Updated Dynamic Lighting - Feedback Thread

TheWebCoder said: This dynamic lighting update was a big, unwelcome surprise today when I was trying to get my game ready. When adding new dynamic lighting, the white translucent overlay makes it very hard to see my map, making it very challenging (next to impossible) to place the dynamic lightning. Getting the game ready will be extremely difficult under these conditions. Edit 1: Having read through the comments above, I'm honestly speechless that you rolled this out with so many bugs. I'm a developer and I get wanting to rolloff old technical debt to the new system, but you don't break a key feature of your product to do that. This should have been rock solid before it went to production. So frustrated right now. Edit 2: This just keeps getting worse. I enabled dynamic lighting and got this:&nbsp; <a href="https://www.screencast.com/t/GzpZM77r0" rel="nofollow">https://www.screencast.com/t/GzpZM77r0</a> Edit 3: Why is the toggle for using dynamic lighting barriers not in the dynamic lighting section of the map settings? Edit 4: Fortunately, it looks like there's the ability to switch back to legacy lighting and that works? At least it does at first glance. Edit 5: It looks like after switching from new lightning, back to legacy, and back to new again, the white translucent overlay issue goes away. Edit 6: Enabling daylight mode gets rid of the big black blob in the middle, but seems to break dynamic lighting entirely. So the blob goes away, but my players tokens do not see any of the dynamic lightning lines at all. Edit 7: Tokens with legacy dynamic lighting being pasted into a map with new dynamic lighting also creates the black blob, and it covers up the tokens so I have to blind click and drag to delete them in order to see again.&nbsp; I haven't tested other combinations of legacy / new combinations between tokens and maps, but it seems like they don't resolve conflicts gracefully. I believe UDL's daylight mode is just the "Ambient Lighting" or whatever option just made the entire map bright light in LDL, hence no lines since there's no areas absent of light. Never really got why that was a feature, although I guess it's intended to work with AFoW but AFoW doesn't work without bricking your browser and has been like that for years.

Let me rephrase that. Circles do not block light in a useful or predictable manner in either LDL or UDL and the documentation discourages their use. Very small circles or ovals have been reported to block movement but not light in UDL, but again, they are unpredictable.

I have some issues with the dynamic lighting, I have searched for something similar in the forum, but I can't find it due my lack of English understanding. The problem is that some of my players see a narrow version of the map over the dark zone when I use explorer mode. Have someone the same same problem?&nbsp;

Hola Manuel, yes, everybody has the same issue. We're waiting and waiting and waiting.... I keep reading this forum from time to time in search of updates but all I can find are people like me reporting issues on issues on issues.... Juan Manuel N. said: I have some issues with the dynamic lighting, I have searched for something similar in the forum, but I can't find it due my lack of English understanding. The problem is that some of my players see a narrow version of the map over the dark zone when I use explorer mode. Have someone the same same problem?&nbsp;

Has Roll20 announced their plan yet? Are they rolling this debacle back, or are they trying to fix it? I played in another campaign recently, Rime of the Frost Maiden which was purchased from Roll20, and the DM was experiencing all of the same issues.

This is absurd, is uncomfortable for my players to play with all the screen in deep black when they change of room. The explorer mode is necessary. I can't understand why only affects some players, and only when you zoom out... It's frustrating&nbsp; Zoltar said: Hola Manuel, yes, everybody has the same issue. We're waiting and waiting and waiting.... I keep reading this forum from time to time in search of updates but all I can find are people like me reporting issues on issues on issues.... Juan Manuel N. said: I have some issues with the dynamic lighting, I have searched for something similar in the forum, but I can't find it due my lack of English understanding. The problem is that some of my players see a narrow version of the map over the dark zone when I use explorer mode. Have someone the same same problem?&nbsp;

(Re-posting from original post per request) I've recently converted an overland hex map to Updated Dynamic Lighting.&nbsp; There was no previous Fog of War on it.&nbsp; We just drew the map as we went.&nbsp; I'd like to switch to UDL so I can draw the whole map and reveal as we go. I've reset the Explorable Darkness back to default, and have a test player logged in. When, using the test player account, I move a token with Night Vision or Light enabled, the map is revealed as expected. When, using the GM account, I reveal a section of map, or move the same token, the map is revealed to the logged in test player as expected. However, if I log out the test player and then either move the token around as GM or manually reveals areas, when I log the test player back in, those areas are not revealed. Does anyone know if there's a way to reveal areas for all players, whether they're logged in or not?&nbsp; (The reason being I'd like to reveal all the previously explored areas from before the switch to UDL - also as a matter of normal use I'd like players not present at a given session to still see the revealed areas at the next).&nbsp; I know I can fall back on Legacy if need be.

Worth noting that when I last checked this a few months back. CTRL + L with a token selected (to see what the player sees) did not work with UDL. If you guys have fixed this already disregard :).

Darpeh said: Worth noting that when I last checked this a few months back. CTRL + L with a token selected (to see what the player sees) did not work with UDL. If you guys have fixed this already disregard :). Roll20 has said that CTRL + L was only ever intended to support line-of-sight issues for seeing other tokens. It was never supposed to show accurately what the token could see from a lighting point of view.

1) It would be nice to have aura-colors applied to light sources on the dynamic lighting layer be visible on the token layer.&nbsp; (I'm using an clear token and using the token editor to have it emit light and an aura tint.) 2) Also, if tints are applied to night vision (so that characters are not seeing everything as though their in daylight), halos the color of said tint start to show up around objects emitting light.&nbsp; The below image is an example of when a dozen black-tinted-darkvision characters see a token that emits light.&nbsp; Admittedly, this is the DM view.&nbsp; The character view is less pronounced, but still noticeable.&nbsp;

Logging on for the first time in a week and it is clear that something has gone horribly wrong with the dynamic lighting. My players can now see the entire map, including the blocking lines. I can no longer even select the blocking lines. Help!!! P.S. We are using the legacy dynamic lighting. Have never messed with the new stuff.

Mr G. Have the dynamic lighting lines somehow been moved to the map layer or token layer? That could result in what you are observing.

Thank you, David, you have it in a nutshell. They are on the map layer. What a rookie error!

Mr G said: Thank you, David, you have it in a nutshell. They are on the map layer. What a rookie error! And too bad there's no way to move things to the light layer...

Does anyone know when we might see a usable product when combined with advanced fog of war on a reasonably mid-sized map? UDL or LDL? Thanks

Adam said: Mr G said: Thank you, David, you have it in a nutshell. They are on the map layer. What a rookie error! And too bad there's no way to move things to the light layer... Turn on advanced shortcut keys on the settings tab. Select the lines to move to the DL layer. Press the following keys in order: l, ... Profit!

Having done this myself soooo many times... alternatively, you can select the lines on the Map layer, right-click and select copy, move to the DL layer, Ctrl-V to paste the lines on the DL layer, move to position, profit!&nbsp; Oh, and delete the lines on the Map layer. :) Brian C. said: Adam said: Mr G said: Thank you, David, you have it in a nutshell. They are on the map layer. What a rookie error! And too bad there's no way to move things to the light layer... Turn on advanced shortcut keys on the settings tab. Select the lines to move to the DL layer. Press the following keys in order: l, ... Profit!

Animated tokens are bugged with Updated Dynamic lighting. Had to switch back over to legacy to get them working. Whenever multiple tokens (as low as two character tokens with UDL vision on) were on screen, the animated tokens would not play. I tried with different animated products I have and they all do not work with UDL, which is a bummer because I bought a bunch of animated weather overlays and animated condition markers for my RoTFM campaign and they'll be rendered useless when Roll20 eventually pulls the LDL plug. Please don't get rid of Legacy lighting. I like UDL, but it’s interfering heavily with bought assets.&nbsp;

Thanks for work in the issues of dynamic lightning. I have to say that it's a really cool tool.

I made a huge mistake in upgrading to the new dynamic lighting. Is there a way to revert a game that's been converted? I'm getting such bad CPU/Memory spikes my browser crashes over and over and over.

So all of my maps are still using the legacy lighting and there is no way in hell I'm converting ANYTHING until this is fixed. I am glad I read this first before I started trying to convert my maps that I spent to much time on- like everyone else here did as well.&nbsp; Question to Roll20- I am extremely nervous about the legacy lighting going away as you have a very non-specific note that legacy dynamic lighting will be replaced "in the coming months."&nbsp; Not that I expect a response, but have you made any comments about keeping the legacy lighting until you fix these bugs?

I've been running Descent into Avernus (purchased from Roll20) for about a year on legacy lighting. Thankfully I never converted it to the new lighting. Last night was our first session since the new lighting update, and half of my player's tokens couldn't see. Again, legacy lighting on all maps, legacy lighting on all tokens; nothing has changed at all in that regard for the last year, but half of the token's vision was black. In looking at the settings, everything looked the same. I wound up making those players fresh tokens and they could see again. We spent about 30 minutes of our session debugging this seemingly random issue. To second @Erica's request: I'd plan on keeping legacy lighting indefinitely until if / when the new system is on much more solid ground. There's so many bugs, and from what I'm reading there are also major performance issues. It may be the best option to keep the legacy lighting, and offer the new lighting as a progressive enhancement for people who have a system that will run it. The original dynamic lighting may not be perfect, but it gets the job done; it's reliable, and it doesn't make my computer's fan turn on instantly.

After reading the thread for a couple hours I cant seem to find anything that is fitting my problem exactly.&nbsp; (some were close).&nbsp; I had posted this in another thread and told to post here.&nbsp; I was playing with some settings for the new dynamic lighting.&nbsp; &nbsp;I am currently using FireFox.&nbsp; &nbsp;When first bring up the map I have explorer mode and daylight enabled.&nbsp; &nbsp;I got my players to set up there camp and then I removed Explorer mode and daylight.&nbsp; (leaving their tokens and the campfire as the only sources for vision.&nbsp; At this point on my map, I get ghost images and tokens disappear. The first image is with Daylight and Explorer mode turned on.&nbsp; &nbsp;This next image is with them turned off.&nbsp; As you can see some of the tokens have disappeared and I have ghost images of the tokens I can see as well as the tokens I cant see.&nbsp; My players did not report a problem so this seems to be only on my screen.&nbsp; &nbsp;I have reloaded the screen as well as the entire browser and still get the ghosting.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Any help or directions on how to fix this would be great.&nbsp; Thank you

I am also having the diagonal black bar issue, which reveals the map when the GM and/or players zoom out. I am running on an HP, with Windows 10. I can also verify, using a separate dummy account, that the issue does not simply affect the GM layer or account. It should also be restated that the issue occurs whether you zoom out on the browser or the VTT. Update: It appears that the issue only appears when Explorer Mode is enabled.

I am playing with the UDL setting and I for one am having a very hard time getting dim and bright light to overlap in a way that as a GM I can tell very easily what is happening. 1. Set 2 tokens to dim light. 2. Set 2 token to bright light now have players move as normal and get into combat.&nbsp; Trying to determine the overlap is hard there needs to be a better way to define the overlap so a GM can see it better.&nbsp; I know there is a small ring around the bright light border but on chrome is sort of hard to see it. Maybe shades of color could be set for the dim and bright lights?&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Another area of consideration is there needs to be a field that limits sight even if GLOBAL illumination is set like for blindsight (PF/SF/3.5) If a PC primary sight is blindsight there should be a flag to stop all vision at "X" distance.&nbsp;

Not sure if this was been addressed. Bought Plus sub yesterday (11/22). Played with Dynamic Lighting today - found an immediate problem. The polygon tool works just fine, but the shape (square/circle) does not. Squares and rectangles block light just fine, but no form of circle/oval does. Having to draw "circles" by using Polygon and doing tiny, tiny lines to make a circle. Am I doing something wrong, or is this known / being addressed?

Paul F. said: Not sure if this was been addressed. Bought Plus sub yesterday (11/22). Played with Dynamic Lighting today - found an immediate problem. The polygon tool works just fine, but the shape (square/circle) does not. Squares and rectangles block light just fine, but no form of circle/oval does. Having to draw "circles" by using Polygon and doing tiny, tiny lines to make a circle. Am I doing something wrong, or is this known / being addressed? Circles have never been officially supported in any version of DL. As a rule of thumb: Use small squares or an "X" for columns. Use a polygon for anything larger than a grid square.

Know bug with the current engine. Circles don't block sight correctly. Better to use X for circles as they still block sight as a circle would and leave the map object visible showing what is blocking that sight, i.e. a column. Paul F. said: Not sure if this was been addressed. Bought Plus sub yesterday (11/22). Played with Dynamic Lighting today - found an immediate problem. The polygon tool works just fine, but the shape (square/circle) does not. Squares and rectangles block light just fine, but no form of circle/oval does. Having to draw "circles" by using Polygon and doing tiny, tiny lines to make a circle. Am I doing something wrong, or is this known / being addressed?

Scrolled a bit and didn't see this brought up, but for a couple weeks now one of my players maps goes completely blank and has to restart browser. Were using the new dynamic lighting and have for a long while now with no issues on their end.&nbsp; Is anyone else having this issue? Or know of a fix? No setting have been altered prior to this issue. Were running yawning portal with Sunless citadel and Forge of Fury Resources in the game.&nbsp; Is it perhaps to much going on in the campaign?&nbsp;

I am having an issue where if I turn on any form of Dynamic Lighting at all, my player's just get a black screen. It doesn't matter what settings we adjust, it just goes black the second I turn it on. Has anyone had a similar problem?

Ian said: I am having an issue where if I turn on any form of Dynamic Lighting at all, my player's just get a black screen. It doesn't matter what settings we adjust, it just goes black the second I turn it on. Has anyone had a similar problem? At the risk of a dumb question, have you gone into each token's settings, gone to the Dynamic Lighting tab, and turned Vision on? You'd also need to add lights or in the same settings tab as the Vision, there's settings for Bright and Dim light emission.

Ian said: I am having an issue where if I turn on any form of Dynamic Lighting at all, my player's just get a black screen. It doesn't matter what settings we adjust, it just goes black the second I turn it on. Has anyone had a similar problem? Another stupid question for you...do your players have their tokens selected? I've lost track of the number of times one player or another says "Hey! I can only see a black screen!" and my tired reply...your token is in X location on the screen, go select it. If their tokens are properly set up to be able to see stuff, they should be able to if their tokens are selected. So, 1-make sure their tokens have the ability to see(it's a setting), 2-make sure there is a light source of some sort near them, either a torch or one or more of the player tokens, and 3-make sure they have their tokens selected.&nbsp; Sorry if these things seem too obvious. The fact that you're having the problem with both versions of DL makes me think you've missed something obvious. Good luck! Oh, right. Whichever version of DL you turn on, make sure your tokens have light and sight set up on THAT version. There's settings for both on their tokens and they don't share.&nbsp; You can even set up both versions on the tokens and then flip the map back and forth as you desire(I had to do this several months back when I built a map on UDL and 1/2 my players couldn't get in...glad they fixed that).

Has there been any announcement from Roll20 on the plan for this feature moving forward? I am seeing pages and pages of user feedback, and I cannot find a response. Is there one that I missed, or is the update that "we're working on it"?

TheWebCoder said: Has there been any announcement from Roll20 on the plan for this feature moving forward? I am seeing pages and pages of user feedback, and I cannot find a response. Is there one that I missed, or is the update that "we're working on it"? They infrequently post acknowledgements and check-ins. In fact, there's one of the previous page (12) on this thread.

Hi, im new to Roll20 and did setup a new game. When i try to convert this game to Dynamic Lighting i got the following error message " There was an error when trying to convert your game to Updated Dynamic Lighting: * undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass" The game is empty, no pages or tokens are created. How can i deal with this error message? What does it mean?

Dominik S. said: Hi, im new to Roll20 and did setup a new game. When i try to convert this game to Dynamic Lighting i got the following error message " There was an error when trying to convert your game to Updated Dynamic Lighting: * undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass" The game is empty, no pages or tokens are created. How can i deal with this error message? What does it mean? The conversion tool is only needed for games that already existed. It's failing for you because the game is empty. If you want to use Updated Dynamic Lighting (and there's many reasons in this thread to not do so without testing), you can turn it on by default in your game's settings. There's a section for Default Settings and a tab in there for Dynamic Lighting. You can set it to be active and other settings that you think you'll need. Then when you make a new page, it'll use those settings for default options. Though, if you then change those settings in the Game Settings, your already-existing pages won't update to match. You'll need to manually edit them.

Was trying to build a new map today with the daylight settings on and the map went dark with the exception of two triangles in the left top and bottom... switching it off and on again resulted in a total dark map.

During last night's game, I encountered a repeated dynamic lighting problem. The red doors, when opened (moved out of the way), should allow the PC with the light source to see into rooms 20 and 21 (yellow arrows). This repeatedly failed, and the only way to bypass the error was for me to manually move each PC token into every room. This would sometimes fix the error (as it did in room 19), but as often as not it'd stay in place and the PCs would be crammed into a 20x30 room with no way to escape unless I rescued them. Is this a known bug, and if so what can I do to avoid this? We're on session 3 of a massive campaign, and I definitely don't want to be fighting with this every session. (It worked beautifully in session 2.)

Bryan N. said: During last night's game, I encountered a repeated dynamic lighting problem. The red doors, when opened (moved out of the way), should allow the PC with the light source to see into rooms 20 and 21 (yellow arrows). This repeatedly failed, and the only way to bypass the error was for me to manually move each PC token into every room. This would sometimes fix the error (as it did in room 19), but as often as not it'd stay in place and the PCs would be crammed into a 20x30 room with no way to escape unless I rescued them. Is this a known bug, and if so what can I do to avoid this? We're on session 3 of a massive campaign, and I definitely don't want to be fighting with this every session. (It worked beautifully in session 2.) It is a known bug, or at least it is one that has been reported before. If you want your campaign to be reliable, use Legacy Dynamic Lighting.

ElKatWilbrooke said: Also we want you to be aware that a different member of our team is likely going to be assisting with communication of our efforts in the future (so you’ll see them posting these messages as well) and that we’ll be increasing efforts to evaluate feedback more actively and have continued discussions from those threads. - Elizabeth Thanks for the update, and this bit sounds promising.

I like the use of a distinctive monospace font (looks to be Courier Sans) for Roll20 Team updates; it stands out visually when scrolling through the forum posts, and would be a nice convention if used often.

ElKatWilbrooke said: Hey Everybody, apologies for the lapse in communication over the holiday period, the team has still been working during that time and we’ve got a few different things to bring up this time. Right now the team has a focus on two main points: Refining Explorer Mode’s loading and rendering performance - Pro Users will be able to see those changes soon on Dev (sometime next week is planned) and the ‘Bug Fix Bonanza’. For the Mask Method overview - as mentioned in the past, our team been working on implementing a new method of handling the UDL Mask that is meant to improve performance, prevent critical issues of Explorer Mode like the whole map being revealed when the render fails, and is going to be put onto the Dev server to allow for testing and feedback before we bring it over to live. Along with those changes, we’re trying to ensure the option for Permanent Darkness is not affected by the new Explorer Mode handling and the ability for GMs to reveal darkness and hide areas in darkness for players is enabled. The Bug Fix Bonanza is going to be our team working out the issues unrelated to Explorer Mode (as we expect that the Explorer mode optimization will address those and will evaluate any that are left afterwards.) such as the on-going CTRL + L issue revealing Night Vision of other tokens, lighting barriers failing to update upon being moved, and other issues that may be identified as a priority. Also we want you to be aware that a different member of our team is likely going to be assisting with communication of our efforts in the future (so you’ll see them posting these messages as well) and that we’ll be increasing efforts to evaluate feedback more actively and have continued discussions from those threads. - Elizabeth Woah! A lot of good news! Thanks! &lt;3

TheWebCoder said: I've been running Descent into Avernus (purchased from Roll20) for about a year on legacy lighting. Thankfully I never converted it to the new lighting. Last night was our first session since the new lighting update, and half of my player's tokens couldn't see. Again, legacy lighting on all maps, legacy lighting on all tokens; nothing has changed at all in that regard for the last year, but half of the token's vision was black. In looking at the settings, everything looked the same. I wound up making those players fresh tokens and they could see again. We spent about 30 minutes of our session debugging this seemingly random issue. To second @Erica's request: I'd plan on keeping legacy lighting indefinitely until if / when the new system is on much more solid ground. There's so many bugs, and from what I'm reading there are also major performance issues. It may be the best option to keep the legacy lighting, and offer the new lighting as a progressive enhancement for people who have a system that will run it. The original dynamic lighting may not be perfect, but it gets the job done; it's reliable, and it doesn't make my computer's fan turn on instantly. I’m having the same issue with a few of my players in the dungeon of the mad mage (purchased from roll20). It’s so frustrating when you’re trying to set up and play but half of&nbsp; your PCs can’t see a thing. Theatre of mind is all well and good, but I didn’t spend money plus the monthly fee for dynamic lighting that clearly doesn’t work yet.&nbsp;

Alex M. said: I’m having the same issue with a few of my players in the dungeon of the mad mage (purchased from roll20). It’s so frustrating when you’re trying to set up and play but half of&nbsp; your PCs can’t see a thing. Theatre of mind is all well and good, but I didn’t spend money plus the monthly fee for dynamic lighting that clearly doesn’t work yet.&nbsp; If you want to put that monthly fee to better use, use the legacy dynamic lighting. It actually works compared to UDL which barely does.

Ok, here is the problem I'm having. When I put player A (without nightvision) in a room without a light source he can't see (as it should be). But when I put a player B in there with nightvision, they become a source of light and the player A (without nightvision) can now see. Is this a glitch or a settings issue? I am using the new lighting, player A has can see light source selected, player B has light source and night vision selected but does NOT have either emits light selected. ?