Any troubles with hotel internet connections?

[hangarflying]

Hello, I'm looking at investing in an ultimate license for FGII as I will be GMing when I travel. I know some people have had issues with port forwarding and connectivity. Has anyone had any troubles with hosting sessions while away from home using a hotel's internet connection?

[damned]

surprisingly the one time i hosted a game from a hotel room it worked, i had a public ip address and was not firewalled in any way. i would strongly suggest that this was an anomaly.

far and away most hotels will give you a natted IP address and there will be no way to ensure that UPnP works and absolutely no chance of creating a static nat/pat entry.

if you are going to be hosting games in these locations you will most likely need to use Hamachi or a similar VPN product - or use a different VTT :(

[JohnD]

I think it's fair to say that most places will make it difficult for you to host and this doesn't even include the crap connection, low strength wifi or the "oops our internet connection is temporarily unavailable" (forever).

All of these are outside of FG's control.

[Trenloe]

Hamachi will be your friend here - it allows you to create a VPN environment for a number of computers and so gets around the problems which are out of your control (i.e. the hotel blocking ports or using NAT, etc.).

I played in a game where the GM (lachancery) was at a hotel and was using Hamachi and it worked fine.

Hamachi is free (for up to 5 client connections): https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/

Everyone (GM and players) will need to install this and connect to the same Hamachi virtual network to be able to play. The players will need to connect to the Hamachi IP address of the GMs computer - do not use the Fantasy Grounds alias or the IP address FG reports.

It works well once setup. Your only issue will be the quality of the hotel's WiFi - you may need to make sure the images/maps you share with the players are optimised for low bandwidth transfers (keep the size down, use JPGs rather than PNGs, decrease colour depth, etc.).

[damned]

hamachi is not difficult to use
and make sure that you dont start any *new* campaigns from the hotel as you will often upload up to 10MB per user - which doesnt sound like a lot but it can be over wireless and/or lower speed links.
manage your image sizes - under 500kb for maps and smaller for fluff images is a good guide.
dont have a gazillion tokens in your tokens folder
dont have unneccesary modules open

[hangarflying]

Thanks for all the help! An associated question: what is the viability of doing this and having something like a google hangout session (team speak or something else)?

[damned]

havent tried hangouts but teamspeak works fine.
hamachi can throttle bandwidth to some extent and your hotel link may also be limited in some regard so hangouts with video could be asking for trouble but should work nonetheless.

[Trenloe]

Hotel bandwidth will be an issue as damned says. I'd recommend using TeamSpeak with one of the narrowband codecs (set at the channel/subchannel level). There is a TeamSpeak server provided for free community use by Mellock - info here: www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?17071-Voicechat!-Community-TeamSpeak3-Server I'd recommend using this for voice comms.

[hangarflying]

Did a test connection last night with my brother using hamachi and team speak and it was a success! Thanks for all the help! EDIT: and FG, of course!

[Trenloe]

Did a test connection last night with my brother using hamachi and team speak and it was a success! Thanks for all the help! EDIT: and FG, of course!
Great to hear that your tests were successful. Always good to know that being on the road is not stopping people being a FG GM! :)

[hangarflying]

I believe I saw something mentioned in another thread, but can't find it: can I zip the mod file of the adventure I'm going to run to my players and have them load it in their module file, with the hope that this will negate any significant load times over poorer connections? Considering the players would be loading the maps from their own computer, am I still able to modify the maps (mask, drawing, etc)?

Thanks again.

[Trenloe]

I believe I saw something mentioned in another thread, but can't find it: can I zip the mod file of the adventure I'm going to run to my players and have them load it in their module file, with the hope that this will negate any significant load times over poorer connections? Considering the players would be loading the maps from their own computer, am I still able to modify the maps (mask, drawing, etc)?
The way people have done it is to zip up the player campaign cache directory and send it to the players before hand. The GM will need to login as a player locally in a second instance of FG on the same PC as the GM instance - connecting to the host as localhost. Then the GM should share all images while that player is logged in - the images will be stored in the player cache. Then close the player instance of FG and go to the <FG app data>\cache folder and you should see a directory with the name of the campaign. ZIP this directory up (best to do it from within the directory so that you don't have double-directories when the players unzip).

Also, if the players will be using library reference modules, make sure they have these installed locally and that they are of the type "client".

This should significantly reduce the initial connection and download time for each player and reduce bandwidth use for library modules too.

You won't lose any GM functionality doing this, you can still mask/draw on images and any new images can be shared as usual - so make sure any additions are relatively small in size, so 500KB or so.

[hangarflying]

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks. As a follow-up, would I, as the host, have to mask the maps prior to sharing and .zip'ing the cache files, so the players can't see them?

Also, and looking back on my original post, I wasn't as clear as I should have been, but I will have a main campaign file with each chapter of the campaign as its own .mod file. With each chapter/.mod file, will I have to do the chache-thing for each chapter, or can I just send them the .mod file?

[damned]

i would mask maps just to be sure but i believe that the sharing would only be there for the player you shared it to - being you.
this just adds the file to the cache as the others havent had the file shared to them they wont see it but it will be there ready for when you do share.

anytime you add a large amount of content you might want to redo the process.
zip it up and put it somewhere for them to download along with clear instructions on how to get it in place.
or - get your game server on early and recommend that the players connect up at least 30mins prior to game...

[Griogre]

You need to mask maps before you pre-load or share them. As long has you haven't shared the maps in any way, the player's can't see them out of the cache. I found out the hard way players can see pre-loaded maps. They appear on their map list and players with the list open will see them and can open them.

[Trenloe]

The images stored in the player cache will only be available to access/view straight away to players logged in at the time they were shared - which will be the player instance the GM uses to create the cache. The tie to the player is the player name used as part of the "Join Game" process - so the GM should use a name that their players won't use. However, the images will be held in the cache but not available to the players until the GM shares them again - thus giving access to the data stored in the cache by the players who the GM shares the info to. The GM can see which players have had the images shared to them by hovering over the (S) icon to the right of the image name - the tooltip will show the names of the players the image/story has been shared with.

[Trenloe]

Also, and looking back on my original post, I wasn't as clear as I should have been, but I will have a main campaign file with each chapter of the campaign as its own .mod file. With each chapter/.mod file, will I have to do the chache-thing for each chapter, or can I just send them the .mod file?
I don't believe that sharing GM only modules will help you - plus the data stored in modules is not encrypted so if you have a curious player they could open the module (or load it in a FG campaign) and look at it.

The player cache is encrypted - so the players can't look at the information held their until you re-share it to them specifically. So, I would suggest that you do the cache distribution process each time you reach a new chapter or have a significant amount of content to share with the players.

[Trenloe]

Another option other than using Hamachi (if you have issues with that or your players can't install it) is to use a VPN Service Provider: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20160-Using-a-VPN-Service-Provider-to-get-around-port-forwarding-issues

[hangarflying]

Saw that thread Trenloe, thanks! It's good to know there are options. Depending on how active I'm able to get my players, I may end up going the VPN route.