Dynamic Lighting stopped working mid-game

Hi! I am a youth councellor running a Dungeon of the Mad Mage campaign for youth in Finland (62 sessions in, yay!). We just got enough "proof" for the city to expand our budget needs for this club and therefore acquired Dynamic Lighting. The players have loved it by far, but I am still experimenting with it to see how it would best suit the players and my needs in Undermountain. Today as we were testing the "Explorer Mode" for the second time with a team, Dynamic Lighting suddenly went haywire. It revealed a WHOLE MAP to the players. I panicked and changed them to a waiting room so fast that it was unclear to me on what they saw. To my belief, they saw the whole map and all of the outlines of different rooms as if they had explored it in the Explorer mode. Spaces between the walls included. It took me a moment to get the game back up and running again, but I managed it and we finished the session about a hour thereafter. Thing is: I want to ensure that this does not happen again. I am glad that I can offer the specifics of what happened just as it all went down: -Characters were on Level 6: Lost Level -According to a player, the change happened immediatedly as their character moved a single space from Room 5 northwards to the corridor. They took a single step through the door (I always delete the small orange bar from the doorway as they explore) and afterwards the WHOLE MAP got revealed! Players were quick to call it out and I reacted fast. I didn't have my hands on my keyboard or mouse at the time this happened so I am certain it couldn't have been from me.

The best thing to do is to report this in a  Help Center Request . This bug does happen from time to time anecdotally. If it does happen to you again, I know the devs would be anxious to see you Console Log ( Chrome ,  Firefox ) from the time of the occurrence (too late for the last one). That would give them a better idea of what was going on. Hopefully the Help Request will give you some information to reduce the chance of future occurrences, but often (I believe) for bugs of this nature, the customer service folks will send the ticket to the Devs, who may still be collating data, testing, and trying to figure out the root cause. You may not get an immediate solution, but you will be a vital part of creating a solution for everybody.

Meanwhile, here is my work-around. I have two players, in two different games, who have experienced this more than once. In one case I was close enough to go see the player's screen. His view was clear and brighter than on my GM view, as if there was no dynamic lighting at all.  I have started using filled black rectangles to cover the screen in patches, so that if/when this happens I don't have to pull everyone out and troubleshoot.  It's annoying, because I have to go to the map layer to see what room the players are about to enter and how to remove the covering rectangles, but until this is solved it's the only way I can be sure of maintaining the suspense.

You can use the darkness tool (not Fog of War) to "permanently" hide some areas. Whether these persist during a catastrophic DL failure though, I don't know.

Valerie M. said: Meanwhile, here is my work-around. I have two players, in two different games, who have experienced this more than once. In one case I was close enough to go see the player's screen. His view was clear and brighter than on my GM view, as if there was no dynamic lighting at all.  I have started using filled black rectangles to cover the screen in patches, so that if/when this happens I don't have to pull everyone out and troubleshoot.  It's annoying, because I have to go to the map layer to see what room the players are about to enter and how to remove the covering rectangles, but until this is solved it's the only way I can be sure of maintaining the suspense. Aaand alternatively, you can just enable Legacy Dynamic Lighting which never has the problems of UDL and works far smoother but you lack the ability to make pretty color lights and use windows that block movement.  /shrug.  If you want fog war like memory of where they have been you can endure a 1-3 second delay on drop with LDL and enable the advanced fog of war feature, or you can keep just LDL on and use Light breadcrumbs.  

The darkness tool does not survive the catastrophic loss of UDL -- been there, done that. I never use explorer mode -- I use my own version of light crumbs when I want players to have sight/memory of explored areas.  LDL did work perfectly for my needs, but I'm trying to accept the reality that it is going away.  Sigh.

Valerie M. said: The darkness tool does not survive the catastrophic loss of UDL -- been there, done that. I never use explorer mode -- I use my own version of light crumbs when I want players to have sight/memory of explored areas.  LDL did work perfectly for my needs, but I'm trying to accept the reality that it is going away.  Sigh. UDL and the sunset of LDL is the greatest thing that will ever happen to Foundry lol.  

I had the exact same thing occur both as a DM and as a player, the entire map is revealed as if the UDL is suddenly turned off, whats worse is that the tokens as a player stop behaving correctly, in that they become static however the movement and status bars still move if dragged or stepped by curser keys. The only partial solution was numerous refresh or closing the browser altogether