adminwheel3
March 15th, 2010, 15:18
Over the last few months I have been challenged by various aspects of FG - mainly in regards to its ability to transmit data to clients.
One by one those issues are addressed, each time by searching through posts and reading through various threads of other people who have had similar issues. We're fortunate that we have such a helpful group of folks here.
What I've noticed with my most recent trials is that there was no single place which codified all of the various steps I've taken to optimize the FG play - and there are a lot of suggestions/recommendations out there, such as:
Keep your maps small
Don't have files in your \images directory that you're not using
Don't put more than a small amount (someone clever should pick a number for this) of tokens in the shared directory
Don't use overly large modules (again - some threshold should be defined)
Don't use too many modules
Avoid going back to the launcher as it causes a memory leak
If possible, have your players connect sequentially to avoid cache write errors
Players should avoid having the combat tracker open when you're sharing maps or adding tokens to the maps (not sure if this one is still out there as an issue where it causes clients to crash or not)
Etc.
These are just from my personal experience of trying to host a game over the last four months and dealing with long load times, crashes, cache write errors and the like.
This isn't a complaint - AFAIK this is the best product available for the type of VTT gaming I want to do and there are only two - count them 1, 2 - developers to address code that they've only had direct exposure to for a matter of months.
This is a request that there be a gathering of this 'tribal knowledge' in a single place of how to best optimize the FG play given the current limitations of the game engine. Not a FAQ per se, because sometimes a new person doesn't know to ask 'How large can I make my maps'? Instead it should be a straightforward list of best practices. 'For the most trouble free experience, follow these guidelines.'
One by one those issues are addressed, each time by searching through posts and reading through various threads of other people who have had similar issues. We're fortunate that we have such a helpful group of folks here.
What I've noticed with my most recent trials is that there was no single place which codified all of the various steps I've taken to optimize the FG play - and there are a lot of suggestions/recommendations out there, such as:
Keep your maps small
Don't have files in your \images directory that you're not using
Don't put more than a small amount (someone clever should pick a number for this) of tokens in the shared directory
Don't use overly large modules (again - some threshold should be defined)
Don't use too many modules
Avoid going back to the launcher as it causes a memory leak
If possible, have your players connect sequentially to avoid cache write errors
Players should avoid having the combat tracker open when you're sharing maps or adding tokens to the maps (not sure if this one is still out there as an issue where it causes clients to crash or not)
Etc.
These are just from my personal experience of trying to host a game over the last four months and dealing with long load times, crashes, cache write errors and the like.
This isn't a complaint - AFAIK this is the best product available for the type of VTT gaming I want to do and there are only two - count them 1, 2 - developers to address code that they've only had direct exposure to for a matter of months.
This is a request that there be a gathering of this 'tribal knowledge' in a single place of how to best optimize the FG play given the current limitations of the game engine. Not a FAQ per se, because sometimes a new person doesn't know to ask 'How large can I make my maps'? Instead it should be a straightforward list of best practices. 'For the most trouble free experience, follow these guidelines.'