Light, vision

Alkix · Post by **Alkix** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 10:15 am

Before I get started, I'd like to say that I love this idea and I'm excited to implement it in my campaign,

I have some comments though.

First, I think there should be a way to distinguish vision from light. That way you could include abilities like lowlight and dark vision. And, you could adjust fog of war for different characters depending on thier ability to see.

For example, player A with a light clears fog of war for everyone, where as player B with no light but with darkvision clears fog of war for the light by player A and his own field of vision.

Also, just talking about the light, I think you should have the option of specifying the area of effect of light in feet, not in cells. (maybe have the option for both)

Post by **trevor** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 10:36 am

Good thoughts. We're going to be reworking that whole system soon. We can definitely allow specifying distance in units rather than cells. I'll let one of the designers respond to the vision vs light since they know more about it

jay · Post by **jay** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 11:40 am

Combining vision and light is a very good idea. I hadn't thought about it in that much detail, we just wanted to get the fog of war to lift with any light

We should be able to do something like this once we get some interaction between light and the FOW. We could combine all of the light sources (from other players, enemies, wall sconces etc.) into a single pattern of light. Then we could apply the vision as another template that interacts with the light.

Darkvision is pretty straight forward, it would allow you to see any space in the dark that is in range reguardless of the amount of light. Lowlight vision would be a little harder since it actually makes all of the existing light sources seem to have greater range. Maybe we could add it as a multiplier to the light for that player's map.

I think that we should do this when we get that far. It could take us awhile to get to it though since currently the lights don't interact with the fog of war.

Alkix · Post by **Alkix** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:15 pm

Right on. I just checked it out real quick and it says that the lowlight vision extends your effective sight range double the current light radius, so for each source of light you can create a third area that is different than the standard light area but uses the light nodes to determine it's location, and just is twice as large.

So really, removing fog of war would be the intersection of light areas and vision areas. Take that and union it to the area from darkvision, and there you go.

(I think...)

RPTroll · Post by **RPTroll** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:38 pm

So, does this mean that the light box should get a few more check boxes for dark vision and low light vision or is the thought this is settable somewhere else?

On one hand, it doesn't make sense to put it there because you're talking about a light source not the capabilities of the character.

On the other hand, putting it there makes complete sense because you're dealing with the vision of the character(s) and it would be nice to have it all in one place.

On the third hand, this data really should be pulled from the character sheet tool

Post by **trevor** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:43 pm

Mmmmmmm CharacterSheetTool.

Man, I need to clone myself a couple times so I can work on all these cool projects at the same time !

jay · Post by **jay** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 3:39 pm

RPTroll wrote:So, does this mean that the light box should get a few more check boxes for dark vision and low light vision or is the thought this is settable somewhere else?

On one hand, it doesn't make sense to put it there because you're talking about a light source not the capabilities of the character.

On the other hand, putting it there makes complete sense because you're dealing with the vision of the character(s) and it would be nice to have it all in one place.

On the third hand, this data really should be pulled from the character sheet tool

You need more hands!

I would expect that we leave the light the way it is and then pull the data from the character sheet tool. If we need to do something before the character sheet tool is available, we'll worry about option placement then.
Besides, since you can have darkvision and carry a light source it could get a little busy in that dialog.

drswoboda · Post by **drswoboda** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 5:17 pm

If your serious about an app for the character sheet, then I would like to suggest that you give consideration to the idea of getting party data from DM Genie, PC Gen and others. That would be so darn great. . .

How about reading in an export of an encounter group from DM Genie, You get data about lights, movemnet (encumbered?), PC and monsters in game and other fine things like the character portraits. Same thing in PCGen with the party file.

Now drooling. . .(wipes up spittle. . .)

-David

Emryys · Post by **Emryys** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 10:39 pm

drswoboda wrote:If your serious about an app for the character sheet, then I would like to suggest that you give consideration to the idea of getting party data from DM Genie, PC Gen and others. That would be so darn great. . .

How about reading in an export of an encounter group from DM Genie, You get data about lights, movemnet (encumbered?), PC and monsters in game and other fine things like the character portraits. Same thing in PCGen with the party file.

Now drooling. . .(wipes up spittle. . .)

-David

The only problem with this is you are making the tools system specific. I like d20 etc, but play a heck of alot of other games as well.
It would be good to be able to use these apps, but don't make the tools dependent on them

The drooling is well deserved though

Post by **trevor** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 11:14 pm

We'll figure out a nice generic way to hook up external tools