game troubles

[seveiht]

Ok this program his horrible, i'm sorry to say it but it is.
We have not had a week where something hasn't gone wrong.

Pictures will not load randomly.
People can't connect.
The latency is horrid.

I really don't know what to say.

[drahkar]

The community and Smiteworks work very hard to help everyone in solving issues they are having in program. You have never posted that you are having issues or asked for any kind of help. Merely coming into the forums and making blanket statements like that isn't going to help resolve whatever issues you might be having.

I suggest going to 'The House of Healing' forum and posting the details of the issues you are experiencing. There are a large number of knowledgeable people who participate in these forums that are more than happy to help people who they ask for assistance.

[seveiht]

Sorry, venting frustration. Our GM has posted and i've found the errors posted by other people but there seems to be no solution to the problem online.

[Fot5]

In my experience, almost all of the problems that are encountered when playing are due to router/firewall settings and/or poor internet connection, usually on the GM's end. Trying to load huge picture files and/or a lot of open modules can also cause problems, but none of these are problems with the program. Ever since I reconfigured my router from the default settings, I've had no problems with FGII whatsoever. I disagree with you. This is one of the best programs I've ever used.

[Astinus]

We have regular dropouts with FG, but it's always with the guys who have the crap computers and the crap connections. Overheating poorly configured routers, spyware bloated machines etc. It's always the same guys, always something the user is doing wrong, not Fantasy Grounds.

[seveiht]

Well, my computer is not crap.
My internet connection is not crap.
We turned the firewall off, plugged directly to the connection bypassing router.

The image sizes we are having trouble with are a mere 20-40 kB. Are you telling me that the software can't handle this?
The gm's internet service is the best we can get.

If he can email us the files instantly, but fg can't transfer them in 20 minutes or longer how is this an issue with our hardware?

[Oberoten]

Most common problems has nothing to do with crappy hardware really. I run this on my seven year old laptop with no problems.

* Turn of QoS from the connection settings.
* Minimize amount of tokens in the token-folder.
* Don't start new transfers until previous transfers are done.
* Try to keep maps under 300k
* Check so everyone is on the same version of the software.
* Check so everyone has the same ruleset version. If there is different versions of a PAK file there will problems.
* Check so there is no weird setups within the router colliding with the FG ports (1802 as per usual)
* Check integrity of images. I have had crashes when corrupted images have been transfered.
* Delete the local cache of the players having the worst problems.

- Obe

[Fot5]

I seriously doubt that it is a software problem because there are a lot of people who are able to use the software with no problems whatsoever. I had problems in a couple of games that I GM'd with people not being able to connect and long lag times, and once I worked on my router settings and made sure that all of my modules were of the appropriate type, I had no problems at all. You may also want to make sure that the GM is not trying to share a large number of large .MOD files with players. In addition, I think that upload/download problems will increase as you add more players to the game.

I also play in a game in which there are frequent problems, and it turned out that disconnection and lag problems were fixed, for the most part, by having players and the GM open only a small number of modules at one time. That, plus the fact that it seems that only a couple of the players in that game have repeated problems, suggests to me that, at least in that game, the problem has to do with bandwidth. To some degree, the software can manage bandwidth, and the folks at FGII are working on some upgrades to improve that aspect of the software (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13932). However, much of it is going to depend on the quality of the connection (e.g., upload rates for the GM and download rates for the PCs). I agree with Astinus' comment that, in the games I'm involved with, it always seems to be the same people who have problems, which suggests that it is not the software.

Regardless, if you are having problems with the software, you're better off working with the software developers to fix the problems than just complaining that the software is of poor quality because, quite simply, it's not poor quality software.

[Fot5]

Oh, and I second several of the things on Oberoton's list. Particularly, I've seen problems with connections resolved with the following points.

* Check so everyone is on the same version of the software.
* Check so everyone has the same ruleset version. If there is different versions of a PAK file there will problems.
* Check so there is no weird setups within the router colliding with the FG ports (1802 as per usual)
* Delete the local cache of the players having the worst problems.

[Griogre]

Obe's list is very good. While I don't think its a problem in your case, I'd like to add one more thing I see a lot:

The GM needs to work with his Security software - both firewall and anti-virus - and actually configure it to work with FG instead of trying to bypass the security.

It is very common to see frustrated people say I turned that off... Turning off software firewalls in particular often just freezes port settings it doesn't open ports. People end up fighting their security software in much the way malware does and usually the software wins to the further frustration of the person running the server.

In the same vein with hardware firewalls, make sure the port is actually opened. Some routers have triggering open ports and I've yet to see that work well. The symptoms of triggered port opening would be similar to what you are experiencing - erratic data transfer.