Bad experience so far

[Demogorgon]

Lag, connection problems, and crashing are causing far to much disruption in my games. It is getting to the point now were I am considering other options to play online. :(

Fantasy Grounds does have a lot of offer in terms of it's ruleset support, character sheets, dice, and nice graphics. But I would honestly have to warn people before they purchase it. Although it looks nice, FG2 is very unstable as it suffers from serious connectivity and lag problems.

Seriously, what is with the 5 min lag times in the chat window that my game usually experiences? Why does the game slow down so much when only one player is having connection issues or a high ping? The game shouldn't be slowing down at all when players are connecting to the server. Usually the entire screen turns white during this process. Furthermore, what data is Fg2 sending all the time anyway? It looks as if FG2 is constantly updating the clients even when it doesn't need to. Even when there is no activity the game is constantly updating the clients over and over again. One look at the windows resource monitor and you can see what is going on.

As a developer myself, I suspect that little can be done to correct these issues because of the underlying software architecture. Major sections of code would have be completely rewritten.

When will FG2 optimize its network communication code? When will Fg2 be as fast or faster than other virtual table top software?

[Griogre]

While I don't doubt you are having problems, I will say that nobody would use FG if they had 5 minutes worth of lag in the chat window. That's way too much - you shouldn't even have more than a few seconds unless someone is connecting, you are pushing out a ruleset or a massive image of some type.

If you are using the 4E or d20_JPG is there any possibility the server or clients are in an endless loop? This usually happens in either the combat tracker (though I have not seen one there for a very long time) or on a character sheet. The usual symptom is the character sheet or the combat tracker "flickers". You can confirm it by looking at CPU usage.

[Demogorgon]

While I don't doubt you are having problems, I will say that nobody would use FG if they had 5 minutes worth of lag in the chat window. That's way too much - you shouldn't even have more than a few seconds unless someone is connecting, you are pushing out a ruleset or a massive image of some type.

If you are using the 4E or d20_JPG is there any possibility the server or clients are in an endless loop? This usually happens in either the combat tracker (though I have not seen one there for a very long time) or on a character sheet. The usual symptom is the character sheet or the combat tracker "flickers". You can confirm it by looking at CPU usage.

The problem is that these issues are consistent for me. I'm sure that there are people who are not having these problems and the game works ok for them, but I suspect that they don't have many players and they don't all live far away from each other (i.e. bag ping ms).

I mean I can deal with the system crashing once and a while, but the lag issues are just horrible. Even when I have nothing shared and players try to connect the first few characters connect fine with little issue, but then as more arrive it takes longer and longer for them to enter the game. Players are waiting around for 20 mins before they can even see their character sheets.

I am using the 4e ruleset, but I'm not sure if that is the problem or not. What would cause and endless loop. I've looked at the CPU usage and I've never seen such a problem. So far I've tried everything to fix this problem. I've deleted all my images and unshared everything I could. Still the problem remains. I've even deleted my cache files.

I really don't understand why the chat would lag so much. Sometimes the game will be slow but manageable, other times it is just complete lag hell.

Maybe the game works ok when everyone has a good connection, but it seems to me that the worst connection dictates the lag for everyone.

This is reminiscent of peer to peer nodes wherein the uplink rate of the slowest peer determines the quality of gaming.

[Moon Wizard]

Demogorgon,

I haven't heard from anybody else having the same sort of delays that you have. The only time I heard something similar, QoS was the culprit. Perhaps we can figure out where the problem lies together, and I can get a patch out.

There are usually some minor stutters when passing big updates (large pictures, ruleset downloads, and auto saves), but they only last for a couple seconds or less.

Some questions about your PC setup:
* Are you sure that you don't have some sort of QoS throttling going on in your network or PCs? (Check routers, switches and firewalls)
* What OS are you running?
* What are the specs of your PC?

Some specific questions about your FG data throughput:
* Which ruleset are you using?
* How many images are in the campaign image directory?
* How big are the images?
* How many tokens are in the FG data folder tokens/shared subdirectory?
* How big are the token files?
* Are you using token modules? If so, where did you acquire them?
* How many modules are you loading?
* What type of modules are you using (host, client, common)? Or how did you create the modules?

We do have plans to research the networking code for the next major update, but that is most likely 6 months out. If there is something we can pinpoint, I can work it into a patch to address.

Thanks,
JPG

[madman]

i play in two games that have the same issues. i would say that we get upwards of three mins of lag sometimes, in the chat window. when i load into the game, there can be 10-12 min wait before i can get my character. frequent dropouts. 100-200k maps taking 5 min to load. i have a 3 MB connection i7 with 12 GB ram, Vista x64 current everything else(drivers and such). And i have seen the endless loop thing, line in the spell list pops up then it is gone. 1 second later pops up again. Is this the endless loop problem? where can i find more info, how do we get rid of it?

AVG 50's ms Latency
1.5 MB Down
1 MB Up

been working around this problem for a year. This is the first i have seen any mention of the endless loop problem. and i watch the boards like a hawk(3 times a day).

Help!

* Which ruleset are you using? D20_JPG
* How many images are in the campaign image directory? 20
* How big are the images? < 200K
* How many tokens are in the FG data folder tokens/shared subdirectory? 15
* How big are the token files?25-40 k
* Are you using token modules? If so, where did you acquire them? no
* How many modules are you loading? 2
* What type of modules are you using (host, client, common)? Or how did you create the modules?
host from campaign data

Chris

[Demogorgon]

Demogorgon,

I haven't heard from anybody else having the same sort of delays that you have. The only time I heard something similar, QoS was the culprit. Perhaps we can figure out where the problem lies together, and I can get a patch out.

There are usually some minor stutters when passing big updates (large pictures, ruleset downloads, and auto saves), but they only last for a couple seconds or less.

Some questions about your PC setup:
* Are you sure that you don't have some sort of QoS throttling going on in your network or PCs? (Check routers, switches and firewalls)
* What OS are you running?
* What are the specs of your PC?

Some specific questions about your FG data throughput:
* Which ruleset are you using?
* How many images are in the campaign image directory?
* How big are the images?
* How many tokens are in the FG data folder tokens/shared subdirectory?
* How big are the token files?
* Are you using token modules? If so, where did you acquire them?
* How many modules are you loading?
* What type of modules are you using (host, client, common)? Or how did you create the modules?

We do have plans to research the networking code for the next major update, but that is most likely 6 months out. If there is something we can pinpoint, I can work it into a patch to address.

Thanks,
JPG

Actually, I was the user that had previously posted about the problem being QoS. I'm sorry to say that I was wrong.

OS: Win7 64
System: AMD Duel Core 3.1 MH 4 GB RAM, Nvidia 8800 GT
10 MB Down, 512K up

Some specific questions about your FG data throughput:
* Which ruleset are you using? 4e

* How many images are in the campaign image directory?
1 image

* How big are the images?
140 K

* How many tokens are in the FG data folder tokens/shared subdirectory?
none

* How big are the token files?
80x80 pixels (tiny)

* Are you using token modules? If so, where did you acquire them?
Not using token modules

* How many modules are you loading?
I have 10 modules but I don't load them unless I need them. During the game I close them all.

* What type of modules are you using (host, client, common)? Or how did you create the modules?
I'm not using modules for my games. i just prepare a few encounters, story, and the map before each session.

At this point I've tried everything.

[Demogorgon]

What I don't understand is why it takes my players so long to login and select their character. It takes 30m+ just to get everyone in.

I make sure to unshare everything before they login and I also close every window.

Sometimes players connect but they have to wait forever before they can even select their characters.

Even when I restart my computer and load FG2 without anything open and loaded it still takes forever for the players to login. The first 3 players don't have a problem, but the moment one of them with high lag connects (400ms +) the connection process and the game slows down for everyone.

[Doswelk]

The problem is that these issues are consistent for me. I'm sure that there are people who are not having these problems and the game works ok for them, but I suspect that they don't have many players and they don't all live far away from each other (i.e. bag ping ms).

All I can say is that I ran a game (not 4e) not so long ago with 10 players (from USA/Canada/Europe/UK).

I live in the UK so it can work!

No-one is using dial-up are they?

[Griogre]

been working around this problem for a year. This is the first i have seen any mention of the endless loop problem. and i watch the boards like a hawk(3 times a day).

Help!

The endless loop issue was an something "that everyone knew about" at the time the d20_JPG was new, so there probably hasn't been much discussion on it recently. Moon Wizard worked on the problem at the time and got so the looping problem happened quite a bit less in the last few versions of the d20_JPG.

The problem seems to be the result of a race condition where both the DM and Player edit (or do something to) the character sheet at the same time. As mentioned earlier, the usual symptoms are the character sheet "flickers" as the result. You can tell for sure if once you see that, if you start Windows Task manager and check CPU usage. If you got one core maxed then you are looping. If its a single processor computer you would probably get a Program is Not Responding.

If this happens to a client (player) then he is the only one who should experience lag, though waiting for him might slow the server a bit. Occasionally, just closing and re-opening the character sheet fixes it but most of the time the player needs to exit FG and come back in to stop the looping. If the player kills the app instead of getting a normal exit, he needs to check under processes to make sure the FG.exe is not still running. At that point I would tell him to just re-boot, though - in theory - he could just kill the process.

If the endless loop is on the server then *all* clients will lag though depending on the power of the server it may still seem responsive to the DM. The DM can check by looking at the CPU usage the same way as a client. If the server is looping one of the cores will be maxed out. If the server is looping the only way to stop it is to exit FG. Assuming you get a normal exit then you can just restart FG and have the player log back in.

So what can you do to prevent loops? Don't mess with the character sheet at the same time as the player. I tell my player not to touch the character sheet if I *must* edit it, and most of the time I tell the player to make the changes even though it takes longer sometimes.

You should also be using the latest release version of FG and the latest versions of the d20_JPG. There were changes in both to make it harder to get looping issues.

[Moon Wizard]

Madman,

If you can recreate the endless loop (flashing lines) consistently with your campaign, please let me know. As I mentioned in another post, this is an issue I've been trying to figure out since before I joined the FG team and I was just building my own rulesets. It appears to be related to the GM and client editing the same sheet. I think it's something in the FG client, but I haven't been able to pinpoint.

Which window does it happen in?

Thanks,
JPG

[Griogre]

What I don't understand is why it takes my players so long to login and select their character. It takes 30m+ just to get everyone in.

I make sure to unshare everything before they login and I also close every window.

Sometimes players connect but they have to wait forever before they can even select their characters.

Even when I restart my computer and load FG2 without anything open and loaded it still takes forever for the players to login. The first 3 players don't have a problem, but the moment one of them with high lag connects (400ms +) the connection process and the game slows down for everyone.
It should not take 30 minutes to get everyone in. That usually means there is a massive data transfer going on from the server to the clients. The lag between the time a player gets into FG and can select his character is another symptom of a large transfer taking place.

There can be several reasons for this, one of the most common was a large amount of shared or "owned" tokens needing to be transfered. FYI, 80x80 pixel tokens are large. I would try a few things to see if they make a differeance. Also find out from the players if any of that pause to get in is because of the ruleset being transfered.

First, before the players try to connect, move whatever you have in FG's data app tokens folders shared or host. If you have token packs in modules, close them and "Block from Players". Close *all* other modules, library or adventure, as well on the server and go through the module activation window and if you have "Force Load" set change it to "Block from Players". If you want you could just move all modules out of your module folder if you have a lot of them.

Second, if you are using extentions toggle them so none of them load.

Third, have the players log in with a different Login ID. IE if some usually logs in as CoolPlayer then have them log in with a different name. You can free their characters for them so they can use them with their new logins as the characters at tied to the login names.

See if this makes any differance for any of the players. Make sure they really do log in with different login IDs.

[Moon Wizard]

Griogre, Thanks for the help.

Demogorgon,

Can you also zip up your entire campaign directory and send it to me at [email protected]?

Based on your details, I'm at a loss as to why you are seeing such large delays. I would definitely try all of Griogre's suggestions. Also, you can try opening a brand new campaign, and see if the players still get large delays.

* Are there other computers running on your network?
* What applications are running on the host machine as well as the other network machines?
* Some applications to look out for: Facebook website (some FB apps use port 1802), video conferencing, file sharing (Torrent, etc.)

Hopefully, we can narrow this down a bit with your help.

Thanks,
JPG

[Moon Wizard]

Another tip in from one of our community members. The user can set any image file to be a portrait. Sometimes they will select very large files (1MB+), and this will cause delays on the character selection screen.

Cheers,
JPG

[madman]

Update on problem

loading in with all the mods on and with the same name that i had been using was like 5 min(only one connection). to load in

Turning off all mods and loading in with a new name cut the time to like 40 seconds.( WOW ) love it.

Sunday we will check it with 4 Players logged in (not one) and see what happens. Hoping for the best.

And as a side note does this help with dropouts at all?

Thank You
Chris

[Moon Wizard]

Perhaps. My guess its that drop outs are related to the network connection getting saturated with large downloads, and then timing out.

If you are playing a 4E game, you can also try having your GM run the /flushdb command that I added in v2.7.2. It removes sharing/ownership of all nodes in the database to reduce any overhead from old campaign information.

Cheers,
JPG

[Leonal]

JPG, would it be a lot of work to add that command to d20_JPG?

Last game we had I was often kicked out, and had to log in with a new name each time. We also experience lag from a second to half a minute quite often.

Two in our group of three are having a a fairly large amount of packet loss between us, and FG doesn't seem to handle that very well (or that's our guess).

[Moon Wizard]

With v2.7.2, you could probably just drop the code for the /flushdb command registration and callback function from 4E into d20_JPG in the chatmanager.lua file.

The update I am working on for d20_JPG/3.5E will have the command built in already. However, it is still has a ways to go in development.

Regards,
JPG

[Leonal]

Thanks!

I just tried and the db.xml got reduced from 842kb to 648kb.^^

Best,
Leonal

edit: Since it removes owners of the notes, is it possible to assign new owners within FG, or just by editing the db.xml manually?

[tpkurilla]

After I posted about my communications issues in another post, I read this post. FWIW, I did scan the titles before I posted, and this title didn't register to me as related...

Anyway, I seem to be having issues (somewhat) related to the OP. Although, thankfully my lag issues aren't as bad as his.

To recap,

1) I cut the amount of data being transferred to the clients in half by not choosing any of the "skins" when I start my server.

2) even with the amount of data being transferred cut in half (to about 6.5MB), the tranfer rate is abysmal.

3) Most startup data transfer issues were mitigated by having only one player connect at a time, one after the other. Any time more than one is within the initial connection simultaneously, all have the issues. Now, our connection procedure is: I tell one of them to connect (using Teamspeak). When he has finished connecting, and has selected his character, I tell the next to connect, and so on. This seems to help a lot.

I will definitely have to try that /flushdb thingy, though. I have over 6MB being transferred even though the total size of my modules is only about 200KB...

-Thomas

[ddavison]

Can you check the size of your tokens/shared folder? Some people have unknowingly filled this folder with large files and it caused their connect times to be very sluggish.

[Demogorgon]

I will send that email to you with my campaign folder ziped.

i do have a question. usually what I do is I drag and drop creatures from my monster modules into the NPC folder. I then add a token to the monsters from the host folder. At one time or another I have used those monsters in the combat tracker. Could this be creating a problem? Do the tokens in my npc folder get shared if at one point in time I have used them in the combat tracker?

Lastly I really do appreciate your help here.

[Moon Wizard]

As far as I can determine, only tokens in currently shared data or in public token folders are transferred. I'm still at a bit of a loss on the long delays, though the fact that token caching was never implemented is probably not helping. I'm going to review ruleset, module and extension transfers while I'm at it.

I didn't write the networking or token sharing code, so I'm digging in with your help to see what I can do.

Regards,
JPG

[Andugus]

I once had terrible lag in a playtest. The issue turned out to be images that were too large in pixel count. For example I had several 200k image that were 1700x2100px. This was too large to handle. Further testing revealed that 1400x1400px is about the point where lag starts to creep in. Size of the file seems less of an issue in my tests.