Pre-Purchase Question (Fog-of-War)

[dloyer4]

I'm seriously considering purchasing the full version for my gaming group...we always seem to have difficulty getting together in person for a gaming session but no trouble at all meeting up online, so this might be a good tool to facilitate that...

The question I have is about the player map and "fog of war". Can portions of the payer's map be hidden and then revealed as the players explore? I couldn't find anything about that in the documentation or by doing a keyword search in the forums.

Thanks,
Dennis

[Sorontar]

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/images/screenshots/fg2-screenshot-06.jpg

As in the linked picture you can apply a mask to a map and reveal it bit by bit by hand, I think you can also re-mask bit by bit as well so things can approach the group from behind.

[Callum]

Yes, it's called "masking" in FG. You can read about it in the User Guide section GM options on images and maps (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/userguide/gmimages.xcp).

[ddavison]

In addition, the next update to FG will include some subtle improvements on the unmasking feature.

[BruntFCA]

Yes. I've used it a lot. Afterall what Dungeon crawl is fun with fully lit dungeons:P

You can even Premask you're map so that say the first area with 5by5 torchlight is already shown, and maybe also a 3by3 around some braziers in the distance, the area in between being covered by the mask (hint this is where you hide the monsters:).

A small tip, if you press shift, you can draw straight lines...this helps a lot.

I would say the "mask" in maptools is more advanced, but it can make you're *hair go grey* trying to get it to work, it also takes a lot more prep time to manually assign all the vision blocking lines etc. One mistake and you can reveal a lot more than you waned to...ruining the whole thing.

Still there can be come improvements on the mask feature in FG. For example,

1 Change the colour of the mask (or give options). Why the brown, been down the newsagent and bought some dodgy magazines, paper bag colour:P It also looks annoying when you set the light to "firelight"

2 Some premade "stamps" to auto cut out a 4by4 or 5by5 around the torch holder would be nice, rather than me having to drag around the "cutter".

Here's a pic of the kind of effect you can achieve. This is from the first dungeon room in Rivenraor, the heroes can just see the steps and the edge of the floor. In the distance the braziers are lighting the back wall. I've hidden the goblins in the "dark" bits...enjoy!

[Griogre]

It doesn't hurt to mention that BruntFCA's screen is from the DM point of view so the mask is semi transparent. In the player view, you can't see through the mask so they wouldn't see the monsters at all.

[dloyer4]

Thanks guys! When I was testing I didn't try loading an image, I tried using the drawing tool to draw a quick room and then looked for some option to mask it, so I missed the option to mask...hence the question.

It would be nice to be able to mask a drawing you made on the fly, but then again, you could just simply limit your drawing to the areas that are visible...

thanks again y'all,
Dennis

[Tenian]

In FGII drawings (i.e. what you create by hand) and images (i.e. files you load) are two different object types. Although they look similar, they do not all support the same features/options (as you've discovered)...

I'm pretty sure you can change the mask color as well. I think it's just the background of an empty image frame. The GM version is just displayed with a bit of transparency.

[drahkar]

Also, drawings are saved as negative images so if you are willing to do some outside of the program graphics works you can convert the drawing to an image. Something to consider.

[Griogre]

drahkar's point is worth stressing. Even Paint can easily covert a free hand sketch to an image if the drawing suddenly becomes important. This happened to me in a game I ran where I sketched out a border keep/outpost that the party encountered while following a small army of bad guys.

For role playing reasons the party decided to try to free the slaves being used to expand and clean out the kill zone around the fort on the return trip out - so suddenly I was going to need that drawing in the future and it had "become" important so I made it an image and included it in the Regional Module for that area. It took far less time to convert the drawing to an image than it did to type out this text.