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Advanced Fog of War Feedback Thread 2.0

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Brian C.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Compendium Curator
AFoW View Distance Should Respect Page Settings I just tested AFoW on its own without DL, and came across another bug. This one is slightly lower priority but would provide better results in tabletop war gaming scenarios. Currently AFoW view distance clears the fog of war around the token in a square with sides that are twice the token's view distance. This may work (although it still looks odd) for 4e/5e style settings, but it is just weird in a war game setting. There are at least 2 scenarios where the area revealed by a token's view distance should be roughly circular. When the grid is set to Euclidian measurements. When the grid is off. Both of these scenarios give measurements with the ruler that are more uniform all the way around a token. This means a 30 foot measurement with a Euclidian grid or no grid will not reach the corners of the area revealed by a token with a 30-foot view distance. Really, it would be preferable for the AFoW reveal to be limited to DL-illuminated squares, which would solve the round light/square AFoW problem and implement the pre-Jan 29 behavior. This suggestion above is if we will never get to the preferable way again.
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Edited 1555547079
Brian C.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Compendium Curator
Turning the Grid On Or Off Resets the Fog of War When the grid is turned on or off, the cleared fog of war is reset. This seems to be unnecessary.
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Brian, I don't know if you're the project manager, the product manager, or the engineer. Honestly, this thread is blowing up and a lot of people are very upset. I am sure you are not the sole person responsible for this decision (there is rarely one person who is), and I've been in your position (but luckily for me I guess it was someone else's fuck up and that person was gone). At this point, either the problem is so complex you're going to need a lot or an unknown amount of time to fix it, or you don't have enough resources. I would suggest asking someone to pull how many a subscribers are dropping off since the patch to get a sense how much damage this issue is doing and escalating this, or at least get some understanding how big of an issue this is because clearly multiple most valuable (most paying) customers complaining for 3 months has not made any progress in escalating this. I have a feeling people are very upset and leaving because of this issue. It's also time to consider rolling back as an option until this is ready, because 3 months to fix a broken experience for a key functionality and a key feature that your product uses to upsell its subscription is outrageous (esp. given Roll20 is not offering compensation of any sort). If anyone is even slightly business or user focused, they should be panicking. This is not normal. I am assuming you are not the sole person responsible for this, but customers are going to rant on you because you're the only one responding here. It's probably time you get someone else to handle the communication so you can focus on your job instead of spending your time alleviating very upset customers from a problem you didn't cause. Also, it's a bad idea to tell your customers "the code was rushed and pushed before it was ready." That is a huge red flag and making people lose faith more. I appreciate the honesty and most people already guessed it, but still, that's probably a bad idea.
Aura best summarized my feelings here.  I've found an alternative to roll20, and I'm currently seeking a refund for the three months I've paid for features that were unusable to me. I am one of your paying customers, who've been paying for going on 5 years, and I have never felt more ignored, invalidated, and scammed. Not a ONE of you have replied to me. Not a ONE of you have offered any compensation. My posts have been ignored, and as a customer with little power, the only thing I can do is vote with my dollars. 
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Brian C.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Compendium Curator
AuraofMana  said: Brian, I don't know if you're the project manager, the product manager, or the engineer. Honestly, this thread is blowing up and a lot of people are very upset. I am sure you are not the sole person responsible for this decision (there is rarely one person who is), and I've been in your position (but luckily for me I guess it was someone else's fuck up and that person was gone).  At this point, either the problem is so complex you're going to need a lot or an unknown amount of time to fix it, or you don't have enough resources. It's also time to consider rolling back as an option until this is ready, because 3 months to fix a broken experience for a key functionality and a key feature that your product uses to upsell its subscription is outrageous (esp. given Roll20 is not offering compensation of any sort).  If anyone is even slightly business or user focused, they should be panicking. This is not normal. I am assuming you are not the sole person responsible for this, but customers are going to rant on you because you're the only one responding here. It's probably time you get someone else to handle the communication so you can focus on your job instead of spending your time alleviating very upset customers from a problem you didn't cause. I would suggest asking someone to pull how many a subscribers are dropping off since the patch to get a sense how much damage this issue is doing and escalating this, or at least get some understanding how big of an issue this is because clearly multiple most valuable (most paying) customers complaining for 3 months has not made any progress in escalating this. I have a feeling people are very upset and leaving because of this issue. Also, it's a bad idea to tell your customers "the code was rushed and pushed before it was ready." That is a huge red flag and making people lose faith more. I appreciate the honesty and most people already guessed it, but still, that's probably a bad idea. I do not work for or represent Roll20.
I'm not sure what triggers this and I'm unsure if its advance fog of war, or where I should post this. So, the problem is that sometimes when my players join a game is that they can see everything within the 40ft stated regardless of any line drawn within the dynamic lighting tab. I know this is a bug because we will finish a session in a dungeon with everything working and then when they rejoin next week (I have not changed any settings and they are exactly where they started) it will have revealed everything in a perfect square around the character. This only ever happens when loading a new map or loading in for the first time. 
I thought I'd just let my voice be added to the crowd here; A few weeks ago I believe, I posted that the only problem I was experiencing was that the token bars were hovering above their respective tokens. Now, while I can get AFoW to *sort of* work with Dynamic Lighting, the performance for several of my players (and myself occasionally) is awful. I haven't really been reading every post, but the squares that AFoW leaves behind (it reveals the entire square instead of what was just seen) is kind of ugly. I assume that's what " When up to 2 in the grid size, AFoW will reveal full blocks, not blocked by dynamic lighting walls." means, though that's worded strangely. "When up to 2 in the grid size"? So, if the group is in a big dungeon, my options are essentially to just to A) Ignore the dynamic lighting thing altogether (which is what one of my players gifted me 2 years of Plus for) and just use the regular Fog of War B) Have the map be 95% black, never permanently uncovered, so they don't have any concept for where they came from and what paths they've gone down C) Suffer with the performance Kind of a shame, when I started Tomb of Annihilation (purchased both the physical book -and- the adventure module from the Roll20 marketplace) I was hoping a lot of these kinks would have been worked out by the time my group was reaching the last half of the adventure, the half with all of the maps and dungeons, but it's not seeming like it will be. They're already in Omu, and will likely be entering the titular Tomb of Annihilation in 3-4 sessions. I understand programming and fixing these things isn't as simple as 1-2-3, far from it, but I'm disappointed more hasn't been done. I don't know how many people are working on the fixes right now, or if Roll20 has brought in more programmers to help fix these issues, but they should be. I'm sure someone has run the numbers, the cost of more programmers to fix these issues VS the revenue lost from people cancelling subs and going to other services, but something should be said about the rate at which revenue will recover versus the rate at which Roll20's reputation will recover. Like others have said, a broken remix of a feature was pushed without consulting the community, without the option of using a legacy version, and for many of us several months have gone by with a next-to-useless Plus subscription ticking down. Sessions that could have been made better have passed. I can't exactly ask for a refund for the wasted months, one of my players gifted the sub for this campaign. It certainly would be nice if everyone who had Plus or Pro during this period was credited a month of subscription, though. Especially when the (in my opinion) biggest selling point for the product hasn't been working for a long while And the token bars are still driving me insane. I'd like to just end off by saying that to members of the Roll20 team who are on the forums and taking the brunt of the complaints, Drespar , Stephanie B. and the rest of the Mod team, we know that you're the messengers and that it's safe to assume you didn't have anything to do with this decision making, the fault lies with the management, and I feel for you having to deal with their mistakes.
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Drespar
Roll20 Team
Real quick for everyone, yesterday was my usual day off so I apologize that there were no replies during that time! :( This thread is my top priority coming into today and I will be replying and updating content as I go.
From Brian's Post : I apologize. The majority of my testing is done with tokens that do not emit light. I did experiment with a light-emitting token with the AFoW view distance not set, and the token's light does clear the fog of war (including the dim light portion when the page option is set), but any other light-emitting tokens not owned by the player are still ignored. So resolved issue 13 is partially fixed in that it only works for light from the player's token rather than all light sources. Add to that the removal of other light sources' ability to clear fog of war for a player, and this has been a debilitating update. I believe this is mentioned in Known Issue   14 . Does the description there adequately describe what you are mentioning? To that end, the issue is very high on the priority list along with Z-ordering and Ctrl+L functionality ... snip... Previously, AFoW view distance had to be set for DL-illuminated squares within range to clear the fog of war. If AFoW view distance was not set, DL did not clear fog of war at all. Now the AFoW view distance clears everything in range regardless of illumination. This might be less of an issue for people with ongoing games. It is a larger issue for existing adventures on the marketplace with tokens that provide sight to players (such as my example above or pre-gen characters). For this section are you speaking to before the initial update or during an interim period?
Re: Squirrel &amp; Jay's posts We're closing in on 3 months of issues caused by the AFoW/Animation patch... I've tried to be understanding, but this feels ridiculous. From one week to the next, I have to preface the start of a session "So Roll20 is still broken, bear with me...". It's getting a little upsetting. I don't want to pile on at all. I understand that mistakes happen, and that no product or company is going to be perfect. That said, I am disturbed by a few things (besides the broken functionality itself, of course): The length of time AFoW has been broken. How has this not been fixed? How have you not made it an absolute top priority? AFoW was one of the top draws for Roll20, and was a major reason I chose Roll20 for my 5e campaign. After three months, no end in sight? No transparency about how you're going to solve the problem? The fact that dev clearly rushed these changes through without the proper amount of testing. That's a strong indication that your workflow, quality assurance, and oversight are in dire need of improvement.&nbsp; The fact that Roll20 tried to change the basic functionality of AFoW, in a manner that was not only counter-intuitive, but not requested by the user community, and gave no warning that this was happening. Who on earth thought this would be a good idea? My players and I are only a few months into using Roll20, and to be blunt, this whole AFoW debacle is not making a strong case for us to continue with your platform. We'll keep going for now, since we have invested in the Player's Handbook, the MM, and a couple of published adventures, but three more months go by and AFoW is still where it is now, we'll have to take a hard look at moving off Roll20. These are entirely valid criticisms, and we sincerely apologize for any and all difficulties that have arisen as a result of this update. Regarding Jay's bullet points: AFoW is very much a top priority, admittedly and unfortunately the updates and fixes have been slow. This update is under constant review as to what we need to change to make sure it never happens again. To that end, we started a few weeks back in re-upping our efforts to bring on new talent; among that was a QA specialist to help in shaping testing processes going forward. Re: Fayne's Post All I want is someone to address the problem. Where is your PR? This feels like, at best, mismanagment, and at worst, a deliberate attempt to ignore your community.&nbsp; I've posted several times about the issues that have not been addressed.&nbsp; 1. What is the timeline for known bugs affecting features established before the AFoW? 2. What compensation should we expect in remediation for the features we have paid for, but haven't been able to use for 3 months now? 3. What is the priority of the bugs you are fixing? Are you focusing on AFoW or bugs with established features? Get someone on here to handle your PR, because your brand rep is tanking, and the good will of your paying customers diminishes with every day you spend in silence.&nbsp; I want to touch on point 2 briefly, I would encourage you to reach out directly to the support team at <a href="mailto:Team@Roll20.net" rel="nofollow">Team@Roll20.net</a> for any billing concerns and they will get back to you as soon as possible. I apologize if your posts have been missed from the previous threads. The new start has helped greatly in making sure I stay up to speed with new replies and posts but it has not been 100% as has been corrected by a few transfer items. I may have misinterpreted and thus did not properly respond previously &nbsp;to your posts before, if that was the case please let me know! To speak to the points of this more recent post: I do not have a timeline for issues outside of the scope of this thread, and to that end I cannot provide exact timelines for AFoW fixes at this time. However, I can say that our current issues that are highest priority are Known Issues 5, 9, 17, and 19 &nbsp;which are in active development at this time.
Re: Brian's Report : I just tested AFoW on its own without DL, and came across another bug. This one is slightly lower priority but would provide better results in tabletop war gaming scenarios. Currently AFoW view distance clears the fog of war around the token in a square with sides that are twice the token's view distance. This may work (although it still looks odd) for 4e/5e style settings, but it is just weird in a war game setting. There are at least 2 scenarios where the area revealed by a token's view distance should be roughly circular. When the grid is set to Euclidian measurements. When the grid is off. Both of these scenarios give measurements with the ruler that are more uniform all the way around a token. This means a 30 foot measurement with a Euclidian grid or no grid will not reach the corners of the area revealed by a token with a 30-foot view distance. Really, it would be preferable for the AFoW reveal to be limited to DL-illuminated squares, which would solve the round light/square AFoW problem and implement the pre-Jan 29 behavior. This suggestion above is if we will never get to the preferable way again. Currently, a square reveal for AFoW is intended. That said, I have submitted a ticket requesting a revision of that functionality. Re: Brian's Second Post When the grid is turned on or off, the cleared fog of war is reset. This seems to be unnecessary. This is actually intentional, there should actually be a warning pop up mentioning that it will be reset that is not popping up on this option (The prompt will &nbsp;appear when changing cell size). I have submitted a ticket to ensure that the prompt will properly appear. That said, could you provide a use case for what you were testing; and I can revise/split the ticket as needed :)
Re: AuraofMana and Brian's Post I would like to reiterate Brian's statement that they are not a Roll20 team member. They do contribute to the marketplace for the purpose of providing content; However, they are not involved in development of Roll20. As Brian also said, Roll20 team members will have a pink badge next to their name that says "Roll20 Team" (i.e. I am the Roll20 team member actively in this thread). With that in mind, I would like to address your post as if it was directed at me (additions I made are in bold, exclusions are struck): Drespar Brian , I don't know if you're the project manager, the product manager, or the engineer. Honestly, this thread is blowing up and a lot of people are very upset. I am sure you are not the sole person responsible for this decision (there is rarely one person who is), and I've been in your position (but luckily for me I guess it was someone else's fuck up and that person was gone). At this point, either the problem is so complex you're going to need a lot or an unknown amount of time to fix it, or you don't have enough resources. I would suggest asking someone to pull how many a subscribers are dropping off since the patch to get a sense how much damage this issue is doing and escalating this, or at least get some understanding how big of an issue this is because clearly multiple most valuable (most paying) customers complaining for 3 months has not made any progress in escalating this. I have a feeling people are very upset and leaving because of this issue. It's also time to consider rolling back as an option until this is ready, because 3 months to fix a broken experience for a key functionality and a key feature that your product uses to upsell its subscription is outrageous (esp. given Roll20 is not offering compensation of any sort). If anyone is even slightly business or user focused, they should be panicking. This is not normal. I am assuming you are not the sole person responsible for this, but customers are going to rant on you because you're the only one responding here. It's probably time you get someone else to handle the communication so you can focus on your job instead of spending your time alleviating very upset customers from a problem you didn't cause. Also, it's a bad idea to tell your customers "the code was rushed and pushed before it was ready." That is a huge red flag and making people lose faith more. I appreciate the honesty and most people already guessed it, but still, that's probably a bad idea. You are absolutely correct that this is a very important issue. We are continuing to work hard on resolving issues and I apologize that things have taken as long as they have. It is understandably very frustrating. As stated in previous posts, if you have any billing concerns or questions please contact us at <a href="mailto:Team@Roll20.net" rel="nofollow">Team@Roll20.net</a> so the support staff can get you taken care of.
Re: Benito's post It sounds as though you may be running into a similar issue to Known Issue 8 &nbsp;where the entire map is being revealed to players. Of course in your case that is restricted to the 40 ft area you mentioned. Could you work through the Submitting a Report &nbsp;section in the first post so I can have a closer look? Thank you!
Re: Spadie's post I haven't really been reading every post, but the squares that AFoW leaves behind (it reveals the entire square instead of what was just seen) is kind of ugly. I assume that's what " When up to 2 in the grid size, AFoW will reveal full blocks, not blocked by dynamic lighting walls." means, though that's worded strangely. "When up to 2 in the grid size"? The square reveal (once outside of Line of Sight) is something that is due to a limitation of the system. A cell is revealed based on if the center pixel is seen by dynamic lighting. If that pixel is occluded by dynamic lighting lines it will revert to a block once out of the field of view. That said, currently the cells are not being partially cleared when a token is close enough for dynamic lighting to take effect. This is a known issue we are working on. And the token bars are still driving me&nbsp; insane. Token bar changes are something we have been testing on the development server. This information should be better conveyed outside of Pro subscribers just so everyone is aware. I will be passing along that feedback to appropriate parties internally.
I have caught up! :) Before I sign off for the night I wanted to make sure we try to get back on topic. I understand that this is a frustrating issue and has affected everyone's games negatively. That said, I would like to return this thread to reporting and discussing any bugs/issues with AFoW as it exists right now. I know there is a lot to discuss and many of you have contributed to helping bring these to light (Thank you!). I would like to narrow down and reconcile any and all possible discrepancy between expected vs intended behavior as well as continue to inform the development team of ongoing priority changes as we continue to push out fixes. A common thread I have seen in various posts is concerns on payment and billing. I would like to make the general statement that if you have any concerns in this area please contact us directly at <a href="mailto:Team@Roll20.net" rel="nofollow">Team@Roll20.net</a> so that we can get you taken care of. (I will be adding this to the 3rd post as well to call back to as needed). Again, lets be sure to keep things focused on finding and narrowing in on any bugs and issues. Thank you!
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Brian C.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Compendium Curator
Hi, Drespar, welcome back! Drespar &nbsp;said: From&nbsp; Brian's Post : I apologize. The majority of my testing is done with tokens that do not emit light. I did experiment with a light-emitting token with the AFoW view distance not set, and the token's light does clear the fog of war (including the dim light portion when the page option is set), but any other light-emitting tokens not owned by the player are still ignored. So resolved issue 13 is partially fixed in that it only works for light from the player's token rather than all light sources. Add to that the removal of other light sources' ability to clear fog of war for a player, and this has been a debilitating update. I believe this is mentioned in&nbsp; Known Issue &nbsp; 14 . Does the description there adequately describe what you are mentioning? To that end, the issue is very high on the priority list along with Z-ordering and Ctrl+L functionality KI14 says: Tokens without a light source but with sight do not continue to see revealed areas after the light source is gone or if they move away from the light source. The greyed-out revealed AFoW area does not stay revealed, and instead reverts to being opaque black. &nbsp; (Added Mar 8) It is possible that is what I am referring to, but it is difficult to test right now because KI 17 is potentially blocking us seeing the lights in the first place. Let's set up a player token with sight that does not emit light and place other light sources on the map as well. One light will be tied to a character sheet to avoid KI 15 " Tokens that are not assigned to a character sheet do not emit light when AFoW is on. (Added Mar 20, high priority)", but I also included a light source that does not have a character sheet just for fun. The green light on the left is attached to a character sheet not controlled by any player. The blue light on the right is not attached to a character sheet. The player token in the middle is controlled by "All Players" so that I can use it when I rejoin as a player. The lights are on the token layer so that we can easily see them from the player side of things. There are some DL-blocking lines to the right of what we are looking at. They do not come into play until the last image though. Here are the token and page settings. The bottom-left and bottom-right settings are for the left and right lights, respectively. The upper-right token settings are for the player token. The page settings are in the middle. Now, rejoining as player, this is our first view of the world. This is what I am referring to in the previous post (and what you are asking for clarification): the other light sources are ignored for the purposes of clearing fog of war. This is not correct behavior. I was not testing without a token's AFoW reveal distance off before, but this problem may have been introduced with the May 19 patch . That is when AFoW blocked any squares a player token could not see the middle of with its own illumination. This incorrect behavior could be entirely from KI 17 " Advanced Fog of War Cells obstruct token Dynamic Lighting Vision &nbsp;(Added April 12) ". Now, because of a workaround introduced by Roll20 (KI 19.2), the player token will still clear 1 square of fog of war even though we cannot see anything. So we can rake the token around until we clear the fog of war and are finally able to see the lights. The player token is not hiding behind a wall at the bottom of the screen, I just ended up moving the token along that path. You can see both lights, and the revealed fog of war around it. Now, since we can see both lights, one attached to a character sheet and 1 not attached to a character sheet, I am not sure how to replicate KI 15. Either it is no longer a problem, or the text does not fully describe the issue. &nbsp;Because of its timing right after the Mar 19 update, it is possible that KI 15 and KI 17 are actually describing the same issue. Since we can see the blue light that lacks a character sheet when the fog of war is cleared, it is possible KI 15 was not fully described correctly. Finally, we move the token partially behind the DL-blocking lines to see the interaction for an area that has been revealed previously. The vision line cuts the blue light's illumination in half. The bottom right portion of the blue token's light, blocked by the DL lines, instead shows the desaturated map of revealed fog of war. KI 14 is sort of impossible to test at this point, at least from the user end. &nbsp;Since the Mar 19 patch blocked vision of other light sources if the player token has not cleared the fog of war, an area cannot be revealed by the other light sources, so it does not get the opportunity to be hidden again. In this example, the player token cleared the fog of war, so the fog of war grey stays after the player token moves behind a DL line. So is the light failing to clear fog of war, or is KI 17 blocking fog of war from being revealed by the other light sources? KI 15 seems to not actually be an issue, or it seems like a different interpretation of KI 17. Based on that, it seems like KIs 14, 17, and possibly 18 " AFoW View Distance invisibly and automatically defaults to 0 &nbsp;(Added April 13)"&nbsp; are actually where the highest priority should be to get AFoW fully working again (ignoring for a moment all the non-lighting things this series of updates has broken). KI 14 would allow other light sources to clear fog of war. KI 17 would allow vision of illuminated areas all the way up to the DL-blocking lines. KI 18 may be artificially blocking vision by invisibly setting a token's blank AFoW view distance to 0. ... snip... Previously, AFoW view distance had to be set for DL-illuminated squares within range to clear the fog of war. If AFoW view distance was not set, DL did not clear fog of war at all. Now the AFoW view distance clears everything in range regardless of illumination. This might be less of an issue for people with ongoing games. It is a larger issue for existing adventures on the marketplace with tokens that provide sight to players (such as my example above or pre-gen characters). For this section are you speaking to before the initial update or during an interim period? This refers to before the Jan 29 update. In this image from last year (that I showed previously in this thread), the player token is a 1x1 image hidden in the corner of the map. The character token is not controlled by any player and is set to all players see light. As the GM moves the character token, it clears the fog of war. The AFoW view distance on the player token had to be set to cover the entire map for this scenario to work. Blank meant the players could see the character token and its light, but fog of war was not cleared. An AFoW view distance of half the length of the map meant that the players could always see the character token and its light, but it stopped clearing fog of war roughly halfway across the map. This is the correct behavior that has been lost. &nbsp;Pre Jan-29, all illuminated squares visible by a player token cleared fog of war. It is possible that KI 14 actually does describe this, but the change of behavior in AFoW view distance, coupled with KI 17 (and possibly KI 14) makes it difficult to test. The exact same settings post Jan 29 now gives this picture because of the change to AFoW view distance while DL is also active. Post Jan 29, AFoW view distance clears the fog of war up to the view distance regardless of whether a player-controlled token has seen an illuminated square. This introduces a question of how to fix KI 18. If the default for a token's blank AFoW view distance changes from 0 to infinite for example, does that mean that a blank AFoW view distance will reveal the entire map if no DL lines are in the way since AFoW view distance now clears the map regardless of light? What is the correct set of page and token settings going to be to get the pre Jan 29 behavior back? &nbsp;This example may seem a bit weird, but if the pre Jan 29 behavior can be replicated, than it will cover a lot of scenarios with 5e human adventures in poorly-lit dungeons.
1555623318
Brian C.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Compendium Curator
Drespar said: Re: Brian's Second Post When the grid is turned on or off, the cleared fog of war is reset. This seems to be unnecessary. This is actually intentional, there should actually be a warning pop up mentioning that it will be reset that is not popping up on this option (The prompt will &nbsp;appear when changing cell size). I have submitted a ticket to ensure that the prompt will properly appear. That said, could you provide a use case for what you were testing; and I can revise/split the ticket as needed :) I can understand resetting the fog of war when the page dimensions or grid cell width changes. However, in the course of turning the grid off, the grid has not changed, and the cleared squares have not been changed. If the only thing that has happened is that the grid is turned on or off, then nothing has actually changed with the fog of war. The use case is probably one that seldom occurs, but if a GM decides to change the map so that the grid is off with the players halfway through exploring a dungeon, the fog of war is reset. Why? Lighting has not changed. DL lines have not changed. AFoW settings have not changed. Page dimensions have not changed. The only change is whether the grid lines are being displayed. Not resetting the fog of war in this scenario could save customers from headaches from time to time.
1555623338
Gen Kitty
Forum Champion
Spadie said: So, if the group is in a big dungeon, my options are essentially to just to A) Ignore the dynamic lighting thing altogether (which is what one of my players gifted me 2 years of Plus for) and just use the regular Fog of War B) Have the map be 95% black, never permanently uncovered, so they don't have any concept for where they came from and what paths they've gone down C) Suffer with the performance There is Option D)&nbsp; Leave lights as breadcrumbs at various branching junction points (or where ever) in combination with DL, but no AFoW.&nbsp; It is what the hexcrawlling "See how far you can get THIS time" campaign I was in did and it worked pretty well.
Drespar, thank you for the response. Can I ask two things, then? When AFoW is fixed, will the functionality revert to what it had been prior to the update? When will Control-L be fixed? Thanks
How is all of this stuff STILL broken? HOW? At the very least fix the weird separation/space between the token bars have now. How difficult can that be?
Just finished reading this thread and sort of glad to hear it wasn't just me that Ctrl+L isn't working: I can't seem to figure out how to get a player token with darkvision (5e) to see the correct distance on a map with AFoW and Dynamic Lighting and light boundaries, instead the player token is surrounded by black.&nbsp; I tried changing so many settings under AFoW, Dynamic Lighting, and player's Advanced Token to fix this, but still can't seem to figure it out for players with darkvision!&nbsp; I'm also unsure what settings to use for Advanced Token for a player with a torch w/out darkvision, because Ctrl+L only reveals out to bright light distance. How much longer will it take for this issue to be resolved?&nbsp; I'm super reluctant to keep investing time and money into purchasing content and designing maps for campaigns for my players.
I completely agree. It's ridiculous that all these issues are still a thing. The token bars, and especially Ctrl + L issue are an incredible nuisance in my game I'm running. All my maps have dynamic lighting, and the game has a heavy focus on stealth mechanics, and what players and enemies can see. Additionally, the 'fix' on the development server for token bars has its own issues (obstructive overlapping bar), which I personally can't stand. I won't be renewing my subscription after it expires, and may even put my game on hold until these issues have been properly fixed. It's just not worth paying for a service and putting work into something that doesn't function properly the way it should.
Phil said: How is all of this stuff STILL broken? HOW? At the very least fix the weird separation/space between the token bars have now. How difficult can that be? This one in particular has been "being tested on the dev server" for about three weeks now.
Fingers crossed it happens soon, I find it absolutely ridiculous that this has gone on this long. Fix your product.
Jay R. said: Drespar, thank you for the response. Can I ask two things, then? When AFoW is fixed, will the functionality revert to what it had been prior to the update? When will Control-L be fixed? Thanks Bumping this up because I haven't received a response.
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Stephen Koontz
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Compendium Curator
Hello everyone, Thank you all for sharing the various bugs and difficulties you’ve been having with Advanced Fog of War and Animations as well as your patience while we work through each report. Some attempted fixes didn’t pass QA, others are still being tested, and even more are in the pipeline. We are committed to getting this right with stable releases. Our current priority is fixing the Token Bars because this change affects all of our users. We released an update this morning, which you can learn about&nbsp; here . Our next focus is on resolving several Advanced Fog of War bugs that were introduced during the rendering refactor in January. The issues we tackle first are based on your feedback. As things, big and small, are fixed, we will update this thread. Beyond those updates, we will check-in regularly to share current priorities based on progress, development needs, and feedback from you all. The first such check-in will be Wednesday, May 1st. We’re so sorry for the prolonged difficulties and frustration with Advanced Fog of War, and thank you again for your patience and help as we build it to be the feature we all know it can be. If you have any concerns or questions you about billing, do not hesitate to reach out to us at <a href="mailto:Team@Roll20.net" rel="nofollow">Team@Roll20.net</a> so we can take care of you. Please continue to use this thread to report any new issues and keep an eye out for updates. We’re here, we’re listening, and we will keep you updated as we make progress!&nbsp; Steve K. Roll20 Lead Developer
This limit was not there in the old version and your new version must fix it, or you are about to lose many of your customers! Drespar said: Re: Spadie's post I haven't really been reading every post, but the squares that AFoW leaves behind (it reveals the entire square instead of what was just seen) is kind of ugly. I assume that's what " When up to 2 in the grid size, AFoW will reveal full blocks, not blocked by dynamic lighting walls." means, though that's worded strangely. "When up to 2 in the grid size"? The square reveal (once outside of Line of Sight) is something that is due to a limitation of the system. A cell is revealed based on if the center pixel is seen by dynamic lighting. If that pixel is occluded by dynamic lighting lines it will revert to a block once out of the field of view.
Thanks Brian C, I'm back at playing with settings and trying your recommendations. -- Also, I'm not sure if this is it, but I switched AFoW back on, and if I set the AFoW "View Distance" to 60 ft. for my darkvision characters, and I think that works now!? Additional note, the health stat bar moved and is now covering my player image .png token's heads, plus there are new settings on Advanced Token edit for "Text Overlay" for Bars 1,2,3 either as "Hidden" or "Visible to Editor" and "Visible to Everyone" Brian C. said: For the time being, AFoW and Ctrl+L are both broken. The first step in fixing your issues is to turn off &nbsp;AFoW on the page. Otherwise, AFoW will block what a PC can see with DL. I would recommend only having PCs have vision for performance reasons. My preferred settings for a PC that has 5e darkvision: Emits light settings are 60/0. Some people like 60/-5 because it does not illuminate the player token, but I find that it cuts off the vision before 60 feet. You could also use 65/-5 to counteract this. "Has Sight" is checked. For Ctrl+L, one of the best workarounds (at least for chrome) is the following: Set the ownership of the token (or linked character sheet) to include you. Right-click on the browser tab and select "Duplicate Page". In the new browser tab, go to the Roll20 settings tab and click the "Rejoin as Player button". You can then make changes on the first tab and see the true results in the second tab. KofaSing KoodGarma said: Just finished reading this thread and sort of glad to hear it wasn't just me that Ctrl+L isn't working: I can't seem to figure out how to get a player token with darkvision (5e) to see the correct distance on a map with AFoW and Dynamic Lighting and light boundaries, instead the player token is surrounded by black.&nbsp; I tried changing so many settings under AFoW, Dynamic Lighting, and player's Advanced Token to fix this, but still can't seem to figure it out for players with darkvision!&nbsp; I'm also unsure what settings to use for Advanced Token for a player with a torch w/out darkvision, because Ctrl+L only reveals out to bright light distance. How much longer will it take for this issue to be resolved?&nbsp; I'm super reluctant to keep investing time and money into purchasing content and designing maps for campaigns for my players.
We were told in this thread an others that there were different teams working on different issues, also we were told that the devs and the forum mods were not the same people to keep things focused. Are both of those true or not? Also will we be getting compensation for the lost time on the usefulness of our current subscriptions? I am not looking for a canned answer saying to send an individual email to your team about my sub, I want us all to get compensated not just those motivated enough to write.&nbsp; I would also like to say that covering the token with the hp bar by default is not good for anyone, please fix it immediately.&nbsp; Steve K. said: Hello everyone, Thank you all for sharing the various bugs and difficulties you’ve been having with Advanced Fog of War and Animations as well as your patience while we work through each report. Some attempted fixes didn’t pass QA, others are still being tested, and even more are in the pipeline. We are committed to getting this right with stable releases. Our current priority is fixing the Token Bars because this change affects all of our users. We released an update this morning, which you can learn about&nbsp; here . Our next focus is on resolving several Advanced Fog of War bugs that were introduced during the rendering refactor in January. The issues we tackle first are based on your feedback. As things, big and small, are fixed, we will update this thread. Beyond those updates, we will check-in regularly to share current priorities based on progress, development needs, and feedback from you all. The first such check-in will be Wednesday, May 1st. We’re so sorry for the prolonged difficulties and frustration with Advanced Fog of War, and thank you again for your patience and help as we build it to be the feature we all know it can be. If you have any concerns or questions you about billing, do not hesitate to reach out to us at <a href="mailto:Team@Roll20.net" rel="nofollow">Team@Roll20.net</a> so we can take care of you. Please continue to use this thread to report any new issues and keep an eye out for updates. We’re here, we’re listening, and we will keep you updated as we make progress!&nbsp; Steve K. Roll20 Lead Developer
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Thorsten
KS Backer
As per @Trivia 's request ( <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/7273026/dynamic-lighting-issues-on-officially-produced-content/?pageforid=7398086#post-7398086" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/7273026/dynamic-lighting-issues-on-officially-produced-content/?pageforid=7398086#post-7398086</a> ), duplicating my Dead in Thay Ooze Grotto report here.&nbsp; 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. When I delete the light blocking lines, the performance issue disappears. 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. Your call as to whether it's "working as designed", that is, don't draw a light layer like that - in which case, please fix Ooze Grottos. Or whether AFoW is supposed to work with this kind of light layer - in which case, please fix AFoW. I'm assuming it's the former.
Thorsten said: As per @Trivia 's request ( <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/7273026/dynamic-lighting-issues-on-officially-produced-content/?pageforid=7398086#post-7398086" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/7273026/dynamic-lighting-issues-on-officially-produced-content/?pageforid=7398086#post-7398086</a> ), duplicating my Dead in Thay Ooze Grotto report here.&nbsp; 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. When I delete the light blocking lines, the performance issue disappears. 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. Your call as to whether it's "working as designed", that is, don't draw a light layer like that - in which case, please fix Ooze Grottos. Or whether AFoW is supposed to work with this kind of light layer - in which case, please fix AFoW. I'm assuming it's the former. This sounds &nbsp;like an issue with dynamic lighting drawings. If you use the free hand drawing tool for DL barriers, a couple are ok, but more than even a little bit will absolutely rend any performance. As you said, it brings the client to its knees.&nbsp; I know you didn't specifically draw that overlay for DL, but you're right with the fix, namely, delete the drawings. This isn't an issue with AFoW or any other side effect of the refactor as far as I'm aware.
Baldur's Great said: Hello everyone. There's a lot of discussion about the status of when issues will be fixed. The devs are working on the whole list of known issues in this post:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/7368017/" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/7368017/</a> Updates will be provided as information becomes available,&nbsp;but time spent responding to status update requests is time not spent on fixing technical issues. The important thing for this thread to stay organized is to keep discussion based on reporting bugs that aren't already on the known issues list, or expanding on known issues with new behavior you have noticed. Replies that are off-topic may be removed. Thanks! I wish you know what this looks like. It looks like victim blaming, and telling everyone the more we complain, the longer it will take to fix it. It smacks of lack of understanding and a clear lack of regard for customers. Again, to use the car analogy, imagine there being a recall for your car's critical safety features, and telling everyone who's suffered injuries and damages that the longer they complain about their injuries, the longer it will take the manufacturer to release a recall order.&nbsp; I advise you to reconsider this disrespectful line of thinking. And regardless of if my post is removed for "off topic replies" I know you &nbsp;will at least read this post. And believe it or not, a company can focus on PR and compensation and also fix the issues that created the need to address their PR and compensation in the first place. That's what a community manager is for, my friend. Take it to heart and quit acting the fool.&nbsp;
Fayne said: Baldur's Great said: Hello everyone. There's a lot of discussion about the status of when issues will be fixed. The devs are working on the whole list of known issues in this post:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/7368017/" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/7368017/</a> Updates will be provided as information becomes available,&nbsp;but time spent responding to status update requests is time not spent on fixing technical issues. The important thing for this thread to stay organized is to keep discussion based on reporting bugs that aren't already on the known issues list, or expanding on known issues with new behavior you have noticed. Replies that are off-topic may be removed. Thanks! I wish you know what this looks like. It looks like victim blaming, and telling everyone the more we complain, the longer it will take to fix it. It smacks of lack of understanding and a clear lack of regard for customers. Again, to use the car analogy, imagine there being a recall for your car's critical safety features, and telling everyone who's suffered injuries and damages that the longer they complain about their injuries, the longer it will take the manufacturer to release a recall order.&nbsp; I advise you to reconsider this disrespectful line of thinking. And regardless of if my post is removed for "off topic replies" I know you &nbsp;will at least read this post. And believe it or not, a company can focus on PR and compensation and also fix the issues that created the need to address their PR and compensation in the first place. That's what a community manager is for, my friend. Take it to heart and quit acting the fool.&nbsp; Indeed suggesting that it is the communities fault for how long these fixes are taking seems a tad dishonest. It's been 3 soon to be 4 months if responding to community complaints is what is slowing this process down then there is something severely wrong with Roll20's internal structure. In which case it is still on Roll20 not the community.
Hey everyone! Please keep updating us! We are keeping track of every report that comes in but every report may not be responded to individually as we work on rectifying these issues.
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Kim
Plus
I'm very disappointed to see that the people who found "Baldur's Great"s way of addressing the concerns of users both frustrating and lacking were not acknowledged in any way, but that their posts were simply deleted. And I find it hard to believe that their comments were offtopic, considering they were directly replying to him in a way directly relevant to his reply. 3 months of issues is already tough to stomach, but I understand that people are likely working hard and some issues might be hard to resolve. But where peoples (IMO legitimate) disgruntlement just gets wiped away is a little harder for me to explain, and gives me the impression that Roll20 has improved little from its earlier troubles/scandals. Edit: Quite happy to see the mistake reverted as I am invested in the platform and such actions make me hopeful that the future looks good. Hopefully the issues will be behind us soon!
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Brian C.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Compendium Curator
Squirrel said: I'm very disappointed to see that the people who found "Baldur's Great"s way of addressing the concerns of users both frustrating and lacking were not acknowledged in any way, but that their posts were simply deleted. And I find it hard to believe that their comments were offtopic, considering they were directly replying to him in a way directly relevant to his reply. 3 months of issues is already tough to stomach, but I understand that people are likely working hard and some issues might be hard to resolve. But where peoples (IMO legitimate) disgruntlement just gets wiped away is a little harder for me to explain, and gives me the impression that Roll20 has improved little from its earlier troubles/scandals. Quite, the posts should be reinstated. We already saw them anyway through email notifications.
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Drespar
Roll20 Team
Hi everyone, Drespar from Roll20 here, Previously our 3rd party moderation team posted that time spent responding to status requests was time taken away from working on the issue. This is not the case. Our development team and user experience teams are separate entities; responding and passing along information here does not detract from development resources. We encourage any and all bug reports and bug discussion in this thread so that we can continue to pass through the information to help inform priorities going forward. As of right now, we have removed the mod post as it does not reflect our official position. Additionally, we have reverted all post deletions and suspensions that were erroneously carried out. We will be meeting with the moderation team to discuss this issue and ensure that this does not happen again. These actions were taken in error, and our sincerest apologies to everyone and especially those directly affected. The Roll20 team will continue to watch and monitor this thread. Our Lead Developer Steve K, offered an update regarding our latest patch to token bars which is one part of the road map for stabilization. We will continue to work on the issues reported and pass along issues discussed and still plan to provide regular updates. The next update is scheduled on May 1st. We are sorry for this incident, and we are working immediately to prevent this situation from reoccurring. Your feedback is valuable in informing important fixes and priorities and we appreciate the time taken to report and share with us.
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Brian C.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Compendium Curator
Drespar said: Hi everyone, Drespar from Roll20 here, Previously our 3rd party moderation team posted that time spent responding to status requests was time taken away from working on the issue. This is not the case. Our development team and user experience teams are separate entities; responding and passing along information here does not detract from development resources. We encourage any and all bug reports and bug discussion in this thread so that we can continue to pass through the information to help inform priorities going forward. As of right now, we have removed the mod post as it does not reflect our official position. Additionally, we have reverted all post deletions and suspensions that were erroneously carried out. We will be meeting with the moderation team to discuss this issue and ensure that this does not happen again. These actions were taken in error, and our sincerest apologies to everyone and especially those directly affected. The Roll20 team will continue to watch and monitor this thread. Our Lead Developer Steve K, offered an update regarding our latest patch to token bars which is one part of the road map for stabilization. We will continue to work on the issues reported and pass along issues discussed and still plan to provide regular updates. The next update is scheduled on May 1st. We are sorry for this incident, and we are working immediately to prevent this situation from reoccurring. Your feedback is valuable in informing important fixes and priorities and we appreciate the time taken to report and share with us. Thank you
Drespar said: Hi everyone, Drespar from Roll20 here, Previously our 3rd party moderation team posted that time spent responding to status requests was time taken away from working on the issue. This is not the case. Our development team and user experience teams are separate entities; responding and passing along information here does not detract from development resources. We encourage any and all bug reports and bug discussion in this thread so that we can continue to pass through the information to help inform priorities going forward. As of right now, we have removed the mod post as it does not reflect our official position. Additionally, we have reverted all post deletions and suspensions that were erroneously carried out. We will be meeting with the moderation team to discuss this issue and ensure that this does not happen again. These actions were taken in error, and our sincerest apologies to everyone and especially those directly affected. The Roll20 team will continue to watch and monitor this thread. Our Lead Developer Steve K, offered an update regarding our latest patch to token bars which is one part of the road map for stabilization. We will continue to work on the issues reported and pass along issues discussed and still plan to provide regular updates. The next update is scheduled on May 1st. We are sorry for this incident, and we are working immediately to prevent this situation from reoccurring. Your feedback is valuable in informing important fixes and priorities and we appreciate the time taken to report and share with us. Way to go!
So, May 1st. Let's hope that the this patch finally fix the aura mess. Haven't been able to work since January, I can't take it anymore
I won't post what was said to me in private, but Baldur's Great sent me a 24 suspension (from a forum I check perhaps twice a week, and have made perhaps a dozen posts to) for telling him to quit being foolish. He told me to quit being disruptive and calling people names. In response, I wrote the Roll20 team and pleaded with them to consider the moderator's behavior as counter to their efforts to appease their disgruntled customers. As I come back to this thread, I see they already handled the situation and apologized for the posts! So my email was a tad late, but I'm glad they are being responsible about the situation.&nbsp; I had considered ending my subscription and finding a new outlet for my campaign. But, in all honesty, the refund they have given me, the personal assurance that the bugs are being address by a certain timeline, and the very quick and decisive handling of a moderator making a situation much worse has made me renew my subscription and continue my support of this company.&nbsp; Thank you for the hard work you are putting into this product. I know it doesn't feel like we're very happy, but consider that our passionate responses here are because we actually like the service enough to be mad when it's gone . I use a ton of other resources for my campaigns, and when they mess up or are unusable, I just shrug because most of them are crap anyway. Roll20 makes so many things easier for me, that I am legitimately concerned when it seemed that the service was going to be gone.&nbsp; Anyway, thank you for your decisive actions and prompt responses. I'm glad to see that amidst all this turmoil, you are still putting customers first, and that alone is the reason I have come back to this service, despite all its current (and perhaps future) problems.&nbsp;
Oh and I would like to remind everyone here and anyone reading in the future: the purple "Mod Team" tag for a forum profile means they are community volunteers. It does not mean they are employees or otherwise affiliated with Roll20. Those folks have a Pink "Roll20 Team" tag on their profile.&nbsp; If a Mod Team ever acts out or is irresponsible, consider they are not an accurate reflection of the Roll20 team, and reach out to Roll20. They might not be aware of what's going on, but as we've seen here, when the moderator is genuinely a problem, they are handled promptly.&nbsp;
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keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Fayne said: Oh and I would like to remind everyone here and anyone reading in the future: the purple "Mod Team" tag for a forum profile means they are community volunteers. It does not mean they are employees or otherwise affiliated with Roll20. Those folks have a Pink "Roll20 Team" tag on their profile.&nbsp; If a Mod Team ever acts out or is irresponsible, consider they are not an accurate reflection of the Roll20 team, and reach out to Roll20. They might not be aware of what's going on, but as we've seen here, when the moderator is genuinely a problem, they are handled promptly.&nbsp; Slight correction. The Roll20 Mod Team are employees of the Mod Squad organization and their tag is more of a dark blue. Purple tags are Forum Champions, who are volunteers who do not have any other affiliation with Roll20. Forum Champions are currently comprised of former moderators, but have no moderation powers. Marketplace Creators are also (a different) purple.
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Gen Kitty
Forum Champion
Roll20 Team, are Roll20 employees. Roll20 Mod Team, as of the start of the year, are members of the Mod Squad, a 3rd party customer service team and Roll20 is one of Mod Squad's many clients. Forum Champion, right now are the former volunteer moderators, and no longer have any moderation powers or responsibilities.&nbsp; We're normal users, just with a shiny tag. Marketplace Creator, are artists/writers/whatevers who have items for sale in the Marketplace. [Edited to add] Well.&nbsp; When I *posted* this it had shiny pictures, and now it doesn't.&nbsp; Frell.&nbsp; Text will have to do :P &nbsp;
Can we please (if this is going to take more than four months now to fix) have a rollback to before the "dark times" of the animations update? We could call it "Roll20 Classic" or something. Would it be possible to have it running on a different server, like the Dev servers are separate. Where we could migrate a game back to Classic, until such time as this enjoyment destroying issue is resolved? I took mapping for my games very seriously. I made sure that mood and well timed reveals of secrets was part of the fun of my games. This current version of Roll20 is hardly worth paying for. Please, just give me what you provided, what we loved, last year - until you truly have something new that works. I for one would be happier playing on a Classic server and never getting another update for years, rather than lose the functionality I've come to rely on as a Pro subscriber for (four? Five?) years.