Support alternative simple/manual fog of war option with tools for selective area reveals

[aaclayton]

Description: Allow fog of war to be visible for areas of the map lit by a static light source but not visible for areas temporary revealed by token light sources. Hypothesis: This would increase atmosphere as well lit areas of the map would feel safe where unlit areas are dark and mysterious, even when explored they remain dark once left. Players will never know if monsters are lurking behind them. Also I think this would be great for maze style maps where the GM can manipulate walls in areas that have been explored to confuse the players when they backtrack.

[aaclayton]

Comment from @tinwe1:

/\ This! So much this!

My group frequently needed a means to reveal all the map terrain while having token vision enabled, so that the players couldn't see any of the enemy token movement out of view.

The request usually is because battlemaps with dense terrain elements have most of the map blackened out completely, even though the characters should know the environment and be able to plan their movement accordingly instead of fumbling around in the dark step by step.

We have previously solved it by enabling fog of war, but having the GM pre move the player tokens all over the battlemap to so that the FOW becomes "pre explored" and properly greyed out and not just pitch black. That method is really cumbersome however, and is impossible for improvised encounters.

Having either a button to clear the FOW in left sidebar, just as there is a button to reset the FOW in the sidebar, or a checkbox for the scene settings, to have FOW explored, or even both, would be immensely helpful.

[aaclayton]

Suggestion from @mxzf:

From time to time, users want to have a scene where the map is pre-explored (no black fog) but line-of-sight is still restricted to the areas tokens can see. This is useful when players know the terrain itself but not the locations of enemy tokens or anything like that.

Currently, the only real option for doing this is for the GM to have a huge wall-ignoring vision-granting light that they flash for a second while users are connected, to reveal the fogged area. It works, but it's far from ideal.

I suggest that an option be added to explicitly reveal the entire scene in that way. Either a scene setting that causes the scene to always act as if its fog is revealed (basically the inverse of the Fog Exploration checkbox) or a button alongside the Lighting -> Clear Fog in the left sidebar that instead reveals fog across the entire scene.

This has some degree of overlap with issues like #604 and #1080 , but is potentially smaller in scope due to being a scene-wide thing, instead of needing to support arbitrary regions inside a scene.

[aaclayton]

Feature Summary

A simple fog of war, suitable for GMs who might want to manually reveal portions of a map or might have imported a very large map that is unwieldy with the current system.

This is doable in roll20 https://wiki.roll20.net/Fog_of_War#Revealing.2FHiding_Areas and works pretty well there, letting you use either polygons or rectangles for revealing parts of the map.

User Experience

As a GM I'd want to be able to select portions of the map to reveal to the players.

Priority/Importance

I'd say this is somewhat important as importing large maps is currently difficult, even more so if they already have an grid on them.

[aaclayton]

Originally in GitLab by @ervwalter

This would be excellent. Dynamic lighting is very immersive, but for some cases too fiddly. For some scenes, I'd love to be able to just designate the entire scene as unexplored and then reveal rooms one at a time using a rectangular mask without requiring walls to be drawn and tokens to be in the right position.

[aaclayton]

Originally in GitLab by @reed.r.lance

I second this. Be great when in a rush to just put up a new map, enable FOW, then "reveal" it manually as needed, which would most likely be faster than setting up the Dynamic lighting etc.

There is a similar option for this on other VTT's that use a "Reveal" option for FOW in rectangles and even Polygons. Hope to see it in foundry in the future.

Thanks!

[aaclayton]

Originally in GitLab by @cyanomys

In my experience, this is actually a really important feature to have for a lot of GMs and not having it is a huge sticking point for Foundry adoption. Personally, if I'm going to go to all the trouble to make a dungeon, I'll set up dynamic lighting walls. But most of the other GMs I interact with in my extended friend group really strongly prefer to use Simple Fog of War for most encounters (where everything is black and the GM can click and drag or draw polygons to reveal areas.) That way they don't have to do anything before they run the game -- they don't have to fiddle with player's light or vision, draw walls, add lights, etc. They can just turn on Fog of War and boom, they can start playing. Simple Fog of War combined with the amazing drawing features in Foundry could make it really ideal for lazy GMs -- but all the advanced features in FVTTT still appeal to those people as well, because sometimes they will want to break them out for a boss battle, not to mention all the little quality of life features that Foundry has built in such as the ruler shapes, etc and the ability to import from D&D Beyond. But right now I really can't convince any of the other GMs in my group (that's about 5 GMs who run mostly 5e games for a pool of about 25 players) to switch from Roll20 to Foundry without this feature.

Also, I noticed that you mentioned this feature being pretty hard to implement. It might be much easier to implement it as a feature separate from dynamic lighting, where you can turn the dynamic lighting off and simple fog of war on. Eventually you could integrate it into the dynamic lighting down the road when you have time, but just having the feature available as an option would be a big selling point in my opinion.

[aaclayton]

Originally in GitLab by @digitalhobbit

I agree 100% with @cyanomys. I just purchased Foundry because I really like what I'm seeing so far (great job!). But can't see myself actually using it until Simple Fog of War or something similar is added. I often run non-D&D games where the purpose of the map is more to visualize the scene and provide context, without relying on tokens to pinpoint the exact position of the players, with tactical movement etc. Also, many of the maps I use tend to be more symbolic in nature and don't adhere to a rigid grid or even scale. For example, Dungeon Crawl Classic modules include fantastic map like this. With Simple Fog of War, Foundry would be a great option, allowing me as the GM to reveal sections as the players explore them, while leveraging the other Foundry features for character sheets, notes, etc.

[MartijnSanders]

The v11 prototype 1 release notes mentioned:

Framework laid for the future of a manual fog-of-war implementation

But alas, v11 stable still does not support this basic yet - to me - essential feature. And with simplefog for v10 still in alpha stage i do not expect that module to be updated soon. Can there please be an expected timeline for this? This is stopping me from using FoundryVTT in life games for multiple years now (since v7)

[aaclayton]

Can there please be an expected timeline for this? This is stopping me from using FoundryVTT in life games for multiple years now (since v7)

We will certainly be considering this feature for V12 prioritization, although there are no guarantees that it will make the cut.

[MartijnSanders]

If i remember correctly this was considered for V9, V10 and V11 too. Confidence that this will make the cut in V12 is very low. As long as you base prioritization on your patreon subscribers: ie your most fanatic users that like the most shiny features, you are ignoring the needs of GMs with a more casual, improvisation heavy play style. When a party decides to go via the sewers instead of via the roof, prepping a map with dynamic lighting for hours is not an option. Unless you add a time machine as a feature.

FoundryVTT is a great product, but i am not going to pay a patreon subscription for three years before the product maybe includes the one basic yet essential feature that makes it workable for me. I am part of a large discord and based on what i see GMs that uses roll20 can GM 3 evenings per week with one evening of prep, whereas the GMs that use Foundryvtt and spend about the same time per week, it's the reverse and only GM one evening. To me TTRPGs are about collectively making and sharing stories, not spending a week in the attic tinkering and then 'tadaa' showing off my quaint little diorama's.

If this sounds harsh: i am a non native speaker that is 100% invalid and need to choose the spending of rain energy very carefully. Every hour i spend prepping is an hour i cannot spend socially with groups.

[aaclayton]

@MartijnSanders - I absolutely understand that this feature is of utmost important to you, but that's not the way that prioritization for the product works. The rest of our user community doesn't feel the same way, nor does our team feel that this is the most impactful missing feature that is holding the software back compared to hundreds of other things we could also be working on. We do think it's important to do at some point, which is why this issue exists, why it's tagged as an epic and why it's something we keep revisiting from time to time.

We won't make any promises about what V12 will or will not contain until after we have done our planning process that decides upon that.

[digitalhobbit]

Just to add another data point: I also consider this feature critical. When I use maps, it's usually to visualize the characters' progress, but not in an immersive and tactical style. I often use overhead maps (not battlemaps) from DCC or OSE modules, for example.

My solution has been to use the SimpleFog module. This works well in general, but has gone through periods of being unsupported, and also has a tendency of breaking for extended periods after major Foundry version upgrades.

I have many GM friends who need a similar manual fog of war capability. Many of them, while they overall like (and paid for) Foundry, ended up moving to alternative VTTs that have support for manual fog of war out of the box. So please be aware that this userbase very much exists.

[PatrickDunn]

I will also chime in here and say as a new user, I am amazed that Foundry gets so much praise as "the best" VTT, when it is missing such a critical feature that Fantasy Grounds had nearly two decades ago.

I can't comprehend how users would choose to not request this fundamental feature as a priority.

[aaclayton]

This feature has absolutely been requested - as I have said multiple times previously in this very issue - it is one that we agree is important to implement at some point.

It is incorrect, however, to portray this feature as "critical" because it is not essential functionality for many users. Most users of Foundry VTT don't care that the software doesn't have this feature. It is - without a doubt - a hugely important thing for some people which is exactly why it's in our list of epic features that we want to pioritize at some point.

We are going to do this - at some point. I'm happy for anyone who wants to to post in this thread and contribute their voices to the discussion as long as you do it in a respectful way that doesn't imply our team are imbecilles for not dropping everything else we are working on to prioritize on "simple fog" immediately. That doesn't do your cause any favors.

[aaclayton]

Please note that this feature is a possible outcome from our V12 Feature Prioritization vote (https://foundryvtt.com/article/v12-patreon-vote/) where this feature is an option for consideration.