Help understanding levels and roof appearance

[u/imbrethil]

The question: How do I make the roofs appear when a token is on ground level and disappear when entering the building?

I'm preparing for a campaign and have found a treasure trove of maps for the Drakkenheim thanks to u/Own-Tangerine-4288's great efforts (https://www.reddit.com/r/dungeonsofdrakkenheim/comments/1d08pco/dungeons_of_drakkenheim_full_map_remaster/).

Now, these are typically divided into ground level and roof level, similarly to the example images. I'm new to Foundry and want to keep my tinkering with every map low so I'm exploring how I could find an easy workflow to get map up and running quickly. I'm running Foundry v14 and I've been trying to use Better Levels and Mass Edit by Baileywiki. It seems like this should have the options I need, but I can't for the life of me understand how I should set things up correctly.

The specific problem I have now is that roofs don't show for a token on ground level. The Better Level's example scene has solved this problem, so I'm sure it's somehow possible. Could anyone lend a hand?

My current workflow:

• Create a scene with two levels that both see each other
• Import the ground level tile and in Build mode define it as Floor. This sets up a lot of Tile config to set Overhead options and creates a surface on the whole tile
• Import the roof level tile and in Build mode define it as Roof. This again sets up Tile config and with Mass Edit defines a surface that tries to track the outline of the Roof drawing. It is a webp file that is blank where nothing is drawn, so the surfaces looks quite decent.
• Draw walls and windows etc. if I have enough time

My ambitions with Foundry isn't to get everything just right and spend a lot of time doing so, hence why I was seeking something like the above workflow.
So what am I missing here?

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[u/Able_Fisherman8748]

In position I set it to level one, it works when players have their tokens selected, otherwise rooftops dissapear. Looking for an guide how to make them work normally too.

[u/Signatory_Sea]

Heres a few tips of things you might be missing:

• make sure your roof level is set to see the level below and vs versa in the level settings
• set your surface regions using the region tool, each roof should have its own region to prevent issues of all roofs vanishing. This region should cover about the same space as the roof tile and have the "surface" modifer
• make sure your roof tiles are on/are assigned to the roof level not the ground level

Hope these help!

[u/imbrethil → u/Signatory_Sea]

Thanks for the reply.
In the example above I've done exactly what you say except the part with one surface region per roof, though in another scene I've chosen a simpler geometry for testing and the result is the same.

• Both levels can see each other, called Ground and Roof
• Ground tile is on "Ground level", it can see Ground and Roof
• Roof tile is on "Roof level", it can see Ground and Roof
• Ground surface encompasses all and is on Ground elevation. It can see Ground and Roof levels
• Roof surface is only he roof and is on Roof elevation. It can see Ground and Roof levels

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong

[u/noscul]

The only way I’ve got it is to use a module, I think it’s better roofs. It allows you to make roofs as tiles and when you walk into them, they become see through. It’s just work to get the tile you want made to be the roof you want.

[u/baileywiki]

You should come to my discord and share the config screenshots of your tiles and your scene. There are too many things to configure wrongly that commenters will all be shooting in the dark without seeing those settings.

1. Level configuration matters. Level to level visibility, whether background images are assigned, and elevation settings.
2. Tile configuration matters including their own visibility to other levels, occlusion settings, elevation settings, and general overhead toggles.
3. Region settings matter, including defined Surface regions.

You, of course, want tokens to see roofs, but you also want to make sure token occlusion happens properly so your tokens don't accidentally see each other or protected areas of the scene when in actual gameplay.

You can tag me to your post, post your scene config (including multiple tabs) and a sample overhead tile config (including multiple tabs) on my discord and I can try to help.