Regions!

[winter lake]

Hey peeps! We want to re-introduce regions for 5E, but in doing so, make sure they aren't overly complex and buggy like their previous rendition. As such, we want to confirm the use cases for regions. Ones we can imagine:

☁️ Fog of War - obscure an area so players can't see it
🧱 Fence - restrict movement into an area
🗺️ Map district - draw an area, as you would for a map, underneath other assets

If you could react with the above emojis to ones you'd use often, that would help us get a gut-check. If you could elaborate more on what you'd need to make each type feel great to use that would be A+!

Bonus points for offering to walk through a design prototype together (react with 💬 ) We'd reach out in the coming week or two, after we get a sense on here for use cases and mock something up!

[uneven jolt]

With "for 5E" do you mean that regions would only be for the 5E OMM edition or would they be also available for regular OMM Verses?

Personally I use it to hide rooms in dungeons or buildings. Most of the time I only want to hide a smal section, so I don't use the other vision mode as that would be overkill.

But most of the time I use them to hide more jarring looking edges of a level and for decoration purposes, especially in cave levels (similarly how they've been used in the Tutorial). Are great for outlining cave ceilings.

[winter lake]

Ah yeah, we're building it as the team working on 5E, but it would go out to the whole product.

Is it important to you to have fog type and/or color options? Or would one, uneditable option, be ok?

[visual drift]

I would 100% use a fog of war for a dungeon situation. I know right now there also a way to obscure stuff based on line of sight but I haven't messed around with it yet

I don't think colors are as important but could add flavor in specific circumstances

[quick stag]

Are you talking about regions to a map?

[winter lake]

yeah, for map regions, thinking of, instead of uploading a level background, you want to just draw regions on the level, underneath the assets

[winter lake]

can you say more?

[oak panther]

Having options could be really nice, in the past when working with other software I was able to use such to match thr mood, like a sooty smokescreen from a volcano

[quick stag]

ok

[oak panther]

This is utterly exciting, I love the idea of having a hub level where players can walk on the map and draw on it

[winter lake]

mm, that's cool! are you thinking of advanced stuff like particles (not sure if that would be performant, but curious anyway), or just like, being able to specify a particular gray for the fog effect...?

[visual drift]

I personally would only ever use a plain black or white fog of war, but I could see colored fog of war effects working well with other settings and campaigns

[quick stag]

Maybe some regions could be described by they're main export/ import/ what they're known for

[oak panther]

To be honest, I would not know how particles would work here, but that does sound interesting! The ways I've messed around with it have been changing the color of the fog

Although, an idea did pop in my head

What if fog of war was a layer, like the background image, and you can attach an image onto it?

[quick stag]

Like a green screen?

[oak panther]

Sorta?

But it fades to the layer the players are messing with like fog of war!

Although it's an idea in my head, when I get to my computer I can try and edit a visual

[vital aurora]

Sorry to cut into a conversation, but I usually use regions for cinematic moments to hide stuff until it's the "right time." For example, I had the big boss dungeon room of my Call of Cthulhu campaign hidden and I gave some brief narration of what it was like ("You enter further into the deep, dank cave, dimly lit by candles, with the smell of sulfur thick in your nostrils." Reveal "Standing before you is a man with a dagger and five animated corpses!" dun dun duuuuun) So I personally would like an easy way to toggle them on/off, especially in cinematic mode (which I use a lot) and an easy way to "layer" them over everything.

[quick stag]

oh oh oh, how about if and when triggers?

like

"if" you go here, "then" the fog fades

[winter lake]

ah so it would be whenever a player touches the border, it disappears? like you're discovering parts of the map?

[quick stag]

well, I imagine it could be customizable

maybe it turns blue, maybe an image appears, maybe nothing happens

[winter lake]

yeah, thanks for the thought! that's basically what we'd release as a bare bones. The ability to edit them in cinematic mode is an interesting thought i hadn't considered!

[quick stag]

but I think that might be stepping over your complicated rule...

[vital aurora]

Yea I really love cinematic mode tbh, especially in concept, but in practice it's a lot of "YOU SEE-- oh, oops, lemme just-- YOU SEE THE-- oh, nope, that's not revealed.....OKAY WITH YOUR EYES YOU-- aaaand that enemy's still a secret..."

[quick stag]

plus youd have to consider the code for every player that wanders into it, might be a bit laggy

[vital aurora]

I think having a "hide/reveal" pod in the action bar to the right would be Awesome

To easily toggle regions and even secrets

With one click

[winter lake]

very interesting though! I don't want to overpromise what the devs can do easily, but I do want to get a check on where the bounds are for players actually using them!

[quick stag]

hot key for activating regions?

[winter lake]

like activating / hiding all at once?

[uneven jolt]

I usually kept the regions either black or in some shade of grey ... but I think having colour options would still be great. Maybe a entire colour picker is not necessary but a pre selecte colors/shades palette .
Also feathering options for the borders.

And on the hiding stuff for players department: Would love it, if GMs could actually see what's hidden behind the region.

[oak panther]

YES

[winter lake]

do you mean the toolbar, like you can toggle the grid on or off?

[quick stag]

Because what if theres something you dont want the players to see, like a cinematic, you use a hot key and the layer changes to how you "pre-programed" it

[vital aurora]

I do mean the toolbar, but less of a toggle and more like...just clicking on the region to toggle visibility. I wouldn't want to reveal everything or nothing, sometimes I'm feeling ~choose-y~

Like how lighting currently works, but without having to right-click the region. Just an action in the toolbar.

[quick stag]

speaking of lighting, could there be a way to control the distribution and intensity separately?

[vital aurora]

Like, using the magic bar we can already place light sources, which can technically cut through a fog of war depending on your vision settings. I'd like a similar concept but kind of in reverse.

Where you can place or remove visibility in a region from the toolbar. I hope I'm making sense help stop me if i'm not 😖

[winter lake]

hmm, I think i know what intensity of the fog would mean, not sure about distribution though?

[quick stag]

Intensity as in how bright it is, and distribution as in how far it goes (although keep in mind I was branching off of PALSJ idea of light sources and not fog)

And back tracking to lag control, I found that when there are too many npcs in a map the whole game lags, could there be a way to just make them ornamental?

[winter lake]

ah sorry, missed it was for lighting

[winter lake]

hmm, i get wanting to just very quickly toggle a region visibility on / off somehow with a click (and I'm assuming that could just be done by hovering over the region as a GM and clicking the on / off toggle). Just unclear on the toolbar.

[vital aurora]

That could also work! I'm kind of struggling to explain it tbh, but I guess I would kind of explain it as like a paint bucket tool except instead of "all colors" your options are "fog of war" or "no fog of war". And the regions you place would be the areas you can "paint" in.

[winter lake]

wanna make sure I understand - so, hotkeying regions would mean, you press a command, and then all regions show at once for players?

[quick stag]

Not all, but ones that you select.

[winter lake]

yeah, we've been thinking of allowing multi-select for regions from a regions pod, and then being able to show / hide all of those at once

could you say more? would this be useful say if you created two separate regions on the map, and then just wanted to merge them together so that they both show / hide at once and have the same settings? Would this truly merge them into a single shape or just group the underlying regions?

if grouping, why would that be useful as opposed to just creating 1 shape?

[night steppe]

I would think grouping is better for people who kinda have commitment issues. Like in procreate I lean towards "combine down" rather than "merge down" so I can still remove pieces of my grouped masses. In this case, I imagine similarly, it'd be nice if you changed your mind as to whether you wanted something to be merged to be able to remove separate regions?

[vital aurora]

Ohhh that's another good point, it'd be nice if, in the regions menu, hovering over a region maybe highlighted it instead of having to click around and get whiplash being launched all over the level because I made like 50 thousand regions

With a very clear, high contrast color like yellow or something.

Oh my god sorting regions would be so

Tbh I'd just love the ability to tag everything and anything. I won't derail, but custom tags when.

[winter lake]

I think we could hover to highlight, but click to zoom to?

[winter lake]

sorting by name? recently placed? on/off state?

[vital aurora]

Yes! Clicking to zoom is fine! It's more knowing what I'm zooming to.

Sorting by a custom "type" would be nice.

[winter lake]

if you're really zoomed in though, you might not see the region we're highlighting

interesting. I'm gonna say that would be cool, but I don't know how performant it would be, to not give the devs a heart attack 😅

but i'm with you though, it would be cool to say like - this right here is a lightening storm! 🌩️🌩️🌩️

[vital aurora]

I usually use regions in a larger scale, so Personally this wouldn't be a problem for me, and if I hovered over it and saw nothing I would assume it's not on my screen/not the one I'm looking for

Like the last time I used regions (outside of hiding a room) was for map edges to fade out roads on outdoor maps so it didn't look so....abrupt of a cut

So purely for aesthetics

Which meant I was largely zoomed out of the map making sure the aesthetics looked right. Therefore the problem you're describing probably wouldn't have happened. But you know what DID happen?

Zoomin'. Much zoomin'.

To regions I didn't even know I made. 😂

Another potential option could be to have the name of a region show up in faint writing (for DM eyes only) on the region itself. Could get wonky with overlapping/oddly shaped regions, and would probably be a nightmare to code in terms of how the region's name orients itself. (ex. a U shaped region, should it follow the sides of the U or the short part of the U?)

[winter lake]

I wonder whether something like "feather level edges with fog" would be an easier solve for this use case? instead of drawing regions everywhere around the level border?

[vital aurora]

Yes and no, in this case I was specifically doing it where roads led inland. I was building a port/bay town, so one corner of the map was essentially the coast, and the rest was a boardwalk/city type area that went inland.

Lemme see if I can find it actually...

I circled everywhere I used a region

The only region that isn't intended to be an "end" of the area is the bottom left one, which is deliberately hidden because players aren't able to see over that fence. It's like a warehouse area where Big Bads are.

I haven't added the water yet but it would go probably near the top and left edges of the map.

Tbh I dropped this project cuz of some frustrations but I wanna get back to it soon. 😭 But you see what I mean kinda?

And I circled the regions as I made them individually. So there are like, 8 different disconnected regions in this map.

[winter lake]

yeah, very helpful to see, thanks! Still wondering whether drawing that large bottom left circle for the warehouse as a region, and then feathering the rest of the level (via level settings) would work since those are ends?

but yeah, level settings is a whole other topic 🙂

[vital aurora]

I wouldn't want the houses to be included as part of that feathering, so as long as it can go below assets I'd be good with that!

And the regions in the little top two alleys are also just for "mood" to make them dimmer than the rest of the area. For Shifty Business purposes.

[winter lake]

I think if we allowed obscuring and fencing options, you could make any region do either or both? So like, fog this and make it a fence

[vital aurora]

wait don't regions already do that?

[winter lake]

i think so! I think we just disabled regions since they were buggy, but that was in

[vital aurora]

I recall definitely making clear fence regions but idk if I ever made opaque walkable regions...

[restive oracle]

i would like to say i would like to use regions to mark areas for me as a GM for mechanics!

[winter lake]

can you say more? what kinds of mechanics and markings?

[restive oracle]

the oneshot i just ran basically had a mechanic where throughout combat, fireballs would land on the ground from above

i wanted to use regions to mark that in advance basically

i got a bug with the regions tho and then forgot about it due to the hectic start, including trying to figure out the bug haha

wdym

i- what

no i just had red outlines to mark the areas where the mechanic would resolve, and had writing in it to mark the order

or well tried to xD

no i got that from a region

im just stating the way i used it

since it wasnt part of the initial post options

[winter lake]

ah, so would you want to just mark the border with a stroke color, but not fill with fog?

[restive oracle]

yep!

its also helpful because in the game beacon for example, there are different zones for combat

[winter lake]

curious whether using the draw tool to do that would suffice?

[restive oracle]

like starting PC/NPC areas

[restive oracle]

personally i prefer regions due to being able to organise them better since theres more than one zone and area effect

regions also have more options like being able to name things

i would also like to be able to hide the zones if needed

so for example this combat i had a PC and Enemy starting zones, and 6 AOE squares for the mechanics

keeping track of 8 different things with 3 different purposes is not great with the drawing tool

[winter lake]

Yep! Still wanna hear feedback!

[winter lake]

Ty for the list! Making my job easier 😛

[winter lake]

Ok! Looking for 5 signups to walk through a quick prototype for Regions, mostly getting usability feedback. Pinging peeps who expressed interest so you can book a time for next week! https://calendly.com/omm-jen/30min
@restive oracle @oak panther @uneven jolt @plucky grail @vital aurora @teal monolith @halcyon sleet @quick stag

ty ty all 🙂