A New Light - Bug Thread - Updated Dynamic Lighting and Fog of War

Andrew F. said: Player can see entire map if they hit Ctrl-L while their token is selected... Thanks for the report, Andrew F. I followed your steps to the letter, and I wasn't able to replicate your issue. With the second player, are you using the same user account that is the GM of the game?

Hi! If you put a torch with a weak light 20 feet. And the character will set up 200% Light Multiplier, then the viewing radius for him will not increase

This probably isn't a unique problem, but when I set Updated Dynamic Lighting for a page, either manually or with the Convert Lighting tool, that page won't load. If I turn it off in the page settings, then it will load again; turn it back on and it won't. If it's relevant, I wasn't using Legacy dynamic lighting previously. Windows 7, Firefox.

Tried the new lighting. When I would move my doors aside it didn't update the lighting. The players could move as normal so movement wasn't restricted but the line of sight didn't update. Even though I moved the door to the other side of the map it didn't allow light through its original spot. I had to outride delete the door shape. I don't have update on drop selected. When I go back to original mode it works as before. As soon as i start moving the door the light gets through. (EDIT) A second issue. I have two players with darkvsion. It stacks the color layer on DM view. Both tokens are owned by the same player.

I hope you folks either don't remove the old system or fix the loading issues.  As I mentioned a couple of months ago, some of my players can't load maps with the new dynamic lighting system.  That was 1 single map last time. Changed to the old system and they got in no problem.  With all the hype for the new system I decided to switch back to the new lighting on that map and we're replaying it tomorrow.  Had some of my players try to get in with the new lighting, and again, some can't load the map.  The map is 60x60 and fairly detailed.  I have another one which I just generated recently where the background is just 6 pictures glued together, plus a bunch of mobs and the light lines. SO it should be way less crap to load (similar size), and again, can't load in, just infinite loading loop.  Players can chat in the text box or with voice but can't see the map.  Change to old system and no problem.  I have bigger maps with more stuff on them than these that don't have lighting and the players have no problems at all. I am very worried that you're going to force everyone to use the new lighting system and remove the old one. If you do this, there will no longer be a point in me giving you money for the lighting as I wont be able to use it and will have to go back to doing manual reveals of maps. Please please please please, either fix this stuff, or leave the legacy lighting in as an option. Players have tried chrome and firefox and use windows 7 and 10.  Some can get in, some can't.  The ones that can't have updated graphics drivers and tried changing browsers. HELP!

I'm getting a strange effect where im getting a ghosted  overlay of the lighting and tokens not sure what to do to fix it i wasn't getting it before converted to new lighting and haven't been able to figure revert back to legacy dynamic lighting

Ron, you should just be able to flip the new lighting off and your old settings on tokens will kick back in. Re-enable the legacy settings for the map the way you set them in the first place.  If you used their new convert thing you may have to reset all of your tokens too, I don't know.

1: Dynamic Lighting, Daylight ON 2: Dynamic Lighting, Daylight OFF 3: Dynamic Lighting, Daylight OFF, Ctrl+L I've been playing with dynamic lighting, and noticed this issue where the character tokens become blurry when Daylight is turned off. When I Ctrl+L, they're clear, so I assume my players will see their own tokens without issue, but it's a bit irritating for me when moving tokens around and not being 100% sure if they've just lost resolution or if it's the lights. Is this supposed to happen/is there a way to fix it? Edit: changed Sunlight to Daylight.

Is directional lighting broken again? I have been bashing my head against a wall to get tokens to emit flashlights like they were able to do literally three days ago and I am at a loss. The tokens I'd placed before this patch still work completely fine, but, when I place new tokens with the exact same settings, the new tokens are completely darkened and cannot emit light. Screenshots to follow. Edit. Never mind. It is entirely the updated dynamic lighting system that was updated; I switched to Legacy and the issue was immediately resolved.  Can we PLEASE stop having these updates on Thursdays? Most every TTRPG group I have ever been a part of hosts their sessions on the weekend, and to force a clearly untested update with zero forewarning right before a weekend, and undoing nearly 4 hours of map work, makes me want to pursue refunding my purchases. This is absolutely absurd.  If the switch to UDL, as has been posted, occurs before it is actually stable, I will be pursuing a new platform. This is not how feature implementation should be handled. 

ABOUT LOW-LIGHT VISION I know that we can put low-ligth on the map through invisible points of light, but it would be great if there was an option where we could do this on the whole map, as it is with the option of day light and / or options such as permanent darkness, only for low-light. It would help a lot! example: nights lit by the light of the full moon to complete it would be a very good option in the UDL to indicate that the character has low-light vision and that he can see normally in this type of lighting. example: edges of torchlight or light magic full moon light for example: for nights illuminated by a full moon, characters without low-light could see, without having to emit light, even with poor vision, and characters with low-light would see normally. all this without having to emit light in dungeons, low-light characters would benefit as well as the lighting generated by their companions, since the external half of the lighting generated by their companions is usually low-light

After transitioning to updated dynamic lighting Roll20 won't even open. It just stays on the loading screen causes chrome to not respond. Help please!

How do you switch back to legacy? Mike H. said: Is directional lighting broken again? I have been bashing my head against a wall to get tokens to emit flashlights like they were able to do literally three days ago and I am at a loss. The tokens I'd placed before this patch still work completely fine, but, when I place new tokens with the exact same settings, the new tokens are completely darkened and cannot emit light. Screenshots to follow. Edit. Never mind. It is entirely the updated dynamic lighting system that was updated; I switched to Legacy and the issue was immediately resolved.  Can we PLEASE stop having these updates on Thursdays? Most every TTRPG group I have ever been a part of hosts their sessions on the weekend, and to force a clearly untested update with zero forewarning right before a weekend, and undoing nearly 4 hours of map work, makes me want to pursue refunding my purchases. This is absolutely absurd.  If the switch to UDL, as has been posted, occurs before it is actually stable, I will be pursuing a new platform. This is not how feature implementation should be handled. 

Rubble said: Ron, you should just be able to flip the new lighting off and your old settings on tokens will kick back in. Re-enable the legacy settings for the map the way you set them in the first place.  If you used their new convert thing you may have to reset all of your tokens too, I don't know. I don't see any button that says legacy lighting or any way to flip the updated lighting off. Can you be more specific? My game is just stuck on the loading screen. RANT: Hey roll 20. Work on your development in a UAT environment with paid testers. I am a paying customer and NOT a member of your QA team. Stop using your clients as free labor. 

Other maps randomly bleed onto different maps with new dynamic lighting on vs legacy.

Rubble said: I am very worried that you're going to force everyone to use the new lighting system and remove the old one. I second this. LDL works for me and my groups, UDL seldom does.

Jason, load into a map that WILL load. Then bring up your maps list.  Each map has a tab where you can click settings on it. Go into the settings and there's a bright shiny "Dynamic Lighting (updated)" tab.  Click that, and then turn off the 2 obvious switches. "Dynamic Lighting" and "Explorer Mode"... the first one should be enough.  That will KILL OFF the new lighting on that map.  Then just go into the usual advanced settings to turn the old lighting back on...might still be there.  Then check your tokens on that map.  If you turned the new lighting on yourself, the tokens will be fine...if it was done with their "tool" you may or may not have to change everything back manually. Note...this only works for GMs. Players just have to rail at their GMs to change back.

If you can't load the game on the map you are set to, you can try creating a  Dummy Account , and promoting it to GM. It might be able to load the game if the player flag is set to a simpler map. Other things to try: Loading in a private browsing window. This will ensure that nearly everything else that might tax your browser is turned off. Loading the game in a different browser, even an unsupported one. You just need to get into the game once in order to toggle off the settings. If that doesn't work, try making a  Help Center Request

Brian V. said: Tried the new lighting. When I would move my doors aside it didn't update the lighting. The players could move as normal so movement wasn't restricted but the line of sight didn't update. Even though I moved the door to the other side of the map it didn't allow light through its original spot. I had to outride delete the door shape. I don't have update on drop selected. I noticed the same problem last night. I'm pretty sure this is a new problem because a couple weeks ago I was opening & closing doors by moving "door" lines aside. I have never used the Legacy lighting on these maps, just the Updated system.

I am trying to use UDL in a sustained way for the first time, so apologies if my issues have been answered upthread and hundreds of posts ago. I'm on Chrome. First off, I see zero difference between bright light and low light when impersonating a token to see from the player's point of view. Saturation appears to be the same. So that's not feature parity with Legacy lighting. If there is a setting to control how low light looks, please direct me to it! Second, Explorer mode does not work for me at all. I reset Explorable Darkness on a map, dragged a player token onto it, gave it light, and then tested. Fog of war is not maintained. Whenever the token moves from one area to another, a previously explored area disappears from its view, as if Explorer mode is off. I'm sure I'm doing things wrong, but right now, the claim that UDL has "feature parity" with Legacy seems  mistaken at best.

I had ignored this until recently due to a message saying the new lighting system was online thinking it would now work, maybe. I just tried and it seems that the "Explorer Mode" is not working for me: - Using latest version of Chrome, old lighting settings are all off both for page and for token, new lighting is switched on both in page and token with the Explorer Mode on. The token has vision and night vision enabled. In the first image I CTRL+L to see what the token sees:  In the second image I move the token up north to another room and it SHOULD show the previous room visible but greyed out. Except it doesn't. It behaves as if Explorer Mode was off: 

Jay R. said: (...) Second, Explorer mode does not work for me at all. I reset Explorable Darkness on a map, dragged a player token onto it, gave it light, and then tested. Fog of war is not maintained. Whenever the token moves from one area to another, a previously explored area disappears from its view, as if Explorer mode is off. (...) Yep, same problem here. I posted a couple of screenshots in my post above.

UPDATE: apart from not working, it also permanently messed up my map. Fortunately I used a test one. After trying to revert to the old system the map is now permanently grayed out and NO lighting works whatsoever.  wow.

LotsOfLore said: UPDATE: apart from not working, it also permanently messed up my map. Fortunately I used a test one. After trying to revert to the old system the map is now permanently grayed out and NO lighting works whatsoever.  wow. Yikes. I'm using a test map on a test game precisely because of all the bugs and errors reported by other users. I'm also encountering an issue where trying to replicate the blinded condition (that is, turning vision off for a token entirely) generates a weird black circle around some areas of the map, as if permanent darkness was placed there (and it wasn't). 

LotsOfLore said: Jay R. said: (...) Second, Explorer mode does not work for me at all. I reset Explorable Darkness on a map, dragged a player token onto it, gave it light, and then tested. Fog of war is not maintained. Whenever the token moves from one area to another, a previously explored area disappears from its view, as if Explorer mode is off. (...) Yep, same problem here. I posted a couple of screenshots in my post above. That's exactly the issue I'm having. Maybe a recent update broke it?

I'm still getting the bug where my tokens get a field of vision with night vision even though I don't have field of vision turned on. If I turn off vision entirely, save, then turn it back on, it fixes itself. However, if i add another token on the map, the one i just fixed resets. Basically I have to put all tokens on at the same time, then fix them all at the same time.

Using UDL, Night Vision doesn't function properly after a certain number of tokens are placed on the map. I'm not sure what the magic number of tokens is, but once it's reached, dragging and dropping a character with night vision will cause effects similar to the screenshot below: This token has Vision and Night Vision turned on with Night Vision Distance set to 60 ft. Limit Field of Vision is turned off, although the effect would seem to suggest otherwise. The green vision area is just the tint color I'm using for Darkvision and is not a bug. As for the map itself, it has UDL and Update when Token Drop turned on, and Restrict Movement is also turned on. There are a total of 18 tokens and tiles on this map, including the base map image itself. As a workaround, I can edit the token and toggle its Night Vision off and back on again, which seems to fix the problem on my screen, but I have not yet confirmed with the player whether it addresses the issue for her.

LotsOfLore said: I had ignored this until recently due to a message saying the new lighting system was online thinking it would now work, maybe. I just tried and it seems that the "Explorer Mode" is not working for me: - Using latest version of Chrome, old lighting settings are all off both for page and for token, new lighting is switched on both in page and token with the Explorer Mode on. The token has vision and night vision enabled. My understanding is that Ctrl + L is just checking line of sight for the token.  You don't actually see what the player would see.  Are you testing it as a player and not a GM using Ctrl +L?

Shane said: LotsOfLore said: I had ignored this until recently due to a message saying the new lighting system was online thinking it would now work, maybe. I just tried and it seems that the "Explorer Mode" is not working for me: - Using latest version of Chrome, old lighting settings are all off both for page and for token, new lighting is switched on both in page and token with the Explorer Mode on. The token has vision and night vision enabled. My understanding is that Ctrl + L is just checking line of sight for the token.  You don't actually see what the player would see.  Are you testing it as a player and not a GM using Ctrl +L? If true, that is a significant downgrade in functionality from how Ctrl/Cmd-L worked for Legacy. In Legacy, I could always see what players had seen of the map by using Cmd-L. Now I have to re-sign in as a player just to do something I could do with a button click? Ugh.

@LotsofLore: So I rejoined as player and Explorer mode seems to be working. Sigh. So I can't even test out fog of war by using Cmd-L anymore. Yay, "feature parity." Edit: As player or DM, though, I still can't see ANY difference between bright light and low light. They look identical. Is there some kind of setting to control low light color?

Jay R. said: If true, that is a significant downgrade in functionality from how Ctrl/Cmd-L worked for Legacy. In Legacy, I could always see what players had seen of the map by using Cmd-L. Now I have to re-sign in as a player just to do something I could do with a button click? Ugh. Even Legacy had this issue, just for different features (such as seeing external lights). I've always tested everything using a  Dummy Account . As a pro, you can even use token mod to assign your Dummy Account as a controller of any token/character on the fly. So you can safely and completely test any character.

keithcurtis said: Jay R. said: If true, that is a significant downgrade in functionality from how Ctrl/Cmd-L worked for Legacy. In Legacy, I could always see what players had seen of the map by using Cmd-L. Now I have to re-sign in as a player just to do something I could do with a button click? Ugh. Even Legacy had this issue, just for different features (such as seeing external lights). I've always tested everything using a  Dummy Account . As a pro, you can even use token mod to assign your Dummy Account as a controller of any token/character on the fly. So you can safely and completely test any character. I'll probably do that one of these days. For now, rejoining as player serves me well enough. 

Ok thanks for clarifying the lack of functionality for CTRL+L in this new ligthing system... I am definitely sticking to the old version. I have never had problems with the old version. It did all I needed it to do. Also this new lighting seems to have antialiasing issues that the old one doesn't have.  I pray to Desna, that they keep the old version there and do not touch it.

Nope said: I'm still getting the bug where my tokens get a field of vision with night vision even though I don't have field of vision turned on. If I turn off vision entirely, save, then turn it back on, it fixes itself. However, if i add another token on the map, the one i just fixed resets. Basically I have to put all tokens on at the same time, then fix them all at the same time. Oh man this has been happening in my game and it's maddening. Everyone has a tiny vision cone no matter what settings I change, and the only fix is...enabling and disabling vision on any other token on the map? Something is definitely broken here.

LotsOfLore said: Ok thanks for clarifying the lack of functionality for CTRL+L in this new ligthing system... I am definitely sticking to the old version. I have never had problems with the old version. It did all I needed it to do. Also this new lighting seems to have antialiasing issues that the old one doesn't have.  I pray to Desna, that they keep the old version there and do not touch it. Yeah, I'm sticking with Legacy right now too. UDL is too buggy, and the claim of feature parity rings pretty hollow at the moment. I've tested on a few maps, and bright light looks virtually identical to low light in UDL, even on an uncomplicated map tile with a single terrain color. This is not how dim light appears in Legacy, where you can clearly see the boundaries between dim, regular, and no light. Maddening. What's the point of even having low light if it looks so similar to bright light that you can't tell the difference on first glance?

This is irresponsible. Given the number of game-breaking bugs still in UDL (and the conversion tool) and that many of the new versions of features have a detrimental effect on game play, who decided that a general broadcast that UDL is ready for primetime was a good idea? There are going to be a lot of people who do not follow these bug threads who are in for some nasty surprises.

Brian C. said: This is irresponsible. Given the number of game-breaking bugs still in UDL (and the conversion tool) and that many of the new versions of features have a detrimental effect on game play, who decided that a general broadcast that UDL is ready for primetime was a good idea? There are going to be a lot of people who do not follow these bug threads who are in for some nasty surprises. Agreed. Irresponsible at best, disingenuous at worst. UDL is not ready. It needs a lot more work for stability and true feature parity. Just playing around with UDL yesterday for a few hours left me with a bad taste in my mouth and uncovered some issues that I wouldn't have thought of prior to experimenting. Roll20, if you are expecting users to convert en masse and not become very, very angry at all the issues they encounter, you are kidding yourselves. This is going to generate even more bad feeling.

Jay R. said: Brian C. said: This is irresponsible. Given the number of game-breaking bugs still in UDL (and the conversion tool) and that many of the new versions of features have a detrimental effect on game play, who decided that a general broadcast that UDL is ready for primetime was a good idea? There are going to be a lot of people who do not follow these bug threads who are in for some nasty surprises. Agreed. Irresponsible at best, disingenuous at worst. UDL is not ready. It needs a lot more work for stability and true feature parity. Just playing around with UDL yesterday for a few hours left me with a bad taste in my mouth and uncovered some issues that I wouldn't have thought of prior to experimenting. Roll20, if you are expecting users to convert en masse and not become very, very angry at all the issues they encounter, you are kidding yourselves. This is going to generate even more bad feeling. Agreed. I feel like this is a bad idea; there should at least be some kind of warning that hey, UDL is busted as heck, and may break your stuff.

I guess I should not have converted? I made a backup prior to converting, so I can fix this, but lesson learned, use a backup to test, not the original game. The really strange thing is I thought I WAS using the new settings. For some reason tokens that were working fine are now only getting vision in a limited cone, I never set or messed with directional settings. Darkvision tinting is FAR more aggressive. I use red and it had a pleasant red... well, tint... Now its like... ugh  Explorer mode is just not working. Before (actually after, in the copy of the game that is not converted, but this is the same behavior as before.) After

Hello, enjoying playing around with the new system. So far few issues but I've only just started using it. That said, I've come across a very curious issue. Not game breaking by any means, just a minor annoyance that I cannot explain. You can see above I have a map with dynamic lighting on, walls blocking the darkvision of 2 PCs. Osgea and Loris. If you look you'll spot some letters on the DM Info Layer... 'test' in white. At first it wasn't showing up when I typed out anything, and I couldn't figure it out. I could still select it but not see it. After a bit of playing around I realized something was blocking it, and that something is Loris' darkvision line of sight. Oddly Osgea's has no affect, but you can plainly see from where I placed 'test', half the word is cut off exactly as it enters Loris' line of sight. Frankly I'm at a loss as to the reason. The darkvision tab in the token UI are identical between the two, and Loris' player has no more permissions than Osgea's does. As I said, I'm just beginning to play around with the new system, and I might just be missing something. Or, this is a bug and I'm happy to report it.

OK so I checked a couple of videos out regarding the updated dynamic lighting and it looked like it was worth upgrading now the testing phase was over and it was being officially rolled out. I converted all my maps and now my game is utterly unplayable. I load up a map now and when I try to move any tokens they are barely moving. I have a brand spanking new gaming laptop and have had absolutely no issues with legacy dynamic lighting. When I click on the tokens they are showing cone views rather than 360degrees. I cannot see anywhere a setting that is related to this. It is an absolute disaster!!!!!  I have a game in 2 days but looks like it will have to be cancelled. I have checked the forums and am getting the impression that this cannot be rolled back so weeks of work on these maps could be a complete waste. What the hell am I supposed to do. This is the first attempt at looking for some urgent support to make sure my game is up and running and the support function just provides 3 links non of which are relevant to this issue. Am I correct that you cannot roll this back?

Mid session I switched maps and had all the settings the same as the previous map but all of my players with night vision could no longer see the distance of their night vision and one player could only see a very narrow cone of vision. And even after resetting several of their tokens they could see with night vision for a second and then it turned back off immediately. This was not an issue on the previous map or and of the other maps I've used. I've also noticed clipping on player token vision overlaps.  One of my players noted when I was dragging them on to the map that his night vision was flickering on and off every time I dragged another player on. And deleting all my players tokens fixed the cone effect issue but then made it so that another of my players couldn't see at all. And then the cone issue transferred to two of my players when we re-dragged on all the token. On the DM side of the game I can see a shadow effect of the cone my players can see which looks like clipping when there are multiple characters on the board. And you can also see that for some unknown reason having tokens on the token layer blocks me from being able to see the info on the GM info overlay. Which makes it pretty impossible to read my GM notes and see the hidden tokens.  With Tokens^ Without Tokens^

This is to report the bug of vision. The vision seems to turn into a cone when the page updates.  This bug resets every time you click out of the page and back in. The cone rotates as you rotate the token. So it appears to read it as a cone vision.

New Dynamic Lighting enabled(top) and New Dynamic Lighting disabled(bottom).  There are no walls.  This token has both 60 feet of darkvision and is carrying a hooded lantern.  He is standing in the same position in both pictures.

I can't even read all of this here, simply too much bugs reported. And I won't add the tons of glitches and bugs here, that I encountered playing around with the new system. They probably have been mentioned before. Just a humble request: please don't never ever remove the old system! It was working very well - and still is. I really can't see what the requirement was to change it. With token-mod I am am even able to set blindness for selected tokens (they see nothing, but their own tokens), the performance is great and I really have no open wishes for it. If some people want to use the new system (probably a group of masochists?) they might, but please please please don't remove the old system. Thanks in advance!

The way my group records sessions is by having me, as the DM, log into the game as a player on a second browser, then recording that. In order for the recording to see anything, I as DM have ownership over the characters, so I can see their vision cones. With the new night vision colors, however, I'm observing a problem. It works fine with one character... But with two or more, it gets ugly. The color tint stacks, forming a region that's practically impossible to see. I can see how this behavior could be desirable, but it's certainly not here. One of my players is a Battle Smith who controls two characters with night vision, so this isn't even just an ease of recording problem. Is it possible to have an option so night vision with the same color doesn't "stack" like this? Additionally, while testing this, I observed some more weirdness with multiple tokens being moved at once . I have update on drop enabled, and when I drop two or more tokens at once it does an odd flash of wrong lighting. If I drag and drop them, there's a few pixels where they can see through walls... While if I use arrow keys, their vision flips so they can ONLY see the opposite side! Edit: It appears that vision is actually fixed to the top left, somehow. Again, this will be terribly annoying for my battle smith player. It occurs regardless of browser, extension, or anything else. I'm also seeing the issue reported by some others where GM-layer tokens are disappearing in places with darkvision, which appears to coincide with the overlap issue. Neither token hides the GM layer on their own, though they do tint them different colors. Interestingly, if I set the night vision color to transparent, the overlap area makes the GM layer invisible still. I will not be using the new lighting system until issues like these are resolved. It's just not worth it. The old system isn't very good either, but it works as needed for now - the only features of the new lighting system I even care about are a working Explorer mode and the night vision tinting, and perhaps some performance improvements - and those things just aren't up to what I'm hoping.

Thanks for what you're trying to do there but may I suggest that the (blue) warning that's in the Dynamic lighting part about testing in a copy of a new game is on the conversion warning  Is there any conversion process to go back. Asking for a friend (ahem)  who stupidly tried it out on a live game ;)

I want to report for a uncommon bug I find with night vsion.When I set a token with night vision and zoom the map I find night vision turns map and token to a double vision when the size rate is below 100%. How can I solve this?

The new features announced in the blog post on July 30th look great. I can't wait until UDL is usable. Very much looking forward to it. I haven't even bothered to try using it since it first came out and it lagged out every map I tried to load; definitely going to wait until it's a finished product, but on that vein, I'm noticing that there are some conflicting reports on that. One message says that UDL is fully ready to use and good to go, but another says that it's still in active development. Reading through these posts, it seems the "active development" message is the accurate one. Any chance we can get a global broadcast when this system is actually ready to be used, not when it's "hopefully" ready?

I can't drag & drop any of the characters on the map that are already created. If I create a new character or drag a monster from the repository those will drop onto the map. I converted to UDL (it crashed chrome multiple times) but have since switched back to legacy. 1. I need a fix because I spent countless hours on those now useless characters. 2. Why am I (a paying customer) being used to QA your product? I don't work for Roll20.

Bret R. said: The new features announced in the blog post on July 30th look great. I can't wait until UDL is usable. Very much looking forward to it. I haven't even bothered to try using it since it first came out and it lagged out every map I tried to load; definitely going to wait until it's a finished product, but on that vein, I'm noticing that there are some conflicting reports on that. One message says that UDL is fully ready to use and good to go, but another says that it's still in active development. Reading through these posts, it seems the "active development" message is the accurate one. Any chance we can get a global broadcast when this system is actually ready to be used, not when it's "hopefully" ready? No. They are using you to develop their software. You've been hired to find bugs and report on them. And no you don't get paid for your work.