First game post-mortem

[Slipshod]

Well, we finally did it. After lurking around here trying to learn as much as I can, my gaming group finally had it's first game today. We decided to do in "virtually, in person", and had a tabletop full of laptops. Overall, I'd say that everyone had a great time.

General Feedback from the group:
1. The UI for scrolling and zooming isn't very intuitive. People also didn't like that they can't control their own zoom.
2. I have to be careful about map and NPC names. I'm running the "War of the Burning Sky", and when the player-map is named "ambush-pc", it kind of spoils it. I don't think this is an FG issue, more like a module design issue.
3. One player kept crashing out, and it took a long time to figure out why. In the end it was related to him not having an extension everyone else had loaded. I wish things like extensions and modules could be auto-distributed from the host. Or even just from a host-configured URL or FTP site.
4. There is SO much to FG2 that we're don't know half of what we're doing.
5. Targeting is not obvious with darker dice colors and round tokens. It would be nice to have a white or transparent border around the target indication ring, and maybe have it a pixel or two thicker.
6. The bug with switching away to another program and not being able to type into chat or get chat updates when you switch back is maddening. We were constantly running into this, and it and the player-zooming were the top two issues.


Thanks for a great program. My group hasn't been able to play for several years, and we're finally able to get back into it because of FG2.

Cheers,
Slipshod

[VenomousFiligree]

Glad to hear you had a good time, of note only the GM needs to add an extension (in fact he's the only one that can).

Is the map just named "ambush-pc" or does it appear on the map? As far as I'm aware only the GM can see map names...

[Zeus]

3. One player kept crashing out, and it took a long time to figure out why. In the end it was related to him not having an extension everyone else had loaded. I wish things like extensions and modules could be auto-distributed from the host. Or even just from a host-configured URL or FTP site.


You might find this thread (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9166&highlight=NSIS) useful reading or perhaps try using something like Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/).

[Zeus]

Glad to hear you had a good time, of note only the GM needs to add an extension (in fact he's the only one that can).

This is true for including an extension for use in a live campaign, however I believe you can distribute extensions to your players. My understanding is that if they have a PAK file ruleset and the extensions installed locally it reduces the amount of data required to be transferred to the client from the host upon connection.

I use this approach and on average players connect to my campaigns in under a minute.

[phantomwhale]

A lot of good points - I know my group is struggling (willingly) to learn the "non-standard" interface, and the loss of focus for typing issue has been extremely frustrating for all of us on occasions (although when I found out the other window they were over on was Facebook, my sympathy dropped a few notches). It's quite annoying when copy-and-pasting PDFs into FGII as well.

I also know the pain of overly revealing names. I had a "secret" encounter setup with an "unknown" token in Savage Worlds. The idea of the unknown token is the players don't know it's real stats OR name. But then I also use the "/die reveal" command, which reveals all dice. And reveals when it's the enemy combatants turn. It also reveals the enemy combatant's name too, I found out.

So when "-> Ogre" appears on everyone's chatlog, the surprise ambush fell a little flat !!! A fix for that will be in the next version, Savage-fans, but yeah it's often good to dry run some stuff with a dummy player session on your localhost to check what your players actually see - or even have it open during play if you can spare the monitors !

[Slipshod]

You might find this thread (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9166&highlight=NSIS) useful reading or perhaps try using something like Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/).


Thanks Zeuss, I am actually using the .EXE installer package already, and distributing it via Dropbox. It still requires the all 5 of the players to pay attention and update whenever I change something. Surprisingly, this isn't easy.

[Slipshod]

Glad to hear you had a good time, of note only the GM needs to add an extension (in fact he's the only one that can).

Is the map just named "ambush-pc" or does it appear on the map? As far as I'm aware only the GM can see map names...

The map file is named "ambush-PC" (it doesn't show up on the map itself). The players were able to see it somehow, I'm not exactly sure. I think it may have been in the images section, or via tooltip somehow.

Regarding the extensions, are you sure this is true? I had one character who was crashing constantly, and the only way it was resolved was by running the latest "distribution" exe I made. The only difference between that EXE and the last was adding in the additional wound level extension, so I assumed the lack of that extension was what was causing him to crash.

[VenomousFiligree]

The map file is named "ambush-PC" (it doesn't show up on the map itself). The players were able to see it somehow, I'm not exactly sure. I think it may have been in the images section, or via tooltip somehow.
Ahh, maybe when minimised and you mouse over?


Regarding the extensions, are you sure this is true? I had one character who was crashing constantly, and the only way it was resolved was by running the latest "distribution" exe I made. The only difference between that EXE and the last was adding in the additional wound level extension, so I assumed the lack of that extension was what was causing him to crash.
I'm not familiar with "distribution" exe's, however if you run a "normal" session of FG, all information is received from the GM.

[Slipshod]

Ahh, maybe when minimised and you mouse over?


I'm not familiar with "distribution" exe's, however if you run a "normal" session of FG, all information is received from the GM.

I used NSIS to build an EXE to distribute the PAK file, modules, and extensions. It was based on a script Zeuss had posted a while back. There were two version of the .exe I'd given to the players, and the only difference between the two was the addition of an extension in the second one.

[VenomousFiligree]

Sounds like it could be then.

[Phystus]

A lot of good points - I know my group is struggling (willingly) to learn the "non-standard" interface, and the loss of focus for typing issue has been extremely frustrating for all of us on occasions (although when I found out the other window they were over on was Facebook, my sympathy dropped a few notches). It's quite annoying when copy-and-pasting PDFs into FGII as well.

Was the player who was having the crash problem the same one that was on Facebook? I seem to recall hearing that FB steps on port 1802 from time, which could certainly crash out FG.

~P

[Slipshod]

Was the player who was having the crash problem the same one that was on Facebook? I seem to recall hearing that FB steps on port 1802 from time, which could certainly crash out FG.

~P

Operating systems track connections on the combination of source IP, dest IP, source port, and dest port. Facebook would have to be forging packets as coming from the FG server in order to interfere.

[Griogre]

The map file is named "ambush-PC" (it doesn't show up on the map itself). The players were able to see it somehow, I'm not exactly sure. I think it may have been in the images section, or via tooltip somehow.

In the 4E ruleset players can now open maps that have been shared to them. This means they have an image/map button on their FG desktop and can see the name of the map.

[Griogre]

Operating systems track connections on the combination of source IP, dest IP, source port, and dest port. Facebook would have to be forging packets as coming from the FG server in order to interfere.
Apps usually actually control ports. If a player connects to FG then FG sets up a connection on 1802 for him. If the player then goes on to Facebook and uses a Facebook app that uses 1802 then that facebook app sets up the connection on 1802. There's nothing stopping this. The next time the FG client tries to sync with the FG server it will be sending its stuff down port 1802 to the facebook app and it likely will be listening to the facebook app trying to make sense of it and failing.

[Slipshod]

Apps usually actually control ports. If a player connects to FG then FG sets up a connection on 1802 for him. If the player then goes on to Facebook and uses a Facebook app that uses 1802 then that facebook app sets up the connection on 1802. There's nothing stopping this. The next time the FG client tries to sync with the FG server it will be sending its stuff down port 1802 to the facebook app and it likely will be listening to the facebook app trying to make sense of it and failing.

Not really...

When a normal client app (like a web browser) opens a TCP connection to a server, the IP stack in the OS (not the app) assigns an arbitrary high port on the client machine as the source port in response to the application requesting to open a socket to a specific "destination" server's port. The "source" port number picked by the OS has no correlation to the port number used by the server (1802). As a pair, those ports (along with the source and destination IP addresses) define a TCP flow. This is also how the server (who has multiple clients connecting to port 1802) distinguishes between each client's data. Traffic from the server returning to the client uses the reverse of the port numbering (i.e. it will be sourced from 1802, with a destination on the client of the arbitrary port opened for the connection). The OS on the client intentionally avoids re-using open sockets to avoid conflicts like you describe. To write to a socket which was opened by another application, you would have to have elevated (root/administrator) permissions and use a completely different method for opening the socket. It would be a HUGE security hole if a non-administrator application could access another application's socket like that.

If you want to better understand TCP/IP and UDP, one of my favorite tutorials is https://www.tcpipguide.com (https://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_TCPIPClientEphemeralPortsandClientServerApplicat io-2.htm) and that link takes you straight to the section on client port number selection.

Cheers,
Slipshod

[Griogre]

You are assuming FG and the Facebook app/game use Ehpemeral Port Range. The number of crashes reported associated with FG and Facebook make me think its not used, but that is only a guess.

[mattcolville]

We had the same problem, re: switching apps and FG2 freaking out.

I think it's only a problem if you have FG2 maximized and switch apps. As long as FG2 isn't maximized, I have no problem moving between FG2 and Skype and Chrome.

[Dershem]

We had the same problem, re: switching apps and FG2 freaking out.

I think it's only a problem if you have FG2 maximized and switch apps. As long as FG2 isn't maximized, I have no problem moving between FG2 and Skype and Chrome.

The Facebook/FG crash is sadly a reality, as I've found many times.

[Zeus]

The Facebook/FG crash is sadly a reality, as I've found many times.

Have you tried starting FG with a different port number? From what I understand both FGII and Facebook make use of port 1802. Again from what I understand you can start FGII from a command line and provide the port parameter, -p <new port number> (I think): Note: both host and clients need to operate on the same port number for connectivity to work.

[Dershem]

I just decided not to use facebook while I game!