Updated Dynamic Lighting - Feedback Thread

There are still many bugs and they are major.

Updated dynamic lighting is still unusable.

nothing about memory usage or the light cones being rendered at wrong angles?

as it is UDL is unusable, I really don't understand how you can proceed with this message of parity and sunsetting the old system leading to people upgrading to this blindly and having problems with their games that can be seen within 10 min of QA.

Is it because you don't have a QA department and rely on people to help find bugs?

Shouldn't this just be on the dev server?

the tokens I had on the map use dynamic lighting fine, but now whenever I add a new token, it doesn't matter what settings I put it on, its vision is messed up

I have never used the "limit field of vision" function (so I don't think one token inherited it from another) but today on some maps, my player tokens have a weird restricted angle of vision. I have reported it through the google spreadsheet as requested, but am also posting here. Weirdly, this is the case on some maps but not others in the same game (from different modules - all premade - Yawning Portal). 

I have never posted on any forum but I feel compelled to post now given the absurd nature of this announcement. This move will cause me and my group to move to something else. Months of usable game maps while they "figure it out" is beyond the pale.

This is a joke right?

BC said:

I have never posted on any forum but I feel compelled to post now given the absurd nature of this announcement. This move will cause me and my group to move to something else. Months of usable game maps while they "figure it out" is beyond the pale.

This is a joke right?

Haha, welcome to Roll20.

There have been countless people who have attempted to explain the bugs but there seems to be little to no correspondence besides "Sorry, we can not replicate this on Dev Server, which game was this in?" more often than not. The absolute most major issue is the performance, why should any of normal users want to switch over to UDL at the cost of 90% of their ram and cpu being eaten up for laggy movement, incredibly fuzzy visuals, and not even properly functioning dynamic lighting barriers? The fact that UDL is still in development is not illustrated well to users who do not look at the forums, I'd highly recommend changing the message on games themselves. Perhaps put out an announcement to make this clearer.

Additionally, it has been pointed out countless times UDL is not near feature parity with LDL, Dark Vision and Low-Light Vision doesn't work well, Permanent Darkness is horrible to handle on GM and Player side, the walls themselves function different even with the conversion tool, Control+L for viewing a token from a player's point of view no longer functions for testing (yes Dummy Accounts exist, but this is completely unnecessary that a GM needs to do so to use the system).

The memory usage issues may not be easy to see on R20 Staff computers but, it absolutely noticeable on a large majority of users who have lower end systems or laptops. The best guess I can make of the issue is there is some very very inefficient loop that's constantly being repopulated instead of adding new/modifying entries. Performance was absolutely not this poor in LDL. Please, please fix this as soon as possible, if you want your user base to test a system, that system needs to actually be able to run on said userbase's systems well.

Additionally, load times for said maps are incredibly high compared to LDL, has there been consideration on acquiring deliberately lower end machines or limiting equipment's ram/cpu to fake as lower end pcs and laptops? There was an extra-ordinarily large amount of unrepeatable issues on the r20 end, a lot of which related to performance. Seemingly as a user it appears if Roll20's team can not replicate an issue, they will not address it. Despite when said issue is coming from multiple users over multiple days and updates.

To bring up an important question, given the load times and performance issues are there new minimum specs for pcs wanting to use UDL?

Un-stickying the previous thread to hide these issues without addressing them is terrible as well, it was a long thread, but simply making a new one gives off the impression you're disregarding major issues that were brought up again and again. Please, read through the previous thread and collect user issues rather than simply ones listed by the team, the point of the thread was to bring attention to problems users encountered right?

Are both types of lighting (bright and low) supposed to completely wash out the colors of the map? If yes, not a feature I would keep - I spend a lot of effort on my maps I'd prefer for them to not be washed out. If no, can we have confirmation that it is a bug? It looks *horrible* Which is unfortunate, I use the lighting more for mood than necessity (all my players are marked as GM to use the GM layer and the lighting slider for aesthetics instead of mechanics). 

Here are side by side pics of a map with UDL off and with it on and a token with "emits bright light" on set to 11 squares to fill the interior space.

Off

On - token in the center of the building on the Dynamic Lighting Layer set to "emits bright light - 11 squares to fill the room 50% GM Opacity for darkness outside.

Edit: I see, its washed out if you don't have a token with vision in it, even as a GM. I definitely don't like this feature, an option to turn off the washed out look would be extremely appreciated. 

There seems to be a serious bug with the conversion tool. I've been using UDL for months in my existing campaign, without any problems. I started a new campaign using Dungeon of the Mad Mage module today, and used the conversion tool to convert all the maps and journal tokens to UDL. When I started putting down tokens with night vision on a map, their line of sight was messed up. They only had vision in a narrow horizontal line out to either side. I tried everything to fix it, (changing map settings, token settings, toggling field of view on and off) but the only thing that seemed to work was either making the tokens emit light or setting the map to daylight mode. I started another copy of the campaign and instead of using the conversion tool, I just manually set a map to use UDL. It works fine with the same tokens (imported from character vault). I'm not sure if the problem was the conversion to the map or the conversion to the journal tokens, but it definitely seems to be a problem with the converter.

I've only had time to test on one campaign, but I'm having the same problem as PublishedAuthor. When I turn on night vision i get limit field of view as if I had some limited field of view turned on. It happens on every map I've tested in that campaign, though.

@Drespar
Why are you  doing this? Why force a sub-par issue-ridden mess upon paying customers? Claiming that the so called Updated Lightning has Feature Parity will not make it so as the problems listed above will prove. 

Meta K. said:

Un-stickying the previous thread to hide these issues without addressing them is terrible as well, it was a long thread, but simply making a new one gives off the impression you're disregarding major issues that were brought up again and again. Please, read through the previous thread and collect user issues rather than simply ones listed by the team, the point of the thread was to bring attention to problems users encountered right?

+1

Have been using UDL for months, really like it. Today I click the update in game Settings and now I am cursed with the ridiculous field of view bug.  We have never used this as a group, so it can't be inherited from other tokens.  I set up a new game based on the same module (BGDIA) and everything in there has 360deg field of view, so problem is obviously with existing games, not new ones.  The workaround would be to copy material across, but I have substantially edited my copy of this module and that would mean a lot of hours wasted that could have been spent gaming.  Seriously unimpressed

I went in, turned UDL off on global settings.  Launched game, deleted all copies of player tokens on maps we had been through, essentially just leaving the 5 player tokens for the current map.  Because I had turned off UDL, none of them could see.  Turned on UDL for that map, then edited each token to add in vision and night vision as appropriate.  Seems to be sorted, 360 degree night vision is back as it was, even when rejoining as a player.

Everything crossed at this end ; )))))

This is absurd. There are still many bugs both major and minor with UDL and the conversion tool. Your customers have been telling you this for months. Yet you continue to pretend that UDL is fine. You need to rethink your dev process, and also hire some QA instead of making the user community do that work and then ignoring them when they point out the ongoing bugs with the software.

Am going to give serious consideration to other VTT platforms now.

I jumped through all the hoops to submit a proper bug report with all the info, links, and repro steps. Hopefully that helps.

Revealable Areas is completely broken on UDL.

Large triangle-shaped chunks of map are revealed to players as if brightly lit.  One of these triangles originates near top left and spreads out and widens to the right; the other originates lower down on the left hand side.  I posted pictures before in the other thread (page 19).

Please advise when this will be fixed.  

It is trivial to demonstrate the bug to yourselves:
1. create a new page with UDL on and Explorer mode on.

2. On that page, select Hide Areas Tool; Rectangle and drag a square across the entire page.

3. Drop a token on the page and give yourself control of it; set 'Has vision' and a 10ft bright light for the token

4. Drag your player icon to the page and Re-join as player.

5. Zoom out, notice that two large triangles are revealed to player, even before they move.

This broken behaviour happens on both Firefox and Chrome current versions

Thanks.

I am experiencing the same problems described by PublishedAuthor, Robert D, and others.  Tokens with Night Vision are only seeing a tiny sliver revealed, in a ~15º angle to the right.  Limit Field of View is not turned on.  In the screenshots below, the token's Night Vision has a Tint set to red, which illustrates the limited field of view. This angle of view is fixed to the token, and rotates along with it.

I'm using a MacBook Pro running Catalina and Firefox v79.

EDIT: Just noticed Peter's reply. Sounds like the same issue, though I don't need to take such involved steps to replicate it. I just turn on "Explorer Mode," zoom out, and there it is.

I didn't notice Explorer Mode Reveals Parts of the Map on Zoom Out in the "Known Issues" (unless that's what you mean by 'visual artifacts,' which is entirely possible as I'm on a Mac), so here's a quick screenshot of the same Death House map with the only difference being the Explorer Mode toggle.

I'd love to switch to UDL, but until this bug is fixed it's unusable for my games. :/

I'm going to be charitable and presume that obvious bugs like the limited field of vision or unwanted map reveals on zoom out will be worked out and solved before Legacy disappears.

But.

I'm starting to think that "darkvision ≠ dim light" is not a bug but a "feature." Which would be bad. In Legacy, as others have pointed out, if I give a token vision and set it to 30 total, with dim starting at 0, and then set a multiplier of 2x..... I get a pretty great version of darkvision. That token can see 60' of darkness *as dim light* (per 5e), and if another source of dim light (like the far 20' of a torch) spills into that area, the dim + dim = bright.

What do we get in UDL? Bright light that I have to "tint?" Huh? I know that UDL understands what dim light is, because I can still set a visible light source to be 20' bright and 20' dim...... so why can't a token see dim light? Why do tokens have to see bright light that I put some... what... gray smog over?

Yuck.

I'm holding out hope that roll20 is working on fixing this, although the silence on this particular issue has been deafening. So when I'm faced with a "I wish I could do X even though it's not readily available in roll20" problem, what do I do?

I go looking to see if The Aaron has solved the problem for all of us. :)

Hopefully he will solve this one too, because while I'm sure there are a long list of reasons why UDL needs to happen, going significantly backwards on 5e darkvision is such a bummer.

Looking at the list of known issues, some of them seem pretty major, so I think talk of sunsetting Legacy Dynamic Lighting (LDL) is premature at this point. Given the problematic rollout history with this feature, I would think Roll20 would want to make very, very sure that Updated Dynamic Lighting was working before taking away the fallback of LDL.

My suggestion: Take care of the known issues list first. Then make a post that says "We think these issues are all fixed. Is anyone still having these problems? Is anyone having any new problems?" and see what gets reported. If you still have major issues, it's not ready.

Once you can go 2 weeks with no reported instances of major issues, then start scheduling the cutover.

The most pressing bug for me personally, reported by many others as well, is the double-vision and "waning" lighting field glitch. I just want to ask -- is the team aware of this? Or does it need more documentation?

Hi Nicholas, I'm currently having this same problem. Converted a Storm King's Thunder module to the Updated Dynamic Lighting an hour or so ago, and now my darkvision characters are seeing in cones instead of a radius.

Nicholas said:

PublishedAuthor said:

I have never used the "limit field of vision" function (so I don't think one token inherited it from another) but today on some maps, my player tokens have a weird restricted angle of vision. I have reported it through the google spreadsheet as requested, but am also posting here. Weirdly, this is the case on some maps but not others in the same game (from different modules - all premade - Yawning Portal). 

 

Hey PublishedAuthor -

We're aware of this problem and were working on a fix, but it looks like it was initially missed on our known issues list for this post - I've made sure it's now on there. Thanks for catching that and for your report!

Update: Actually, it looks like we pushed out a hotfix yesterday that should have resolved this issue. Would you mind testing it again now and letting me know the results, please?

Nicholas said:

PublishedAuthor said:

I have never used the "limit field of vision" function (so I don't think one token inherited it from another) but today on some maps, my player tokens have a weird restricted angle of vision. I have reported it through the google spreadsheet as requested, but am also posting here. Weirdly, this is the case on some maps but not others in the same game (from different modules - all premade - Yawning Portal). 

 

Hey PublishedAuthor -

We're aware of this problem and were working on a fix, but it looks like it was initially missed on our known issues list for this post - I've made sure it's now on there. Thanks for catching that and for your report!

Update: Actually, it looks like we pushed out a hotfix yesterday that should have resolved this issue. Would you mind testing it again now and letting me know the results, please?

Nicholas said:

Hey Josh -

Can you tell me if this has occurred as recently as today perchance? Thanks for your feedback here!

That's correct Nicholas.  The screenshots were taken this morning, 08/15/2020 at 11:30am Central time.

Here's a direct link to the Roll20 game that's experiencing this issue:

https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/5905757/tomb-of-annihilation

The map from the screenshots is "(J) Hrakhamar", and the issue can be seen on the two tokens using Dark Vision (tinted red).  They each display a tiny sliver for their field of vision, as seen in this screenshot taken a few minutes ago.

However, the issue only persists on certain maps.  If I copy the same tokens and paste them into the "Grand Coliseum" map, their field of vision works as expected.

Is the issue possibly related to the map?  Are there perhaps too many complex shapes on the lighting layer?

For the Updated Dynamic Lighting Cone View bug, one I reach a total of roughly 15 or more objects on the map and/or token layer having vision and/or giving off light, vision starts to break and is forced into a 90 degree cone.

Nicholas said:

Robert D. said:

I've only had time to test on one campaign, but I'm having the same problem as PublishedAuthor. When I turn on night vision i get limit field of view as if I had some limited field of view turned on. It happens on every map I've tested in that campaign, though.

Hey Robert D. - 

Have you noticed this occur as recently as today perchance? If so, would you mind providing me a link to the game in which it occurred, please? Thank you!

I'm still experiencing this two, at least on my preexisting campaign. Not on every map, though. I tried Simon G's fix but it didn't work for me.

I'm also having an issue with players/characters with Night Vision being unable to see into "shadows" created by light sources. The character in question has been given 60 ft of "Night Vision" (Darkvision) yet can't see into shadows or areas of darkness specifically created by another token giving off light.

I have marked the areas I'm referring to. Green lines are borders of vision where the character cannot see but should not be able to see in the first place while areas outlined in Red are areas the character cannot see but SHOULD be able to see. I have included 2 images, 1 of the map itself with the GM's transparent vision lines and one "through the eyes" of the character in question.

Nicholas,

Thank you for looking into this :)

It happens on a completely new game with no extra assets loaded.

To reproduce.

1. Create New Game; give it a name; Launch Game

2. On settings for the default/first page, enable Updated Dynamic Lighting and Explorer Mode - no other changes

3. Zoom out until whole page visible.  Notice the triangles and how they change as you scroll in and out (see first screenshot below)

4. Drop a token onto the page in the top 'lit' area (middle top) ; give yourself control; give the token Vision but no light.

5. Re-join as Player; Black screen

6. Scroll out; Notice the extra lit areas appear; scroll in and out and see how they change (see second screenshot below)

If a map layer is present then it will be revealed where these 'triangles of light' are present.

icholas said:

Peter said:

Revealable Areas is completely broken on UDL.

Large triangle-shaped chunks of map are revealed to players as if brightly lit.  One of these triangles originates near top left and spreads out and widens to the right; the other originates lower down on the left hand side.  I posted pictures before in the other thread (page 19).

Please advise when this will be fixed.  

It is trivial to demonstrate the bug to yourselves:
1. create a new page with UDL on and Explorer mode on.

2. On that page, select Hide Areas Tool; Rectangle and drag a square across the entire page.

3. Drop a token on the page and give yourself control of it; set 'Has vision' and a 10ft bright light for the token

4. Drag your player icon to the page and Re-join as player.

5. Zoom out, notice that two large triangles are revealed to player, even before they move.

This broken behaviour happens on both Firefox and Chrome current versions

Thanks.

Hey Peter - 

I'm actually having a hard time reproducing this on my end. Would you mind providing me a link to the game and the name of the page in which you experienced this, please? It will be a little easier for me to review at that point. Thank you!

Hi @Nicholas. Unfortunately, I had deleted the maps (Forge of Fury) on which I saw the restricted angle token vision from the game. The other maps I had in that game (Sunless Citadel) were not showing the problem. I just reimported the Forge of Fury maps and switched them over to the new dynamic lighting system manually and all seems well. I am sorry that I can't provide a better test of your fix, but I will keep an eye out to see if I see it again and if so will report it. I appreciate you fixing it. I really like Roll20 and the lighting system is a great tool for making a cool player experience. Please continue to work on it.

SlendyMcTendies said:

For the Updated Dynamic Lighting Cone View bug, one I reach a total of roughly 15 or more objects on the map and/or token layer having vision and/or giving off light, vision starts to break and is forced into a 90 degree cone.

I believe this is correct.  My map has well over 20+ tokens that either have vision or emit light, and I was experiencing the narrow "coned vision" bug for tokens with Dark Vision. 

After I deleted nearly every token that emits light or has vision (other than the party), the party members with Dark Vision started to work properly.

You can see their accurate vision ranges below, tinted red:

I'm not sure what the limit of "has vision" + "emits light" tokens is before Dark Vision breaks; I currently have a total of about 10 tokens that have vision or emit light, and Dark Vision is working properly.

Unless significant improvements are made the transition to UDL will likely be the abandonment of Roll 20 for many people. With each update 30% of my players wind up with black screens. Mayhaps the power level of PCs is the issue, if so the effect of setting the minimum speed limit well above the maximum speed for many excludes them. My style of GMing includes detailed battle scenes and complex lighting schemes, which I can pull off in LDL with a limited amount of "Sturm Und Drang" after years of wrestling with it. I have yet to successfully build a complex scene with UDL that all of my player can use.

I can confirm that the hotfix implemented yesterday (8/15) did not resolve the "cone vision" bug for tokens with darkvision.  

After much frustration I am back to using the simple Fog of War feature. In order of importance  my reasons are:

1. Performance Issues. One of the great things about Roll 20 is that I can play with about anyone that has a computer. No fancy system that costs   thousands is needed. That is no longer true with UDL. 

2. Frequent Bugs both during play and during setting up UDL. I too have had the issue with a cone of night vision. 

3. Fog of War is Easy to Use and has no bugs.

4. All lighting features are clunky to set up and take a lot of time. I was looking forward to using UDL for purchased products, but #1 above scared me off. 

I am still trying to figure out what is improved about UDL.

It does not have feature parity, despite the claims made by development.

Performance is not great, and in fact appreciably worse for many.

The conversion tool has serious issues that haven't been resolved.

Still many game-breaking bugs.

So ... WHY are you trying to foist UDL on us when it is clearly not ready, Roll20? This is really showing contempt for your customer base.

I have to chime in that the latest update has even affected me, who have NOT converted to UDL yet.

I have a couple of maps. Sure they do use a fair bit of Legacy DL for iron bars and stuff, so I'm not saying those maps are not resource heavy.

However.... before the UDL update, it worked like this:

1. Player launches game and enters semi empty loading page.
2. Memory usage increases a little bit, not strange at all. But then it stops, since nothing new is added/happening, etc.
3. Player is moved to resource heavier map.
4. Memory uses starts climbing. Also not weird at all.
5. Eventually, memory usage reaches the point it needs, and stabilizes at it's new higher memory usage, since the map uses more memory.
   Again nothing weird at all.
6. Player is moved to less heavy map, or back to semi empty loading page.
7. Memory use starts sinking since it doesn't use as much memory on that page.

So, that's nothing weird.

But then the recent UDL update came... which I have not converted to. I'm still on Legacy.
So how does the list above look like after that update? Should be similar no?

1. Player launches game and enters semi empty loading page.
2. Memory usage increases a little bit, not strange at all. But then it stops, since nothing new is added/happening, etc.
3. Player is moved to resource heavier map.
4. Memory uses starts climbing. Also not weird at all.
5. Memory is still climbing. It doesn't stabilize, it just keeps going until I move away from the map.
   And this is even if I just move the player there, and then the player doesn't do a single thing.
   Still climbing.
6. So I move the Player back to the semi empty loading page.
7. Memory use ... is not climbing anymore. But.. it's also not sinking. It stays at peak it had at the previous map.

And yes, the memory climb does not have a roof either.
When I opened a small map that did have a bit of DL, sure, but it was small, and the memory was climbing.
Eventually the memory would climb until I have no available memory left in the computer, where as Firefox completely grinds to a halt, and it takes about 20 minutes just to shut down because the entire system is halted, including the mouse being extremely laggy.

And this is without UDL, on maps that worked without issues before the UDL update.

Some kind of memory leak has most likely been introduced which just keeps eating more and more memory until you kill the process, because moving to a more lightweight map doesn't help, it will never ever sink again until you Exit Game.

Jay R. said:

I am still trying to figure out what is improved about UDL.

Something like 10% of users have problems to one degree or another with "legacy" dynamic lighting, something r20 has been struggling with a fix to implement for just shy of two years now.

Dalamar said:

I can confirm that the hotfix implemented yesterday (8/15) did not resolve the "cone vision" bug for tokens with darkvision.  

I can also confirm this is the case.

Been having an issue with night vision. When zoomed in, all is well


However, as you zoom out, the visible area becomes squished and off-center


What can be seen doesn't actually change, it just ends up in the wrong place

Wint said:

Jay R. said:

I am still trying to figure out what is improved about UDL.

Something like 10% of users have problems to one degree or another with "legacy" dynamic lighting, something r20 has been struggling with a fix to implement for just shy of two years now.

Oh, I know the issues with Legacy, particularly after that awful Jan. 2019 "fix" that took months to patch (and even then, left us with worse AFOW). But this supposedly improved UDL doesn't seem like an improvement to me at all.

I'm really trying not to jump onto the negative bandwagon.  I tried my game today and the nightvision being in a cone was fixed.  However, about the 3rd room in, the dynamic lighting in the game went away and everyone in the game was able to see the entire map.  I'm not sure why or how.  Two players' browsers had to reset a few times while we were playing.  And then the map was entirely visible to the group.  All online players saw it.  Not sure how that is one person's fault and not the system.  I had to revert to the old system and use the fog of war with manual reveal.  I've been paying for a top tier subscription for over two years to use the dynamic lighting system with the promise that it's just around the corner.  Now it's here and I still can't use it.  And it's with official maps that I purchased from Roll20.  Really disappointed since it is now in fully functional mode but hanging on for now.

I have the same problem. It is only a problem with certain tokens, and not others, even if settings are identical on the two tokens. Limit field of view is not enabled on the faulty tokens, and if I enable it, it doesn't affect the small angle of the nightvision. In my case, the angle is wider; about 45º of view, also off to the right and also ending at the 90º mark.

Also MacBook Pro, Catalina, running Chrome. It shows the same in Firefox.

Josh said:

I am experiencing the same problems described by PublishedAuthor, Robert D, and others.  Tokens with Night Vision are only seeing a tiny sliver revealed, in a ~15º angle to the right.  Limit Field of View is not turned on.  In the screenshots below, the token's Night Vision has a Tint set to red, which illustrates the limited field of view. This angle of view is fixed to the token, and rotates along with it.

I'm using a MacBook Pro running Catalina and Firefox v79.

Jay Berryman Crawford said:

The most pressing bug for me personally, reported by many others as well, is the double-vision and "waning" lighting field glitch. I just want to ask -- is the team aware of this? Or does it need more documentation?

Hey there Jay,

For clarification, can you provide us with screenshots and a link to the game and page that you're having the issue in?