Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Doc requests, organization, and submissions

Moderators: dorpond, trevor, Azhrei

Post Reply
User avatar
heyes
Giant
Posts: 142
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:22 am

Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by heyes »

I'm using the 1.3b56 on a mac running 10.5x.
I've finally started delving into the joy that is topology, light, and fog of war, and loving it greatly. Much more efficient than using the hidden layer as I had been before. So here's my question:

Is there a way to get NPC tokens' line of sight to show up as an outline in the same way that it works for PC tokens? I'm designing an encounter where the PCs have to infiltrate a walled compound with various sorts of lighting, but not very much of it. It'd be nice for me to be able to mouse over my NPCs in the non-player view and quickly determine if a given pc is visible from the perspective of the NPC.

Thanks.
As a quick note I did check the wiki and the vids, and I did a very brief search f the forums but was unable to find anything on this, so if I missed the relevant information my apologies! Also, if this posted in the wrong place I apologize again!

User avatar
Azhrei
Site Admin
Posts: 12086
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:20 pm
Location: Tampa, FL

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by Azhrei »

The only way I know of is to give the NPC vision by checking the "Has Vision" box on the Config tab for that token.

The downside to this is that the NPC can now expose FoW if you use Ctrl-I while the token is selected, or if you move the token while the Autoexpose Fog option is on in Preferences.

User avatar
Slayve2DnD
Dragon
Posts: 455
Joined: Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:06 am

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by Slayve2DnD »

heyes wrote:I'm using the 1.3b56 on a mac running 10.5x.
I've finally started delving into the joy that is topology, light, and fog of war, and loving it greatly. Much more efficient than using the hidden layer as I had been before. So here's my question:

Is there a way to get NPC tokens' line of sight to show up as an outline in the same way that it works for PC tokens? I'm designing an encounter where the PCs have to infiltrate a walled compound with various sorts of lighting, but not very much of it. It'd be nice for me to be able to mouse over my NPCs in the non-player view and quickly determine if a given pc is visible from the perspective of the NPC.

Thanks.
As a quick note I did check the wiki and the vids, and I did a very brief search f the forums but was unable to find anything on this, so if I missed the relevant information my apologies! Also, if this posted in the wrong place I apologize again!
If they turn on "Has Vision" and changes the vision to dark-vision, will it count as a light source that reveals FoW with autoshow checked too? or would it give the NPC sight that doesn't reveal so it could be sneaky versus a PC with a torch or no light source? Assumption tells me it will reveal. It's awful hard to keep players from having a light source, torches are easy things...and there's a handful of races with low-light/darkvision that wouldn't need one.
I'm not retarded...I'm a simple creature...there is a difference.

User avatar
heyes
Giant
Posts: 142
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:22 am

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by heyes »

Azhrei wrote:The only way I know of is to give the NPC vision by checking the "Has Vision" box on the Config tab for that token.

The downside to this is that the NPC can now expose FoW if you use Ctrl-I while the token is selected, or if you move the token while the Autoexpose Fog option is on in Preferences.
I did try checking the "has vision" option, but it didn't have the effect I was looking for. In fact it didn't seem to do anything (as far as I could detect). I'm not looking so much as to give NPCs their own FoW (which might be cool in its own right) but rather to have that glowing edge that pops on over the range of a PC's vision on mouse over.

User avatar
jfrazierjr
Deity
Posts: 5176
Joined: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by jfrazierjr »

Not quite sure what your doing, but at least in GM view, this seems to work for me (without a server started.). Are you sure you have given the token vision and that the vision has an approriate range? Are you in player view? Are you in the dark with no light sources?
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

User avatar
heyes
Giant
Posts: 142
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:22 am

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by heyes »

jfrazierjr wrote:Not quite sure what your doing, but at least in GM view, this seems to work for me (without a server started.). Are you sure you have given the token vision and that the vision has an approriate range? Are you in player view? Are you in the dark with no light sources?

Sounds like I must have missed a step somewhere. Will report back after trying from scratch.

User avatar
jfrazierjr
Deity
Posts: 5176
Joined: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by jfrazierjr »

Ok.. yea... after a second look... if it's night and you aint got not light, your screwed....
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

User avatar
Azhrei
Site Admin
Posts: 12086
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:20 pm
Location: Tampa, FL

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by Azhrei »

jfrazierjr wrote:Ok.. yea... after a second look... if it's night and you aint got not light, your screwed....
Which is the way it should be. ;)

And which is probably also why the darkvision was suggested, above.

User avatar
heyes
Giant
Posts: 142
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:22 am

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by heyes »

jfrazierjr wrote:Not quite sure what your doing, but at least in GM view, this seems to work for me (without a server started.). Are you sure you have given the token vision and that the vision has an approriate range? Are you in player view? Are you in the dark with no light sources?
Okay, I'm not sure what I did before, but Vision and Light seems to be working exactly as I had hoped it would. darned user error, gets me every time. Of course it would be nice if, I dunno, NPC tokens had their own FoW layer. But that is a thought for another thread. And for the record it's really good to be an archer standing just behind the path of a cone-shaped light source when facing on coming victims!

new zombie
Kobold
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2009 10:22 pm

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by new zombie »

The downside to this is that the NPC can now expose FoW if you use Ctrl-I while the token is selected, or if you move the token while the Autoexpose Fog option is on in Preferences.
I'm really new to maptools, i can't locate this autoexpose fog option in preferences you mention

User avatar
Azhrei
Site Admin
Posts: 12086
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:20 pm
Location: Tampa, FL

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by Azhrei »

Check the Edit -> Preferences... menu option; look for "Auto-reveal" or "Auto-expose", I don't remember which it's called.

new zombie
Kobold
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2009 10:22 pm

Re: Question/Help: Vision & Light for NPC tokens

Post by new zombie »

found it. i was looking under the tokens and map panels of the interactions tab, but it is located under the application tab.
thanx

Post Reply

Return to “Documentation Requests/Discussion”