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Visvalor
July 24th, 2010, 03:32
My ruleset takes FOREVER to load. I have ... lessee...252 different XML files mostly individual windows and sub-windows for selecting and whatnot.

Would it load faster If I dropped everything into a single XML somehow? My poor gamers lock up and lag a bunch and I'm maybe 20% done with what I intend to do with everything :P

I can't get rid of content, this is all charsheet stuff. So how do I increase loading times without losing content?

Visvalor
July 24th, 2010, 14:41
So suggestions eh :\?

Does anyone know if it would load faster or slower if shoved into a single XML?

Does any particular type of script make it load slower :P?

Visvalor
July 24th, 2010, 14:48
Oh right and I should also note that it takes me like 10 seconds or so to load, maybe 15. It's my gamers that are taking a long time (So I assume it's a client issue)

Stitched
July 24th, 2010, 15:09
I know, from experience, that long load times means that either your campaign is huge (lots of images, etc.) or that you have a ton of module books open.

Since your clients (players) are taking a long time as well, it sounds like you are sharing those modules when they connect ("client.xml").

Reducing the number of modules for yourself and limiting the shared ones should ease the load times.

Visvalor
July 24th, 2010, 15:45
God I wish it was that simple.

0 modules 0 images. Takes them upwards of 4 minutes to load. It's entirely the charsheet. (Still I can load in like 20 seconds TOPS :P)

Zeus
July 24th, 2010, 15:49
How big is the upload side of your internet connection? This will be the likely bottleneck thats slowing down load/connection times.

You could also try staggering connections to only a couple at a time, this might also help individual connection times.

Finally, you could also try packaging your ruleset up as a .PAK file (placing it in the FGII prog dir not app data/rulesets) and distributing it (assuming its not a commercial version) to your players along with any extensions you have for local install. This could speed up connection times for your players considerably.

Visvalor
July 24th, 2010, 18:43
Well good idea with the pak but it's in progress. My down up speed is 10.78mps/1.92mbps according to Speakeasy. (Just tested)

The problem isn't necessarily the connection, because when they just load it on their end as a GM it also lags a bit. SO I'm going to assume it's a mixture of connection/slow computer/sheer size of information.

But how much faster would a pak load vs an open ruleset? (It's a WIP that's why I ask)

Spyke
July 26th, 2010, 17:42
Distributing a PAK makes things very fast, as the client machines are opening the PAK at their end and the ruleset doesn't need to transfer at all.

Are you sure it's the ruleset itself that's taking the time? XML files, even 252 of them, are tiny text files. Have you got a large number of tokens that are also getting transferred?

Spyke

Zeus
July 26th, 2010, 18:14
I did a bit of debugging for Visvalor and I believe the problem was indeed down to script referencing error in the ruleset.

There' still some testing to do but last check indicated significant improvement.

There's another thread floating around in the Workshop forum related to the same matter.