UDL 1.0 Updates, Bugs, & Feedback

FYI - These are still a thing - and I assume they're on some list somewhere:
Old forum post

But I found another variant of the latter issue:

1) Navigate to a map with "Dynamic Lighting" and "Explorer Mode" enabled.

2) Toggle "Dynamic Lighting" to off

3) Reveal/Hide toolbar erroneously still shows "Permanent Darkness" and "Explorable Darkness" options until you switch maps and back or reload the page.

I'd imagine it's a similar problem to toggling daylight mode as per the post above, but might be different enough issue that a note should be tacked on to the the ticket.

Edit: If it would help to send 3 snarky bug reports into the Help Center void I can do that.  But the issues are trivial to reproduce.

Tinted nightvision is being dumb at the moment.

Here is the GM view for two tokens on a blank map with dynamic lighting enabled.  Both tokens have vision and night vision enabled.  The one on the left has 30 ft whereas the one on the right is 8.  The one of the left has a cyan tint whereas the one on the right is transparent.  There are no night vision effects.

I don't control the Hadrosaurus, which is why it's vaguely cyan.  If I give myself control it's the correct colors.  The transparent night vision stacks with the tinted by just removing the tint apparently.

If I add a tint to the T-Rex (orange in this case), you get this.  It's still white but now washes out the grid lines as well.  And makes the T-Rex all weird and bright (which again can be fixed by giving myself control of the token).

Now, Lets turn the T-Rex back to transparent and switch to Explorer Mode!

Well - this isn't great.

Maybe it's better with an actual background?

Oh - look - that's where the grid lines went.  They turned into a super light cyan.  Not so much with the cyan, but with a different color choice for the tint I can just sort almost still make out the grid lines if I zoom in super close to that all white section.

Let see what it looks like for the player (with or without explorer mode at this point really):

Look at that dreary washed out mess.  I hope they didn't need to see that T-Rex.

Presumably someone tried stuff like, "put a token or two on the map",  and "enable nightvision with tinting" before pushing out this code - so I imagine that at least a bit of this looks like it's supposed to?

I'm happy to file a bug report if someone from Roll20 would like to weigh in on what specifically is buggy here and needs a game with an example.

keithcurtis said:

I made the switch last month. It's quirky, yes, but if I avoid things like tinted light or expecting Ctrl-L to do more than it's supposed to, I vastly prefer it to the kludginess of Advanced Fog of War. I know it's a pain to work around the bugs, but I've said farewell to LDL.

Same here. UDL works quit well for me actually :)

UDL settings not immediately being honored when creating token objects via api script

I didn't see this in the list of things being worked on. Some unusual behavior observed in UDL when programmatically creating token objects. My SpawnDefaultToken api script creates an instance of the default token for a given character sheet. Here is an example of a "Bullseye Lantern" character being spawned. UDL settings emit bright light 30, dim light 30, and a directional value of 30 degrees. When dragged from the journal, light settings are immediately honored.

Map view when first spawned - Lantern token is not emitting light.

If I "wiggle" the lantern token, light is emitted, but the directional value is ignored.

Opening the token properties, here you can see that the UDL settings were correctly applied by the script

If I don't change any settings, but click "Save Settings", the directional component is finally honored.

Seems like UDL is missing a "refresh" that occurs when dragged from the journal, but missing when creating the default token from the api.

Sean G -- if you could send a link to the game with the Night Vision tint issues, that would be great! As for the Explorable/Permanent Darkness issues you mentioned, there are solutions are in progress.

David M -- thank you for that API report! We're looking into it right now.

Hello All, 

Here is the problem I have: 

Using DL, I'm drawing the dungeon walls to prevent the vision. It works up to a point, any additional lines in DL layer does not prevent vision. 

Things I have tried: 

- Restarting / Exiting 

- Checking if I'm still drawing on the real layer

- Deleting / renewing the token I'm checking the vision with (both character token and light source token) 

- Turning DL on/off

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. It is super frustrating... 

See Screenshots for more information.

PS: This is my first forum post in AGES!

1: Vision of a player token 

2: DL layer what I have drawn :'((( 

3: How it looks on token layer. 

As you can see the lines on top and bottom of the room does not block the vision, but the other ones do. Is this a bug or am I doing anything wrong? 

Hard to decipher, because there is obviously more going on than is framed in the screenshot, like the source of that diagonal darkness in the LR. Hmm..

Serken, try re-doing your Dynamic Lighting Layer lines (walls) with the straight-line tool, instead of the freehand drawing pencil.

I believe they've said that freehand drawing tool is allowed and supposed to be functional, but, surely there would be less Math in the backend if your lines are simple-straight. At least worth a try to compare the results.

In the release notes yesterday (6/15) it mentioned something about Dynamic Lighting celebration.  What does that entail?  

Jake M. said:

In the release notes yesterday (6/15) it mentioned something about Dynamic Lighting celebration.  What does that entail?  

I don't know what on earth that could be. /s

;)

Real answer: more info coming soon!

Hey everyone.
I'm still having issues with the explorer transparency thing. I assume this issue has been brought up to the dev team or so but can we have a little update on that particular matter ?

It's just about the only problem that really grind my gears hard.

Carnage Mantis said:

Hey everyone.
I'm still having issues with the explorer transparency thing. I assume this issue has been brought up to the dev team or so but can we have a little update on that particular matter ?

It's just about the only problem that really grind my gears hard.

Yes! The fix is currently in progress. I don't have an ETA, but we'll let you know as soon as it's out.

Someone upthread wrote:

A brightness slider on the daylight toggle would also be great to handle twilight or moonlight or areas lit by a magical diffuse dim light or whatever.

I want to second that! A slider on the daylight brightness would be EXTREMELY useful to show moonlight and other dim light effects that affect the entire map.Yes, it can probably be done by placing multiple tokens on the map that generate dim light but, it's not as useful as being able to light (or not light) an entire map.

Does anyone else notice that the nocturnal setting dims too short for the distance?

Can you post a screenshot Eric M.? 

I haven't seen that.  If you're tinting the nightvision - that gets way too dark at the edges - but I think that's less of a "too short of a distance" thing and more of a issue with the tints just being overly dark.

The lighting is a circle using the Euclidean distance, whereas your grid generally isn't.  So on a square grid the vision is not going to reach nearly far enough on the diagonals.  On a hex grid it's closer, but will will reach a bit too far along some hex paths, and not far enough along others.  If there isn't a suggestion somewhere for grid distance based lighting, there probably should be.  But that sounds like a mess to implement.

Laurent said:

Hi Katie. Will that be fixed in the near future?

Katie Mae said:

It was not our intention to disable LDL token features in your games, this was a graphical error that was showing settings as off despite them being active!

Or do we need to update all tokens on maps and character default tokens?

I suppose no answer means we need to update all tokens. 

Laurent said:

Laurent said:

Hi Katie. Will that be fixed in the near future?

Katie Mae said:

It was not our intention to disable LDL token features in your games, this was a graphical error that was showing settings as off despite them being active!

Or do we need to update all tokens on maps and character default tokens?

I suppose no answer means we need to update all tokens. 

I did look at one of my LDL games and I found that the LDL settings, though buried, were still active.

The most recent Roll20 communication on this suggestion thread (March 23, 2020) seems to suggest some hope, as of last year, that it may be possible to implement a global lighting slider in Updated Dynamic Lighting:
https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1337963/adjustable-global-illumination-dynamic-lighting

Kenton said:

A New Light is currently on the Dev Server for Beta Testing, and we are working on the issues found and preparing for full release. Once that feature is available to all subscribers, and in a stable place, we will be able to better gauge a feature to meet the needs outlined in this Suggestion.

I, too, would be very excited if this feature were implemented. Or if the way UDL has turned out means it is not feasible at this time, it would be lovely to get some official word on that.

Thanks for all your work on UDL; I hope it is approaching "a stable place" overall--it is working pretty well in my own games.

Edit: Woo hoo! Glad to hear the news news, Kenton!

Edit 2: Does that mean the status on the suggestion, which is currently marked as "Obstructed", can be changed to "Queued" now? (Or is that still a "secret"?) ;)

Adjustable Daylight Mode is one of the features that the team has queued for work. Here's a preview of the wireframe that's been designed. Please note there are likely to be changes when this is actually released, but I wanted to share a preview.

Nice! The sundown/sunup icons are clever. I'm excited to know it's in the works.

Adjustable daylight mode is exciting to hear about! That would be a great addition.

Kenton said:

Adjustable Daylight Mode is one of the features that the team has queued for work. Here's a preview of the wireframe that's been designed. Please note there are likely to be changes when this is actually released, but I wanted to share a preview.

VERY cool! Hopefully Nocturnal vision will brighten it up for the token having it!…

Katie Mae said:

KENTON! 

I didn't realize SECRETS were allowed in this thread!!!

Keep'em coming.  ;-)  We won't tell anyone.  Honest...

I wanted to post this here because its a rather strnage bug that is making me scratch my head alot.

I have one player in one game that sees the entire map as if there is no lighting on there.  I have tried kicking him from the game and reinviting himj, deleteing his token and making a new one, the whole 9.  Yet he seems toe very time be able to see the entire map.  Whats worse is when as a dm i use ctrl-l the lighting seems to be working fine, just on his end he can see the entire map.

I have players ffrom Europe who have no issues,  and they use firefox, chrome and safari, use windows pc and mac and dont have this issue and it has just shown up over the last two weeks, the previous week i kicked the player from the game and on a re invite it fixed it but on wednesday when i tried it didnt seem to do anything.

Due to this being just for one player and no one else i am kinda stumped as to why this is happening since the switch to UDL as LDL never had this issue.

Is this player using any browser addons?  I haven't messed with it to see if I can do the same with UDL, but at one point the NoScript addon (any script blocking addon would work) could disable LDL on the browser.

Hello.

I added a new character sheet for a new player yesterday.

None of the changes he makes to the character sheet stay.

None of the changes I make to his sheet stay.


Ps.
And I paid for the Pro level that allows you to make custom character sheets, but where do I learn to do that?

Thank you.

Hi Rory,

Quick idea for something to check. Look at the home page of your campaign. Is there any chance the player in question has been promoted to GM status? They would have a GM marker next to their icon.

Also, you could have them check this page to see if WebGL works for them. The overwhelming majority of systems do, but if it doesn't, then they would be unable to use Dynamic Lighting.

Kraynic said:

No they have no addons as far as i know just a mac from 2012.  The only odd thing is that i kept getting an alert about lib toklen markers not working so i got them and then the problem started.  I deleted all the api and reinstalled what i had and i wasnt getting the error.  Funny thing is i use the same api on all my games but it was only this one that gave me that error

keithcurtis said:

Hi Rory,

Quick idea for something to check. Look at the home page of your campaign. Is there any chance the player in question has been promoted to GM status? They would have a GM marker next to their icon.

Also, you could have them check this page to see if WebGL works for them. The overwhelming majority of systems do, but if it doesn't, then they would be unable to use Dynamic Lighting.

Thanks for the response, no they have not been promoted and i even removed them from the game and then brought them back in, the lighting worked for them before and now not but ill get them to check the page you linked thanks for the help ill let you know

When I went to convert to the new lighitng, its just frozen/stopped loading and now I cant play my game...

Believe you’re going to want to file a help ticket for that one.

Duncan M. said:

When I went to convert to the new lighitng, its just frozen/stopped loading and now I cant play my game...

Do you get that message if you go to the game home page in a brand new window? That window might be "stuck". If you get the same message in a brand new window, then yes, it's time for a Help Center Request.

Duncan M. your problem should be resolved. Please let me know if it is not.

Not possible to create a light source with only dim light

If I create a light source and set the bright light distance to 0, there is still a 5 ft residue of bright light. This looks bloody bad on the map.

Bernd S. said:

Not possible to create a light source with only dim light

If I create a light source and set the bright light distance to 0, there is still a 5 ft residue of bright light. This looks bloody bad on the map.

Did you try setting it to -5? That’s a trick that used to work in LDL…

Bernd S. said:

Not possible to create a light source with only dim light

If I create a light source and set the bright light distance to 0, there is still a 5 ft residue of bright light. This looks bloody bad on the map.

It sure seems possible to me.  Just leave the bright light toggle off, and it only emits dim.

What a token with vision sees while next to a light source with those settings:

Duncan M. you should be all set. Not sure the cause, but your game's conversion job got stuck. We finished it manually.

Kraynic has the right way to have a light source without Bright Light - just leave Bright Light off.

I was forced to switch to the original Fog of War (the manual, free version) due to UDL's inability to support large maps without crashing everyone's browser (trying to run Dungeon of the Mad Mage and failing).

Long story short, I found out that the slider to adjust the opacity of Manual Fog of War was buried and hidden in the LDL settings. Please fix this. It's a pretty ridiculous place to put it.

Not sure if this has already been covered...but I am seeing the following anomaly...

Token Brutus has emits low-light set to 2 feet.

Token Fazsiel has normal vision...can see low light as expected...

Token Vanafinden has Nocturnal Nightvision...sees nightvision as expected but low-light emitted by token Brutus is intensified.

I assume this error is already logged?

Interestingly enough that would track with 5e rules! (Dim intensifying to bright with Darkvision…)

From here:

Nocturnal Vision is a new mode that mimics DnD5e and PF2e rules for Darkvision. When enabled, tokens will have Low Light in No Light areas, and Low Light areas will appear Brightly Lit. 

Ray - That's the Nocturnal Effect working as intended. If you prefer not to intensify the Low Light, you could use one of the other Night Vision Effects.

It would be nice if it said that somewhere on that settings page.  The name "Nocturnal" isn't exactly self-evident, and the note I linked to is a bit buried in the documentation that I doubt many people read through.

That documentation should also have "and PF2e" removed. The Nocturnal effect only mimics DnD5e Darkvision.

Persephone said:

That documentation should also have "and PF2e" removed. The Nocturnal effect only mimics DnD5e Darkvision.

This is true. PF2e and Starfinder darkvision let you see in the dark as if it were bright light. PF2e and Starfinder low-light vision lets you see in dim light as though it were bright light, but low-light doesn't help in areas of darkness. The Nocturnal effect doesn't really match either mechanic. I don't know if it's helpful for other systems besides 5e, but it's not really helpful for PF2 or SF. We'll use other settings instead.

The light Multiplier is probably the best way to mimic PF2/SF low-light vision.

keithcurtis said:

The light Multiplier is probably the best way to mimic PF2/SF low-light vision.

That would accurately mimic PF1e/DnD3.5 low-light vision, but in PF2e/SF only dim light is brightened by LLV. The multiplier turns a radius of darkness around a light source into dim light, revealing more than that token ought to see by the latter's rules. I've stuck with normal vision for now, and just tell players what they can see in dim light.

Some really exciting Dynamic Lighting updates are available on the Dev Server, for Pro users out there!

For those of you who aren't Pro (and therefore can't see that link), we've added Colored Lighting and a fix for jagged lines that includes some cool feathered shadowing on the Dev server to let people play around with them before they go live.

Happy Friday :D