I've finally being able to play test the fog layer changes that were made to the dev version a while back.

It works great, except it only appears as grey, but appears as black for other players and the GM. I checked with everyone playing and everyone except me was getting a black fog layer. Everyone else was using the standard release.

I remember we had talked about not knowing if the fog layer actually transmitted the data for color. Well it seems it does, somewhere or possibly the default color in standard is black.

This gives me an advantage over the GM as I can tell where he's hiding stuff because the fog doesn't match his map background. ( I've actually been good about not using this info to influence my actions in game, but a more unscrupulous player may not ).

Here's a pic to show what I mean.


I've also noticed that when using save as jpg that sometimes the mini's and the fog layer are not captured in their correct positions as you can see in the pic.

While none of these problem create errors or crashes I just thought I would bring it up before a possible new release came out.

Not really that much of a big deal more just an aesthetic thing I guess.

Yes black is default. I seem to recall thinking you could probably work out where the fog was in the older stuff too but as I said at the time I don't use it in play myself. If the players cannot change the fog colour, even say, before they enter the room, and the DM correctly assumes everyone is seeing black and makes empty space black too, and has no grid....

The difference is between "fog" which is what it was designed as and more a sort of "invisibility", which is an upgrade from fog. Or could both have their uses. Fog is "you haven't seen what's here yet" and invisibility is more "looks just like nothing is there". For example if a player were to move a mini into a fogged area of the map they should see the mini disappear under the fog but if they move a mini over an invisible room it should behave just as if it was moved over the bare background which usually would mean that you would be able to see the mini still. I believe this is enough to give away where the fog is under the old system though it might be obvious you're up to something!

Another difference between fog and invisibility is that fog is a rough and ready shape which lends itself to the whiteboard style draw a freehand region and it is un-fogged. Invisibility however needs to be exact. You will often want to have one side of a fine line visible and the other side not.

Ok then the default color for fog should also be black in the dev version.

Yes it's easy to figure out where the fog is by " accidently " dropping your character in an area. But nobody ever believes it's an accident and it opens the player up to a DM smack down or as I have seen happen the DM just removing that part of the map and saying there's nothing there including any treasure that may have been there.

The problem with making rooms invisible is then you have to keep all your rooms as mini's which leads to problems with larger maps you also would then have to make the monsters in said rooms invisible, it's far easier to make it one solid map and just hide it with fog.