Bit of an odd question but I'm suffering a crisis of confidence in my use of Roll20 after my first two sessions using it got very negative feedback from my players who claimed that nothing I was doing worked. They say they heard no sound and saw no images displayed on the VTT despite the fact that I was following the techniques I'd seen in the tutorials.
Is there any way of checking whether things are working other than with the help of a co-operative third party?
You could create a dummy account and have it open in a private window to check how things look. That is something from the Stupid Tricks thread. You might want to check out the first post (index) to see if there is anything else of interest to you as well. https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6049241/
You can create a dummy account and view the same game from that. You can also do "Rejoin as Player" with your main account to see how a generic player sees the game.
They say they heard no sound and saw no images displayed on the VTT despite the fact that I was following the techniques I'd seen in the tutorials.
This is pretty ambiguous. Did they not see audio & image from your video chat, or did this include something else?
With this little info on both sides, it's pretty much impossible to guess what was the source of the supposed problems.
Didz said:
Bit of an odd question but I'm suffering a crisis of confidence in my use of Roll20 after my first two sessions using it got very negative feedback from my players who claimed that nothing I was doing worked. They say they heard no sound and saw no images displayed on the VTT despite the fact that I was following the techniques I'd seen in the tutorials.
Is there any way of checking whether things are working other than with the help of a co-operative third party?
We need some details about what you were doing. Was it your video feed? Was it graphics in the map section? Was it any music you were playing? If you can give us the steps you were doing, we might be able to spot what and why was happening.
Creating a dummy account is pretty much the gold standard for preflighting a game. It will show exactly what a player should see.
Andreas J. said:
You can create a dummy account and view the same game from that. You can also do "Rejoin as Player" with your main account to see how a generic player sees the game.
They say they heard no sound and saw no images displayed on the VTT despite the fact that I was following the techniques I'd seen in the tutorials.
This is pretty ambiguous. Did they not see audio & image from your video chat, or did this include something else?
With this little info on both sides, it's pretty much impossible to guess what was the source of the supposed problems.
I'm sorry it seems a bit vague but in truth, I'm totally confused as to why what I was doing apparently didn't work.
The main visual and audio ideas I thought I was using were:
1. Every VTT Page had accompanying Audio track to enhance the image.
Pretty much every page has its own audio track to enhance the ambience and immersion of the scene, but neither of my players claimed to have heard anything during play. To make matters worse in the next session I was planning to use audio effects to heighten tension and provide audible clues but that seems pointless if nobody can hear them for some reason.
2. Every NPC and encounter had its own visual art.
Just as every scene had its own audio track so every encounter and NPC had their own intro art and portrait.
So for example in Session 2 there was an encounter with a caravan of Strigany Gypsies.
Jameela the Strigany dancer.
Sarah the Strigany Mystic
Zakaria the Strigany Leader
It's frustrating after putting the effort in to provide a rich audio-visual experience to discover that basically none of it was reaching the audience and at the minute I'm not sure if that's something I'm doing wrong or if the players themselves just aren't interested in the effort I've made. The problem becomes more serious if I continue because in the sessions to come I was planning on using audio-visual clues. But that becomes pointless if the players can't see or hear them.
I think I might have to create a dummy account just so I can see and hear for myself whether what I'm doing is working.
Kraynic said:
You could create a dummy account and have it open in a private window to check how things look. That is something from the Stupid Tricks thread. You might want to check out the first post (index) to see if there is anything else of interest to you as well. https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6049241/
Thanks might give that a go as if I can see and hear what I expect to see and hear at least I'll know it's not me that's screwing up.
How were you presenting the graphics? If it was with the "z" key, remember that for players to see it, you need to use "shift-z". If it was with a handout, pressing the Share with Players button in the upper righthand corner of the handout needs to be pressed.
As for why they were not hearing the audio, have them check the Master Volume Control located under the My Settings tab. Players can adjust the sound level that they hear on their end independently.
Didz said:
Andreas J. said:
You can create a dummy account and view the same game from that. You can also do "Rejoin as Player" with your main account to see how a generic player sees the game.
They say they heard no sound and saw no images displayed on the VTT despite the fact that I was following the techniques I'd seen in the tutorials.
This is pretty ambiguous. Did they not see audio & image from your video chat, or did this include something else?
With this little info on both sides, it's pretty much impossible to guess what was the source of the supposed problems.
I'm sorry it seems a bit vague but in truth, I'm totally confused as to why what I was doing apparently didn't work.
The main visual and audio ideas I thought I was using were:
1. Every VTT Page had accompanying Audio track to enhance the image.
- So, for example, the Home Page setting should have played 'Before the Storm by Tabletop Audion as soon as it was loaded
- The Jagerhaus has an audio track 'Elegant Dinner Party' by Tabletop Audio
- and later The Mountain Road had an audio track of 'Carriage Journey by Tabletop Audio'
Pretty much every page has its own audio track to enhance the ambience and immersion of the scene, but neither of my players claimed to have heard anything during play. To make matters worse in the next session I was planning to use audio effects to heighten tension and provide audible clues but that seems pointless if nobody can hear them for some reason.
2. Every NPC and encounter had its own visual art.Just as every scene had its own audio track so every encounter and NPC had their own intro art and portrait.
So for example in Session 2 there was an encounter with a caravan of Strigany Gypsies.
- The Text read: The cart rounds a spur of high ground and crests yet another rise and Rom and Felix are greeted by a strange sight heading towards them.This was supposed to be accompanied by the following depiction of the caravan on the VTT displayed as a visual handout. But whilst I could see it apparently neither of the players saw it or any of the other images I thought I was providing to enhance their experience.
It's frustrating after putting the effort in to provide a rich audio-visual experience to discover that basically none of it was reaching the audience and at the minute I'm not sure if that's something I'm doing wrong or if the players themselves just aren't interested in the effort I've made. The problem becomes more serious if I continue because in the sessions to come I was planning on using audio-visual clues. But that becomes pointless if the players can't see or hear them.
I think I might have to create a dummy account just so I can see and hear for myself whether what I'm doing is working.
I’m sorry you’ve had a rough time with Roll20. I’ll admit, it’s functions are rather counter-intuitive at times.
Roll20 no longer supports the use of .jpeg files. Please make sure your images are either .jpg or .png files.
In order to show handouts to players, please double check the settings on the handout. If you have given only one player permission to see a handout, and you press the “show to players” button, only the permissible player will see it. If you remove all permissions and press the button again, there will be a warning which asks “Show to all players?”. Click yes to confirm.
Gargamond said:
I’m sorry you’ve had a rough time with Roll20. I’ll admit, it’s functions are rather counter-intuitive at times.
Roll20 no longer supports the use of .jpeg files. Please make sure your images are either .jpg or .png files.
In order to show handouts to players, please double check the settings on the handout. If you have given only one player permission to see a handout, and you press the “show to players” button, only the permissible player will see it. If you remove all permissions and press the button again, there will be a warning which asks “Show to all players?”. Click yes to confirm.
I probably feel a bit like a singer who's just delivered what they thought was an ace performance on stage after a long period of nervous preparation only to be told that the microphone wasn't working and nobody heard it.
The background to this is that I've been running WFRP games for over 30 years, so I'm pretty well versed in the setting, style and ruleset. But I've never tried using Roll20 to host a game before. So, I was really nervous about it, and to try and boost my confidence I asked my two sons to run through an opening couple of sessions acting as the players until I was sure I could cope with the system and was familiar with the controls. Once they reached the first large town (Hugeldal) if all had gone well then the idea was to take on more players and continue the adventure with a larger party.
However, as I've explained it didn't go well in that what I thought was happening in terms of player experience didn't seem to be happening at all except on my GM screen which seemed to be fine except for the failure of some of the audio files to kick in on cue. That still seems to be an issue even during testing.
Handouts and images: Some of the images were Handouts (particularly NPC's) and so I was clicking on the 'Show to Players' button on the assumption that would make them visible to the players. That didn't seem to work and another Roll20 GM has since told me that it only works if the hand out has been opened and dropped in the VTT area before the button is pushed. Another possible explanation is that it did appear but the players weren't looking at that part of the VTT and so missed it. I'm told there is a button combination that forces players to look at a handout by zooming the screen to it effectively sticking it right in their faces so they can;t miss it.
When the handouts didn't seem to work as expected I abandoned them and resorted to simply pasting the images I wanted the players to see onto the VTT figuring that if the image was on the page it had to visible to the players, but this apparently wasn't the case. Although I could see them perfectly. I recall we had a similar problem in an SWN game where I was a player and the GM was supposedly posting Comms messages from our communication devices to the VTT to inform us of incoming messages. I never saw any of these in the entire course of a multi-session campaign game and had to rely on my son to tell me if anything had been transmitted as apparently he could see them. However, in my case neither player saw my pop-ups.
Were you dropping the images onto the token layer? Did you press Shift-z to make them appear as a preview for all players?
For the handouts, had you previously shared them with a subset of players as Gargamond brings up?*
Did you investigate any of the solutions presented above, yet?
*A handout cannot be "dropped" into the VTT area. If you click on it in the journals tab it will open in the VTT area, but drag and drop is something different, resulting in an image or feature being transferred to the VTT. Nitpicky, I know, but it help to troubleshoot if we are using the same terminology.
Didz said:
Handouts and images: Some of the images were Handouts (particularly NPC's) and so I was clicking on the 'Show to Players' button on the assumption that would make them visible to the players. That didn't seem to work and another Roll20 GM has since told me that it only works if the hand out has been opened and dropped in the VTT area before the button is pushed. Another possible explanation is that it did appear but the players weren't looking at that part of the VTT and so missed it. I'm told there is a button combination that forces players to look at a handout by zooming the screen to it effectively sticking it right in their faces so they can;t miss it.
When the handouts didn't seem to work as expected I abandoned them and resorted to simply pasting the images I wanted the players to see onto the VTT figuring that if the image was on the page it had to visible to the players, but this apparently wasn't the case. Although I could see them perfectly. I recall we had a similar problem in an SWN game where I was a player and the GM was supposedly posting Comms messages from our communication devices to the VTT to inform us of incoming messages. I never saw any of these in the entire course of a multi-session campaign game and had to rely on my son to tell me if anything had been transmitted as apparently he could see them. However, in my case neither player saw my pop-ups.
I guess I'll have to look when in game. I didn't realize there was another button anywhere to push than when the handout you want to show is open. I use handouts a lot, since I am running a game that has been out of print for a long time and the entire ruleset is on handouts. I use the "show to players" button all the time for rules or npc portraits. I would say to give handouts another try. If you can't get them to work, do you have any browser addons that might be interfering with the background scripts that make these things work? Might be something to check anyway.
Another thing I have done is to set up a handout with links to different scenes and portrait handouts. An index basically. If you have something like that as a backup, you could always talk your players through getting to the image you want to show. Even if the links are there, they can't bring up any linked handouts that they don't have permission to see, so can't be skipping ahead through the index. Something like this then allows them to look back at any time. I archive anything listed on an index handout to keep clutter down in the folders. Archived handouts can still be called up through the links. Give that a try if you need a backup plan to the "show players" button.
I'm not sure how big images are handled when dropped on the table. I think sometimes things like that will require the players to reload for it to view if you are just dropping/resizing the image on an active map page. It isn't always that way, but I have been in games where people had to reload because a player didn't even see tokens in the same places everyone else did (a move or 2 behind everyone else). I have, at times, set up map pages in advance with setting images. Especially if you want to scribble on a landscape image where certain things are. This can make for a longer list of map pages to scroll through if you have many, but at least all the resizing is done that way. Then you are just moving the player ribbon to the scene you want them to see, and that has worked without fail so far in my experience.
Didz, since you are a pro user, you can also look into these two macro generators I use for presentation of scenes and NPCs:
Scenes Macro for Theater of the Mind (Requires API)
NPC Directory and Slideshow (Doesn't require API)
Dude, this is painful to read. PM me a link to the game and set up a time to run tests over the next few days, all of my games are on hiatus, so all you need is to schedule. Once we look at it, you can then promote me to CoGM, and we can fix it. I am in the EST (New York) time zone and I keep normal(?) hours from @06:00 to 23:00 EST. Problems are easier to see than explain.
Did you use animations for weather or something like it?
I don't know if this is the case, but animations don't work in all browsers.
If your players didn't use either Firefox or chrome, they might get a really weird screen.
(It generally is a good idea to test things in different browsers)
Kraynic said:
You could create a dummy account and have it open in a private window to check how things look. That is something from the Stupid Tricks thread. You might want to check out the first post (index) to see if there is anything else of interest to you as well. https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6049241/
I have finally got around to trying out your idea and have successfully created a Dummy Account using the '+' trick.
I was surprised this worked but apart from occasionally switching me from one account to the other dynamically when I login it has allowed me to Launch my game twice once in GM mode and once as a player.. 
The first confirmation is that my players are right the audio isn't working.
I had hoped that the failure was limited to the GM screen only, but it turns out that the players are not getting any audio either, and the 'Now Playing' box clearly confirms that 'Nothing, currently' is playing.
I've tried reloading the game and page from scratch as the player but this makes no difference.
However, if I manually start the audio file from the GM account then it starts playing on both the GM and Player Account. So, it seems to be an issue with the 'Play on Load' feature in the Page Settings. It's obviously not loading the audio track for some reason.
As you can see its clearly set but not functioning.
++++
A weird inconsistency.
Whilst testing the image placement reported below to 'Jens F' I happened to move the 'Players' marker in the GM screen to change the current scene from the Home Page to 'The Mountain Road' and when I did so the audio files suddenly kicked in and started playing both for the GM Account and for the Player.
For a brief second, I thought I'd cracked it and that the audio files are triggered by the movement of the 'Players' marker which causes the page to load for the players. But subsequent testing shows this is not always the case and its actually inconsistent.
keithcurtis said:
Didz, since you are a pro user, you can also look into these two macro generators I use for presentation of scenes and NPCs:
Scenes Macro for Theater of the Mind (Requires API)
NPC Directory and Slideshow (Doesn't require API)
Wow! Ok....I've had a quick look and these look really useful but probably complicated. Not sure I need more technology to work with at the minute but I do like the ideas. The scenes macro in particular as I am that GM who uses full-page images as the backdrop for each scene and not just for combat encounters.
I might come back to this once I've mastered the basics.
Jens F. said:
Did you use animations for weather or something like it?
I don't know if this is the case, but animations don't work in all browsers.
If your players didn't use either Firefox or chrome, they might get a really weird screen.
(It generally is a good idea to test things in different browsers)
Hi Jens, No! I'm not using anything like that. The set-up I'm using is just a series of scene backdrops onto which I had intended to superimpose images of the key characters encountered. Something like the image below. But apparently it didn't work for the players.
The interesting thing about the above screenshot is that it shows two images which appear as tokens on both the GM and player screen. suggesting that the function is working as intended. But if I try to add a handout such as 'The Strigany Caravan' it appears on the GM Screen but not the player screen even if I click on 'Show to Players' and regardless of clicking on Shift+Z . So there is a degree of inconsistency which is worrying. Perhaps I need to create all images as tokens. 
So here you can see the handout image for 'The Strigany Caravan' clearly highlighted on the GM screen having been marked as 'Show to players.' and I've even tried using Shift+z on it just for good measure.
But this is the Players screen.
As you can see no sign of the Strigany caravan image or even the handout on the players VTT.
One issue with having 2 instances of the game running at one time is that the browser doesn't keep them truly separate from each other. You refresh one, and suddenly that tab/window will be the other login. If you look back at the post I linked way up at the top of the thread, it does say this:
3) When signing on, use either a different browser, or preferably a Private Browsing window of the same browser. If you are logged on to two different games in regular browser windows of the same browser, and need to refresh one, it will always refresh to the latest account joined. This will leave you logged into two windows with the same account. So open a private browsing window and log into your second account with that.
Kraynic said:
One issue with having 2 instances of the game running at one time is that the browser doesn't keep them truly separate from each other. You refresh one, and suddenly that tab/window will be the other login. If you look back at the post I linked way up at the top of the thread, it does say this:
3) When signing on, use either a different browser, or preferably a Private Browsing window of the same browser. If you are logged on to two different games in regular browser windows of the same browser, and need to refresh one, it will always refresh to the latest account joined. This will leave you logged into two windows with the same account. So open a private browsing window and log into your second account with that.
Fpr this reason its always best to have your main account in one browser, and your dummy account in another browser. Or, one opened in a private browsing session, or separate user account if you know how to do that - separate browsers is easier to explain.
al e. said:
Dude, this is painful to read. PM me a link to the game and set up a time to run tests over the next few days, all of my games are on hiatus, so all you need is to schedule. Once we look at it, you can then promote me to CoGM, and we can fix it. I am in the EST (New York) time zone and I keep normal(?) hours from @06:00 to 23:00 EST. Problems are easier to see than explain.
Hi! Thanks for the offer and I agree that some sort of one to one tutorial might sort out my issues pretty quickly. The only problem I can see is the difference in time zones as I'm based just north of London on GMT so by the time your home from work I'm going to be in bed. I've had a similar offer from someone living in the CST time zone which had the same problem.
It one of the other issues with online roleplay as it makes party composition difficult. One of the few advantages of PBEM games is that time zones don't matter.
Hi Didz, if you continue to struggle feel free to ping me a note. I'm also GMT so could likely help you out... I'm predominantly active during normal working hours though ;)
Actually I am a "seasoned citizen", I have been home from work for years. I run a SWN game normally on Friday nights at 23:00 EST and once ran a one shot at 4 AM to match up with some peeps in Australia. I am flexible in time if not in my knees. BTW, I have been doing this so long I played in a tourney game with Gary Gygax DMing at Gencon East2.
This is typical of the sort of issue I'm struggling with.
There's a video here that pretty much shows the sort of thing I'm trying to do in my game, but unfortunately, Darpeh actually doesn't explain how he does it. So, I'm just left looking at this and thinking 'Why doesn't this work for me?' So frustrating.
Looking at what he's doing, he seems to be hovering the mouse over an image and pressing SHIFT+Z and boom it highlights the image on the player screen. Which is exactly what I want to do, except when I try it nothing happens. So..either there is more to the set-up than he's saying, or something I'm doing is different to what he's doing.
For that, they aren't hovering over the image. They will be selecting it, then pressing shift+z.
Pressing 'z' alone allows the user to show the image on their screen alone (but only if they can actually select the token/drawing). As a DM however, you have the power to select anything and press shift+z to force the image onto EVERYONE's screen in one go. They can click to remove it so if the timing is off they might clear it before acknowledging it but the DM can always pop it back up again by the same method.
al e. said:
BTW, I have been doing this so long I played in a tourney game with Gary Gygax DMing at Gencon East2.
Quit bragging al e.
;-P
It was just the luck of the draw and a scheduled DM not showing up. BTW, he was famous then and there were so many interruptions by fans walking into the room, we got nowhere in the allotted time. It was the equivalent of having Elvis cut you off in traffic.
Ziechael said:
For that, they aren't hovering over the image. They will be selecting it, then pressing shift+z.
Pressing 'z' alone allows the user to show the image on their screen alone (but only if they can actually select the token/drawing). As a DM however, you have the power to select anything and press shift+z to force the image onto EVERYONE's screen in one go. They can click to remove it so if the timing is off they might clear it before acknowledging it but the DM can always pop it back up again by the same method.
Hi Ziechael,
Yes! I've watched this video several times now to try and work out what the Darpeh is actually doing and what I might be doing differently that would explain why what I'm doing doesn't seem to work.
First of all, it looks to me as though the Darpeh has set up a Page on his VTT which contains all the images he wants to use in his storyboard. I don't do that because I use the page background images to set the scene and to provide the ambient sounds for it. So, there is a clear difference there in that the Darpeh has the images on the page but hidden behind the Fog of War, whereas I am trying to place the images dynamically onto the VTT from my journal or from an external source (such as my plot article on World Anvil).
So, what Darpeh seems to be doing is hovering over an image which is already on his VTT but hidden behind a Fog of War screen and pressing SHIFT+Z to cause that image to become the focal image on the VTT and to override the Fog the War.
Whereas what I'm trying to do is either:
So, there is a difference but what puzzles me is why SHIFT+Z seems to work as an image highlighter for his method, but not for any of mine. For 1 & 2 nothing seems to happen when I press Shift+Z. In fact, with handout images, I've tried just clicking on the magnifying glass symbol on the image itself and that usually causes Roll20 to go into the hour-glass mode for several minutes but eventually refreshes the VTT with a zoomed-in image in the centre of the VTT similar to the SHIFT+Z effect. However, it's not visible to players and using SHIFT+Z on it has no effect.
So, for example, the image of the Strigany Caravan shown here was actually achieved by clicking in the magnifying glass on the handout image you can just see behind it in the greyed out area. But it took ages for Roll20 to provide that focal image on the VTT with lots of disc thrashing going on behind the scenes and having got to the point depicted it was still not shown on the player's screen even if I hovered over it and clicked SHIFT+Z.
Similarly copying in images and pasting them onto the VTT and then highlighting them works on the GM screen but isn't visible on the player screens, but I'm told that might be due to my use of JPEG format for image storage.
The problem with using Darpeh's approach as I understand it to work is that I would have to sacrifice my scene backdrops and the ambient sounds and just play with the Fog of War Black Screen background.
In fact, with handout images, I've tried just clicking on the magnifying glass symbol on the image itself and that usually causes Roll20 to go into the hour-glass mode for several minutes but eventually refreshes the VTT with a zoomed-in image in the centre of the VTT similar to the SHIFT+Z effect. However, it's not visible to players and using SHIFT+Z on it has no effect.
The magnifying glass you speak of is for when you, only you, wish to see the handout at a bigger size. It will never cause the image to show for anyone else when you click the magnifying glass on the handout. And you can not shift-Z a handout to show it to anyone else.
To show handouts to your players, do the following:
1) Open the handout that you've created, click on 'Edit'
2) Make sure it is in 'All Players' journals and then click' Save Changes'3) Click 'Show to Players'
Those are the steps for showing a handout to your players.
To expand on what Gen Kitty posted, shift+z is for showing the enlarged graphic of a token to the players. So, for that to work, you have to have a graphic on the tabletop itself, and it has to be selected before you hit shift+z. I have to admit it does look like he just hovers his mouse of them and then does shift+z, but if that is actually what is happening there is something else at work (external scripts/extensions), because that isn't the way Roll20 works as far as I am aware.
Hi @Gen Kitty and @Kraynic.
Handouts: I think my confusion over handouts stems from the way they are used in the tabletop game. A handout is literally something that the GM handouts in my experience. e.g. it gets thrown down on the tabletop for the players to look at and read as appropriate. So, I naturally tend towards trying to use them in a similar fashion for my Roll20 games.
It, therefore, seemed like the obvious feature to use to store images that I wanted to share with my players at the appropriate moment in the story. e.g. The appearance of the Strigany Caravan on the road ahead. In a tabletop game this would be the moment I would have revealed the image and dropped it onto the table for the players to look at and so my assumption was that the Roll20 handout could be used in a similar manner.
The fact that SHIFT+Z doesn't work on Handouts and that 'Show to Players' only makes a Handout accessible to a player in their Journal seems to undermine its value as a storytelling aid in my opinion. In real-world terms, it seems to me like the equivalent of secretly stuffing a screwed up handout into a player's back pocket whilst they are sitting at the table and not bothering to tell them its there. Unless the player is constantly monitoring their Journal they would have no idea that it had just been made visible to them. That probably explains why as a player in a recent SWN game I was completely unaware of the Comms Messages being sent to my character as handouts because I rarely opened my character journal during play.
I was told by another DM in our group that dragging a Handout onto the VTT and then clicking on the 'Show to Players' button made the handout visible on everyone's VTT including all the players. But Having tried that several times it doesn't seem to work for me and even if it did without being able to use the SHIFT+Z command on it to make it the focus on the player screen there is no way of ensuring that every player would see it as it's always possible they might have the VTT zoomed in and focussed elsewhere so the handout was off-screen.
So, it looks as though the Handout is a redundant feature for my games with no practical purpose except perhaps as a player characters notepad.
Tokens: If tokens are the only things that can be dragged onto the VTT and highlighted using SHIFT+Z then that seems to be the only feature I can use for my player handouts and it looks as though every image I want to use during play will have to be created as a Character Sheet with a Token image to make that work. I know token images do appear on everyone's VTT when dragged onto it, so I just need to make sure I can get the SHIFT+Z to work once they are there.
SHIFT+Z: What confuses me somewhat about the use of SHIFT+Z and the way it works (or doesn't work) in Roll20 is that I was sure during my research and study of the Roll20 tutorials that it was described as a sort of universal focus tool for drawing the players attention to specific parts of the VTT that the GM wanted the players to look at, but so far it doesn't look like it does that at all. So whereas I thought I could drop an image onto the VTT and then use SHIFT+Z to draw player focus to it (a bit like pointing to a handout I'd just dropped on the tabletop) in fact it does work like that at all. So, I need to experiment a lot more to find out what its real limitations are and whether it can be used to do anything other that highlight a token assuming it actually does that in my game anyway.
Roll20 Wiki: The Roll20 wiki clearly states that Pressing Shift+Z as the GM shows all players the larger version of that object. But then goes on to state Note that only players and DMs that are on the same page as the selected token will see the modal pop-up. A bit misleading as I assumed an Object could be anything on the VTT, but the Note clearly does indicate that the object has to be a Token. So it looks as though all my images do need to be Character Tokens. I also noticed from the number of forum posts on this subject that I'm not the only GM having issues with SHIFT+Z.
You could make your photos into a rollable table. The "0" could be the logo for your game sitting there on the tabletop. A macro and TokenMod would allow you to change the picture quickly on the fly. I just set up my "Saturnalia" game page for my group(s). This is a mashup game where I invite all of my players, but I run D&D, Stars Without Number, and Trail of Cthulhu games. The center of the map is the ubiquitous tavern that everybody meets at. My tavern is on a rollable table, and every time they leave the tavern, it randomly switches between 900 AD Lithuania, 1939 Philadelphia, and 3632 in a Virgin Intergalactic Station Bar. This gives the opportunity for all of them to be confused.
Minor point of clarification:
'Show to Players' only makes a Handout accessible to a player in their Journal
No. 'Show to Players' is supposed to cause the handout to actually show on every player's screen until they dismiss it.
Gen Kitty said:
Minor point of clarification:
'Show to Players' only makes a Handout accessible to a player in their Journal
No. 'Show to Players' is supposed to cause the handout to actually show on every player's screen until they dismiss it.
Well, that would be more useful but it doesn't seem to work for me.
Didz said:
Gen Kitty said:
Minor point of clarification:
'Show to Players' only makes a Handout accessible to a player in their Journal
No. 'Show to Players' is supposed to cause the handout to actually show on every player's screen until they dismiss it.
Well, that would be more useful but it doesn't seem to work for me.
Here's how Show To Players with Handouts is supposed to work:
This button is to the right of the Name and allows the GM to cause the Handout Dialog to be displayed on the screens of any players that can View the Handout. If no players can View the Handout, a dialog will prompt the GM and ask if it should be shared with all players. Clicking Show to Everyone will insert All Players into the In Players's Journals field of the Handout (see below).
So, you should be able to test this:
Make sure the In Players Journals and Can Be Edited box are empty.
I'm wondering if you have something set in the visibility settings, so it's only being shown to you.
I'll test this tonight or if not tonight then on Monday and let you know what happens. I'm not sure about the visibility settings.
I haven't knowingly changed anything and until you mentioned it I hadn't even heard of visibility settings. So if anything has been changed then it will have happened by accident and without any understanding of the consequences. I'm also conscious that I'm using Google Chrome as a browser which someone mentioned can interfere with Roll20.
However, the only extensions I'm using are Adobe Acrobat; Grammarly for Chrome and Skype. I know Grammarly can sometimes be invasive particularly on Facebook but I'm only using the free version so it shouldn't be as intrusive as the full product. I'm not sure why Adobe or skype would be a problem.
Once the current General Election is over and I've completed all my Christmas shopping I'll hopefully have more time for testing and will set up some test sessions with those people who have offered to help sort me out. At the moment I'm not really sure I can use Roll20 effectively for my game, as I can't seem to make it do what I want it to do and I'm wondering whether its the right tool for the job anyway.
I play first edition WFRP and I get the impression Roll20 is really designed to support D&D which is much more combat focussed and so a lot of the tools seem to be more appropriate to a sort of Wargame Table simulation with figure tokens, battle boards, turn progression trackers and combat roll macros. Whereas WFRP tends to be more story/narrative-driven and is more akin to 'theatre of the mind'. Also, there is no support for WFRP First Edition so I have no character sheets to work with and it just seems like I may be trying to use a hammer to crack a nut. Or perhaps more accurately trying to drill a square hole with a round bit.
I'm actually wondering if it might make more sense to switch to the World Anvil Storyboard System. I already do all my world-building on that platform so all the images are already stored there as part of WFRP Fragile Alliances. The only thing I would miss is the Roll20 chat journal which is really useful for recording the history of the sessions.
The other problem is that it would mean starting virtually from scratch as I know even less about the WA Story-Board system than I do about Roll20. So, it would be a big gamble to switch and no real guarantee that it would actually work any better either.
Didz said:
I'm also conscious that I'm using Google Chrome as a browser which someone mentioned can interfere with Roll20.
Google Chrome is one of the two officially supported browsers for roll20, so it shouldnt cause any issues.
However, the only extensions I'm using are Adobe Acrobat; Grammarly for Chrome and Skype. I know Grammarly can sometimes be invasive particularly on Facebook but I'm only using the free version so it shouldn't be as intrusive as the full product. I'm not sure why Adobe or skype would be a problem.
I dont know what grammarly is, but this is a misconception: free versions are more likely to be more invasive than full versions (you pay to avoid the invasiveness of free products). But I doubt thats an issue.
I play first edition WFRP and I get the impression Roll20 is really designed to support D&D which is much more combat focussed and so a lot of the tools seem to be more appropriate to a sort of Wargame Table simulation with figure tokens, battle boards, turn progression trackers and combat roll macros. Whereas WFRP tends to be more story/narrative-driven and is more akin to 'theatre of the mind'. Also, there is no support for WFRP First Edition so I have no character sheets to work with and it just seems like I may be trying to use a hammer to crack a nut. Or perhaps more accurately trying to drill a square hole with a round bit.
lol, talk about fighting words. The argument of whether D&D is a wargame is not for these boards, and is likely to get you in trouble. For the record, I tend to play games with are more rules-light than WFRP (like Fate, Apocalypse World, and many others), and roll20 serves their need fine.
It's better for theatre of the mind games.
Also, I could have sworn I'd seen a 1st edition WFRP sheet. Maybe its being maintained unofficially. I'll have a look and see if I can find it.
Anyway, back to your main topic: the issues you are having are not the normal behaviour. The things you are trying to do are things lots of us are doing without any problems. So there is a problem somewhere - whether its a bug in roll20, or a configuration mistake. We can hopefully help you find it, and get it working.
Didz said:
I had hoped that the failure was limited to the GM screen only, but it turns out that the players are not getting any audio either, and the 'Now Playing' box clearly confirms that 'Nothing, currently' is playing.
I've tried reloading the game and page from scratch as the player but this makes no difference.
However, if I manually start the audio file from the GM account then it starts playing on both the GM and Player Account. So, it seems to be an issue with the 'Play on Load' feature in the Page Settings. It's obviously not loading the audio track for some reason.
As you can see its clearly set but not functioning.
++++
A weird inconsistency.
Whilst testing the image placement reported below to 'Jens F' I happened to move the 'Players' marker in the GM screen to change the current scene from the Home Page to 'The Mountain Road' and when I did so the audio files suddenly kicked in and started playing both for the GM Account and for the Player.
For a brief second, I thought I'd cracked it and that the audio files are triggered by the movement of the 'Players' marker which causes the page to load for the players. But subsequent testing shows this is not always the case and its actually inconsistent.
At login or browser refresh, the jukebox won't restart playlists at the beginning once they have played through. I suspect this is the case with tracks that don't loop but I haven't tested that yet. But they will if you move the player ribbon to the page, or if you manually restart, as you found out. Change your Before the Storm track to loop and it should continue to play and sync when your players log in. You will need to do this for any playlists that are 'play on load'.
It is supposed to trigger on movement of the player's ribbon. Assuming you don't have a copy of the Necromicon resting on your computer, try moving the ribbon away, waiting a few seconds, then back again.
GiGs said:
lol, talk about fighting words. The argument of whether D&D is a wargame is not for these boards, and is likely to get you in trouble. For the record, I tend to play games with are more rules-light than WFRP (like Fate, Apocalypse World, and many others), and roll20 serves their need fine.
It's better for theatre of the mind games.
Also, I could have sworn I'd seen a 1st edition WFRP sheet. Maybe its being maintained unofficially. I'll have a look and see if I can find it.
It wasn't meant to be an insult or criticism merely an observation based upon my own experience and that of my gaming group which plays mostly D&D style games. It's also pretty obvious that Roll20 heavily supports D&D as a gaming system with a lot of emphasis on combat.
I don't GM D&D games so I can only comment based upon my own participation in them and watching videos etc. But my impression is that there is a lot more combat in D&D than the average WFRP game and that it tends to be played out move by move on the tabletop rather than as a narrative encounter.
But that is obviously a generalisation based on my own experience.
I was surprised to hear that Google Chrome is an officially supported browser as I am sure someone told me that it causes a lot of problems with Roll20. But that's good to know anyway.
al e. said:
It is supposed to trigger on movement of the player's ribbon. Assuming you don't have a copy of the Necromicon resting on your computer, try moving the ribbon away, waiting a few seconds, then back again.
I intend to experiment a bit more with 'Moving the Player Ribbon' as it seemed to work most of the time and on at least one occasion I noticed that it said it was playing an audio track even though there was no audible sound. So, I need to try and fathom out what's actually going on in a bit more detail.
Also as Doug E points out I may need to set some of these tracks to 'Loop' in order to make them persistent. Particularly on the Home Screen.
Didz said:
It wasn't meant to be an insult or criticism merely an observation based upon my own experience and that of my gaming group which plays mostly D&D style games. It's also pretty obvious that Roll20 heavily supports D&D as a gaming system with a lot of emphasis on combat.
I don't GM D&D games so I can only comment based upon my own participation in them and watching videos etc. But my impression is that there is a lot more combat in D&D than the average WFRP game and that it tends to be played out move by move on the tabletop rather than as a narrative encounter.
D&D (like a lot of RPGs) tends to have a bulk of rules dedicated to resolving conflict. A lot of the rest of it is handled with skill checks or role play. How the rules are used and in what proportion is entirely table-dependent. I've played whole games where barely a die and nary a punch was thrown. I've certainly played without miniatures. Since one of the main advantages of Roll20 is to automate rules, a lot of it is devoted to resolving combat.
I was surprised to hear that Google Chrome is an officially supported browser as I am sure someone told me that it causes a lot of problems with Roll20. But that's good to know anyway.
Google Chrome is one of the two supported browsers and works fine. I get slightly better performance from Firefox, but this varies from person to person.
Audio Testing
I finally got some time this afternoon to do some testing and decided to try and sort out the 'Play On Load' audio issue.
Everything seemed to be working fine for the first six pages and as soon as I moved the 'Player Ribbon' I could hear the page music kick in on the player screen which was loaded in the background. The issue I thought I had with the Carriage Ride sound effect turned out to be down to the fact that I had the sound set too low on that file and once I turned it up to Max it worked normally.
I was just thinking that I'd got it all sussed and everything was working perfectly when I moved the Player Ribbon on to the 6th Page and nothing happened. At least Audio-wise anyway. The 6th Page is the Scene for the Mine Entrance and has 'Blacksmiths Shoppe' by Tabletop Audio as the 'Play on Load' Audio SFX. On checking the Player Screen the Scene had changed to the mine entrance and the audio file was showing in the 'Now Playing' box. Except that it wasn't. It seemed to be stuck at 0.00 of 10.00 and not playing.
I tried moving the player ribbon back and counting to 10 and then moving it forward again but that didn't work.
I tried moving on to the next Page 'The Herrenhaus' which had a different audio file specified and the same thing happened. The file seemed to load but didn't start playing.
I tried running the audio file manually, and even choosing other audio files which I'd used on earlier pages just to see if it was a problem with the files. But none of them would play even though I could list four or five of them in the 'Now Playing' box for the page.
None of the pages from 6 onwards would allow an audio file to play.
Interestingly if I moved the player ribbon back to the Home Page or Pages 1 thru 5 they all still worked normally. So, it just seemed to be an issue with pages 6 to 9.
I had just about given up on it working when I moved the Player Ribbon back to Page 6 and it worked. Then I found all the other pages also worked and I have absolutely no idea what I did to make that happen or what was stopping it in the first place.
So, at the moment as I type this everything is working as intended, but for well over five minutes the sound wasn't working on Page 6-9 and I don't know why. It's almost as though something was running in the background on my PC that was stopping the audio file being played. But of course, that doesn't make sense as the audio files for the first six pages were still working normally.
Bit puzzled.
++++
AFTERTHOUGHTS
I've been trying to think of some logical explanation for the behaviour described above as sometimes one can identify the cause of an IT issue simply by logical deduction. But the only thing I can come up within this case is that it's must be some sort of buffering issue on the Roll20 server.
My first thought was that it might be something on my own PC (e.g. a scheduled download or update) that was interfering with the playing of the audio tracks. But that doesn't make sense given that I was still able to play the same audio files on the earlier pages (Home to 5). I would have expected anything happening on my PC to block all audio playback until it had finished regardless of which page I was on.
Instead, it's almost as though I had exceeded the number of audio files I was allowed to load from the Tabletop Audio Server (e.g six files) and it wouldn't let me play anymore until it had cleared my buffer limit. The only thing that still doesn't make sense is why files that I had already downloaded and played wouldn't play on pages 6-9. Almost as though those pages needed to be authorised to allow the function.
The only additional clue I noticed is that Page 8 (The Bucket of Blood) took an awfully long time to load a clear image too almost like I was overloading the server. But it's all a bit weird and I'll have to repeat the test later and see if the issue is persistent and consistent or just a random glitch.
Try this: "Ego daemonium et mittam te in nomine ____________" (Demon I cast you out in the name of [fill in the blank])
Sorry, this thing is just not giving you a break...
al:^)
al e. said:
Try this: "Ego daemonium et mittam te in nomine ____________" (Demon I cast you out in the name of [fill in the blank])
Lol! I'll give that a try before I try my next test. Hope to get a chance to do some more testing later today. But at least thanks to @Kraynic I now have a dummy player account that lets me see what's happening from the players perspective. It was a nightmare before as I was just getting player feedback that made no sense.
TODAYS TESTING
Audio Replication Test
I repeated the test I carried out yesterday and got exactly the same results.
The audio files load and play as expected on the first six pages, but fail to play on pages 6 - 9.
So the results appear to be consistent but I still don't have a logical explanation.
Shift+Z Basic Function Test
I then went on to test that the basic function Shift+Z works as expected.
I selected the Token image of Petra Sara on the Mountain Road page and having zooming in the Players VTT to focus on a patch of grass in the bottom right of the VTT I then pressed SHIFT+Z to confirm that it would force the image onto the players screen.
The result is shown below.
So it worked as expected.
The only issue is that it took an inordinate amount of time to load the image. I timed it as 33 seconds from pressing SHIFT+Z to the image loading on the player's screen. Which is a long while to be staring at a revolving circle.
However, I did go back and repeat the test and it worked almost instantaneously. So, perhaps it was just a random glitch.
Could there be a lag issue exacerbating the problems? Really unload your computer and run it on a naked browser; no add-ons, cleared cache...
BTW this made my morning tea:
"I then went on to test that the basic function Shit+Z works as expected."
Surprised you didn't get "Posted in wrong forum".
al e. said:
Could there be a lag issue exacerbating the problems? Really unload your computer and run it on a naked browser; no add-ons, cleared cache.
If it was a lag issue I wouldn't have expected it to arise at exactly the same point (e.g. on page 6) in every test. Lag issues are usually caused by an extraneous event that has its own frequency and timing (e.g. a scheduled windows update or a routine AV scan). Unless of course there is something special about pages 6,7,8 & 9 that is causing the lag. But nothing obvious springs to mind.
I'll repeat the test again today and see if I get the same results.
Didz said:
Unless of course there is something special about pages 6,7,8 & 9 that is causing the lag. But nothing obvious spring to mind.
That's what I'd be checking - try to find out if there is anything different about the setup or contents of those maps.
Displaying Images: Are the images very large (in terms of filesize)? If the images are many megabytes in size, it might explain why they load slowly. You could try saving them at a lower resolution.
Music on Page Load: When you are opening pages, are you opening them in the same order? I wonder if it is something specifically with those maps and/or soundfiles. Otherwise, it may be a caching issue and the problem occurs after any six pages are opened.
