Fog of war & dynamic lighting suggestion

Imagine the following scenario: A party is dungeon crawling and encounter a door. The map is completely dark except for a torch being carried by one in the party (using dynamic lighting). When the party opens the door (and the GM removes the door on the dynamic lighting layer) the light of the torch lits the room beyond. For some reason however, the party closes the door again. The room is again completely black. The same with the corridor behind them that is no longer in range of the torch light. What I would like to see is more like an actual fog of war as seen in RTS games. The map is completely black at the start (or not) and the areas the party have visited but are no longer lit but are something like 20% visible. Dark, but at least the party knows they have already been to that location. I suggest adding four input fields to the lighting controls to set the minimum/maximum amount of that light the specific feature can provide. For example: Fog of war enabled (20% minimum, 100% maximum), dynamic lighting disabled Result: Hidden areas of the map are 20% visible, revealed areas are 100% visible For of war disabled, dynamic lighting enabled (20% minimum, 100% maximum) Result: Unlit areas of the map are 20% visible, lit areas are 100% visible Fog of war enabled (0% minimum, 100% maximum), dynamic lighting enabled (20% minimum, 100% maximum) Result: Hidden areas of the map are completely dark, revealed but unlit areas are 20% visible, revealed and lit areas are 100% visible The maximum number is always at 100% in these examples, but you could use that for example to simulate the sun going down and reducing the lighting of the entire map this way. The default values could be 0% minimum and 100% maximum for both, which would create the current situation. Possible extensions for this feature could be: - a checkbox that decides whether enemies (tokens) should be visible or not when hidden or unlit. - actual fog of war based on history of dynamic lighting (never lit = 0%, lit = 100%, once lit = 20%)

While not exactly what you want you can replicate this by dropping a torch on the dynamic lighting layer with the second distance set to 0. It will be a dim light radius illuminating what they have already been in.  - Gauss

Thanks for the suggestion, Gauss. I have tried what you suggested, but unfortunately there are downsides to using a "torch"-like object for this. - The object (while in the dynamic lighting layer) is still visible to players - The light is still clearly coming from one point (radial gradiant) instead of the desired ambient illumination - The light intensity is related to the range of the light (a 200ft light is much brighter than a 50ft light) - Concave rooms or rooms with pillars require multiple light objects, making it look like an ambient illumination even more impossible - Objects on the dynamic lighting layer cannot be edited, making it impossible to "turn the light on" quickly - The following context menu option is missing: Object -> To Layer -> Dynamic Lighting

1) Im not sure why the object would be visible to players on the DL layer. Objects on the DL layer do not show up to players. 2 and 3) This is true.  4) I am not sure this is impossible, difficult perhaps but not impossible. 5) True. 6) Copy/Paste works for this purpose.  Just a reminder: I do not comment on suggestions, only on how to use the existing tools. Sometimes the existing tools can do what you want, other times it is less than perfect. :) - Gauss

Here is how it looks in a room with (large) pillars You can clearly see the locations of the "hidden" light objects (I thought this was the object graphic because it's similar, but it's the light itself) I'm afraid I'm too much of a perfectionist to allow my players to play like this.

If they've already been in the room, and the monsters have been defeated, would it make more sense to just use 1 DL object with dim illumination, and remove the pillars from the DL layer?

Is this from the GM view point or the players view point? If you are looking from the GM vop then the objects are seen on the DL layer but it usually isn't seen if you rejoined as a player.

If I remove the pillars from the DL layer, the bright light of the sunrod (item that the blue dragon character is holding) would also pass through the pillars. And a single dim light only has a range of 5 squares so you could never illuminate the entire room with it. And increasing the range makes it much brighter as well, which is also undesirable. I appreciate the suggestions for trying to get it to work with the current tools, but I'm afraid that will never be good enough (for me). Since the suggestion doesn't seem to be that complicated (I could probably do it myself with my programming background), i'd much rather see it implemented instead of fiddling around with suboptimal solutions ;) This is from the players point of view. When in the DM view, the entire map already has an ambient illumination while still being able to see any revealed areas or light sources. This is why I'm convinced the implementation of the suggestion would be easy, because the tech is already there.

I understand that you are a perfectionist. I can be too. :) I was just suggesting a workaround using current tools. It is up to you if that is satisfactory for your purposes or not.  - Gauss

I'd like to bump this request. I was just jumping to this forum to suggest the same feature, but Maarten T. did a much better job than I could have in describing it. Like him I was going to mention that it looks like something to this effect already exists in the GM layer, though there would probably be extra work in persisting light source movement history (especially between gaming sessions). I would also probably suggest an "undo" of some sort when that token with an attached light source gets moved into the wrong spot by a player with a twitchy mouse finger.

I've mentioned much the same in G+. It'd be nice to have 2 layers: a fog of war layer, and a line of sight layer. Fog of war would be completely opaque, but "burned away" as characters gain LoS. LoS would be partially opaque, and exist "between" the map and token layer, so the PCs can see the map, but not tokens. So a map area would be completely opaque until a PC gains LoS to it, then some partial opacity afterwards. We could, to a degree, emulate this now (with more GM interference) if there were an ability to make the LoS fog of war partially opaque, and the drawn in fog of war objects fully opaque, with the GM erasing the drawn in fog of war along PC's LoS.

Andrew , Line of Sight was implemented on the Dev server 2 weeks ago. You may want to check it out and then perhaps repost your suggestion in this thread: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/380805/rugged-reroll-update-number-1-dynamic-lighting-line-of-sight-light-angles-special-fx-prototype-and-more#post-392841" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/380805/rugged-reroll-update-number-1-dynamic-lighting-line-of-sight-light-angles-special-fx-prototype-and-more#post-392841</a> - Gauss