Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

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rpt-steve
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Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by rpt-steve »

Hello all!

Forgive me if this has been hashed to death before, but I'm having trouble setting up token VBL on a token, and I've so far failed to find any helpful/relevant discussions of the problem I'm facing. It's very likely I'm missing some setting or other, as I'm very new to MapTool, but I can't for the life of me figure out what.

I have a token, meant to represent a section of a wall. It's a square token, the same size as one grid space. The problem is that the token itself does not draw overtop of the VBL. The player token's vision seems to be working properly in all regards. The token DOES block vision as I would expect it to, but the wall image which the token uses is not shown (it's just a black square in the player's window.)

The image does appear in the GM's window. So it's like the image is drawn over "soft fog," but not over "hard fog" - which the GM never sees anyway. Maybe the player would see it if the hard fog were changed to soft fog (is there a way to do that for the player?) but I was expecting/hoping that I could make the token itself visible to the player, but anything behind it would be hidden. That's the effect I'm trying to achieve anyway.

- I'm using the most recent MapTool 1.5.5rc
- The player token's vision is set up properly and he has a light source (at least, it seems to be behaving properly with regards to map VBL and other NPC tokens.)
- I dropped the original image on the object layer to make a new token of it, and set up token VBL.
- The image has not been rotated, resized or otherwise manipulated, either in or out of MapTool.
- I have "visible over FOW" checked.
- The token VBL (yellow layer) perfectly covers the image (maptool did this automatically.)
- There are no animations involved. Just a 1x1 square block that I'm moving a PC token around to check vision.
- Sensitivity is currently 0, but I've tried various values including 0, 1, 250, 255, etc. Nothing seems to change here.
- the "number of points visible" setting I've got set on 1. I've tried a few different values there as well, with no noticeable effect.
- I can't find any way to define these "points" or see how they are defined automatically. It sounds like its an automatic thing based on reading the tutorials, though.

If I drag the wall around the map in the GM's window, the player CAN see the wall while it's moving, but once I drop it, it becomes a solid black square once more.

I'm not sure what else I may be missing.

After typing all this out, I'm thinking it may be an issue with the GM needing to "reveal" the area over the wall token to the players, to change the "hard fog" into "soft fog"? I guess I was expecting the token itself to become visible automatically even over "hard fog" but maybe that's not how it works?

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aliasmask
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Re: Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by aliasmask »

Token still needs line of sight to see the token so if there is any other vbl blocking or vision range or something like that then he can't see token. Make sure the server setting players reveal FoW is checked as well.

If you want to share your campaign with the map then someone can look at it as well to see if there is some other detail missing.

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Re: Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by Phergus »

A screenshot would probably help diagnose the issue.

The object with VBL must be in actual visual range of the observing token before it will appear.

Here is a GM/player view side by side with the player token in visual range of the Object with VBL.
Screenshot 2019-10-03 10.37.40.png
Screenshot 2019-10-03 10.37.40.png (140.13 KiB) Viewed 972 times
And then backed away from it.
Screenshot 2019-10-03 10.37.58.png
Screenshot 2019-10-03 10.37.58.png (135.58 KiB) Viewed 972 times

Phergus
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Re: Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by Phergus »

And welcome to the forums!

rpt-steve
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Re: Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by rpt-steve »

Thank you both for taking the time to reply. :)
aliasmask wrote:
Thu Oct 03, 2019 12:31 pm
Token still needs line of sight to see the token so if there is any other vbl blocking or vision range or something like that then he can't see token. Make sure the server setting players reveal FoW is checked as well.
There was definitely not any other VBL or tokens in between the PC and the wall (at least, not always.) I was just playing around with this, so it was literally just the PC token and the wall token. I added one NPC token who I occasionally moved the PC behind to see what would happen, but I also moved the PC out and away from it. I drew some random boxes on the VBL layer, but they were behind the PC & NPC tokens (ie: the tokens were in between the wall token and the VBL, so definitely not blocking line of sight to the wall.)

I'll have to double-check if the "players reveal FOW" setting was checked when I get home tonight. That could very well be the issue.

I tried "resetting the fog of war" a few times and this would make the entire Player window black (even hiding his own token) until I (as GM) right-clicked on the PC token and chose "reveal current vision" (I forget the exact name of the option.) That would make everything in his line of sight reappear, though the wall token would still be a black box rather than the image.
aliasmask wrote:
Thu Oct 03, 2019 12:31 pm
If you want to share your campaign with the map then someone can look at it as well to see if there is some other detail missing.
I'll try the setting you mentioned first. If that doesn't work I'll see about uploading the campaign file.
Phergus wrote:
Thu Oct 03, 2019 12:41 pm
A screenshot would probably help diagnose the issue.
The object with VBL must be in actual visual range of the observing token before it will appear.
I can certainly take some screenshots later tonight. The images you show look accurate to my experience, with the exception that the wall image was never visible to the player, even when he was right beside it. I walked him all the way around the wall so that all the fog had been cleared away and the wall was just a black square.

I assume that the reason why the wall image doesn't show for the player in the lower set of images is because his light source is only 5-ish feet (1 space)? That does make sense. My player token had a larger light source (60ft, I think) so in that case the wall image would/should still be visible from further back, right?

Does a token's vision have a defined radius, apart for any light sources he may be carrying? Like, is it possible that he had a 60ft light source but effectively 0 "vision"? My PC token definitely had the "has vision" checkbox checked, and the vision type was left on the default ("Normal" I believe.) but I don't recall explicitly choosing a radius value for vision - just adding the light source. The NPC token was appearing and disappearing as I would expect, when the wall blocked line of sight between the two creature tokens.

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Re: Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by Phergus »

rpt-steve wrote:
Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:35 am
I assume that the reason why the wall image doesn't show for the player in the lower set of images is because his light source is only 5-ish feet (1 space)? That does make sense.
Correct.
My player token had a larger light source (60ft, I think) so in that case the wall image would/should still be visible from further back, right?
And, correct. :)
Does a token's vision have a defined radius, apart for any light sources he may be carrying? Like, is it possible that he had a 60ft light source but effectively 0 "vision"?
It can but in your case with Normal vision selected it would have been anything within the Vision Distance specified for the map in question.
The NPC token was appearing and disappearing as I would expect, when the wall blocked line of sight between the two creature tokens
That would suggest that vision in general was worked correctly. Are you sure you had the Object set Visible to Players?

rpt-steve
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Re: Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by rpt-steve »

Update: Tried again and made sure both "players can reveal vision" and "auto reveal on movement" were checked. This didn't change the behaviour I'm seeing. They were actually checked already when I opened the start server window, so I suspect they may have been on all along.
Phergus wrote:
Fri Oct 04, 2019 4:36 pm
Does a token's vision have a defined radius, apart for any light sources he may be carrying? Like, is it possible that he had a 60ft light source but effectively 0 "vision"?
It can but in your case with Normal vision selected it would have been anything within the Vision Distance specified for the map in question.
That was the map default (1000) so shouldn't be an issue.
Phergus wrote:
Fri Oct 04, 2019 4:36 pm
The NPC token was appearing and disappearing as I would expect, when the wall blocked line of sight between the two creature tokens
That would suggest that vision in general was worked correctly. Are you sure you had the Object set Visible to Players?
Yes, that was one of the settings I toggled while playing around, but it didn't seem to make a difference.
I also toggled "visible only to owner" and that DID make a difference - but not the difference I wanted (the wall was completely invisible while still blocking line of sight) - so I turned that off again right quick :P

---

All that said, I think I've found a solution that will work for my purposes, though it's not quite what I expected: I cleared the token VBL that was automatically generated and drew my own in the form of an "X" (as suggested in some of the tutorials from the "pre-token-vbl" era.) I drew that on the map and then moved it to the token with that "move VBL from map" button.

This resulted in sections of the wall appearing as the PC token gained line of sight, in the manner I would expect. It's not what I was initially trying to accomplish, but it achieves the goal I need when building larger maps. I guess the problem was that the auto-generated VBL was blocking the whole token from the edges in, and the fog wasn't being revealed because the player hadn't (and couldn't) see "inside"? I mean, it makes sense from the way VBL generally works, it's just not how I thought it was supposed to work from reading the token VBL introduction.

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Re: Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by Phergus »

There is some detail missing here still. Those screenshots I shared where made using token VBL. You can see that it works as expected.

If you like, you can attach a campaign file (preferably with just the one map) to a post and I'll take a look at it.

rpt-steve
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Re: Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by rpt-steve »

OK, so I decided to upgrade to the newly released 1.5.6 version of maptool (technically skipping over the full release of 1.5.5, I suppose, since I was using rc2 before.) After installing the new version and reloading my campaign file, the token VBL on my wall seems to be functioning as expected, per your images above.

I don't know if this upgrade process would have reset any settings that may have been incorrect, or if it was just some glitch on my system. Either way, I thank you for taking the time to help me as I stumble through learning this program.

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Re: Issues with token VBL and the token itself not drawing

Post by Phergus »

No worries. Glad it's working correctly for you now.

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