Keybord locked

[Carlos Luzzi]

Hi there! FG is a nice Tool, I´m liking it a lot, although its a bit difficult to get in to it, learn all the steps and really just enjoy to RP Game using it. I´m hopefuly oln the way.

I found solutions to many issues in the forum, but here is one I couldn´t find.

While Hosting, many times I got my keyboard locked, and for no reason, I can´t type numbers on Characters /NPCs sheets or anything on the chat. This issue seems to be in and out. Also the mouse scrolling on maps was disabled during most of the session, and out of the blue in the last hour it was enabled again.

Is it some shortcut I´m accidentally hitting to disable the keyboard, or anything?

I was having "the players disconnecting problems" at the same time, which I hope to get fixed next session, Maybe it´s somehow related? because I notice every time a player disconnects my computer freezes for a brief moment.

So, it´s being kind of a chaos, to run the game session, with all this software issues happening it the background, and at the same time trying to keep the game attractive.

I would appreciate you help very much, Thanks.

[Ksathra]

I've had this problem with not being able to type, though I've noticed that its when I open another window on top of FG and that window is still be considered Active by FG. If you make your Fg screen smaller (Restore down) and bring it back to full screen it should fix the problem. Its a bit annoying but not all that in the way.

[Zeus]

While Hosting, many times I got my keyboard locked, and for no reason, I can´t type numbers on Characters /NPCs sheets or anything on the chat. This issue seems to be in and out. Also the mouse scrolling on maps was disabled during most of the session, and out of the blue in the last hour it was enabled again.

Is it some shortcut I´m accidentally hitting to disable the keyboard, or anything?

Without a doubt the problem lies with running FGII in full screen mode. In full screen mode, if FGII loses window focus, user input (including keyboard and mouse wheel) stop registering. To recover you have to cycle through Alt-Tab until FGII is re-selected and focus re-applied to the FGII window.

Its a known problem that occurs with many DirectX based applications.

A workaround is to manually re-size the FGII window to fill your desktop, rather than using full screen mode. You get a window border around FGII and therefore lose maybe 1/2 inch of desktop space but the focus issue will not occur.


I was having "the players disconnecting problems" at the same time, which I hope to get fixed next session, Maybe it´s somehow related? because I notice every time a player disconnects my computer freezes for a brief moment.

The problems are not related. The lag/freeze you encounter when players connect/disconnect from the server is normal behaviour that started occurring from 2.7.2 onwards. You may also find the FGII screen goes black for a short period when multiple players connect at the same time. Its mildly annoying but you can live with it.


So, it´s being kind of a chaos, to run the game session, with all this software issues happening it the background, and at the same time trying to keep the game attractive.

I would appreciate you help very much, Thanks.

All I can say is, bare with FGII, once you have discovered and learnt its quirks, I am sure you will find its the best in-class VTT on the market today.

And no (before you think it), I don't work for Smiteworks, I'm just a very supportive community member. :)

[Carlos Luzzi]

Hey Ksathra, DrZeuss, thanks a lot for you comments. The solution seems reasonably easy, I´ll try it in my next game sessions, hopefully it´s going to work!

Now Just that you guys gave me a little attention here, another issue that some of my players had was that they mini sized window for their Character sheets, used to disappear now and then, so every time they have to reopen it. Some of the players where experiencing trouble using the little dice icon on powers to automatically roll the dice for that power. They said sometimes the dice simply didn´t work. Could this effect be anyhow related to the full screen thing?

I not seeing my players screen, so I´m not sure exactly what´s going on, if it´s a software issue, or they lack of aptitude with their software itself. :)

If you guys know anything about it, that would be of great help





All I can say is, bare with FGII, once you have discovered and learnt its quirks, I am sure you will find its the best in-class VTT on the market today.

And no (before you think it), I don't work for Smiteworks, I'm just a very supportive community member. :)



That´s nice, I´m indeed in the hopes that FG2 will provide the best VTT experience, We are just not there yet. After last session, I started thinking about trying MapTools, but I think it´s going to be all the trouble once again, so I´ll sticking with FG2, We bought 4 licenses, so let’s stick with it. I´m betting if we survive this initial stage, stuff will get really interesting in the future!

Absolutely, you are providing great help here, answered many of my questions promptly, specially about parsing and stuff. We can only say a big thanks to you and the other great supporters for the FG2 community.

Big Thanks,
Carlos

[Zeus]

Its quite possible your players maybe experiencing the side effects of full screen mode. As a DM who hardly ever gets to play as a Player its hard for me to be certain though.

The best thing to do is to mention not running in Full screen mode to your players, if they still encounter problems, its worthwhile pausing our game and making a detailed note of the steps to re-create. From this I am confident you should be able to eliminate the obvious or at least gain structured help from the devs/community.

It generally depends upon the ruleset, however most will support opening charsheets by clicking on the various PC portraits. Players can only open charsheets for PCs that they own though. This might speed up locating windows if they become lost under other windows or on a busy desktop. I believe moon_wizard is also looking to introduce new window functionality that will allow one to easily re-order the z-ordering of windows on the desktop

As for FGII, I am being very honest when I say that I have been using the product for nearly two years now. Yes, its has a slightly higher learning curve than your standard Windows application, however for RPG games over the wire and of all the products available I believe FGII delivers the best overall experience.

I am confident, once you have ironed out the initial kinks, you won't regret the decision to stick with it. Good Luck and happy gaming.

[Carlos Luzzi]

Huge thanks. I´ll test it and let you know how it worked out.

Best,
Carlos

[Griogre]

If you are playing 4E. The players have to have opened their player tracker at least once after the DM has opened his tracker for much of the targeting things to work.

[Carlos Luzzi]

Yes, it´s 4E. I´m not sure I understand. wht do you mean by tracker? is it they character sheet? not combat tracker, I guess. I think I´m missing this one. can you further explain? Thanks!

[Griogre]

The player combat tracker like the GM combat tracker is opened by a button in the top right of the FG desktop. Sorry I should have said combat tracker the first time.

[Carlos Luzzi]

Humm, I didn´t know player have a combat tracker. I have only played using the DMs interface. Anyway, the combat tracker seems to be working pretty well, although I´m not sure if they open it or not. Most likely not. You say they must have it open?

[Griogre]

They must open the player tracker *once* after the DM has opened his combat tracker to initialize some stuff that connects the client to the DM's combat tracker, after that they can then close it. If they don't open their tracker a lot of the targeting stuff does not work on the client because all of the targeting is really run through the DM's combat tracker.

The player's combat tracker just displays a censored version of the the GM's tracker. The DM is not affected at all regardless of what the player does because his combat tracker is the master one.

[Carlos Luzzi]

Hey Griorge, thanks for the tip. It might be important, if you mentioned it, but the thing is, the combat tracker seem to work fine with me during the sessions. I can drag the damage results directly in to the corresponding tokens in the map, and they appear at the chat window as damage along with a red drop of blood. Blooded and dying npcs and characters also appear on the chat window. According to initiative order every token gets highlighted on it´s turn. It seems ok to me, even we didn´t know about the issue you mentioned. What is it that you refere as targetting?

Sorry for the multiple questions, thanks for the multiple answers :D

[Griogre]

Let me start over. My comment on the combat tracker was based on you player(s) telling you that they double clicked on the little dice on the mini sheet and nothing happened. As mentioned, most of the combat automation used by both the players and DM really runs through the DM's combat tracker.

If DM's combat tracker is not open for some reason when the player double clicks on an attack die on the mini sheet the die might not roll or the die roll might end up in chat but will not give you the normal, hit/miss message the roll typically gets. This is because the player's roll can't be compared to anything since the DM tracker is not open.

Likewise if the DM's combat tracker is open but the Player has never opened his combat tracker to establish a link with the DM's combat tracker the DM's combat tracker can't be queried to see if the attack roll hits or misses.

Targeting is usually done by the players by clicking a token on the map to get a ring around it. After that if the player double clicks on an attack dice the attack is directed against that target. Players can also target by just drag and dropping an attack roll right on the token on the map or by drag and dropping the attack roll on the monster on the player combat tracker. Naturally, this all assumes the DM has set the Target: Enable PC actions to On in options.

[Carlos Luzzi]

Amazing! Fantastic. Now I totaly get it. Probably that´s one of the reasons stuff got mixed up. Big thanks for the patience on writing it all down. :D Best!

[Griogre]

You're welcome.

[Carlos Luzzi]

Hello everybody,

In our last game session, last night, all the issues mentioned here where all gone. A few minor, very minor bugs happened during the session, (the chat window got frozen in one player view, but it got back to normal when I erased it). Besides that, all just fine. Thanks a lot for you insights!

As a side note, the software is becoming much more intuitive after a while. Still there are things I´m not sure about, But it´s much nicer now.

HUGE THANKS!

[Moon Wizard]

What you probably experienced is that the chat window can be scrolled using the mouse wheel, and it will appear not to update while it is scrolled. By scrolling to the bottom again, it will start showing new messages again.

Clearing the chat will also reset the scroll state.

Regards,
JPG

[Carlos Luzzi]

Absolutely! I´m sure that´s what happened there. I´ll tell my player about it. Thanx!