Explain to us the Sight Types

[idle_ideas]

As the title describes, please explain to us as best you can, the uses of each Sight types found beside the "Has Sight" check box in the Token Editor Window. We're working on implementing our take on dynamic VBL, and would like to factor in all related aspects. It seems DarkVision allows sight even with out a light source; Lowlight amplifies available light, thereby increasing the vision area; Conic and Square shape the light area into a vision area, and Normal is for normal (haha), with Short cutting down the range. 

What else should we know?

[James Murrell]

You're correct on all counts. :)

Also, the ability to customize the sight types is essential to an open VTT. Not all rulesets are the same. Some use square vision, others use round, others use conic with facing. Vision ranges vary greatly, as well.

If I were to offer one suggestion, most RPGs have some form of effect like the Darkness spell in D&D. It would be helpful if we could have a type of VBL that blocks light, but not vision. Currently, simulating such effects essentially requires us to create a "wall" rather than an area of actual darkness. This would be particularly good for interacting with Darkvision sight.

[idle_ideas]

great.

as for the Darkness effect. We'll see. We can't promise anything as most of what we're doing is pretty theoretical, though what we've started on performed exactly as expected. we'll be trying other crazy ideas, and settling on what works. If Darkness is a good fit by then, we'll talk about it more. for now, let's just keep things simple :)

[James Murrell]

Sounds good to me. : )

[veggie sama]

MapTool's vision systems are very tightly tied to various editions of D&D, so it might help to explain how it works in those games.

In D&D 3e, lights cast two types of light: bright light and shadowy light. Generally, shadowy light shines twice as far as bright light, so a torch that casts 20 feet of bright light casts 40 feet of shadowy light (In MapTool I just give the character two light sources: 20 feet normal light, 40 feet colored light). Characters also have low-light vision, which let him/her see twice as far as others. To that character, the torch would cast 40 feet of bright light and 80 feet of shadowy light. Darkvision is just 60 feet of a virtual bright light source centered on the character, but no one else can see it.

D&D 4e simplified the system into bright light and dim light. I believe most sources exclusively cast bright light, but some things (like candles and phosphorescent fungus) only cast dim light. An entire environment, like a moonlit forest, could be in dim light rather than complete darkness. In addition, low-light vision allows you to act in dim light *without penalties*. It does not double your vision radius. Darkvision works the same. It's also worth noting that D&D 4e assumes everything happens in squares, so square vision makes sense.

D&D 5e continues using the same systems (though no squares), except I think it goes back to objects generally casting 2x their bright radius with dim light. 5e also removes the "low-light vision" term and redefines darkvision. Darkvision lets you see in dim light as if it were bright light, and darkness as if it were dim light (out to 60 ft). Night-adapted creatures like drow have "superior darkvision" which just increases the darkness vision up to 120 ft. The new darkvision is basically a combination of the old low-light and darkvision systems. I don't believe MapTool currently does this one accurately. Also, you can only see in black and white with 5e's Darkvision, which might be possible through some kind of filter if the Mote devs wanted to take a crack at it.

(IDEA TIME) If a black-and-white filter were introduced, others could easily make sense. A reddish filter could represent thermal vision or a green one for night vision. In Shadowrun, astral vision might have a weird hippy vibe that distorts or negatives the map underneath. Could be a really cool feature.

Unrelated to D&D, conic vision works great for any games that use facing systems or vehicle headlights. I don't know any systems that would use "short vision" but why not have the option? User-modifiable sight ranges are definitely great for other systems. I can imagine a game that uses starships or submarines with differently ranged sensor systems defined by the sight properties.

One small problem I've had with MapTool/Mote is it's little unintuitive to get sight and light sources working at first. By default, light seems to extend infinitely. Normal vision extends pretty far even with no light sources. So first you have to set it to Night mode (even if your map is set indoors, for instance). That alone doesn't do anything unless Fog of War is turned on. If you're still having problems with sight, you have to make sure it's not an NPC without "Sight" checked in its properties (PCs have Sight checked by default, while NPCs don't, which I don't think is mentioned explicitly anywhere). Players are sometimes confused when they get a black screen because they don't actually own the tokens with sight. Finally, your view can sometimes just be lost in the blackness somewhere without realizing you have a token somewhere else that can see. I understand it all now perfectly fine but the whole system can be very confusing and error-prone for new people. It can be confusing enough that enough GMs don't even bother with setting up light, sight, and VBL.

(MORE IDEA TIME) One last thing: darkness spells. Now if there's a special type of light that radiates darkness (wtf?!) then there needs to be a Truesight sight option. Truesight usually lets you see perfectly into real darkness and magical darkness (as well as spot invisible people). Truesight trumps all. Then magical darkness. Then bright light. Then dim/shadowy light. Then normal darkness.

Okay, I think I'm done making edits to this.

[grant strachan]

The other visiontype in maptool is darkvision, this seems to be implemented by havingw the token with a lightsource only visible to them. However it would be 

good if the token could also interacted with 'visible' lightsources 

 

 So for example in complete darkenss the token can see to the limit of their darkvision, but could also see a torchlight outside the limits of the darkvision.

[Chris Randall]

Sight and Light are closely tied together. First there really isn't a darkvision or lowlight. Those are just names based on the settings. Darkvision is simply a light source only that token can see centered on that token. That's specified with the r## where ## is the distance of personal light. Lowlight doubles the effect of any visible light including darkvision and that's specified with the multiple like x2. Distance is from absolute center so the size of token isn't considered unless you include it in the distance value. The shapes are self explanatory except. arc is always centered on facing. offsets is actually new and really isn't used afaik, but allows you to move the arc center based on facing. This would be more useful as a light parameter, which it's not. As far as light parameters go in relation to cones, the way lights overlap it would be nice to have offset with a light. You could potentially create zones at different angles. I would also like the see a start/stop for distance of lights so you can better defined zone with that as well. Could be denoted like this "range short: 5,30##(0,255,0)" where 0,30 is the range, ## specifies color (###,###,###) is rgb in decimal. Currently it's like "range short: 30#00ff00" where all light sources start at 0. I would want to be able to create a medium range light like this: "range medium: 30,60#(yellow)" where it only shows the "light" starting at 30 and going to 60 and will allow for html color names (just the basic set). This would be better as an aura actually.

Aura is just a light that doesn't reveal fog of war. There's also the personal aura which only owners can see. All visions, lights and auras I think should have the same options for simplicity.

[idle_ideas]

thanks for the input, grant. we didn't notice how darkvision interacts with light sources. we've been working under normal vision condition while testing out ideas. normal vision in our dynamic vbl test does interact with existing light sources. can't promise anything right now, but i think it shouldn't be hard to have the same behavior for darkvision.

[idle_ideas]

thanks for the clarifications. they shed some light on the thought process that went into how these were made.

we do agree that things should be kept simple, as much as possible, without sacrificing flexibility. as what we told grant, we'll take note of what you said, and earmark it for a later date. the vision system Mote inherited from MapTool is not something we can port over to Mote-X, and we're writing an entirely new one based on our own ideas of how it should be. to the point, we like the challenge of putting your suggestions in, but only when time allows us to do so.

[idle_ideas]

thanks for the detailed answer! thanks, as well, to chris and grant.

it's as chris said. vision and lights are coupled tightly together within this vision system. we also agree to a large degree that a vision system should be both flexible, yet simple. Our ideas of that duality will be found in Mote-X. Unfortunately, this is what we have to work with in Mote, since it inherited the MT vision system. Light is the base necessity to calculate vision components such as fog and visible area. without it, there is no processing. so, basically, in this system light = sight, and are not as separate entities as they should be, even if they are separately defined in the MT system. this makes it complicated when figuring out the "rules" that define a visual context, as described by all of your examples, and when someone wants to add something new to the system.

You say light stretches infinitely? I'm not sure when I say this, but isn't there a vision/light limiter? Or is that the trick where a user can box vision in by surrounding an area with hollow VBL?

Touching on your ideas, a filter probably won't perform well with this rendering system.  I think a colored, transparent overlay is better suited, though it'd be an infinite one stretching over the infinite map the MT system employs. Not an issue really, but while we are suitably impressed with it, infinite maps will not likely find a home in Mote-X. Big maps, yes, infinite maps, no.

We agree about things being unintuitive. I guess it's to keep the element of surprise as much as possible. That thing you said about getting lost in blackness is one of the reasons we put the token bars in, to reset to a token with sight. Perhaps what we can do for now is to point out stuff or flash a reminder. Like when, for example, a token with vision if put on the map, we remind the GM to turn on FoW and/or set vision to Night, and the like.

As for the last idea (TrueVision, Magical Darkness), we're toying around with an idea for Mote right now that may be a solution. No promises yet, since it may very well bomb, but if we are right, and the idea is sound, then we'll have relatively flexible system in Mote for stuff like James' one way VBL, or your hierarchy of sights vs. blocks. The tricky part really, is working with the MT system. We have to tread lightly around the models for vision, light, and the map elements, else they'd break and in turn, break backward compatibility.

[Thomas Pither]

Here is a good overview of the Pathfinder rules for Light: Illuminating Darkness

Especially a good example of how darkness interacts with light.

[Chris Randall]

I'm so glad Paizo wrote this. It vindicates what I have been saying for awhile despite the massive opposition.

[idle_ideas]

Thanks Thomas. That was a good read. While impossible, wouldn't it be nice if all gaming systems subset their vision rules from a universal base? :))

On Friday, May 8, 2015 at 1:50:29 PM UTC-7, Thomas Pither wrote: