision stacks for myself as DM and makes my screen very bright. This also happens with any auras I look to use. I was hoping to start giving my NPCs vision, so I could click into their individual token for a turn and see what they see, so i can run them more realistically (rather than me metagaming as DM with what i can see on the overall view), but as soon as NPCs have any vision turned on, the map becomes so bight with stacked vision that it becomes unplayable.  An option, where the vision/auras only appear when the token is selected would be amazing. I hope that makes sense, i don't feel like i am explaining myself very well there to be honest. Thanks Mike

Mike A. said: Hello, Is there a way to prevent things like vision and auras stacking on top of each other for the DM? I run a game with 4 players currently who all obviously have their vision enabled, when they are all stood close together, each players field of vision stacks for myself as DM and makes my screen very bright. This also happens with any auras I look to use. I was hoping to start giving my NPCs vision, so I could click into their individual token for a turn and see what they see, so i can run them more realistically (rather than me metagaming as DM with what i can see on the overall view), but as soon as NPCs have any vision turned on, the map becomes so bight with stacked vision that it becomes unplayable.  An option, where the vision/auras only appear when the token is selected would be amazing. I hope that makes sense, i don't feel like i am explaining myself very well there to be honest. Thanks Mike Unfortunately, it doesn't work well for NPCs to have vision at all. At least that's my opinion based on how busy the screen gets and the impact on performance. For tokens that are not controlled by any player, a nice feature in the future would be for vision to not show for the GM unless they use Ctrl+L on the token. This would allow for checking vision on a token without having it clutter the screen the bulk of the time.

Brian C. said: For tokens that are not controlled by any player, a nice feature in the future would be for vision to not show for the GM unless they use Ctrl+L on the token. This would allow for checking vision on a token without having it clutter the screen the bulk of the time. That would be an excellent feature.

For tokens that are not controlled by any player, a nice feature in the future would be for vision to not show for the GM unless they use Ctrl+L on the token. This would allow for checking vision on a token without having it clutter the screen the bulk of the time. +1 For this idea!

Mike A. said: Hello, Is there a way to prevent things like vision and auras stacking on top of each other for the DM? I run a game with 4 players currently who all obviously have their vision enabled, when they are all stood close together, each players field of vision stacks for myself as DM and makes my screen very bright. This also happens with any auras I look to use. I was hoping to start giving my NPCs vision, so I could click into their individual token for a turn and see what they see, so i can run them more realistically (rather than me metagaming as DM with what i can see on the overall view), but as soon as NPCs have any vision turned on, the map becomes so bight with stacked vision that it becomes unplayable.  An option, where the vision/auras only appear when the token is selected would be amazing. I hope that makes sense, i don't feel like i am explaining myself very well there to be honest. Thanks Mike Mike,  I also applaud the idea of having NPC vision a "Only active when held"  type situation.     I have a tip that helps a little with auras that I use in my games.  doesn't really help with vision, and has nothing to do with dynamic lighting, but it can help with auras and is controllable by players (if players have aura control in a game)   I swear I picked it up from Innovative Tips and Tricks thread, but when I looked which user/post to attribute it to, I couldn't find it.   Anyway, it is based off the fact the the aura color pallet has pre-selections, but actually uses a hex code, so you can set the transparency to be even lighter than normal by adding two digits after the hex code.  In the picture below, the 'bright yellow' code is #ffff00.  I added 45 at the end to make it about half as strong as it was before.   To do this, select the color you want and then put your cursor in the hex-code bos after it and type the two-digit level you want. Hit ENTER to set the level, then just exit hit the "Save Settings" button and it will apply.   Getting the right balance of visibility sometimes takes experimentation. That setting will persist on that token but doesn't stay if you change the color and come back to the same color.  If the GM copies the token and pastes it on another page, the aura settings will persist.  If that version is saved as the default token to the character sheet,  it can be dragged from the Journal section onto new maps and the setting will persist.  

Brian C. said: Mike A. said: Hello, Is there a way to prevent things like vision and auras stacking on top of each other for the DM? I run a game with 4 players currently who all obviously have their vision enabled, when they are all stood close together, each players field of vision stacks for myself as DM and makes my screen very bright. This also happens with any auras I look to use. I was hoping to start giving my NPCs vision, so I could click into their individual token for a turn and see what they see, so i can run them more realistically (rather than me metagaming as DM with what i can see on the overall view), but as soon as NPCs have any vision turned on, the map becomes so bight with stacked vision that it becomes unplayable.  An option, where the vision/auras only appear when the token is selected would be amazing. I hope that makes sense, i don't feel like i am explaining myself very well there to be honest. Thanks Mike Unfortunately, it doesn't work well for NPCs to have vision at all. At least that's my opinion based on how busy the screen gets and the impact on performance. For tokens that are not controlled by any player, a nice feature in the future would be for vision to not show for the GM unless they use Ctrl+L on the token. This would allow for checking vision on a token without having it clutter the screen the bulk of the time. This would absolutely be a fantastic feature.  I hate having to toggle vision on and off again fro NPCs just to get a line of sight.

FWIW, with the API, you can toggle sight on and off with a token mod macro. All Roll20 modules have NPC vision/nightvision settings pre-set, just turned off by default. But yeah, that would be no substitute for a "toggle on while Ctrl-L is active".

cant believe the D light problem still on ipad, man, months...

Horvald said: I have a tip that helps a little with auras that I use in my games.  ...  Anyway, it is based off the fact the the aura color pallet has pre-selections, but actually uses a hex code, so you can set the transparency to be even lighter than normal by adding two digits after the hex code.  ... Horvald, that is a great trick! Thanks for posting.

Not Sure when it got this bad but I just discovered that night vision is completely broke. tokens can not see there set ft of sight regardless of the setting you change it to. it can be easier to see it in these pictures with nocturnal turned on, if its set to none its just black completely black.   Then when you move you can see how the dynamic lines are creating possibly a strange unseen blockage that is covering the map up and making tokens basically vanish. but i you move closer they reappear but the vision is still not at the set 60ft. turning off or on token drop does not fix, if you set vision to 100ft the token can only see out to 70ft. Any ideas on a solution? Roll20 please add this to your list of fixes asap.

This is likely a symptom of the 5E measurement system.  The dynamic lighting system goes by actual radius (as in a round area).  5E calculates everything as being a square and circles don't exist, so diagonals don't at all line up with dynamic lighting measurements that are based on radius.  If you switch to any other measurement system in the page settings, it works pretty well.

I'm using the darkness tool and it seems to work fine for the most part, but whenever I log out of the game it semi-resets. It seems that the areas I've revealed stay the same, but the token can't see them until I change the "Represents Character" field for the token representing the party. I thought maybe turning on Explorer mode would help, but it doesn't do the trick. It does allow the token to see a grayed out version of what was previously visible, but it doesn't help with the actual darkness reveal issue. Edit: It's not just when I leave the game. It happens whenever I change pages as well.

I've been experiencing full map reveals with explorable darkness in DotMM module. Extremely large maps, but only few lightsources. Using tokenmod and aura/tint as API. I cannot reproduce the issue myself, but sometimes, we had it in 3 out of 5 sessions now, somebody just suddenly can see the entire map and have to use the create darkness tool to hide it all again. Anybody have experience with that issue? Or a fix even? Couldn't find anything on the forum or google about it in my (short) search. :( Thanks in advance

Is there a scheduled date for the Doors & Windows update that was announced in the May 16th Product Updates announcement?

I recently had to switch my PC from Windows 7 to Ubuntu 22.04. I used Firefox 64-bit 102 on both setups. I've run into an issue which occurs only in the Ubuntu Firefox so far, after testing on various Windows machines and Android devices. When a map that was previously set up with Dynamic Lightning turned on, when I try to load that map as the GM it won't load. It just sits at the black loading area with the random text and never actually loads. If I try to go into the page as a player, it works fine. If I go into a map as GM that does not have DL turned on, and I turn it on and save the map, DL does not turn on. I loaded up Opera, and in that browser I can get into the map with DL on as GM and turn it off or on as I please and it works fine. But if I turn it on in Opera, then try to load the same map in Firefox, it won't load. I can turn off the DL on that page in Firefox and then get onto the map, but then I can't turn DL back on unless I switch to Opera (the only other browser I currently have, which I loaded just for testing this). So there is some sort of DL issue with Ubuntu Firefox. In Firefox 102 under Windows and Android the map will load. Please look into this, as at the moment I can't use Dynamic Lighting at all. I can only turn it on outside my preferred browser, and once on I can no longer access the map as the GM.

Roll20 generally doesn't give dates. but yeah, I'd love to see some progress. After the big code push at the beginning of Operation Warp Speed, there doesn't seem to have been a lot more happening.

Aelanna said: I recently had to switch my PC from Windows 7 to Ubuntu 22.04. I used Firefox 64-bit 102 on both setups. I've run into an issue which occurs only in the Ubuntu Firefox so far, after testing on various Windows machines and Android devices. When a map that was previously set up with Dynamic Lightning turned on, when I try to load that map as the GM it won't load. It just sits at the black loading area with the random text and never actually loads. If I try to go into the page as a player, it works fine. If I go into a map as GM that does not have DL turned on, and I turn it on and save the map, DL does not turn on. I loaded up Opera, and in that browser I can get into the map with DL on as GM and turn it off or on as I please and it works fine. But if I turn it on in Opera, then try to load the same map in Firefox, it won't load. I can turn off the DL on that page in Firefox and then get onto the map, but then I can't turn DL back on unless I switch to Opera (the only other browser I currently have, which I loaded just for testing this). So there is some sort of DL issue with Ubuntu Firefox. In Firefox 102 under Windows and Android the map will load. Please look into this, as at the moment I can't use Dynamic Lighting at all. I can only turn it on outside my preferred browser, and once on I can no longer access the map as the GM. This is probably an issue with some Firefox setting.  Have you verified that hardware acceleration is turned on in Firefox?  If you have both integrated and discrete graphics on your system, is Firefox using the discrete graphics? Do you use any security related addons in Firefox? I have a dual boot machine running MXLinux (which should be running on an older kernel than your system) and ArcoLinux (which is likely running on a newer kernal).  Firefox is my primary browser, is up to date on both of them, and runs dynamic lighting on both distros just fine.

Haven't been following this thread much lately, but it seems like the problem with UDL not respecting light and vision settings for api-generated tokens is back. Just got a report on my SpawnDefaultToken thread and tested myself.  Tokens created by the api (using something like spawnObj = createObj('graphic',baseObj);) don't respect light/vision until the token properties are opened and saved (without even making changes).  IIRC this was fixed a while ago (with the exception of directional lighting), but it's definitely happening again. LDL continues to function as expected. EDIT - gif description

Kraynic said: This is probably an issue with some Firefox setting.  Have you verified that hardware acceleration is turned on in Firefox?  If you have both integrated and discrete graphics on your system, is Firefox using the discrete graphics? Do you use any security related addons in Firefox? I have a dual boot machine running MXLinux (which should be running on an older kernel than your system) and ArcoLinux (which is likely running on a newer kernal).  Firefox is my primary browser, is up to date on both of them, and runs dynamic lighting on both distros just fine. I have verified accelerated graphics is on in Firefox. I have onboard video not being used, and a PCI graphics card running two monitors. Since discrete graphics is the only thing I'm using, Firefox must be using it. The only addons I have are VTTES and Adblock plus. I disabled both and had the same issue.

And I am getting inconsistent results. Sometimes it fails to work, and then suddenly, bam! it's all working correctly and refuses to fail after that. And then I add a second light source, and it all goes kablooey again. Frustrating.

keithcurtis said: And I am getting inconsistent results. Sometimes it fails to work, and then suddenly, bam! it's all working correctly and refuses to fail after that. And then I add a second light source, and it all goes kablooey again. Frustrating. That pretty much sums up my experience. But it never went away so when people were saying UDL was fixed I never believed them.

Aelanna said: I have verified accelerated graphics is on in Firefox. I have onboard video not being used, and a PCI graphics card running two monitors. Since discrete graphics is the only thing I'm using, Firefox must be using it. The only addons I have are VTTES and Adblock plus. I disabled both and had the same issue. Something you might try would be to create a new user on your computer.  Log in as that user, and see if that user can log in and load the map.  You could remove the user after the test, but the new user would have no addons at all, and a totally stock batch of config files.  If you are able to load into the game that way, then the "nuclear" option for your normal user account would be to delete the .mozilla folder in your home directory to force it to create new config files. 

Aelanna said: I have verified accelerated graphics is on in Firefox. I have onboard video not being used, and a PCI graphics card running two monitors. Since discrete graphics is the only thing I'm using, Firefox must be using it. The only addons I have are VTTES and Adblock plus. I disabled both and had the same issue. Also maybe test WebGL in Firefox? <a href="https://get.webgl.org" rel="nofollow">https://get.webgl.org</a> <a href="https://get.webgl.org/webgl2/" rel="nofollow">https://get.webgl.org/webgl2/</a>

Also confirming issue with Directional Light not updating when using TokenMod to change vision / lighting. I would have to click on the token and hit save setting to work as intended. Also having issue with torch not showing up for tokens who uses my vision/light macro, I would have to just open token setting n save for it to update and see the roll20 torch.&nbsp;

Svinder said: I've been experiencing full map reveals with explorable darkness in DotMM module. Extremely large maps, but only few lightsources. Using tokenmod and aura/tint as API. I cannot reproduce the issue myself, but sometimes, we had it in 3 out of 5 sessions now, somebody just suddenly can see the entire map and have to use the create darkness tool to hide it all again. Anybody have experience with that issue? Or a fix even? Couldn't find anything on the forum or google about it in my (short) search. :( Thanks in advance Came to this thread because I have a session coming up and was hoping to hear this had been fixed. Ah well. I'll check again later.

Over here sipping on coffee waiting for doors and windows..

Very often when I draw a line in the DL layer using "thin" line width, I cannot later select that line, even if I try selecting it using a window around just that line. It will select if I use a larger window that selects that line and multiple other lines around it, but that's often frustrating, forcing me to redraw everything. I usually avoid using thin DL lines, but sometimes I want the players to see a feature on the map like a picture or door frame that would be obscured by a thicker line.

Rick A. said: Very often when I draw a line in the DL layer using "thin" line width, I cannot later select that line, even if I try selecting it using a window around just that line. It will select if I use a larger window that selects that line and multiple other lines around it, but that's often frustrating, forcing me to redraw everything. I usually avoid using thin DL lines, but sometimes I want the players to see a feature on the map like a picture or door frame that would be obscured by a thicker line. Thin lines require adding a small "tail" at an angle to be able to select them again. Small lines will often work for&nbsp; most &nbsp;situations. For those where it doesn't, you can set a Small box be one-way looking in to allow the players to see what would normally be obscured by the line (although it might be a little hard to line up with the wall. In the DL Tips and Tricks thread, I have a few techniques that I have adopted, including using the one-way lighting to allow players to see into a line without seeing past it.&nbsp;<a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/10920258/" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/10920258/</a>

Brian C. said:&nbsp; Thin lines require adding a small "tail" at an angle to be able to select them again. Small lines will often work for&nbsp; most &nbsp;situations. For those where it doesn't, you can set a Small box be one-way looking in to allow the players to see what would normally be obscured by the line (although it might be a little hard to line up with the wall. In the DL Tips and Tricks thread, I have a few techniques that I have adopted, including using the one-way lighting to allow players to see into a line without seeing past it.&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/10920258/" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/10920258/</a> Thanks, Brian. I saw that thread and your post about using one-way lighting earlier and have been using it lately. I still had the thin lines on some older maps and went back to edit them, which is when I ran into my problem.

For tokens that are not controlled by any player, a nice feature in the future would be for vision to not show for the GM unless they use Ctrl+L on the token. This would allow for checking vision on a token without having it clutter the screen the bulk of the time. +1 for this idea. Maybe it should be posted in the Suggestion forum?

Hi,&nbsp; I just updated my game and my map drop-down menu doesn't show up properly anymore. It's super white and hard to navigate.&nbsp; See below

Confirmed. Possibly related to recent forum facelift?

Drespar said: Hey Roi, Thanks for the report-- We are looking into it now! Good... I am having the same issue! PLEASE for GODS SAKE let the background be BLACK or grey again as it was before! WHITE FONT on WHITE BACKGROUND is VERY HARD TO READ!!! Also the "Archived Pages" subtitle is NOT THERE anymore! (bottom row on the left!) WHO thought THIS would look good?!

keithcurtis said: Confirmed. Possibly related to recent forum facelift? It is NOT just the forum but the whole page as well as the VTT... ALL options in VTT now share the same Pink color...

Drespar said: Hey Roi, Thanks for the report-- We are looking into it now! I'm also having the same issue for the map drop down on both dark and normal mode on the VTT

TheMarkus1204 said: keithcurtis said: Confirmed. Possibly related to recent forum facelift? It is NOT just the forum but the whole page as well as the VTT... ALL options in VTT now share the same Pink color... True, but I just meant that the map page error could be an accidental product of the other changes.

Hazarding a wild guess: I have looked at the CSS for the site and links are now using a CSS variable instead of a hard coded color. This could be preparatory for implementing a site dark mode (it is the approach used in the VTT). If so, I am content to wait for the dust to settle, however much I might personally dislike the use of pink in display text.

I'm ok with pink, just eliminate the white on white on the map navigator or give me a list of maps by name instead.

This sheer white aestetic is giving me issues due to my eyesight condition which makes sharp whites blur over other colours. The new site aestetic if intentional is a huge step down for accessability in my opnion. If you're going to implement something this sheer, then please add some kind of alternative option for those of us who genuinely can't see properly when there's too much white onscreen.

RoiPhilosophe said: Hi,&nbsp; I just updated my game and my map drop-down menu doesn't show up properly anymore. It's super white and hard to navigate.&nbsp; See below I am having the same exact problem.&nbsp; And what's worse is that it overrides darkmode as well so it's eye-scorchingly bright.&nbsp; This needs to change NOW.&nbsp; I don't care if it's a prep for some new feature either, it's painful, unwanted, and completely unnecessary.

I am having the same exact problem.&nbsp; And what's worse is that it overrides darkmode as well so it's eye-scorchingly bright.&nbsp; This needs to change NOW.&nbsp; I don't care if it's a prep for some new feature either, it's painful, unwanted, and completely unnecessary. Yeh - surely they could test it offline and not on the live website.&nbsp;

Fluffanutter said: I am having the same exact problem.&nbsp; And what's worse is that it overrides darkmode as well so it's eye-scorchingly bright.&nbsp; This needs to change NOW.&nbsp; I don't care if it's a prep for some new feature either, it's painful, unwanted, and completely unnecessary. Yeh - surely they could test it offline and not on the live website.&nbsp; You said it: They COULD test it... Have they done it? Obviously not... IF they'd test the things they implementations, there were no transparent overlays in VTT which are annoying in case you want to read a pdf or have a character sheet open and want to read things... If they'd test their implementations, the PDF feature WOULD work fine. Instead: it does NOT (or at least NOT as intended!)... I could go on and on with this list...

keithcurtis said: It appears to have been largely reverted. What has been reverted? Regarding the forum itself: A little more distance or a clear separation of the individual subforums would be nice! WHY don't they take the following approach: Implement a new feature, have some players (chosen at random) TEST it without impacting the rest of the Site / users (A game on the Dev Server for example). Let those give feedback and ADJUST the implementation based on THEIR feedback! THEN have another group of users test this improved feature... After they are done testing and all adjustments are made, roll the feature out for everyone! This approach is much more consumer friendly as the approaches taken right now!

keithcurtis said: Hazarding a wild guess: I have looked at the CSS for the site and links are now using a CSS variable instead of a hard coded color. This could be preparatory for implementing a site dark mode (it is the approach used in the VTT). If so, I am content to wait for the dust to settle, however much I might personally dislike the use of pink in display text. Same approach as VTT? I seriously hope NOT! Just invert the colors and leave the rest as is! ( Minus the latest adjustments regarding layout and color choice! )

Drespar said: Hey Roi, Thanks for the report-- We are looking into it now! Hopefully they will be looking into it faster than into 2 factor authentication (aka 2FA). That thing is in Limbo for a VERY long time now.&nbsp;

Accidental post. I deleted it, but you must have caught it before I realized I had Stylus activated! Or given the time stamp difference, I guess you are using something like digest or email interaction. :D

For anyone struggling with the white Page Toolbar bug, there's an easy fix (at least for chrome, but you can probably do the same thing in other browsers.) If you inspect element, find the section for the page toolbar, then uncheck "color-surface 1" it'll go back to normal until you close the page or refresh. Hopefully that will tide people over until they fix it.&nbsp; Here's a video demonstrating&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6jLFz6z5bk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6jLFz6z5bk</a>