BEHIND THE DM SCREEN TALK 150801 DYNAMIC LIGHTING If you pony up the extra cash and pay roll20 for the additional perks like dynamic lighting, you will increase the level of immersion for your players. It is interesting, but be forewarned, it is a little tricky and somewhat quirky to get it running properly. You saw last week, the players were entering an entirely new campaign area, and the initial hangups we had to get it to go. All strictly pilot error on my part, simple things that were overlooked. So let me just walk you through this process so that you can make sure you have these areas addressed, and your game play is enhanced. At the very end of this brief training class, I'll explain how to prepare for testing, how to turn it on and then how to verify your handiwork before using it during a session. Ok, last week I shared with you my method for creating my maps, which was basically dragging and dropping a scan of my handwritten plan directly into roll20, sizing it to the grid, temporarily drawing on the tokens layer using the map below (on the map layer) as a guide, deleting the original map, moving the drawn items to the map layer, adding tokens and items of interest on the tokens layer, along with room numbers, DM notes, charts and other such info on the GM layer. For the full discussion, you can find it in the new roll20 DM101 forum, along with other helpful information and free downloads which is added to weekly at this link. If you're unable to see the link, be sure to set up a free roll20.net account so you can follow along with us each week. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/942114/dm" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/942114/dm</a>... 1. From the vertical menu on the left, go to the dynamic lighting layer. 2. Add your dynamic lighting elements, which is basically all your walls, minus any door openings. The door elements will be made last, with a different color, so we can move them out of the way when the players decide to enter the room. Otherwise, without door elements, the players will be able to see the contents of the rooms, even though there may be a door token on the token level for them to move out of the way. Its unfortunate that we don't have any way to group items between layers, so that when the player moves a door on the tokens layer, it might also move that dynamic lighting layer door item along with it, essentially doing double duty, but maybe that's something for later versions of roll20...hint, hint! 3. So, we make these wall lines by choosing the polygon line drawing tool from the left side menu, selecting a bright contrasting color, like yellow (which shows up on the left hand side of the draw popup menu), with no fill color (which is the lower right hand corner item in the color pallette) which then shows up the righthand side of the popup menu (represented by a checkerboard), and lastly the thin line setting. 4. The polygon tool will draw a line between points, so do your perimeter first, and put every line in the middle of every wall. This will allow the players to see some of the wall (on either side of the wall), give them some reference as to where they are, that it is in fact a wall they're seeing and they're not floating out in the middle of space somewhere, which can be somewhat disorienting. 5. Draw all the internal walls. Do not draw over door openings. Just be sure that you draw up to other previously drawn walls. Otherwise, a gap will allow the dynamic light to spill into other areas, so we want to be sure each room is fully enclosed. If you make a mistake during your drawing, use the keyboard shortcut control-z to undo the last line, straighten it out, and continue where you left off. Worst case scenario, just use the left menu arrow to pick a wall and delete it entirely if you have to redo it again. 6. After all the walls are done, choose a different color in the polygon draw tool like red. From the inside of each room, draw each door, making sure to connect both wall lines. To make moving it easier, add a small angled handle to either or both ends of the door line. Just be sure you keep those inside the room, because they will cast shadows with dynamic lighting, and if it's a secret or concealed door, you don't want to tip off your players as to it's location. The same goes for alignment, if necessary, press and hold the alt key and using the arrow, move it flush with both adjoining walls so that it doesn't accidentally leave an indentation! 7. Let's turn on the dynamic lighting. In the upper right hand corner of the display area, click the blue page settings icon and display the pages in your campaign. Hover your mouse over the page you're working on so that the blue gear icon appears. Click that icon and enter the page settings menu. At the bottom, in the dynamic lighting area, be sure that a check mark is in the box next to enabled. For the time being, the rest in this area can be unchecked. Click OK. 8. Put a token on the token layer, open it, and in the basic tab, give yourself control of it. Also, and most importantly, in the advanced tab, if the character is not human, enable 'has sight' and in the emits light section, add 60' in the box on the left. Be sure that the box 'All players see light' is not selected. For human players that need a torch to see where they're going, their torch token will have that box selected. The human player token though, will not have any of these settings. Either group the two items together, or just tell your players to either click and drag to select their token and the torch, or press and hold the shift key to select multiple tokens to move them all simultaneously. Here are token advanced tab settings for dynamic lighting and the effect, which is what the players see. Human token settings... Torch token settings... Non-human token settings... 9. Now, check your work. Click and select the token. Use the keyboard shortcut 'control L' to see what your players will see. Move the token around the entire map and verify that everything works, you didn't miss anything, and that everything is lined up correctly. To get out of this mode, click anywhere on the screen, other than on the token. 10. Lastly before game play, go back into the page settings again and enable 'enforce line of sight', 'only update on drop', and 'restrict movement'. Leave off 'global illumination', since this overrides the dynamic lighting and makes everything bright.
