Keep Map

Post by **dorpond** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:44 pm

I started making a cool Keep but I decided to stop because I was diverted by a couple issues that came mind.

Load up this map that I started to make:
http://gallery.rptools.net/d/8460-1/Lig ... cd727a182b

Issues I found:
1. I have lit torches on the walls throughout the Keep. My original thought was that the torches would be lit and that would light up those areas. I wanted to do a reveal on those torches but found that I couldn't because they are stamps. I really don't want torches to be a stamp but I just made them that way to get around this for now. Do you think it should be that way?

2. Then I realized that I cannot have all the lights on (revealed) because the players would see parts of the map that they did not visit yet. Take a look that the entrance way. There are guards in there that are actually saturated in light from the torches on the inside wall. I cannot reveal that light from the torches though because the players would be able to see around those walls.

What we would need to do:
We need to have lights (torches, lamps, etc) reveal FOG but if a player does not have Line of Sight (LoS), it would still be covered with FOG according to that player.

Three things that we need to have to be able to play on this map with minimal effort:
1. Light - Not just the hazy glow that we currently have but a real light that interacts with darkness.
2. Vision - one that interprets and displayes the light on your screen.
3. LoS - Line of Sight is important because if you don't have line of sight, you don't see the light. This is especially important. We can see a cars headlights 1000 feet away but if there is something blocking our view, then we don't see them.

If you look at the entrance way of my map, you will see that the Vision is inaccurate. Dorpond would be able to see the guards and behind the guards (note: dorpond isn't carrying a light source btw). If I did a reveal on the torches inside to light up the guards, it would also light up much more that Dorpond shouldn't be able to see.

Try to run this map using Vision and Reveal and you will find that it doesn't work for external light sources like torches, lamps, etc. We are still kind of forced to manually remove FOW in most cases.

Post by **dorpond** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:57 pm

Another thing I found with this test.

When using Vision on a torch and having that torch "revealed", the monster tokens are not hidden from the players view even if they are around a wall out of the players vision.

So I guess if any of the players can see a monster (within their vision), then all of them can?

dLANbandit · Post by **dLANbandit** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 4:41 pm

Yes right now, you don't have individual views of the screen. I posted about that, and proposed that there be not only individual views but be team views where each player is on their own team. That way it also supports games with Team A and Team B with a GM judging the game.

Trevor opted to put that in 1.3's list of features.

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 4:58 pm

All issues I've been aware of from the beginning when I was trying get clarification on MT's notions of vision vs light.

To handle light sources like the torches in your example, MT will have to do several things:

For each token that might be in a position to see some portion of the area illuminated by the light source it needs to get their vision properties so that it knows how much area to illuminate.
Then it checks every pixel that is potentially illuminated and does a LoS calcs back to each token that might be in a position to view it. Note that intervening tokens need the ability to block light.
Then for any pixel determined to be both visible and illuminated it removes the FoW/Darkness.

The current Vision system pretty much assumes there is a light-bulb mounted on the tokens head and only uses LoS out to the radius of illumination. I consider it to be Illumination and not Vision.

I think Vision ought to separate the ability to perceive light from the ability to illuminate but that still leaves the tricky issues of vision where there is no visible light like infravision. In theory each token would be a infravision light source with a radius of just that token. Of course some tokens would not radiate sufficient energy to be perceived by infravision while others might radiate significantly more and be visible from farther away though they wouldn't necessarily illuminate their surroundings.

Other magical vision forms might need other special handling.

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:06 pm

BTW, your arrow loops are backwards in your keep.

The wide end should be towards the defender.

Post by **dorpond** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:30 pm

Phergus wrote:BTW, your arrow loops are backwards in your keep.

The wide end should be towards the defender.

Says who? In what world are you talking?

J/K

May bad - I didn't even realize it during drawin gbut now that you mention it, they are backwards!

Oops!

I was really pleased those with the map so far though - 100% of the floors and walls were drawn with the Texture Drawing Tools. The rest of it is stampped objects (beds, guards, etc). The stairs were made by Kepli and are just shadows. Overall, I was pleased with the map. It is actually fun walking around with a torch though - to see the bits and pieces of the guys appearing in the arrow area.

Post by **dorpond** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:33 pm

Oh, I forgot - that is actually a 200 grid map which is something I couldn't do effectively before. I am glad to see that nice resolution -it makes for much better gaming. These texture drawing tools are really nice.

Post by **trevor** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:54 pm

Keep in mind that with 1.2b9 the texture drawn maps created with 1.2b8 and before won't work quite like you expect.

Right now the drawables are saved to a single layer. In 1.2b9 there are multiple layers. By default drawables coming in from 1.2b8 and before will show up on the token drawable layer. This layer is now _above_ object stamps where it _used_ to be beneath it, so stamps will seem to disappear.

Just a heads up. 1.2b9 will be released at the end of the week.

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 6:49 pm

dorpond wrote:Oh, I forgot - that is actually a 200 grid map which is something I couldn't do effectively before. I am glad to see that nice resolution -it makes for much better gaming. These texture drawing tools are really nice.

It does make for very pretty maps but be careful about the use of high-res texture campaigns.

Your keep campaign seems a bit slow on my fast desktop and is essentially unusable on my laptop. Panning and zooming is glacial and moving tokens is extremely jerky.

I used a campaign file with a lot of texture drawing on it this past weekend and it was very painful for some of the laptops.

For the time being I"ll be sticking with fixed bitmaps or tile based constructions as even very large Dundjinni map exports pan and zoom smoothly on the laptops as do the maps built from tiles.

Post by **trevor** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:04 pm

Phergus wrote: Your keep campaign seems a bit slow on my fast desktop and is essentially unusable on my laptop. Panning and zooming is glacial and moving tokens is extremely jerky.

That's my fault. I'll be putting in some optimizations in the next build or two.

Post by **dorpond** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:10 pm

Do me a favor Phergus,

All of the torches in the map have vision set on them. My original thoughts was to use them that way but I think I will forget that altogther since it won't do what I want anyway.

Turn off all the vision on those torches and tell me if it performs better.

I have made a lot of textured maps and I never really noticed them getting slow until I added vision to it.

Keep in mind also that I have every wall covered in LBL. That could be causing it also.

I will test it on my system also.

Post by **dorpond** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:21 pm

This is curiously strange...

Trevor, do you have some kind of mechanism in place that handles map movement differently when you zoom out far vs. zoomed in close?

My reason for the inquiry:
When using a grid 40 setting, you will be zoomed in a lot more than if you have a gird 200 setting. When using a grid 200 setting, you have to zoom a lot further than grid 40 to get the same amount of screen.

Unless maybe there is a lot more data or pixels at that zoom level that is naturally bogs down Maptool.

I really didn't see all that much of an increase in performance after deleting the LBL. Hey Trevor, you mentioned that erase doesn't really erase in another thread - it simply covers (I think that is what you said). Is that the case with LBL? If I were to delete it all to help performance, am I really? Am I just covering it up with an invisible layer? I guess the same question goes with texture drawing; if I draw a bunch of walls and then erase hallways, am I eliminating wall or am I adding more overhead by erasing? That could also answer why my maps are sluggish because I do a lot of drawing and erasing and drawing again.

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:22 pm

I thought of that. Turned off all the visions and erased the LBL.

Same performance.

It's the texture stuff. I'm not using the vision feature in my campaigns and those that have textures are slow as well.

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:24 pm

Dorpond - If your suppositions regarding drawing and erasing are correct then MT will need an optimization function to help with that.

I typically do quite a bit of drawing and then erasing around edges or extending them when using textures.

Post by **trevor** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:28 pm

The lbl will not have any impact on rendering speed, at all (well, there is one exception, but it's moot in this discussion). Lbl will only impact speed when moving a token.

It's entirely the texture drawing. I actually did some profiling on it last night cause I noticed the slowness too. I'm already deep into rebuilding the drawable renderer that will provide some relief