The goal of this guide is to provide a step by step walk through of creating Line of Sight for imported maps. This guide assumes the following:

• You have a map
  
• You know where to put images for use in Fantasy Grounds
  
• You have at least basic knowledge of Fantasy Grounds

This guide will NOT cover using the internal map painting suite or tile set suite.

For this guide, I will be placing the map file in the general image folder. Remember, all image files MUST be either .png or .jpg files.

Manual Method

The fist step is to make sure you have your map either in general images or campaign images. Next you want to create a new image in the [Image & Maps] window.



Next, open [Assets] and swap to the Images tab. This displays all the images you have available from loaded modules, campaign data, and general data. For this, we want the image data from general, so I need to click on [data]. If you placed the image in the campaign image folder, click on campaign data.



This is where you will find all of the images stored in the image folder. Now we need to add the map to the new image we made. Make sure you have both the [Asset] and the [Image & Maps] windows open. In the [Image & Maps] window, make sure there is a new image. Click on it, and make sure the image is unlocked.



Now the easy part: drag and drop the image from [Assets] to the image window. This will place it in the image. Name it, close the image and re-open it to ensure it loaded properly.



Alternate Method

You can directly import an image from any destination (even the FGU folders) into the [Image & Maps] window. In order to do this, the image can not be already imported as it will create a duplicate and cause an error message. Keep in mind that FGU only like .png and .jpg files.



Now you have your map ready to be used in play. Next we can set the grid and go over map tools.

Lets go over the map tool bar of what we will be using in this tutorial.

This is the tool bar with [Play] activated.



The top bar (1-4) is your mode selection.

1: Play
2: Walls and LOS
3: Mask (this is Mask from FGC and will not be used in the tutorial)
4: Grid Options

The portion with 5 and 6 are for the [Play] mode.

5: Pin visibility toggle
6: LOS visibility toggle (this turns on and off LOS, very important)

Lets go ahead and set the grid for the map, as you will want to do that first in any map. After the grid is set, click on the [Wall] mode (2) button.


Here are the tool functions:
1: Selection
2: Draw Line (NOTE: for Doors and Terrain this functions as a Polygon draw tool.)
3: Draw Box
4: Draw Circle

LOS Type Selection

5: Walls (Can not pass through or see through)
6: Terrain (Can pass through, see the draw area, but not past the draw area, not toggleable by the player, and if a token is standing in the terrain it can see all areas outside the terrain)
7: Door (Can see through slightly, can see the draw area, cannot pass through when closed but can be toggled by the player (unless locked))
8: Looks like a wall but can be opened by the DM to allow pass through by players.

The final tool I will discuss is (9), the snap tool. This lets you snap the wall wires together, and usually it is good to leave it on.

Time to draw the map. As a rule, it is best to only work with one draw mode at a time. Personally I like to start with the doors first, then move to walls, then to terrain and secret doors. However, the order in which you draw is entirely up to you. To place a line, click the line tool then click at points in your map. If you need to pause a line, press escape to end drawing.

A few things to note:

• You can move around the map with the arrow keys
  
• It is a good idea to be consistent on how you draw walls
  
• It is a good idea to draw walls in a way you can see part of the wall art work
  
• To get out of drawing a tool (particularly line), press Escape (esc)
  
• It is generally a good idea to let doors have larger boxes than their imaged counterpart.
  
• Make sure a little bit of wall goes into the door in order to prevent seeing areas past the door
  
• You can select all of a drawn line/polygon by double clicking a node
  
• You can delete a node(s) by selecting them and pressing delete
  
• Letting one line cross another will create a node
  
• You can swap to play mode to test the vision with either a PC or NPC, select them and you can see how things look.

Here is an example of drawn walls. The blue square is a door, the green lines are terrain, the red lines are walls. This image is outside of play mode.



Once you have placed all your LOS details, you need to switch back to play mode (1) and enable LOS (6).



Here is what this looks like while in play mode (as a GM) with the PC selected.



A player would only see darkness beyond the walls and not the rest of the map image, if a player opened the door, they would see the skeleton.

There was an update to the LOS tools with three new options.

1 - Windows. These players can see through but can not move through (unless opened)
2 - Illusory Walls. These function similarly to walls in that they block LOS, but a player can pass through them freely.
3 - Pit. It is 'experimental' but basically it lets you set up an area where once a player is inside it they can not see outside it. On the outside of the pit, vision acts normally.

<for future development/corrections/other notes>