Complaint From my Players About LOS in Maps in Official FG PF2e Modules

[Farnaby]

I am going to preface this by saying as a DM I didn't see this until my players mentioned this issue and I logged on with a 2nd instance as a player.
Also I especially chose a couple of examples that will not spoil anything for players reading this (I hope).

The main issue is that whoever is creating the LOS is creating the lines on the exact edge of the wall.

Here as an example I have the Spire dormitory from Strength of Thousands.

This is my view as a DM:
50482
Looks pretty.

This is the view as a player:
50483
Hmmm, ugly.

Further into the dorm as a player:
50484
Still ugly.

Here is the unaltered LOS view:
50485

Here is my change to the LOS:
50486
I moved the LOS lines a few pixels into the walls.

continued in Post #2 as only 5 uploads max allowed

[Farnaby]

This is what the players now see:
50487

50488
A lot prettier and imho realistic.

The second example is about objects in rooms.

The description of the room starts as follows:
An elegant but dusty flight of spiral stairs ascends in the middle of this room.

Here the DM view:
50489

And here the player view:
50490

Here the DM LOS view:
50491

Continued in Post #3

[Farnaby]

What if we changed the LOS to a window and just one simple line?

It would look like this:
50492

And the players would see this:
50493

So what I'm asking is to set back the LOS lines a few pixels that you do not just see a black blob but wall.
Thick walls with 2 lines but thin walls only need one LOS line.
And think about the objects in rooms, most of them can have window LOS but the above sentence also holds true.

[Montis]

I recently tried to have an inner and outer layer of a cave by having the inner layer be regular walls but moved inwards so the players can see the actual wall graphics and the outer layer on the exact edges as an object boundary. It's not perfect but at the same time it allows the players to better see what kind of wall they are dealing with and not allow them look around corners at the same time. If you look closely it the LoS edges are a bit odd but it works.

It's rather annoying to implement, though, and you have twice the amount of work.

[ronlugge]

I ran into this issue, big time, with my players. Eventually just gave up on revealing the map and turned off LOS long enough for them to see the entire map, then turned it back on. They knew the layout, but LOS could still help with figuring out what characters could see.

[dsaraujo]

I'll add a +1 to that. It is important to see walls!

[Surge]

This is why I feel it a necessity to map my own maps or find alternatives. All of the included ones are very unappealing to players when using LOS.

[timg]

I had a similar request out a while ago. It is completely terrible for players not to be able to tell what is a wall on their maps. One of the big drawcards of pre-gen AP content is that the maps and LOS are done already, but I have to go in an spend time modifying them all to be like you have done here and it reduces the benefits a lot. I wonder if we could somehow share our modified map content among ourselves? I am happy to pay for content but would prefer it to be recognizable to my players.

[ronlugge]

What's worse at this point is I have one of my players whose a bit more tech savvy, and has set maps up himself, and apparently there are different LOS wall types -- and using the right type would have worked here. And I'm having to listen to him make sense, but I don't understand a single thing about what he's talking about to actually do anything with it because I haven't played around enough with the LOS tools myself.

[Zacchaeus]

What's worse at this point is I have one of my players whose a bit more tech savvy, and has set maps up himself, and apparently there are different LOS wall types -- and using the right type would have worked here. And I'm having to listen to him make sense, but I don't understand a single thing about what he's talking about to actually do anything with it because I haven't played around enough with the LOS tools myself.

Whilst there are different Line of Sight types there is only one wall type, so not sure what exactly your player is talking about without further information.

[Montis]

Whilst there are different Line of Sight types there is only one wall type, so not sure what exactly your player is talking about without further information.

If you use the Object sight blockers, the players can look "into" the walls. The "best" albeit most labor-intensive way to do it is the way I described in my post above: have an inner layer of regular walls as far in as you want your players to see and have an outer layer of object blockers at the border of the walls on the map.

[Zacchaeus]

If you use the Object sight blockers, the players can look "into" the walls. The "best" albeit most labor-intensive way to do it is the way I described in my post above: have an inner layer of regular walls as far in as you want your players to see and have an outer layer of object blockers at the border of the walls on the map.

I did read your original post and didn't really understand what you meant and I still don't. In the most recent couple of modules that I have done I have drawn the wall occluders in such a way that they are set back from the edge of the walls so that a part of the wall was showing rather than have the occluders right up against the wall boundry (which is more correct really since you can't see into a wall - but I get that you want to see the wall rather than just have it black). I did this because of posts like that started by the OP and because I wanted to see if there was any reaction from users like, "hey sort the walls my players can see them" or "hey this is great". However so far there's been no reaction at all.

[Trenloe]

In the most recent couple of modules that I have done I have drawn the wall occluders in such a way that they are set back from the edge of the walls so that a part of the wall was showing rather than have the occluders right up against the wall boundry (which is more correct really since you can't see into a wall - but I get that you want to see the wall rather than just have it black). I did this because of posts like that started by the OP and because I wanted to see if there was any reaction from users like, "hey sort the walls my players can see them" or "hey this is great".
Hey, this is great!

[Zacchaeus]

hey, this is great!

lol

[sciencephile]

Yeah, I guess I just kept doing things the way we were originally showed in the tutorial video back when the occluders were a new thing.

That being said, I totally agree. I personally like more wall. It just didn't dawn on me to just change the way I did things.

Therefore, I will be doing it more this way starting with my next project (Strength of Thousands AP 5).

Also, I did fix Strength of Thousands AP 1 and checked it back in. It will go live Tuesday after tomorrow (1/11/2022).

I will go back and fix occluders for the old modules but it will take me a while. I can only work on 1-3 modules per week as doing too much occluder work makes me go crazy (and makes my eyes blurry).


-Danny

[Montis]

I did read your original post and didn't really understand what you meant and I still don't.

This should hopefully illustrate my method: 50710

Red lines are regular wall occluders, green lines are object occluders. This way players can't look around corners where they shouldn't be able to but they can still see "into" the wall to see the texture. Again, it requires much more work to set up properly, unfortunately.

[Farnaby]

Ninja'ed

[Zacchaeus]

This should hopefully illustrate my method: 50710

Red lines are regular wall occluders, green lines are object occluders. This way players can't look around corners where they shouldn't be able to but they can still see "into" the wall to see the texture. Again, it requires much more work to set up properly, unfortunately.

Right, I see. And I agree too much work for no real return really.

[Farnaby]

I did read your original post and didn't really understand what you meant and I still don't. In the most recent couple of modules that I have done I have drawn the wall occluders in such a way that they are set back from the edge of the walls so that a part of the wall was showing rather than have the occluders right up against the wall boundry (which is more correct really since you can't see into a wall - but I get that you want to see the wall rather than just have it black). I did this because of posts like that started by the OP and because I wanted to see if there was any reaction from users like, "hey sort the walls my players can see them" or "hey this is great". However so far there's been no reaction at all.

What modules are those? I probably haven't purchased them yet.

But anyway, Hey, this is great!

[Farnaby]

Yeah, I guess I just kept doing things the way we were originally showed in the tutorial video back when the occluders were a new thing.

That being said, I totally agree. I personally like more wall. It just didn't dawn on me to just change the way I did things.

Therefore, I will be doing it more this way starting with my next project (Strength of Thousands AP 5).

Also, I did fix Strength of Thousands AP 1 and checked it back in. It will go live Tuesday after tomorrow (1/11/2022).

I will go back and fix occluders for the old modules but it will take me a while. I can only work on 1-3 modules per week as doing too much occluder work makes me go crazy (and makes my eyes blurry).


-Danny


Brilliant, thanks very much.
I'm glad you think the same way as me.
I'm going to run Strength of Thousands in February so this is good news.
I'm also running AP1 of the Extinction Curse and I would be glad to export my LOS adjustments and send them to you if it would save your eyesight.

[Zacchaeus]

What modules are those? I probably haven't purchased them yet.

But anyway, Hey, this is great!

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.

[Farnaby]

Aaaah, I'm a PF2e player.
That's why I haven't seen them.

Anyway again thanks for adjusting your LOS lines.

[sciencephile]

Brilliant, thanks very much.
I'm glad you think the same way as me.
I'm going to run Strength of Thousands in February so this is good news.
I'm also running AP1 of the Extinction Curse and I would be glad to export my LOS adjustments and send them to you if it would save your eyesight.

Thanks Farnaby - much appreciated. I'll be glad to use what you have already done. It will help get that out earlier for others.

Not sure if you can PM a file through this system so I sent you a PM with my email address.

Thanks again,
Danny

[JohnQPublic]

I lobbied for this in beta. It's important to see the walls instead of just blackness. Glad it's being changed!

[Surge]

I lobbied for this in beta. It's important to see the walls instead of just blackness. Glad it's being changed!

Here here!

I might be able to use some of the included maps now. Here's hoping this becomes the new standard for all module authors.

[rcfouts]

Seems a programmatic update to allow the Dm to set a pixel offset to wall Los per map would be a way to handle the issue on a per case basis, without a ton of manual work replacing all the currently implemented walls.

[Trenloe]

Seems a programmatic update to allow the Dm to set a pixel offset to wall Los per map would be a way to handle the issue on a per case basis, without a ton of manual work replacing all the currently implemented walls.
Welcome to the FG forums.

That's a good idea. Unfortunately wall occluders don't know which is the inside or the outside of a wall, so an offset like this can't be accurately applied unless there's also some method of indicating what's the inside/outside of an occluder.

[Insanitywiz]

Welcome to the FG forums.

That's a good idea. Unfortunately wall occluders don't know which is the inside or the outside of a wall, so an offset like this can't be accurately applied unless there's also some method of indicating what's the inside/outside of an occluder.

How I would picture it is based off the site point. For this purpose, everything occluded is the "inside" since we are just trying to show the wall or object lines. The bigger question I think would be performance, as I would imagine the occlusion zones are "probably" calculated for each possible point when the map is loaded, and not updated as the tokens move, which would be what is required for a change such as I am suggesting.

[sciencephile]

How I would picture it is based off the site point. For this purpose, everything occluded is the "inside" since we are just trying to show the wall or object lines. The bigger question I think would be performance, as I would imagine the occlusion zones are "probably" calculated for each possible point when the map is loaded, and not updated as the tokens move, which would be what is required for a change such as I am suggesting.

Hi Insanitywiz,

Welcome to the FG Forums.

I wish it were that easy - I wouldn't have so much work to do to retool my maps.

The problem is unless you had some super AI, I'm not sure how the system would determine inside from outside. There are some cases where it might but a lot of cases where it couldn't determine the proper direction. Even Adobe Photoshop, which tends to be on the forefront of graphics manipulation has a tool to select an object out of a photo or other editing auto features, but they only work part of the time and in the right conditions.

I suspect the best we might be able to hope for is an occluder setting interface that is easier. I say this because SmiteWorks has already made it easier to do from version alpha/beta. I have faith that things will get easier, but it takes time.

[Insanitywiz]

Hi Insanitywiz,

The problem is unless you had some super AI, I'm not sure how the system would determine inside from outside

I'm not sure I'm explaining myself well here, the program already knows to draw the occlusion based off of the site point (player tokens in the examples in the OP), the suggestion is to have it to update those occlusions to be a n pixels further away from their map reference points, from that site point. i.e. If the token were below the wall, and the pixel offset was set to 2, the occlusion area would draw starting two pixels higher on the map Z axis relative to that token. Would need to do the math to extrapolate the correct vectors for movement when it isn't a straight on x or y change. There is no need to know inside and outside, only to know the site point (player token). Again though, I suspect making the occlusions move on the client dynamically as the site point (player token) moves would be a fairly significant re-work, unless they already re-calculate as the site point (player token) moves to reveal LOS, which I doubt as would be pretty resource inefficient without a specific need to do it that way.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just tossing ideas, every codebase has it's own fun happy foibles, especially ones that are being actively developed/added too. I work on a 20 year old MMO, so I well know the issues of code stacked on code stacked on code, and none of it doing what it was originally design for! Sometimes even if something is possible, it might not be possible with the resources at hand.

Regardless, love the program and all you folks do for it! Wouldn't have been able to continue running games over the last couple years without it!

[Zacchaeus]

At present tokens can 'see' through wall occluders to about 5%.

[lostsanityreturned]

Just on the topic of aesthetic importance. I recommend the OP shifting their grid to a transparent black. It is a lot nicer to look at from a player perspective as it doesn't show in the FoW.

[dsaraujo]

At present tokens can 'see' through wall occluders to about 5%.

Honest question, I didn't understand what that means. 5% of what?

[Zacchaeus]

Honest question, I didn't understand what that means. 5% of what?

It's do do with the number of pixels I think. Another way to express it is that the token can see into the wall a wee bit :)

[Moon Wizard]

It's 5% of grid size. We found that this was the right balance of allowing visibility peek through into walls, without exposing secret areas. Of course, some maps are better than others at putting separation between secret areas.

Regards,
JPG

[dsaraujo]

Thanks for the clarification!

[Thorns001]

Yeah I totally agree. I play a home brew game where I have set up my own maps as well as The Extinction Curse. I do what you do (albeit a bit more rough) with the LOS and I see a much better product.