player dropping

[inuroku842]

Hey, I've been havin a problem lately with players gettin dropped. Is it a connection issue on either end or is this a consistent problem with with the program itself?

[Leonal]

I think it's a connection issue.

However 2.8 currently in test mode will make players automatically reconnect unless they log out manually. It works very well!

[Moon Wizard]

Try checking out the thread on disconnects by Primarch for some suggestions:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14288

Cheers,
JPG

[Griogre]

It does usually seem to be a connection issue. Not turning off QoS scheduling can be a killer for the host on some computers - but typically it's connection.

[inuroku842]

ok, wasn't sure if it was the program or something on my end. so what can i do to improve my connection issue?

[Zeus]

You can also use https://www.speedtest.net (https://www.speedtest.net/) and https://www.pingtest.net. (https://www.pingtest.net/) to help diagnose connection quality and performance. Speedtest will give you a view of your download/upload bandwidth whilst Pingtest will measure packet loss, line latency and jitter (the latter affects quality of connection).

https://www.speedtest.net/result/1334172593.png

https://www.pingtest.net/result/41770046.png

You can also run a variety of tests both local to where you live in the world or remotely to the other side. Very useful for determining which countries around the globe you have good/bad connections to.

[inuroku842]

hmm. may give that a shot. so it could also be their connection?
btw, does anyone know just how much bandwidth the fg program takes up on its own, and does it increase with each player that joins the session?

[Griogre]

When not doing anything almost no bandwidth. The major use of bandwidth on the server is the sharing of images.

If you share a 100K map then the bandwidth required is number of player's x 100K. Given most non commercial connections running FG have only about 1/3 to 1/4 of the total bandwidth available to steam uploads you can see that even that tiny map being sent to 4 players would take around 2 seconds (ignoring network overhead and assuming perfect connections to the players) on a 600K DSL connection.

Naturally as the number of player's go up and the size of the map increases the bandwith requirements can get pretty large. That's why you should try to keep your maps under 300K.

[inuroku842]

Ahh, well that just may account for a lot of things, I have around 5 to 6 players on any given session, and I'm not quite sure just how big my maps are, but I'd imagine they can get to be pretty large. Now what part of the bandwidth accounts for all of that? the upload speed, I'd imagine right? My current upload speed is about 950 kps, (120 kps transfer rate) and that's on a wifi network with my wife and I, on top of that I always have the srd up on the web in the background.

[Griogre]

As a GM keeping your image size small is the best thing you can do for you player's connection stability (that and keep shared tokens to the absolute min - will change when tokens are cached though). Some of the easiest things to do for images is bring them down to 256 (8 bit) colors and used pretty highly compressed gifs or jpgs. Almost every art programs make 24 bit or higher images which on a monitor are wasted. Very few monitors show any difference on bit depths greater than 8. Thus decreasing an image from 24 bits to 8 bit will decrease the file size by close to 2/3 and display the same.

[inuroku842]

As a GM keeping your image size small is the best thing you can do for you player's connection stability (that and keep shared tokens to the absolute min - will change when tokens are cached though). Some of the easiest things to do for images is bring them down to 256 (8 bit) colors and used pretty highly compressed gifs or jpgs. Almost every art programs make 24 bit or higher images which on a monitor are wasted. Very few monitors show any difference on bit depths greater than 8. Thus decreasing an image from 24 bits to 8 bit will decrease the file size by close to 2/3 and display the same.
so how can I go about changing the bit size of these images then? How would I reduce them from 24 bit to 8 bit?

[Zeus]

Most commercial paint programs should offer you a choice when saving the file under JPG or PNG format.

For example in Photoshop you can change the format and bit depth of the image by opening the image and then selecting Mode from the Image menu and selecting the appropriate bits per channel. For RGB colour formats the choices include 8, 16 or 32 bits.

You should be able to also use GiMP, Paint.net, MS Paint and the various other standard graphics packages.

[inuroku842]

Most commercial paint programs should offer you a choice when saving the file under JPG or PNG format.

For example in Photoshop you can change the format and bit depth of the image by opening the image and then selecting Mode from the Image menu and selecting the appropriate bits per channel. For RGB colour formats the choices include 8, 16 or 32 bits.

You should be able to also use GiMP, Paint.net, MS Paint and the various other standard graphics packages.
hmh, ok then. i have GiMP 2, so what I'd need to do is import the files into there, change the size, save as that smaller size, then move it around? Sounds good then, if I can figure out how to do it, lol.