Player can't see characters any more!

[Callum]

One of my players has developed a strange problem. Initially, he had real problems while connected, with slow response from FG and not being able to see what anyone had typed in the chat window. In a subsequent session, when he connected to FG the character selection screen was blank, and no amount of reconnecting could get it to show anything for him (even when I released his character, and everyone else could see it in the selection screen). Later that week, I arranged for him to connect to FG on his own, and that worked fine, though the connection was slow. But in the next session, he again couldn't see any characters once he connected. He then uninstalled FG, removed all FG registry entries, and reinstalled it. When he reconnected, the character selection screen was still blank! He wasn't having any other problems with his Internet connection, and he doesn't use that PC for anything else. None of the other players has had the problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what could be causing this very frustrating problem, or how we might solve it?

[Oberoten]

Do you have a lot of tokens and maps in the campaign? This occasionally occurs when there is a lot of data for the client to recieve.

You might wish to uncheck QoS Scheduling as well.

- Obe

[Griogre]

It sounds like for whatever reason the player is starved for bandwidth. What type of connection does he have and how much data are you pushing to him? Are you using the d20_JPG ruleset?

Ask him if something else on his internet connection could be starving him for bandwidth (ie someone running torrents, or streaming video in the next room, or half the building using his wireless connection). It's not good that he was slow on a one on one connection. If he has automatic updates on - something like Windows could be trying to download patch large updates. For something like this leaving the computer on overnight might allow any queued update(s) to clear out. It wouldn't hurt him to run a virus and spyware scan either.

Definitely have him check that QoS is off, too - like Obe said. It could be a handshake problem.

[Callum]

Thanks for the suggestions. I initially felt it was a bandwidth issue, but he claimed that there wasn't any issue there. I'll check again. I don't have that many tokens or maps in the campaign, and I'm using the ordinary d20 ruleset.

[Griogre]

The d20 ruleset is pretty lean. You could also try freeing the character and telling that player to use a *different* Login ID to see if it makes any differance. Doing this means he would own none of the old maps, etc.

If the guy is on a wireless connection tell him to try moving the computer next to the wireless router using a wired connection and see if it makes a differance. Computers not close to the wireless point can get a lot of dropped packets especially if there are other type of interferances.

[Callum]

Well, he claims there's no bandwidth issue, as he wasn't running anything else while we were playing, but afterwards he was watching streaming video without any problem. I'm going to arrange a test session with him, but I'm a little stumped as to what could be causing the problem...

[Griogre]

If it isn't the QoS thing, my best guess is a) He's got something running at the same time that doesn't like FG. b) He really has bandwidth issues and doesn't know it. He may be doing something like torrents at the same time or have some other bandwidth hog set to automatically run - *shrug* he could be a zombie for all we know, or just have a bad network cable.

If the other players don't seem effected it is almost certainly something on his end, though.

[Callum]

Okay, when he signed in with a different user ID, it took a while to download, but then everything was okay! Does this mean his original user ID was corrupted in some way? Would that be on my end or his?

[Oberoten]

Or check that he hasn't got any local characters if you are running the test-version. That bugged things bad for me.

- Obe

[Griogre]

Okay, when he signed in with a different user ID, it took a while to download, but then everything was okay! Does this mean his original user ID was corrupted in some way? Would that be on my end or his?
It probably means you been running that game a while and he's been in it for a long time. Several versions of FG ago there were some changes made to how being the "holder" of various objects works. These changes don't effect new campaigns but it does mean old ones will attemph to transfer massive amounts of data to the clients they are marked in the campaign's db.xml as a "holder." Effectively, you kinda end up "pre-loading" every map in the campaign you have ever shown him and every token on the those maps. You transfer the other stuff too but the big hit typically comes from the maps or any other images.

Because things don't work that way anymore, when he logged in as a different ID he didn't "hold" anything so very little needed to transfer. What did transfer to him? Do you know? Do you have a large amount of data in your base campaign that holds the characters?