Maps not loading consistently

[chatty]

Problem: For some reason, maps and other shared images do not always seem to finish loading on the client machines. They will finish loading on some, but not all, client machines.

This is especially strange in my case because they often load on my computer (I'm not the GM), but not my wife's, and we're sharing the same broadband connection (so it's hard to blame our ISP).

Is there a way for the GM to just send us the map assets in advance (via ftp, in an email, or whatever) so they can load from the local data structure rather than being downloaded?

If there isn't, might this be a good idea that would allow play over slower connections? (I can FTP down all the maps tonight, so tomorrow we can play!)

Any input or suggestions are welcome!

-C

[Leonal]

Our group tends to pre-load the cache and then distribute that in advance.

What you do is open a second client on the GM's machine and connect to the campaign. Then share all the needed images for the session so they're stored in the cache. Finally you email/upload the cache file to all the players in advance.

We have some unstable connections in our group preventing image sharing, but this seems to work. Using this method they will also load instantly.
(can also be done with custom tokens if they don't load for everyone)

[chatty]

This is an excellent idea. I will have to make a feature request that macros be saved in a different .dat file.

[Griogre]

Also tell your GM to preload the images to you if they are large (file wise). It sounds like they are timing out. Having two people on the same external IP could cause this to happen more since that connection is getting twice the data.

It does sound like your GM is pushing out large files, though from the symtoms - or has a very small up bandwith. Does he use a wireless connection? They can be very slow. Does anyone else have problem? If preloading images works it's probably a bandwidth issue on his side.

[Leonal]

While I'm not in their group, since we also have similar issues I'll explain them.

When I GM, some players don't get images likely due to them timing out, but I don't think it's a bandwidth problem. With the exception of two in our group who use the same router fro China, all of us have from 10 to 100Mbit bandwidth.

However, when I share images to one person in Hong Kong or to the two in China, FG is only sending <1kb/s and sometimes as low as a few byte/s, but with another player in Norway it's much faster with 10-50kb/s.

It seems more like a connection problem than a bandwidth one for us atleast.

Sorry for the thread jack. ;)

edit: This only seems to happen when there are more than one player connected.

[chatty]

Is there not some kind of checksumming going on? A status bar would be nice.

Pre-loading solved the problem for most, but not all, of us. But it would be nice to know just what is failing.

[adminwheel3]

I thought I read somewhere that doing this cache sharing will wipe out the player's shortcut keys? Is that true?

I think my players are on their 5th or 6th try setting up shortcut keys for fast spell casting or combat emotes and while the fast loading of maps would be nice, they might riot if they had to recreate their shortcuts every week.

[Leonal]

Ah yes, that's true.

I guess our players don't have that many shortcut keys set up and it's better than not seeing maps for us. (It's possible to share through a module, but we prefer this method.)

Sometimes we end up with using Procaster to stream the view if a player can't see the map/tokens.

Edit: Was a bit early in the morning so I forgot, but if you have images in a module, they will go in a separate .dat file and won't mess up keyboard shortcuts for the players.

[chatty]

I thought I read somewhere that doing this cache sharing will wipe out the player's shortcut keys? Is that true?

I think my players are on their 5th or 6th try setting up shortcut keys for fast spell casting or combat emotes and while the fast loading of maps would be nice, they might riot if they had to recreate their shortcuts every week.

It is true, but I suspect that if the developers could put the shortcuts into a separate .dat file, it wouldn't be an issue. I put this request in the wish list. It SEEMS like it wouldn't be a hard fix, but that depends on how it needs to be referenced by the rest of the application.

[chatty]

Edit: Was a bit early in the morning so I forgot, but if you have images in a module, they will go in a separate .dat file and won't mess up keyboard shortcuts for the players.

OK, so which DAT file is for which? If we only need the image cache, that would be rad.

Edited to add: what I mean is, is there a problem with ONLY loading, say, the module dat file? Do they reference each other in some way that might make that problematic?

[chatty]

Preloading works, so I consider this matter more or less closed.

[Griogre]

While I'm not in their group, since we also have similar issues I'll explain them.

When I GM, some players don't get images likely due to them timing out, but I don't think it's a bandwidth problem. With the exception of two in our group who use the same router fro China, all of us have from 10 to 100Mbit bandwidth.

However, when I share images to one person in Hong Kong or to the two in China, FG is only sending <1kb/s and sometimes as low as a few byte/s, but with another player in Norway it's much faster with 10-50kb/s.

It seems more like a connection problem than a bandwidth one for us atleast.

Sorry for the thread jack. ;)

edit: This only seems to happen when there are more than one player connected.
Some peoples effective bandwith is very low, because they don't take into account the other computer(s) on their network using part of the bandwidth. I played in a game one time where all of a sudden the GM couldn't share images and there was massive server lag. Nothing had changed and this happened off and on for a few weeks. The cause? The wife in the next room's computer was running torrents. :p The low through put doesn't surprise me on the Hong Kong/China guys. The chinese ISPs need to sniff everything to implement their censor filters.

[Leonal]

Some peoples effective bandwith is very low, because they don't take into account the other computer(s) on their network using part of the bandwidth. I played in a game one time where all of a sudden the GM couldn't share images and there was massive server lag. Nothing had changed and this happened off and on for a few weeks. The cause? The wife in the next room's computer was running torrents. :p The low through put doesn't surprise me on the Hong Kong/China guys. The chinese ISPs need to sniff everything to implement their censor filters.

Thanks for your input Griogre.

We've been very careful about our players not having any other things running simultaneously, and the bad transfer is not only images in the image folder, but also custom tokens that are only a few kb large.

It also happens when they're(the two in China who are on the same connection) connecting, sometimes taking ages before their characters show up, or suddenly not being able to see what's happening in the chat or movement on the map often having to reconnect.

[ddavison]

Do they experience this problem when only one of the players in China connects and you share an image or token?

[Leonal]

As far as I can recall, yes. We haven't been able to game lately due to time constraints, but I'll make sure to double check that next time.

Quite often they need multiple attempts when connecting, and sometimes one involuntarily disconnects from FG when the other manages to connect.

I'm unaware of the details of their setup, but I know they're both cabled to the same router.

If this was only happening with the players in mainland China I could more easily blame it on their connection, but since it also sometimes happens with the one currently in Hong Kong leads me to think it's something different.

Maybe lines between Korea and China are unstable...


While I know many like the "non-technical" look of FG, it would be nice to ha an optional feature enabling the GM to monitor what's being transferred to who and at what speeds. Then we could at least see if an image got partially transferred or if it just showed "loading" without transferring any data.

[Andrepartthree]

sorry to bug you guys.. .. but wanted to get down on my knees (literally, lol ! ) and beg you for a favor ! :)

You made an EXCELLENT post here

Our group tends to pre-load the cache and then distribute that in advance.

What you do is open a second client on the GM's machine and connect to the campaign. Then share all the needed images for the session so they're stored in the cache. Finally you email/upload the cache file to all the players in advance.

We have some unstable connections in our group preventing image sharing, but this seems to work. Using this method they will also load instantly.
(can also be done with custom tokens if they don't load for everyone)



And it looks like fantastic advice - the problem is I don't know how to do any of that stuff :( (opening up a client on my PC, e-mailing the cache to people)... any way someone could post a step by step guide? (crosses fingers)... it would REALLY help me out a lot ! :) ... I try preloading the maps (by preloading I mean bringing up the map in FG and selecting the "preload" type option) but it often does not work for everyone :( ....

Also what's the ideal "resolution" in pixels ( number x number in pixels) for maps on FG ?

Thank you SO much I really appreciate you guys reading this :) ..

[Leonal]

Ah, I already sent you a PM, but I can post the steps here too.

Start Fantasy Grounds and open your campaign as the GM.
Start FG again, but this time click join as if you were to join a game and connect to yourself by the alias used for the GM session. (you can also type ‘localhost’ in the address field).
Open up all the maps/images you want to use in the next session on the GM session of FG.
Then, share each image until they’re all loaded on your other FG session. (I believe you can mask them in advance too when sharing and they will still be transferred)
When all the images are shared, disconnect/close the client session of FG.
Go to the FG Application Data folder (typically through the short cut in FG program group in the start menu)
Open the cache folder and then the folder which has the same name as your campaign.
Send the campaign.dat file located there to your players and have them save it in the same location. (If they have already connected to this campaign earlier, this folder will be made for them.) You'll have to overwrite the old campaign.dat file, but note that this will delete any hotbar short-cuts created by the players locally. The solution to this is if you create a module containing your images first, as that will generate a cache file named after the module instead of using the campaign.dat.
Happy gaming!


I typically use 50pixels/5ft square for my home made maps, but depending on the size of the map it can be a bit big if you have very large maps. 32px/5ft helps a lot on the file size, but you will lose some of the detail.
If I use original ones from bought pdfs or acquired online, I use those images unmodified in terms of resolution, but may increase compression to reduce file size.

I'm not sure if there's an ideal resolution for maps. It really depends on how much you want to show at the same time at 100% and the lowest desktop resolution among your players. I just go with the shape of the map.

[Andrepartthree]

thanks man I truly appreciate it ! :) ... one teeny tiny additional ? though (and sorry to be bugging you about this :( ) .. but you mentioned being able to share custom tokens too? (which sure enough some of my other players can't see , sounds like other people on FG are having this problem too)... how would I go about sharing tokens? Again thank you so much for your time and attention ! :)

[Leonal]

For tokens I do the same procedure as with maps, except I put all the tokens I want to use either on one of the maps or on a new blank one and then share that. I haven't tried this more than once so I cannot confirm it working 100% though.

You're welcome. :)

[Andrepartthree]

wanted to give a quick shout out , it worked GREAT Leonal thank you so much ! :)

[Leonal]

I'm glad it worked. :)

[Andrepartthree]

Going to update this a bit further with Leonal's reply (this guy is SO awesome ! :) ) to a ? I had...



Originally Posted by Andrepartthree
.. again thank you so much for all your help here

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums...t=11884&page=3

One thing I forgot to ask though... if I'm sending a DAT file to people who are logging into my FG campaign for the very first time (that is they haven't tried to connect to my FG campaign ever before), I'm guessing they probably wouldn't have a folder with the name of my campaign in the cache folder on their PC's?... if so , would you recommend they try to connect to me on FG, disconnect once they've connected, and hopefully that will generate a folder in their cache with the name of my campaign on it ?

Sorry to bug you again and once again thanks so much for all your help in the past
Hi, no problem.

Either they can connect/disconnect and it'll generate a folder, or you can just tell them to create a folder with the correct name. Either should work just as well.

Good luck and happy gaming!

[Leonal]

I'm flattered.:o

You're welcome and happy to help.^^

[lady2beetle]

I'm sorry to hijack this thread, but I've been trying to troubleshoot the connection issues of my own players and I'm hoping this might help. My characters have trouble DCing when I try to share my maps/combat tracker with them, so I'd like to try this caching the map, but I'm not sure if that will solve our issue. I mean, if they are DCing and coming back in, shouldn't they have the map cached already? Could the problem be that they have too many maps cached or something? :-/

Anyway, what I'd like to try is caching all of the maps for the module and sending them to them, but in order to do that, will they immediately be able to see them all or do I need to mask them first? What are the issues with doing it this way, other than that they would lose their hotkeys (which hopefully will only happen once per adventure, if I send them all the maps at once)?