Dylan
A new year brings change, and in that spirit, we’re announcing the first major update to our Updated Dynamic Lighting system with Update 1.0, now live on Roll20.
Last spring, we debuted Updated Dynamic Lighting to our Pro and Plus users. An entirely new system for allowing our players to control the lighting in their games, Updated Dynamic Lighting was developed from the ground up to replace Legacy Lighting once we knew that Legacy Lighting had reached its limit to accommodate user requests. This new system uses WebGL, a JavaScript API for rendering graphics in compatible web browsers, without the use of a plug-in. It also allows us to do things Legacy Lighting could not do, like adding different types of vision with their own color and filter effects and a more intuitive way of creating opaque darkness, and overall, it lays a better foundation for us to add many of the user requested features and enhancements going forward.
The launch of this new system was a step in the right direction, but we stumbled along the way. There were bugs and sluggishness we didn’t anticipate in our initial launch. We apologize for those problems and their impact on your play time, and appreciate the feedback that has helped us deliver an improved version of Updated Dynamic Lighting today. We hope this update shows we’re committed to listening to feedback and working continuously to give you the best experience possible.
To give you a more thorough accounting, here’s some of the issues we tackled:
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Fixed an issue where darkness was breaking in explorer mode at the top left corner of the map for users on MacOS using integrated graphics settings
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Various Nightvision issues ranging from disappearing GM layer to Nightvision showing up on tokens you are not using “Control-L” on
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Ability to add a Dimmable Nightvision effect
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“Pixel Dust” scattered across the map
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Fixed a “cone” issue that kicked in when you hit a large number of tokens on the map
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Implemented significant performance improvements, which cut down considerably on the resources used across the board
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Fixed an issue where moving lighting barriers were updated as expected
and many, many more, some of which you can see in our Change Log.
With these issues addressed, we’re officially releasing Update 1.0, which gives us a solid foundation to continue to build on. We’re excited with how it’s performing thus far, and we think you will be, as well. As always, we welcome your feedback in the forums and look forward to addressing whatever issues may arise as you play.
For those of you still using Legacy Lighting, there’s never been a better time to make a copy of your game, convert it, and give Updated Dynamic Lighting a try. We will still support Legacy Lighting for a while, but we feel it’s only fair to let you know that we will be deprecating our support for the Legacy system sometime in the future. We will be sure to give you enough time to convert your games – and you can still use the Legacy system for some time after support is withdrawn – but our hope is that you’ll find enough in Updated Dynamic Lighting to not want to go back.
Thanks for your support and patience during this time. If you’ll indulge a little corniness, we appreciate your passion and want to give you the best experience possible in your games. Updated Dynamic Lighting has been in the works for some time, and we see the 1.0 Update not as a finish line, but a checkpoint. Similarly, we know that development on Updated Dynamic Lighting isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. We’re going to keep working to improve it and bring it up to meet our standards and expectations.
As always: Thanks for playing with us.
