Conic light discussion

[Lee]

A patch fixing a problem with conic light has been submitted here. You can find the details in links found within that post. If you are unable to access it, here're the topic links:

Initial report
Test build discussion

As requested by Azhrei, this thread was made to focus the discussion on what the final fix should be like as there are currently 2 major opinions on this regard:

1. No footprint highlighting, leaving the option to do so to the MapTool user. This implies an additional burden on novice MT users and a problem on what to do with existent frameworks that were built around the expectation of the current conic light behavior.
2. Leaving it as it is. A number of advanced MT users believe that the more control, the better, and having no method to control footprint highlighting takes away a nifty element to heighten game drama (among other things).

Everyone's thoughts on this are welcomed. Thank you.

[JML]

I'd prefer 1) but that's a pure dogmatic stand (I'm suspicious about objects not sticking to their true nature)

[wolph42]

1 as well.

[JamzTheMan]

1 also

[Sol Invictus]

1 also.
I do not think it's hard to figure out how to create the kind of light you want once you start making your own lights.

[Lee]

Perhaps a new default light can be put in to highlight the footprint and can be named "Self" or "Personal", or anything more intuitive. If anyone saw the screenshots I posted illustrating an elliptical lighted footprint (rather than the usual square), that would be my suggestion on how the personal light would look like. There is, after all, some diffusion when it comes to conic light...

[JML]

It's what makes the most sense to me. Having an example, users can change it to their own taste whenever they want to.

[aliasmask]

Perhaps a new default light can be put in to highlight the footprint and can be named "Self" or "Personal", or anything more intuitive. If anyone saw the screenshots I posted illustrating an elliptical lighted footprint (rather than the usual square), that would be my suggestion on how the personal light would look like. There is, after all, some diffusion when it comes to conic light...

I like this idea. This way the source can size with the token automatically.

[Azhrei]

So the plan would be to have multiple lights on a token? One light named "Self" and one light named "Lantern"? That might be workable... Hm, when an existing campaign is loaded then any creature with a light source should have the Self added to it. Will that work in all cases?

But how do we define Self so that it resizes automatically? The Lights configuration doesn't have an option for that...

Interesting... this would also solve the issue where a blind creature can't see itself (no light source and no vision) so it couldn't be selected by the user to be moved! The user would have to resort to the MapExplorer panel or similar...

[Lee]

I think what most want is to have a personal light on the default lights list but not to have it active unless a user enables it. This would leave conic light as realistic as what most seem to want it to be.

With regard to scale, the patch I submitted tied the footprint lighting to the token's scale, instead of the grid. I discovered that for sized Medium and up, the scale stops at 1.00, whereas scales below Medium each had a corresponding ratio. These scales were stored in xml files and I was about to ask the community what scales they thought would suitably match Medium+, but I thought it'd best to ask the devs instead since it seems that there are some footprint calculations that hinge on values being as they are.

I haven't had the time to just tweak the values and see for myself; perhaps in a day or two, I could get around to doing it.

[ntbrady]

Sorry to be so late in commenting, but it took a while to find this thread. The last post says comments welcome so I'll go ahead and put in my 2 cents. I use conic auras in my framework to display area of effect for conic spells because I can use different colors for different classes of spell and because auras do not past through my vision blocked walls. I was happily using the conic auras in build 87 and was unpleasantly surprised when I switched to build 89 which I like in general much better, to find that my lovely AOE cones were now corrupted by the addition of a circular aura effect around the casting token. This corruption basically ruins my conic effects since it makes it appear that characters standing near and even behind the caster would be affected by the spell. I am not sure why this was done since the light set up dialog explains clearly how to add a circle of light around the source of a cone to, for instance, simulate a slightly leaky shuttered lantern. It appears that there is no way for the user/gm to remove/disable this new effect. I had hoped after finding this thread that the beta version B90 would have this new conic light with circle feature removed or at least have a way for the user to disable it and that the "fix" would find it's way into the release version B90. However, I have tried the latest version of beta B90 as mentioned in this thread and I do not find any fix for this "problem". In fact the discussion seems to indicate that many, if not all, of the users who responded prefer a weird circle of light corrupting their conic effects. I don't understand this. In any event my input is that I want my raw unadulterated cone starting at the center of the "lit" token back, please, at least as a user/gm controlled option. Is there anything I can do, short of coding a Java level patch myself, to get raw conic aura effects or at least a user/gm controlled option for such added to a near future version of beta B90 and included in the release version of build 90 when it is implemented. I'm guessing that it would be Lee that I am asking to do the implementation. Anyway let me know and thank you for your time.

[wolph42]

Well you have my support for exactly the same reasons. But as you said: the general preference appears to be including a personal area. Anyway, if this is gonna change, then it's in the mote system that is currently being build.