Overhead Tiles

[Miloh]

Not sure if I missed it, but are there any plans for overhead tiles? I have a lot of town maps, and would love to be able to set it up so that players see the roof top, until they go in the building and then the overhead roof tile fades out and they see the inside walls/doors/etc. Thank you. Much love for Fantasy Grounds!

[HywelPhillips]

There isn't an automatic facility, but what I've done sometimes is to set up the map with a roof layer.

I can then turn the roof layer visibility off to reveal the insides of the buildings.

It's not a snazzy fade, and it can't cope with eg only one party member going inside and only showing that player the interior. And if you have lots of buildings and want to control the interior
visibility of each one individually you'd end up with a lot of layers to switch by hand.

But it's worked pretty well for me so far.

Cheers, Hywel

[LordEntrails]

You mean like official FG Art Pack roof tiles? That I don't know.

But if you have your own art assets (such as from Campaign Cartographer 3) then you can do it yourself by placing them on one or more layers. Either individually or for each roof, or making one image outside FG with all the roofs on it. The first method is perhaps better so you can turn them off one at a time.

[Lo Zeno]

You mean like official FG Art Pack roof tiles? That I don't know.

But if you have your own art assets (such as from Campaign Cartographer 3) then you can do it yourself by placing them on one or more layers. Either individually or for each roof, or making one image outside FG with all the roofs on it. The first method is perhaps better so you can turn them off one at a time.

He means a feature like this:
https://github.com/VanceCole/roofs#features
(press 'play' on the first image to see the effect)

HywelPhillips gave the best way to replicate it in FGU in his reply above

[WinterSoldier7]

Remind me, can you have LoS layers, too? So that it all updates when you switch from exterior to Interior and have LoS set up?

[LordEntrails]

You can put LOS on different layers. I don't know how it behaves. I do remember there being a bug months ago about LOS on different layers, but I don't remember details.

[Elawyn]

You can put LOS on different layers. I don't know how it behaves. I do remember there being a bug months ago about LOS on different layers, but I don't remember details.

My workaround is to turn the LOS of the Walls off and only LOS of the roof layer on. When someone is going to enter the building, i have to switch so walllayer LOS turns on an roof layer turns off. There is no automation afaik

[RustyInRT]

That sounds like a pretty effective workaraound. I'll have to give that a try.

Surely one of the coding-enabled members of our community could write an extension to automate that.

[Miloh]

Thank you for all the replies. Early on I created a roof layer and had individual roofs for each building. Then when a player wanted to walk in the building I would make that image invisible. It turned out to be DM overload with 5 players wandering around so I just turned the entire roof layer off and don't use it anymore. I was watching a video from another VTT company and they had overheard images that would automatically disappear if a character walked under it. It could be a roof, a cliff overhang, tree canopy, etc, but it was automatic once set up. It's a neat feature if FG would want to consider it.

[Miloh]

Yes, like Lo Zeno posted.

[Lo Zeno]

Thank you for all the replies. Early on I created a roof layer and had individual roofs for each building. Then when a player wanted to walk in the building I would make that image invisible. It turned out to be DM overload with 5 players wandering around so I just turned the entire roof layer off and don't use it anymore. I was watching a video from another VTT company and they had overheard images that would automatically disappear if a character walked under it. It could be a roof, a cliff overhang, tree canopy, etc, but it was automatic once set up. It's a neat feature if FG would want to consider it.

It is indeed a neat feature, I use it sometimes in other VTTs, but it's... hard to judge when to use it and when not to. For example, many times I've had a player argue that if they walk in front of an open window they should be able to see inside, instead of seeing the roof - but on Foundry the roof disappears automatically only when a character token "steps under it". So I end up removing the roof altogether.
Ideally it would work better if the "roof" could replace the "black field" of the LOS obstructed view - but it sounds already way too complicated for little gain.

Nothing stops you from adding this suggestion on the wishlist though (here: https://fgapp.idea.informer.com/). Once you do, put the link here to give it visibility so people can vote for it.