Lights not working when added

[Sterno]

Had two times in my game last night where I was trying to add lights to the map and nothing actually lit.

Here, I'm trying to add a the equivalent of a continual light spell to a room. Didn't light up (did notice way at the end of the session, when I deleted all tokens from the map, suddenly that light turned on).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zifHc-pNHk&t=11720s

Also, earlier in the night was trying to add another light, same problem with it simply not lighting up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zifHc-pNHk&t=7490s

[Zacchaeus]

Not sure but you have several different layers of lights; none of which are on the map layer. That could be one issue.

[Laerun]

Lights need to be enabled in the Play options for the map itself. Lights also need to be visible and not blocked by LoS occluders. The token vision and what tokens are active can also affect who is seeing what. If you select a token, you will see through it's vision. If you deselct by clicking again, as the GM, you will see the entire map. It's easy to get confused about lighting.
Line of Sight from the GM view (1).png

Also, we are holding an event today (tonight) in regards to the Map tools workshop in the FG Academy. 6:30 PM ET.
https://discord.gg/FFEYbNER?event=964524952265064528

[Sterno]

Lights need to be enabled in the Play options for the map itself. Lights also need to be visible and not blocked by LoS occluders. The token vision and what tokens are active can also affect who is seeing what. If you select a token, you will see through it's vision. If you deselct by clicking again, as the GM, you will see the entire map. It's easy to get confused about lighting.
Line of Sight from the GM view (1).png

Also, we are holding an event today (tonight) in regards to the Map tools workshop in the FG Academy. 6:30 PM ET.
https://discord.gg/FFEYbNER?event=964524952265064528

Is this a standard "how to use lighting response" or something? I don't think it applies to my case. As you can clearly see in my links, lighting was enabled, and in fact all the token lights were working correctly. It was newly-added static lights that weren't turning on.

In the first example, the door was closed, but in the 2nd, they had direct line of sight to it. Plus, even without that, on the DM view I can typically see lights even if the players can't.

[Sterno]

Not sure but you have several different layers of lights; none of which are on the map layer. That could be one issue.

I'll try putting them on the map layer next time. I've used multiple layers of lights many times in the past (so that I can turn on/off sections of the dungeon for performance reasons, or story reasons) and it hasn't been an issue. Plus, often when you add a new light (and it happens in my first example), if you weren't careful to select the map layer first, it adds a new light layer automatically. So it's surprising to me that this would be an issue, and has me curious why it's designed to even allow this or do it by default if it's something known to cause problems.

[Moon Wizard]

Unfortunately, part of the image panel is cut off in your videos; so I'm not able to eyeball if one of the rightmost settings might have been an issue.

Can you recreate the same issue with the campaign by setting up the characters, and trying the steps again?
Did you possibly have any tokens selected? (I didn't notice any on the screen; but the strange arrows overlay on one of the tokens was making me second guess.)

Thanks,
JPG

[Sterno]

Yeah, I hadn't noticed that at some point OBS started chopping off the right side of the screen. Sorry about that.

For what it's worth, at the time, I had manually verified that the layer has lighting enabled (the "Use Lights" column on layer), since I thought that might be the potential issue. And you can't see it, but in one of those two videos I actually toggle the "Enable/Disable Lighting" off and back on to see if that would "refresh" it.

Also, in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zifHc-pNHk&t=12350s) you can see that as soon as I delete all the tokens from the map, the light in that north room that hadn't been working suddenly turns on. The settings all seemed to be correct for it to have been showing... it just didn't (at least, not until tokens were removed).

I'll see if I can reproduce tonight.

[Moon Wizard]

No worries; just like to eyeball the visible settings to make sure that nothing related to configuration might be impacting things. Definitely not doubting that you did it correctly, but just like to double-check.

If you can reproduce, it would be great if you could /save; and save off a copy of the campaign folder. If the issue persists through session reload, we may be able to use that copy of the campaign folder to figure out what the issue might be.

Since it doesn't seem to be a general issue, I'm guessing it's related to the specifics of your campaign map/token setup that's triggering the issue scenario.

Thanks,
JPG

[Laerun]

Is this a standard "how to use lighting response" or something? I don't think it applies to my case. As you can clearly see in my links, lighting was enabled, and in fact all the token lights were working correctly. It was newly-added static lights that weren't turning on.

In the first example, the door was closed, but in the 2nd, they had direct line of sight to it. Plus, even without that, on the DM view I can typically see lights even if the players can't.

You are using the assistant GM extension in this session?

[Laerun]

Is this a standard "how to use lighting response" or something? I don't think it applies to my case. As you can clearly see in my links, lighting was enabled, and in fact all the token lights were working correctly. It was newly-added static lights that weren't turning on.

In the first example, the door was closed, but in the 2nd, they had direct line of sight to it. Plus, even without that, on the DM view I can typically see lights even if the players can't.

I looked at the video links. None of the lights layers are labeled as to which light corresponded to which area, so that does not help with troubleshooting. I saw the new lights being dragged onto the play map on the fly, but no telling which light layer was added or active. Plus when dragging in the lights on the fly, there is no telling if you had last had possession of an active NPC token, or which one you had selected afterwards, on the fly. It was odd that the static light did not shine for you, but it could really have been some confusion with which tokens you were using to view the play area, or if you had the GM overview vision at that particular moment. The game play was definitely live and lights added in as needed. Nothing wrong there, but the unlabeled light entries were hard to follow or diagnose from the video. Removing the tokens from the map from the active map and the light suddenly work tells me that you might have incidentally had a token selected that would not have had the vision access to the lighting that you added at that moment. It is very easy to do and have this type of issue. I have done similar things as well trying to find a better way to wrap my mind around using the mapping tool in general. I had to fight with it, have some problems, and adjust to it before teaching it.
One small thing I usually teach in the Maptools class is to take the "extra seconds" to label the layers to avoid potential confusion during Gameplay and for the long run. Once one moves beyond a couple of newer light layers with no labeling , it can become difficult to recall which lights exist for which areas or items. I know it can break the momentum of your story telling and running the game, but it's certainly something to consider when you have a large and complex game map.

Best of luck,
Laerun