A woeful session of crashes [2.8]

[phantomwhale]

Tonight was our first session with v2.8, running the latest development version of SWEX and DL:R extension.

A number of ruleset bugs plagued us, after all, I'm always play testing, but overall SWEX v3.2 is getting quite stable. However slowness and crashes plagued us much more than usual - we spent half the session chasing down bugs and restoring sessions.

Three players out of four had the same symptoms; dice and chat not being picked up, very occsaionally they would all appear as a big, batch update. More often than not, they would crash out a few minutes later. During this time they COULD see my updates though.

Sometimes, these "broken" sessions would seem to add up to cause my server to crash too - I had two full crashes (no warning / error box) over our 4 hour game. Each time, I needed to do a carfeul db.xml restore.

After a few crashes, one player had a "could not load base.xml" problem, so cleared his computer (bit overkill, but we were desperate...) reinstalled FGII and logged back in. But the problem came back.

Another player did get a runtime error on one crash, which was

"Snapshot image size (0,0) does not match base image size (3072,1987)
Runtime Error: Snapshot image size (0,0) does not match base image size (1224,1152)
Runtime Error: Cache file write error: +C:/Users/Erik/AppData/Roaming/Fantasy Grounds II/cache/Virtual Bandpractice/campaign.dat"

By the end, I had two players on VOIP chat only, two logged in and I had to roll dice for all but one of them. We had this sort of behaviour (with a different player, who didn't turn up this week) before, but today we had it in spades. Next session is 3 weeks time, thanks to the August bank holiday, so maybe we'll get ourselves onto 2.8.1 by then. Although all my players run as unregistered clients, so not sure if they can upgrade before the new .exe is created (?)

Overall, we're sticking with it, but that was a TOUGH session :hurt:

[Moon Wizard]

Usually, delayed chat/dice are a symptom of network issues. In 2.8.x, FG will track which packets get sent successfully, and reconnect/resend data on a broken connection. The console.log will have additional information on reconnect and other network events. It gets reset each time you start FG. You might try reviewing the thread in the House of Healing forum on disconnects, since it may be related to router settings (i.e. QoS, etc.).

For the error messages,
* The snapshot image size errors only appear if the client somehow receives no image on a mask or drawing layer request. I've only seen these happen if something else is not working.
* The cache file write errors only occur if FG attempts to overwrite an existing file in the cache, but fails to delete the old file. I've only seen this with saving module data for modules with names containing colons so far. (fixed in 2.8.1) Also, I've seen this happen when FG is running multiple instances (after crash, clear with Task Manager), and when the cache file gets corrupted.

If this is reproducable consistently, I definitely want to get a hold of your campaign folder, as well as the player cache file for that campaign.

Also, I'm very interested in any situations that will prevent SW ruleset from being used to its full ability, as it's the most popular ruleset that I didn't build and several aspects are coded differently.

I'm currently away on holiday for the next 1.5 weeks, with sporadic Internet, but I'll try to see what I can do. You can send files to jgregory at smiteworks dot com.

Regards,
JPG

[Trenloe]

"Snapshot image size (0,0) does not match base image size (3072,1987)
Runtime Error: Snapshot image size (0,0) does not match base image size (1224,1152)
Runtime Error: Cache file write error: +C:/Users/Erik/AppData/Roaming/Fantasy Grounds II/cache/Virtual Bandpractice/campaign.dat"

I've just encountered the "Cache file write error" today for the first time. It happened when I joined the game late with 3 other players already deep in the game. I deleted the cache and around 10-20% into downloading campaign.dat I would get the error - seemingly when it was downloading the tmp campaign.dat file

I tried deleting the cache a number of times. In the end, all of the players exiting the game and I logged back in first and then it seemed to work.

Is this something to do with me trying to download a large new campaign.dat file while it is getting updated by the ongoing game?

- FG V2.8.
- Windows 7 64bit.
- C&C ruleset.

[damned]

Just to add to Trenloe's post - I removed my handmade module (well just closed the book) before he re-connected as the first player. He got on and played but I think he was still getting some write or permissions errors? I then opened the module up again but as it turned out our belligerent wizard and truculent cleric picked fights with the locals and then the constabulary and then the magistrates before calming down just enough to walk away and I didnt end up needing either my bought or hand made modules ;)

[Moon Wizard]

Out of curiousity, what are the names of the modules that you have open in your campaign, including the handmade module?

There was an issue I found in 2.8, where some non-alphanumeric characters in the module name were causing issues. A fix is in testing for 2.8.1.

Regards,
JPG

[gmkieran]

Moon_Wizard, would that include things like Player'sHandbook 3 or Adventurer's Vault 2 or is it something more esoteric than that? I've been noticing some crash issues when opening additional modules, but haven't been able to narrow it down to specifics.

[Moon Wizard]

It specifically pertains to module names containing characters which are not valid in file names.

If you are loading a large number of modules, you may also want to check memory utilization for Fantasy Grounds using the Windows Task Manager. Previously, I was able to open about 17-18 modules before hitting the memory limit for programs, but it all depends on how much data you have in your modules. There is a 2 GB memory limit for applications, but in reality you will start running into issues at the 1.7G limit due to the way Windows applications work.

Regards,
JPG

[Trenloe]

There was an issue I found in 2.8, where some alphanumeric characters in the module name were causing issues. A fix is in testing for 2.8.1.


It specifically pertains to module names containing characters which are not valid in file names.

So you mean some non alphanumeric characters?

[Moon Wizard]

Yes, that's correct.

Cheers,
JPG

[damned]

Names of my own modules were:
temple of Aikarn
Deceit of Aikarn
T4
Trenloe and I spent a bit of time last night just doing housekeeping (/flushdb and deleting client side cache contents) and opening and closing the various modules. I think all the errors were gone after that.

[phantomwhale]

Quick note to say I had another bad session, but with JPGs advice, captured some excellent logging. Going to investigate this week, but looks like DL:R arcane skills might be causing me some bother. Not sure if it's simply the latest development version, or within the release version too; when we know more, I'll follow up.

Needless to say, I'm not sure my players are coming back if we have another session like this, so I'm kinda invested into getting this resolved !

[phantomwhale]

Bug found in DL:R - have spent this evening working on the fix. Hopefully will have something ready and available soon.

[phantomwhale]

A patched version has now been released via the Smiteworks store - kudos to Doug and JPG for the fast response.

See : https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?p=114191