Fog of War question

#1

Hello! I am new to Astral and have a question about fog of war. Previous to this for the past year I have used Owlbear Rodeo where I simply create the cloud and click to remove.

I am understanding the mechanics of this system and have created my map with it just fine. However, I am noticing a few things I can’t figure out how to fix.

  • When the players move a good amount of area they have already traversed turns black again. Is there a way to keep already traversed areas visible?

  • Another thing I noticed is with fog of war, aside from the immediate circle of vision around a character, the traversed areas that are visible are very dim, almost like it is night, which is hard on the eyes.

  • Lastly, I do have “Enable Dynamic Lighting” turned on. If I shut it off, the entire map is visible even if Fog of War is enabled. Is this supposed to happen? From the description, something seems wrong.

Is there something I am missing? I have included a pic of my current map to show you what I mean. The areas circles in red are areas the characters have already traveled in and are not black again once they reached their current location at the bottom.

Screenshot%202021-12-06%20225115
Screenshot 2021-12-06 225115.jpg1525×926 582 KB

Screenshot%202021-12-06%20225350
Screenshot 2021-12-06 225350.jpg1549×910 1.02 MB

#2

Hello! Welcome to Astral, happy to have you with us.

Dynamic Lighting is the prerequisite technology behind all those options. If it’s disabled, there is no obscurity layer being rendered, so everything is visible.

Granted, there’s something we could do better here, such as making that more obvious in the UI. I see why this would be confusing. I actually do think that we had this implemented in the past, but it may have gone by the wayside at some point. Feel free to drop a bug report.

Same with Fog of War forgetting past areas, that’s not intended. It’s possible the reset button was hit as there’s no “are you sure” prompt, but it’s been mentioned before so it’s worth looking into to see if we’re losing FoW history.

Hope this helps!

#3

Hi @Hakkai_Lord

Another thing I noticed is the size of your map. If that is a single image then the Fog Of War overlay is going to run into memory issues.

I suggest slicing the map into pieces around 700px X 700px (10x10 grid squares), which reduces the memory strain. This will also improve Dynamic Lighting and FoW performance.

You will need to use a third party tool to make the slices, then re-upload the slices and build the map again like a puzzle.

I’ve done this with a massive map, using over 90 pieces, and the FoW works great, even on a cellphone that I sometimes use for testing.

#4

I see. so multiple pieces and then position them as multiple small maps pieced together in the lobby?

#5

I’ve taken the tokens and moved them over the area and it turns black again lol. But it looks like LaMorte response may be a fix since this particular map is very large

#6

Yes, slicing the images improves performance noticeably.