Dynamic Lighting Issues on Officially Produced Content

The method chosen to fix the issue appears to have been changing the 10' grid with .5 size for 5' squares, to a 5' grid with .5 size for 2.5' squares. This makes all map measurement information inaccurate, not to mention contradicts descriptions of areas as written, the note about Grid Size which wasn't updated, or anything else. Asking DMs to have players just treat 2.5' squares as 5' squares for purposes of measurement adds a needless layer of pain of exactly the sort that Roll20 should be eliminating, and it's especially galling because lighting on 10' unit .5 size grids worked perfectly prior to the lighting update. I am curious how such a feature could have been lost, but I understand that code can be weird.

With all of that said, yes, it made the lighting render in a way that, on face, seems correct - but given that the map itself has incorrect measurements, the lighting is...wrong. For example, a token with a theoretical 60' darkvision is shown to me, the DM, as having 30ft darkvision on the map. God only knows what it looks like to players, since I already know they don't see lighting the same as I do nowadays, even with Ctrl+L.

EDIT: Apparently the ruler will be fixed to account for this. Thanks.

Is this still a current issue? I had many players in game today complaining about having problems with the dynamic lighting. They either could not see, could not see with dark vision, or saw significantly more than their vision should allow. I had some players that were revealing over 25 squares on fog of war, through lighting walls! I also know that they are not seeing the dynamic lighting the same way I am with Ctrl+L.

I am also having issues not being able to see through fog of war on enemies from the Monster Manual (Also, monster stats won't show up correctly), or any enemy token that I place.

Hi Theron,

It sounds like you might also have Advanced Fog of War on. Is that the case?

There are some significant issues with the interaction between AFoW and Dynamic Lighting at the moment. You can follow them in the AFoW bug reporting thread.

If you do have AFoW and DL on, you will likely at least get correct lighting if you turn AFoW off on the pages.

The issue I've been experiencing is that I have to double or triple player's sight so that they can see the correct distance. Sometimes when I change the distance settings it does not update for the players. This has only been experienced on the first level of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Once my players got to the second level they no longer experienced issues. Thank you.

JDanger - Is this with only Dynamic Lighting enabled or also with Advanced Fog of War enabled? As Brian C. linked, AFoW has it's own bug thread to track these issues currently :)

Dead in Thay, the Ooze Grottos map will, when taken at default (dynamic lighting, enforce LoS, global illu) and adding Adv FoW, bring the client to its knees. I'm not sure why, exactly, but a quick look at the LoS layer shows a very intricate outline. It might just be that the map is too large / the light layer too intricate for that to render well with Adv FoW.

Suggestions on how to handle that so that we can a) use the map with FoW and b) it renders speedily? I'll try redoing the light layer in a copy and see how it does.

Hi Thorsten, it sounds like you're also having the issues with DL and AFoW that we are tracking in this thread - Please check there to see if your issues have been reported already (That means they're on our dev plate), and if not make a report? Thank you!

This is a separate issue and doesn't seem like a bug with AFoW, rather an issue with the Ooze Grottos map. I verified - by deleting the light layer info, the performance issue goes away. I think the light layer for Ooze Grottos is just too complex. I can duplicate my report in the other thread.

Edit: I made a copy and re-created the light layer in the "recommended" way rather than following every nook and cranny of the map. Performance is fine that way. It's definitely the light layer that's to blame, in some way.

Thank you Thorsten - That map was created very early while we were still getting best practices in place. I've logged this as a bug and that we need to update that lighting layer. I appreciate the report! :)

similarly, I found AFoW performance on thundertree from phandelver was an order of magnitude worse than general use. It seems partially related to the use of filled irregular polygons for trees in the DL Layer, alongside the doubled map scale.

In War for the Crown: Scion, Songbird, Sabatour on the Betony Estate map. The default DL lines for the doors leading from room A24 to rooms A25 and A26 are not long enough to fully conceal sight past them.

About a month ago my group started experiencing difficulties with AFOW in Tomb of Annihilation. Every week I have had to mess around with the settings until everyone could see and move their characters. I play D&D with my brothers, who live all over the USA and we lost valuable playing time as I made adjustments. I often had to reset FOW or else they could see rooms they had not yet visited. Last night, my PCs could not see anything no matter what I tried so we cancelled for the evening. I played around with the settings, jumping from GM to PC to see what worked. I found that, if I turned off both AFOW and FOW, but left on Dynamic Lighting, it seems to work well enough. No lag, characters only see what they are supposed to see. I still need to try it out with one of my brothers to make sure it's working correctly.

Can you please get this fixed so that it works like it used to? Thanks!

Hiya, currently playing Tomb of Annihilation and am on the Fane of the Night Serpent map. I have turned off fog of war and advanced fog of war as they slow everything down too much, but dynamic lighting does not seem to be working properly. If a character that has darkvision is around others that don't, they see the light the he 'emits'. I have the 'all players see light' box unticked, but they do see his light. The dynamic lighting borders work fine, so if that player is in another room, those without a light source are effectively blind (which is good).

I've had to turn on 'global illumination' just to stop it being weird.

Miles said:

Hiya, currently playing Tomb of Annihilation and am on the Fane of the Night Serpent map. I have turned off fog of war and advanced fog of war as they slow everything down too much, but dynamic lighting does not seem to be working properly. If a character that has darkvision is around others that don't, they see the light the he 'emits'. I have the 'all players see light' box unticked, but they do see his light. The dynamic lighting borders work fine, so if that player is in another room, those without a light source are effectively blind (which is good).

I've had to turn on 'global illumination' just to stop it being weird.

Are you checking this with Ctrl+L, or are your players reporting this?

Brian C. said:
Are you checking this with Ctrl+L, or are your players reporting this?

Just to speed things up in case this is the issue, Ctrl-L is broken currently. This is issue #5 from this thread. You can track the progress there:

CTRL-L doesn't work properly for GMs; If Enforce Line of Sight is off, one token will not see the other token's light source, even if they are unobstructed. This only affects GMs, however; the player can see the other token. GMs using CTRL-L will see all tokens, even if they do not have "All Players See Light" enabled, and will also see the full range of vision, blocked only by Dynamic Lighting (see Known Issue directly above this one.)

Until then, a common workaround is to use a dummy account. Log in with a separate free account that you make a player in your game. Use an private browsing window for the dummy log in to avoid confusing the browser about who is active. Assign control of the token in question to the dummy account and you can view its actual vision, live. If you change to give permission to a different token, you may need to move it to update it's vision settings.

Hiya,

I was seeing this as GM, but my players were also reporting it.

Yep, if any creature has darkvision, all tokens can see the darkvision even though the creatures do not have . Is there any fix in the works for this? At the moment it is just confusing and I might just have to do global illumination and give up on players without darkvision having to actually think about their light sources.

Miles said:

Yep, if any creature has darkvision, all tokens can see the darkvision even though the creatures do not have . Is there any fix in the works for this? At the moment it is just confusing and I might just have to do global illumination and give up on players without darkvision having to actually think about their light sources.

I've only seen this behavior through Ctrl-L. The dummy account testing I use (as described above), does not combine individual token sight. You could try posting screen shots of your page light settings, token light settings, and permissions on an affected token.

Ok, here is the DM view of what is on my screen. Trayzeal has darkvision, b'Urp does not.

Here is b'Urp's view. He should be totally in the dark, but can see the light that Trayzeal and any other creature with darkvision emits.

Here is Trayzeal's view (it's as it should be)

b'Urp's settings are: 

Trayzeal's settings are:

Page settings are:

Basically, it seems that all tokens emit any light they have, even if the 'All players see light' box is unticked.

I hope this helps, this has been the case for two weeks but may have been longer - this is the first time that global illumination has been off as it is the first time they have gone underground. Not a problem I've ever had before. It's a shame as now they are not having to worry about what light sources they have as long as they stay near the drow.

It looks like you are running up against Known Issue 5 in the AFoW thread. https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/7442110/

In the example images there, you will see that Joshua can see Wyatt's darkvision when Ctrl+L is used. This is what is seen if the "Rejoin As Player" button is used. I added myself to the list of players that control Joshua but made sure that I do not have control over Wyatt. You can see Wyatt in the shadows, but he is not generating his own light.

If you give yourself control over b'Urp only (in the character sheet settings) and "Rejoin Game As Player", you should see that b'Urp is in darkness...unless something else is going on such as characters have ownership of each other's sheets.

Brian is explaining better what I only alluded to in my answer. Mile, how are you testing your token's vision? If it is through Ctrl-L, that is broken and leads to results like you posted. Using a dummy account or rejoining as player, after assigning permissions is the safest way to test. Here is what I normally post for this issue:

Until then, a common workaround is to use a dummy account. Log in with a separate free account that you make a player in your game. Use a private browsing window for the dummy log in to avoid confusing the browser about who is active. Assign control of the token in question to the dummy account and you can view its actual vision, live. If you change to give permission to a different token, you may need to move it to update its vision settings.

So I bought Curse of Strahd and have no idea how to turn on Dynamic Lighting, theres no option for it.
Is this apart of the bug or am I stupid?

Spicy said:

So I bought Curse of Strahd and have no idea how to turn on Dynamic Lighting, theres no option for it.
Is this apart of the bug or am I stupid?

You turn it on with a plus subscription at $5/month.

On storm kings thunder in the eye of the all father my players are seeing through walls they shouldn’t. They see through the doors and they see the secret rooms. The dynamic lighting is drawn is but not working. I do still have to open the door for them but they see through it.

Thanks for that. We played again on Thursday and the problem seems to have disappeared. It only seemed to occur in the Fane of the Night Serpent, but it may have already have fixed itself by the time we got to the tomb. Ah well, whatever the cause, it works properly again now. Thanks for your efforts.

keithcurtis said:

Brian is explaining better what I only alluded to in my answer. Mile, how are you testing your token's vision? If it is through Ctrl-L, that is broken and leads to results like you posted. Using a dummy account or rejoining as player, after assigning permissions is the safest way to test. Here is what I normally post for this issue:

---

Until then, a common workaround is to use a dummy account. Log in with a separate free account that you make a player in your game. Use a private browsing window for the dummy log in to avoid confusing the browser about who is active. Assign control of the token in question to the dummy account and you can view its actual vision, live. If you change to give permission to a different token, you may need to move it to update its vision settings.

Hi!  We are playing Dungeon of the Mad Mage.  AFOW and DL both work as intended it seems except when anyone first logs on, it always reveals the map as far as their character can see, disregarding light walls.  I can hide them and continue but they still know the layout every time, secret rooms, etc.  We just use DL and not AFOW but they tend to get lost because the map is so big and AFOW would be really handy.  Not game breaking, just reporting it.  Here is a screenshot of a startup screen.

No matter what I do, it always reveals everything in view when someone logs in with both AFOW and DL active.  So DL only will have to be used.

Edit:  Technically fixed thanks to the big update to AFOW, but still unusable as it is soooooooooo slow.  There is like a 5 second delay anytime anyone moves a token so that it is unusable.