UDL 1.0 Updates, Bugs, & Feedback

Evening all, smouldering rage aside I would prefer to light a candle than curse the dark, many thanks to Jay R and Keithcurtis for listening to my rantings.  If I were to try and set up LDL so my game (BGDIA) is ready to go should the small gods smile and I roll a mad persuasion check on my players, can you cast a quick eye on the settings I have chosen below on a test map and Crash Test Orc and point me in the right direction?  I like nightvision to fade quickly and have chosen it to be just 20ft max at the moment for testing's sake.  I set the fade radius at 5' though would probably want that to start immediately rather than create a bright aura.  I don't want areas of the map to stay revealed once the players move, I like to think of that feeling you get walking through the woods in winter with your dog, the torch illuminates the way ahead, but the darkness closes in behind and what lurks within the shadows?...I have a 5' radius of light on the firefly to the NE, dimming at -5 as I only want faint light from it, with "all players see light" as that seems to be the right setting for a light source rather than just a personal radius of vision?  What does the Advanced Fog of War radius do (looking at the Wiki I think I can leave it as I have specified settings above it) and also, is there a way to rid myself of the awful square blocking at 20' range (again, I think Wiki says no) ? I know it eventually fades as the player moves, but I find it jarring. Many thanks

If you "don't want areas of the map to stay revealed once the players move", then I would suggest turning off Advanced Fog of War altogether, since that's pretty much what it does. If you want to eliminate brightness altogether, LDL allows you to put in a negative number for the start of dim light, with the effect that then entire area of dim light starts dimming earlier and is darker overall.

As a relatively new customer - pretty much since the pandemic forced our group to run remotely - I've been using exclusively UDL, and shrugging my shoulders at the errors, figuring you know what's happening and you're doing your best. Till last week and this.  It's been unusable. When anyone moves a token, the whole screen goes dark for them - their tokens become translucent for me at the same time.  I've been experimenting, with different browsers, different existing maps (successfully used in past weeks), and everything behaves the same. It has quite suddenly gone from the occasional "oops" - which I have been happy to live with - to unusable. Tonight I'm effectively drawing tarpaulins over the map - just like in face to face gaming - and revealing portions they can see. But ... I've been spoiled by lighting that mostly-worked, which was all I needed, and now it doesn't work at all.

I've mostly been able to muddle through with the UDL system, but in the last three weeks, I had the fog of war lighting up large areas of the map, passing through walls, in circles around my players. I shrugged it off and pushed forward. Today, however, we encountered an issue with every time a player token dropped it revealed the fog of war out to their night vision distance, ignoring all lighting geometry. I had to revert to the legacy system, and because it is less optimized, I had to disable fog of war outright for my players to avoid slowdown. This lead to a frustrating experience and really makes me feel like the feature is regressing, rather than improving, and I find it farcical that this state is a "1.0" version of this product. From what it feels like, many of the most recent updates should be rolled back to a stable state. Are these changes not vetted by a testing server with complex game states before going live?

I posted this on what is apparantly the odd thread:- Can you add the bug where Grid vanishes under light/vision to the bug list in OP? Also when storing a token with vision set as the default token (which I do for PCs) all vision details are lost when dragged out (presumably lost when stored). The first item is listed in the bugs here. Although I suspect it is related to other bugs concerned with light mixing. The second I can find no mention of, and indeed it seems some default tokens for other players reveals all, and so does have Vision... I stopped using DL several years ago when it was completely messed up by a new version.  LDL is what - that which we had before the mess or something different?  Calling it Legacy implies the former, although just means it's going to be phased out one day.  Yet 'back then' we were told that bringing it back was not possible. On return to Pro I am avoiding using the auto convert, as I had no confidence it would work. I spoke with a friend who uses UDL - and on his advice I only have lighting set on the currently active map in any campaign. So far the only issues that concern me greatly are the two mentioned above. 

The problem I was experiencing Saturday night appears - from testing this morning - to have been fixed (or gone away)... I will try a short all-players test during the week sometime, to ensure it's working, but: assuming you fixed a thing, thank you!!!!

Whenever I select any token the whole screen starts shifting shapes and lines running across it in strange directions centered on various features.  This is persistent throughout the map and soon begins to turn into strange flickering.  I have updated all the drivers including, but not limited to CPU, mother board, and graphics card. All with no luck.

not so much an issue, more an observation  I use the snap to grid function when doing lines for UDL so the walls should be pretty damn perfectly straight But when I drop in a test token  and CTRL +L  the smooth lines appear very jagged ... not sure if this is a cause for any performance hits? can actually see the straight lines here and the shadow of where vision is in the blue lines Still getting the odd occasion where using CTRL + L to view the token will lose vision, and I'm left with explorer mode only until I refresh the page this is on Chrome with no addons or extensions at all.

Ndreare said: Whenever I select any token the whole screen starts shifting shapes and lines running across it in strange directions centered on various features.  This is persistent throughout the map and soon begins to turn into strange flickering.  I have updated all the drivers including, but not limited to CPU, mother board, and graphics card. All with no luck. Relative to my problem.  I was advised by my brother the problem could be because of my xSplit Broadcaster installation. So I removed this program and run a test for about 30 minutes using discord video, running roll20 in edge with 4 pop out characters and some dynamic lighting installed, moving tokens around.  The problem seems to have completely disappeared. Strangely running OBS (a cheaper free software) does not bring the problem back and is not showing the same issue I was having. Here is a link to someone else experiencing the same bug that had pushed me to quitting.  Map-and-tokens-bugging-out So maybe there is a compatibility problem with the xSplit software, or whatever engine drives it? Does anyone else with lighting issues use software like xSplit?

Did something change 8 hours ago or so?  I was running a game and had to turn of UDL because it became unusable.

Hi, the jagged lines seem to have source in a quantum of light ;) You can draw a line step by step to the token. The lower the angel between the line of sight an the line of the wall is, the more jags can be seen. So you can see the rays cast from the token here. Findulas Mach Ten said: not so much an issue, more an observation  I use the snap to grid function when doing lines for UDL so the walls should be pretty damn perfectly straight But when I drop in a test token  and CTRL +L  the smooth lines appear very jagged ... not sure if this is a cause for any performance hits?

I am having the issue with the grid disappearing as well. It seems to be linked to having a color set in night vision, and then having the night vision of multiple tokens overlap, as opposed to leaving the color set to transparent. Also, it is only occurring for me as the GM, the players seem to maintain full visibility of the grid. Jim W. said: I posted this on what is apparantly the odd thread:- Can you add the bug where Grid vanishes under light/vision to the bug list in OP? Also when storing a token with vision set as the default token (which I do for PCs) all vision details are lost when dragged out (presumably lost when stored). The first item is listed in the bugs here. Although I suspect it is related to other bugs concerned with light mixing. The second I can find no mention of, and indeed it seems some default tokens for other players reveals all, and so does have Vision... I stopped using DL several years ago when it was completely messed up by a new version.  LDL is what - that which we had before the mess or something different?  Calling it Legacy implies the former, although just means it's going to be phased out one day.  Yet 'back then' we were told that bringing it back was not possible. On return to Pro I am avoiding using the auto convert, as I had no confidence it would work. I spoke with a friend who uses UDL - and on his advice I only have lighting set on the currently active map in any campaign. So far the only issues that concern me greatly are the two mentioned above. 

Everyone posting here is significantly more experienced with roll20 and DMing in general than I am, so I may have missed where someone mentioned this, but I have a serious issue with the Explorer Mode for UDL. I am a new DM and a lot of dark dungeon crawling is happening right now. For all of my monsters I need to have myself as the only player who can edit/move the tokens, and because of this whenever Explorer mode is on it reveals everything the monsters can see, as a dimmed area, to my players. I can solve this by removing myself from the Monster's control lists, but if I do that then I can't see the areas of their vision brightly like I need to. To simplify, Explorer mode should only expand the area of sight for players, and the host/DM account in a game should not impact this vision that should be excusive to the player party's exploration. 

Nicholas C. said: Everyone posting here is significantly more experienced with roll20 and DMing in general than I am, so I may have missed where someone mentioned this, but I have a serious issue with the Explorer Mode for UDL. I am a new DM and a lot of dark dungeon crawling is happening right now. For all of my monsters I need to have myself as the only player who can edit/move the tokens, and because of this whenever Explorer mode is on it reveals everything the monsters can see, as a dimmed area, to my players. I can solve this by removing myself from the Monster's control lists, but if I do that then I can't see the areas of their vision brightly like I need to. To simplify, Explorer mode should only expand the area of sight for players, and the host/DM account in a game should not impact this vision that should be excusive to the player party's exploration.  My recommendation would be to remove all vision and night vision from the monsters. It slows down the DL system with a bunch of calculations that provide only a marginal benefit. As GM, you have access to all information on the monsters, the maps, and everything else, so you can have a pretty good idea of what the monsters can see even without resorting to DL. If you really need to know how far a token can see at a given moment, you can always add an aura of the range of the darkvision which will show you if a PC is in the range of the monster's darkvision.

Why is regular Fog Of War, on the Legacy tab now? Shouldn't regular FoW remain on the Page Settings tab, as a default-available, Free-users feature for everyone? Does the outlook for UDL include deprecating/sunsetting the regular Fog Of War?  (I hope not).

RavingDragoon said: I am having the issue with the grid disappearing as well. It seems to be linked to having a color set in night vision, and then having the night vision of multiple tokens overlap, as opposed to leaving the color set to transparent. Also, it is only occurring for me as the GM, the players seem to maintain full visibility of the grid. Jim W. said: I posted this on what is apparantly the odd thread:- Can you add the bug where Grid vanishes under light/vision to the bug list in OP? If it was that simple I'd hope Roll20 would make 'transparent' the default . I just changed all 5 PCs in one game to transparent, made no difference for me.  It is where they overlap.  Thanks for trying to help! However a further test, logged in "as player" with rights to one token, it looks correct.  So thanks for that - a step forward it seems.

Jim W. said: RavingDragoon said: I am having the issue with the grid disappearing as well. It seems to be linked to having a color set in night vision, and then having the night vision of multiple tokens overlap, as opposed to leaving the color set to transparent. Also, it is only occurring for me as the GM, the players seem to maintain full visibility of the grid. Jim W. said: I posted this on what is apparantly the odd thread:- Can you add the bug where Grid vanishes under light/vision to the bug list in OP? If it was that simple I'd hope Roll20 would make 'transparent' the default . I just changed all 5 PCs in one game to transparent, made no difference for me.  It is where they overlap.  Thanks for trying to help! However a further test, logged in "as player" with rights to one token, it looks correct.  So thanks for that - a step forward it seems. Hi Jim I find if players control one token it is fine, but beyond that it gets increasingly grim.  Two of my players have two PCs each and their experience of the grid is pretty much the same as mine.  I also find, like you, transparent brings nothing to the table. Swapping settings to LDL as suggested to me earlier in this thread took no time at all and works like a charm (once I realised I didnt want to tick Advanced Fog or even basic Fog, just use the Dynamic Lighting on LDL).  Now I just need the tongue of Calliope to charm my players back around the VTT : ))

Thank you for the clarity on Fog of War.  <little happy dance>

Katie Mae said: Updates to Dim Lighting should be hitting the Dev server early next week! The team has been working hard on this, and I'm excited to hear your feedback on this improvement to one of the most common problems you have cited. If there were a like button, I'd be smashing it. Thanks for the update, Katie!

I think this is the new thread, hope it is. Been a user of Roll20 for a few years (and been avoiding UDL like the plague because of everything I've read that's going/has gone wrong with it) but a couple weeks or three weeks ago when I ran a session, there was some lag in map loading as well as delay for it to register to my players I had changed maps. Then a week or two ago when I ran a game again (as we figured maybe there was a lot of people using Roll20 to explain the lag), I was told by my players that their tokens no longer had vision and only saw black. I have stayed with the LDL. So I turned off Dynamic Lighting all together because, after reading all the bug and glitches that people had/have happening from the other 2 threads, I didn't want to have to try and spend time resetting vision for all my players and their pets if it might just glitch again. I've never had this happen before. I'm now using basic FOW with manual reveal of area's for the players to ensure they can see things. (This is also a problem with LDL messing up since my computer is a beast of a tower. I read specs off to a friend who knows technology speak and he called it a sick beast and praised me on having such a strong system. Told him the builder of the system told me it could play most AAA games and he confirmed this based on the stats I read off from the system information) I'm maintaining my paid subscription due to still needing access to things so I can find them in my files and get a couple future games set up on Foundry/Forge. I love Roll20 and the usefulness of their marketplace. I love all the tokens and maps that people have made that are for sale, I just don't have the money to actually buy what's on my Private Wishlist as a reminder to me to what I was looking at and wanting. But after it got announced that UDL was a thing, seeing the bugs and glitching that was happening, along with the apparent lack of care from the heads of Roll20, one of my players got me Foundry and I bought a yearly subscription to Forge to host my games. So I'm slowly working on learning Foundry and getting maps, sheets, and everything I can set up over there so I can have the ease and speed of Dynamic Lighting for my players. I do hope that UDL can in the future be actually functional and helps Roll20 flourish but whatever they did recently caused LDL to glitch for me and I didn't want to mess with playing ping pong, so went with basic FOW with manual reveal for the game I'm hosting here due to not wanting to take the time to set up maps for it over on Foundry when it's DLC for the campaign that was already completed last year. Due to how uncaring the heads of Roll20 come across as and how unlistening some workers come across as, has me going to continue trying to learn Foundry/Forge and moving unstarted games over there so they can function for the most gameplay in the time each player has free.

I have been using UDL since I became a subscriber several months ago without complaint, but the past few weeks have made my game unplayable. My group has been having several issues with UDL over the last couple weeks, but the biggest issue by far is a strange connection issue where the following happens at the same time: I (the GM) can connect to the servers to move tokens, roll dice, etc. and my players can see the results of my actions. My players can move their tokens, roll dice, and see each other's rolls and changes in position. But I cannot see my players' dice rolls, changes in position, etc. Because my players can communicate with the servers and I can communicate with the servers I can't blame the issue on any real connectivity issue outside of roll20, so the only thing I can think is causing it is the Jan 14 UDL update as these issues were not occurring before that update. I have tried both firefox and chrome, and the problem persisted on both browsers. This is a gamebreaking issue and we have had all of our weekly sessions since Jan 14 affected by this issue.

I am having a night vision issue with a token that emits light. When i turn night vision on the tokens disappear unless they are within the field of vision, kind of defeats the point of a torch if you cant see it. Have i done something wrong? i am pretty new to this.    

It's probably because of the field of vision. The field of vision blocks everything outside of it. Since the light token is outside the field of vision, the player token cannot see it. Make the field of vision cover the full area, and the player token will be able to see light tokens to the side or behind it.

according to this video it should work. &nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IftmAljlk0&amp;list=PLTj75n3v9eTljjooh-nIr_LFAeHatTeI4&amp;index=2" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IftmAljlk0&amp;list=PLTj75n3v9eTljjooh-nIr_LFAeHatTeI4&amp;index=2</a> Brian C. said: It's probably because of the field of vision. The field of vision blocks everything outside of it. Since the light token is outside the field of vision, the player token cannot see it. Make the field of vision cover the full area, and the player token will be able to see light tokens to the side or behind it.

If you go to about 2:13 in the video you linked, the token cannot see the torch light while turned away from it.&nbsp; That seems to be the same behavior you are seeing in your game.

Kraynic said: If you go to about 2:13 in the video you linked, the token cannot see the torch light while turned away from it.&nbsp; That seems to be the same behavior you are seeing in your game. While I agree with you, however,&nbsp; just before that we see it working the way I believe it is intended. Yes I can just turn off night vision I realize that. It seems&nbsp; night vision should be be to be left on

No, it is the angle of vision that is keeping you from seeing it, not nightvision by itself.&nbsp; If you want people to see any light sources no matter which way they are facing, you need to turn off angle of vision.&nbsp; You will still retain the nightvision radius without angle of vision.&nbsp; Angle of vision keeps you from seeing anything outside that arc.&nbsp; That is how it is supposed to work, and works that same way in LDL.

Kraynic said: No, it is the angle of vision that is keeping you from seeing it, not night vision by itself.&nbsp; If you want people to see any light sources no matter which way they are facing, you need to turn off angle of vision.&nbsp; You will still retain the night vision radius without angle of vision.&nbsp; Angle of vision keeps you from seeing anything outside that arc.&nbsp; That is how it is supposed to work, and works that same way in LDL. yes. I guess so. although I personally think it should not. just because a player has night vision I don't think it should mean all of a sudden they cant see a light source they could see if that was off. i guess i just think it should work differently is all.&nbsp;

Isaac said: Kraynic said: No, it is the angle of vision that is keeping you from seeing it, not night vision by itself.&nbsp; If you want people to see any light sources no matter which way they are facing, you need to turn off angle of vision.&nbsp; You will still retain the night vision radius without angle of vision.&nbsp; Angle of vision keeps you from seeing anything outside that arc.&nbsp; That is how it is supposed to work, and works that same way in LDL. yes. I guess so. although I personally think it should not. just because a player has night vision I don't think it should mean all of a sudden they cant see a light source they could see if that was off. i guess i just think it should work differently is all.&nbsp; Does it work if you have a separate token for the source of light? I think that roll20 doesn't allow you to specify a light on a token as well as the token having night vision.

Farling said: Isaac said: Kraynic said: No, it is the angle of vision that is keeping you from seeing it, not night vision by itself.&nbsp; If you want people to see any light sources no matter which way they are facing, you need to turn off angle of vision.&nbsp; You will still retain the night vision radius without angle of vision.&nbsp; Angle of vision keeps you from seeing anything outside that arc.&nbsp; That is how it is supposed to work, and works that same way in LDL. yes. I guess so. although I personally think it should not. just because a player has night vision I don't think it should mean all of a sudden they cant see a light source they could see if that was off. i guess i just think it should work differently is all.&nbsp; Does it work if you have a separate token for the source of light? I think that roll20 doesn't allow you to specify a light on a token as well as the token having night vision. my source of light is the token on the alter. its just a torch token. not a character. i just want the light from the torch to behave the same way even if my character has night vision ( or field of vision limited.)

Isaac said: I personally think it should not. just because a player has night vision I don't think it should mean all of a sudden they cant see a light source they could see if that was off. That is what I am trying to tell you.&nbsp; You can still have nightvision without the field of view.&nbsp; Just turn off the "Limit Field of Vision" toggle.&nbsp; You will still be have night vision, and you will be able to see other light sources without having to have the token turned a specific direction.

Had to convert my entire campaign back to Legacy last night&nbsp; I know there's a tool for upgrade to UDL, but is there a way to en masse go back to LDL ?&nbsp; as a GM every time I was swapping tokens and CTRL L to view, it would&nbsp; - LOSE VISION,&nbsp; &nbsp;but there must be an underlying layer for fog of war because Explorer Mode was still revealing areas ... just couldn't see LoS or any tokens in what should be visible areas. had to refresh my browser&nbsp; (Chrome latest ver -- no addons)&nbsp; to get back to seeing things I had a player join a game and they just had a black screen when given sight and token ownership. it just won't work at all. How, Just ... how has your core feature for Plus users taken such a huge backwards step in recent weeks ?&nbsp; &nbsp;I ran the whole Tomb of annihilation campaign using NEW DL like 6 months ago and while often buggy it really worked well.

Mach Ten said: Had to convert my entire campaign back to Legacy last night&nbsp; I know there's a tool for upgrade to UDL, but is there a way to en masse go back to LDL ?&nbsp; as a GM every time I was swapping tokens and CTRL L to view, it would&nbsp; - LOSE VISION,&nbsp; &nbsp;but there must be an underlying layer for fog of war because Explorer Mode was still revealing areas ... just couldn't see LoS or any tokens in what should be visible areas. had to refresh my browser&nbsp; (Chrome latest ver -- no addons)&nbsp; to get back to seeing things I had a player join a game and they just had a black screen when given sight and token ownership. it just won't work at all. How, Just ... how has your core feature for Plus users taken such a huge backwards step in recent weeks ?&nbsp; &nbsp;I ran the whole Tomb of annihilation campaign using NEW DL like 6 months ago and while often buggy it really worked well. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to convert back to LDL. The only protection is to convert a copy of your game, but that really only helps if all you are doing is testing.

cheers Brian,&nbsp; it was only 10 maps or so, not a huge deal as none of it was lit with tokens (Nightvision players fTW! ) I do need some help on LDL settings but I'll raise another post for that elsewhere.

Katie, Thank you for the info. The slider is a nice option and makes the difference determining between bright and dim light. What are the bug fixes? There hasn't been announcement on this. In my limited time testing the Dev server (KrothosTest) in the last few minutes, I found that I'm not able to easily see as the GM what the token can see in bright, dim, vs around corners. A faint barely preceptible line to determine what the token can see around the corner, much less the fog of war aspect where the token has been. I can see this clearly by usng Ctrl+L but having to do this for each token is inconvenient. Thank you. Katie Mae said: Hi folks!&nbsp; Sneaking over here during a meeting to announce that the new Dim Lighting improvements are live on the Dev server. It includes two bug fixes, but more importantly, there's a slider now. Let us know what you think! &nbsp;

Katie Mae said: Hi folks!&nbsp; Sneaking over here during a meeting to announce that the new Dim Lighting improvements are live on the Dev server. It includes two bug fixes, but more importantly, there's a slider now. Let us know what you think! I think the point was missed. The Problem UDL's low light gradient starts much brighter and fades to black. This is magnified much more strongly over the long distance that dim lights have to project to act as dim ambient lighting. LDL's dim light starts dimmer and has a more subtle gradient before fading to black near the end. Looking at the following reference photo, light 1 is 300 feet of low light, and lights 2 and 3 are 25 feet of low light. Walls have been added to show the difference between the low light of 1 when it is near to the source and when it is farther from the source. The viewer of 1-2 is about 55 feet from light 1, and the viewer of 1-3 is about 110 feet from light 1. Light 1 is the same light source in both pictures. Lights 2 and 3 are the same intensity to each other, but compared to 1, there is a massive difference in 1's intensity nearer to its source (when compared to 2) and farther from its source (when compared to 3). 1-3 is a "good" comparison, but 1 is much too bright when compared to 3. Slider pushes the problem further away Adjusting the brightness of the dim light does not solve the issue. Low light being too intense can be an issue anywhere because of the brightness at the core and how fast it drops off, but it is at its most noticeable when used long distances for ambient light (as above). Sliding the brightness slider all the way down on light 1 does get it to be slightly darker than light 2, but it is then&nbsp; much &nbsp;darker than light 3. I personally don't think the slider solves the problem at hand and introduces a level of complexity to a portion of UDL that is not really needed until the basic functionality of UDL is bulletproof. My take is that, while it could have some interesting applications down the line, it is mostly a toy and needs some more thinking through. LDL does ambient light fairly well It is not possible to have an ambient light be mostly consistent over 100 feet in UDL. In comparison, LDL does also start brighter and fade over distance, but that gradient is much more subtle. 1-2 and 1-3 are much closer to each other. 1 is slightly brighter than 2 and slightly dimmer than 3, but 1 provides a much more consistent light over the distance. Reference issues Two posts that I can remember UDL low light being brought up as significantly too bright are when it is dealing with a single low light being broadcast over a large area to work as dim ambient light. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/9687717/" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/9687717/</a> &nbsp;- Marko L.'s example <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/9743148/" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/9743148/</a> &nbsp;- My example (explained above in more detail) The slider doesn't help this. Either the low light is too bright close to the light source, or the low light is too dim far from the light source. It is unable to be "just right" in both locations. Other solutions Multiple low lights While available now, it unfortunately doesn't work well to use two dim lights to simulate ambient light, because they mix strangely at the border. This is not as much of an issue for multiple small lights near each other, but a smooth area without light interaction is wanted when simulating dim lighting conditions over a large area. Either the lights do not interact, leaving gaps, or they interact and cause bands of brighter areas where the illumination should be consistent. Match LDL The most straightforward solution might just be to have the gradient match the change in intensity that LDL currently has. UDL's primary advantage with low light over LDL is that there is no "bright core" at the middle of the dim light, but LDL's dim light is easier to use because it is more consistent in intensity over distance. Adjustable global illumination Having the slider instead change the brightness of daylight mode while allowing other lights to still operate would obviate the use case for simulating ambient light with one or more low lights casting light over a long distance. If we could have dim light over an entire map and &nbsp;add additional lights to make brighter light, that covers a lot of use cases. The downside is that it doesn't let you have an interior location be dark (because it's global illumination). Lightmaps Possibly the best solution, and something that would likely have to be implemented down the road, would be light maps. Allowing a user to define an area on the DL layer (whether by dropping a white rectangular JPG, drawing a closed polygon, or some other means) would allow the user to say, "This area should be lit with this color and intensity of light." It would allow exterior areas of a map to be lit while leaving the interior dark. Having that defined area be seen as a third kind of light would allow it to be turned on and off, moved, and otherwise manipulated and interact well with the other types of light. Unfortunately, my guess is that this would be difficult with the current implementation of UDL lights since it seems &nbsp;some kind of ring is used as a mask to create the fade to black at the end of the light's radius (inferred because of how lights will draw dark rings when they intersect other lights). If each light source just faded, they could be composited (along with the user editable lightmaps) into an overall lightmap for the page. (But if wishes were horses. . . ) And the crashes Additionally, UDL "crashed" 3 different times during testing. This mostly occurred while switching between LDL and UDL or leaving the tab and coming back. The VTT went black, and when I selected the token and clicked Ctrl+L, it would show the entire contents of the VTT instead of just what that token could see. I had to refresh the browser tab to reset things.

I just wanted to thank Brian C for delivering what is basically expert level QA. If Roll20 hasn't hired him yet, they should. You are greatly appreciated for spending your time to put together these amazing reports. I just wanted to mention how tone deaf it was for Roll20 to respond to the daily shit storm about lighting with "we're calling this v1.0 now". If you want to refer to it that way internally great. For thousands of subscribers it doesn't work and never has. Many of us are living in fear of the day you turn off legacy lighting, and my anxiety is increasing now that it's called v1.0, which suggests that Roll20 thinks it's somehow a stable feature release. Does that make anyone else very nervous?

Actually No, I've been using it probably for months and have never had a problem with it. Guess I am lucky.

TheWebCoder said: I just wanted to thank Brian C for delivering what is basically expert level QA. If Roll20 hasn't hired him yet, they should. You are greatly appreciated for spending your time to put together these amazing reports. I just wanted to mention how tone deaf it was for Roll20 to respond to the daily shit storm about lighting with "we're calling this v1.0 now". If you want to refer to it that way internally great. For thousands of subscribers it doesn't work and never has. Many of us are living in fear of the day you turn off legacy lighting, and my anxiety is increasing now that it's called v1.0, which suggests that Roll20 thinks it's somehow a stable feature release. Does that make anyone else very nervous? To your first point in bold: yes, absolutely. I'd add that it is disturbing that customers like Brian C. are doing elite QA that Roll20 itself doesn't seem to be capable of doing. I am hugely grateful for Brian for providing these detailed reports, but it is beyond absurd that such effort and time is required from paying customers in order for the product not to be broken. It seems to me that Roll20 has come to depend on this frankly insane level of unpaid QA from its customer base, and it's not a healthy dependency.&nbsp; Second, and in response to one of Brian's comments: it is equally disturbing that after Brian took the trouble to compile a set of phenomenally detailed explanations of the dim lighting issue, Roll20 essentially missed the point, and introduced a "feature" (the slider) that does not fix the problem when Brian and many others have repeatedly advised that reverting to LDL's handling of the light gradients would be the best option. Despite Roll20's claim that they are listening, they are either not listening or listening so poorly that one is forced to question the competence of the entire development team . Brian and many others have documented the boundary issue with dim lighting for months. HOW is Roll20 not able to a. understand the problem and b. fix it efficiently and properly, without adding twenty new problems in the process? Third, I agree that responding to the myriad crippling and well-documented problems with UDL with "We're at 1.0 now, yay! Get ready for LDL to be sunsetted!" is tone deaf at best, and monumentally incompetent at worst, unless Roll20's goal as a business is to hemorrhage customers to competitors with better products who actually listen to their customer feedback.

This is pretty much par the course for roll20, and has been throughout the entire UDL saga, even stretching to before it was called "UDL." There's a severe disconnect between how roll20 devs think their platform functions and is used, and how it actually functions and is engaged with by users. It certainly doesn't help that apparently no one is actually listening to user feedback, which is itself a whole 'nother can of worms stretching back years and years at this point. This is exactly the sort of issue, among many others, I had in mind when I talked two weeks ago about either a) roll20's development being grossly incompetent, or b) roll20's PR outright lying to users. This sort of thing doesn't consistently happen by accident, and points to a myriad host of major issues in the entire platform's company structure and culture behind the scenes. I have absolutely nothing against @Katie Mae, but we've heard these sort of promises of "better communication" and more "openness and honesty" before from many other roll20 employees, yet here we are still doing the same two steps back, one step forward dance. The only reason I think many of us use roll20 anymore is sunk costs and the fact that it still holds up against its competition, which is a sad state more on other VTT's than it is praise of roll20.

Is there any reason that the first implementation of UDL didn't simply try to recreate all the LDL using new technology without making any visible changes for the user? And then, as subsequent steps, start introducing new/better/different ways of doing things? This would have allowed LDL to be retired much more quickly.

Low Light Slider Comparison I decided to take a closer look at the slider effects because of a Reddit post that showed the drastic difference in low light levels even for "small" lights".&nbsp; <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Roll20/comments/lgx0j5/low_light_too_bright_in_updated_dynamic_lighting/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Roll20/comments/lgx0j5/low_light_too_bright_in_updated_dynamic_lighting/</a> I had a chance to do a deeper dive into the proposed brightness slider for low light on dev. Let's take a look at light cast over 100 feet, which will help highlight the differences in gradients and light levels. The lights are bordered by 15 feet of DL lines on each side to create cones that let the gradients be viewed more distinctly. Here is LDL. From left to right, the lights are 100/100, 100/0, and 100/-5. You can see that there is &nbsp;a fade-to-black gradient, but since the light starts darker, it is more subtle. There is not really much of a difference between 100/0 and 100/-5. Next is UDL on production: 100 feet bright and 100 feet low. The low light starts bright , stays bright for a while, and then fades to black quickly. Finally, the influence of the new brightness slider. The leftmost light is bright, and the others are different levels of low light based on the slider. From left to right, they are: 100%, 69% (the default), 50%, and 0%. A few thoughts on the UDL low light on dev: Even at 100%, it is darker than on production. The gradient seems largely similar, so darker low light causes the low light to not reach its full distance. 50% is probably a better default near the light source, but it is too dark at the edges of the light. The slider lets a user choose a low light level that makes them happiest, but the added complexity might not be best until UDL is bulletproof. While the UDL low light gradient might be more realistic and potential is closer to the drop off in light intensity in the real world (based on the inverse-square law), it is not as useful in games. I use lights in games to communicate to the GM and players the environment in which they are operating. In 5e, dim light tells them that the creature is making Perception checks at disadvantage, but the player still needs to be able to see the map.

TheWebCoder said: I just wanted to thank Brian C for delivering what is basically expert level QA. If Roll20 hasn't hired him yet, they should. You are greatly appreciated for spending your time to put together these amazing reports. I just wanted to mention how tone deaf it was for Roll20 to respond to the daily shit storm about lighting with "we're calling this v1.0 now". If you want to refer to it that way internally great. For thousands of subscribers it doesn't work and never has. Many of us are living in fear of the day you turn off legacy lighting, and my anxiety is increasing now that it's called v1.0, which suggests that Roll20 thinks it's somehow a stable feature release. Does that make anyone else very nervous? It doesn't make me very nervous, no. But I do hope that LDL will stay until I finish my current campaign. And then I'll decide which VTT I will use for the next one. It is not the end of the world.

What would an ideal torch look like? Let's take a look at the 5e torch (20 feet bright light and 20 feet dim light) in LDL. There is honestly a lot of drop off in the dim light area. and in UDL. The middle part of the low light is nice, but the start is too bright (possibly to create a smooth transition). What I would really like is something that communicated what is bright and what is dim light easily. This is a UDL bright light of 20 feet on top of of a 100 foot low light on the production server. The slider was set to 50%. I used DL walls to restrict the low light to 40 feet. However, I realize this would not necessarily be ideal for all situations. It is not as aesthetically pleasing. A short transition from the bright light to low light might go a long way towards helping as would a short fade to black at the end of the low light. There could also be a potential issue where lights overlap, as the overlapped area would be very obvious.

Bug: Break between bright light and low light There is a visible break between bright and low light which has been there for the better part of at least a month (possibly December 31). I have not noticed it on the Dev server, so it may be fixed.