Slow internets down under, looking for some help!

[Lapsed]

Hi all,

I'm currently GM'ing a game for a couple of friends that live in the same house via a broadband connection (we all live in Australia). According to a couple of different internet speed tests my internet runs at roughly 6.95 Mbps download and 0.29 Mbps upload.

We seam to be having a really bad time whenever I share an image from my campaigns (both purchased dlc and homebrew using small images).

After searching the forums the only thread that seamed to be similar was - 'DM / Host on dialup success story ' https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?7585-DM-Host-on-dialup-success-story&p=51689#post51689 and it mentions exporting a module top send to my players ahead of time.

The bit I'm stuck on is '- Save the maps and images as "Host" data. This way, the players/clients aren't able to access the images. '

When I use the export function of FG, I can select the individual elements such as story, images etc. but I can't find the 'Host' data option. Is this a legacy feature as the post was from 2007?

Any help will be gratefully received as we're struggling to play with stuff taking forever to upload / download!

Many thanks.

[dulux-oz]

Let's address your actual issue, as opposed to the "work around" you may have stumbled across.

First of all, if you're all in the same house are you running wired or wirelessly?

Second, how big are the images you're trying to send (in kb, mb, whatever)?

Third, what do you actually mean by "a bad time"? Can you be more specific?

Get back to me and we'll see how we go :)

Cheers

[Nylanfs]

I'm guessing based on the description supplied that a) they are on a wireless connection and/or using really big images.

[dulux-oz]

I'm guessing based on the description supplied that a) they are on a wireless connection and/or using really big images.

Yeap, that's what I'm suspecting. The Dial-Up Modem post was from 2007 - with the modern WAN/LAN setups these days they shouldn't be having the same types of problems as back then - unless they running wireless on the same WLAN and they've got really big images.

Anyway, let's wait and see what they come back with

[Lapsed]

Let's address your actual issue, as opposed to the "work around" you may have stumbled across.

First of all, if you're all in the same house are you running wired or wirelessly?

Second, how big are the images you're trying to send (in kb, mb, whatever)?

Third, what do you actually mean by "a bad time"? Can you be more specific?

Get back to me and we'll see how we go :)

Cheers

Hi dulux,

My friends are both in the same house as each other on a wireless connection to their router. I am at a separate location on ethernet cable to my router.

The images are all under 300Kb in size.

As to a 'bad time' I mean that whenever it's time to share an image to my players it takes a really long time for even the smallest of images to be shared to them which holds up the game while we sit and twiddle our virtual thumbs!

I was hoping that there was a way to resolve this or a method for which I could give them all the images etc ahead of time to avoid this issue. We have got around this in the past by me masking all the images, setting them to shared and starting the clients well before the game start time. This means there are potential spoilers for the players unless I rename all the maps and images, which then makes it harder for me to tell what is what when it comes to sharing them!

Many thanks for your help.

[Nylanfs]

That actually sound like they might be having an IP conflict on their end.

[Lapsed]

That actually sound like they might be having an IP conflict on their end.

Hi Nylanfs,

That will be easy enough to check, I'll see if I can both of them online tonight to troubleshoot this issue.

Many thanks.

[dulux-oz]

Another thing to try is see if you can get one or both of them to use a cable, and/or both to sit very near the Wireless Access Point.

What a lot of people don't know/understand is that Wireless is a shared medium, like the bad old days of Thinnet Ethernet and 10Mbps Ethernet. With Wireless only one of the connected computers (& that includes the Access Point) can transmit at a time and normally the transmission is not broadcast, but to a single receiver. Also, because of the way the Wireless communication was designed the further away from the Access Point the slower things are - and that includes the signal having to penetrate walls, fridges, etc, etc, etc, and the entire WLAN runs at the speed of theslowest connected computer. And don't forget that modern Smart Phones are the same as a computer (they are, actually, computers) if they've got their Wi-Fi turned on and they're connected to the WLAN as well - even if their just sitting there, they still effect things.

Another thing is that most Access Points operate at or near the frequency of Microwave Ovens, so that when a Microwave Over is cooking it can really affect Wireless Communications (the number of times I've seen the Wireless Access Point sitting next to the office Microwave - because that's a "central" place in most office floor plans - and then they wonder why their Wireless LAN is so terrible... ). And don't get me started with the issue of everyone in the neighborhood using the same or overlapping wireless channels - people, use Channel 1, 6 or 11: anything else and all you'll do is stuff up yourself and others - and some "cheap" Wireless Access Points default to Channel 3 - the manufacturers of such devices should be shot!

As an example, if you've got four people all connected to the same Access Point and three are sitting practically on top of it and the 4th is right on the edge of the range then not only is everyone getting at most one quarter of the signal, but it's 1/4 of the signal of the one furthest away (who's probably only running at 1Mbs anyway). And if all four have Smart Phones connected to the WLAN as well then each is only getting one-eighth of the speed.

I'm not saying any of these scenario applies in this case, but the only way to be sure that these aren't issues is to check.

Any questions please ask, and let us know what you find - we'll get this sorted, one way or another.

Cheers

[Lapsed]

Thanks again Dulux, hopefully tonight I'll get everyone on line with all the various devices turned off at their end. I'll do a test image share and then get one of them to plug in via Ethernet and repeat the test.

[Dr0W]

I have more or less the same connection speed and uploading is usually something that I have to be careful because of my slow upload.

Do you pre-load the images before you share them with your players? I usually ask my players to get connected half an hour before the game so I pre-load all the images and stuff I'm going to use.
In the past I've used to upload the cache file to a website and asked my players to download it so I wouldn't need to send them stuff while we play. The idea is having to upload as little as possible, only tokens and really small images as we play.

[brustmlj]

Ugh I just type a long reply and lost it.

[brustmlj]

Ugh I lost it again. Let's try one more time.

I would also like some more information on preloading data and the options available.

First off I am pretty new to FG and I am just getting my feet wet. I really and pleased to see the licensed content from Wizards and the quality I have seen with the modules. I have been working through the mechanics of running the game and all the preloaded encounters and the ability to drop them on the maps is just awesome.

I have a friend with a very slow internet connection. I would like to understand how the server and client interact when behavior on the maps occurs. If as a DM I scale, pan, hide, reveal, add tokens, remove tokens, from a map what is the interaction between the client and server. I would hope if the data, images, tokens are all pre-loaded then the server communicates simple instructions about how to display the map. I assume the BW for this is very low. I hope that the server is not rendering/re-rendering the images and pushing/re-pushing them to the client.

Additionally I would like to know what happens to the campaign data in the client when a session closes down. I would hope the data stays persistent in the client and thus when the next session starts up the pre-load event is a very light process.

I have investigated the pre-load feature and this seems to be exactly what I want with one exception. My friend with the miserable internet. I would hate to ask him to dial into the game 1-2 hours earlier just to get pre-loaded. It would be very simple for me to drop him a zip drive at lunch the day before we play.

There is another thread (admittedly quite old) that details exporting data for the "host" and providing it to the players pre-game. It seems this thread is avoiding re-iterating how to accomplish this. Is this mechanism still possible in FG? Can you detail how to accomplish it? If it is no longer available I recommend you archive the other thread and remove links to it so as to remove confusion.

[damned]

welcome brustmj

first if you are having issues when you type long emails - and i have experienced this on odd occasions - highlight the text and ctrl-c before you click post could be a good idea... if it doesnt save then you can ctrl-v straight back in...

when a player connects to your host computer it will download all the campaign elements that it doesnt have - this starts with rulesets, extensions, modules, images, story etc
the second time they connect it should download only the changed data

one thing that is making a big difference to this right now is when the 5e stuff gets an update... there is a 100+mb (depending on what books you have) of stuff that may have *changed* according to FG and it all has to redownload. logging on an hour early is one good way.

if you want to share a copy of the cache you need to do this:
connect to your computer from ANOTHER computer - preferably one without any content downloaded on it (rulesets, modules etc).
connect to your host computer and let it sync.
close FG and go to %appdata%/fantasy grounds/cache/ and find your campaign. transfer that to the player and store it in the same location....

in regards to 5e - if you get a 5e update between sessions - I would try to get your server up an hour early and ask all players to log on a bit early....

[brustmlj]

Ok this is great. Now is this only if pre-load is selected or does this always occur at this point?

Can you responds on the client server behavior of changing the things visible on a map? Are my assumptions correct?