Map and Mask performance

[etropic]

Greetings !

Can anyone comment on best practices for map and mask performance?

For instance, how does the mask work from a network performance perspective? Is there a hit to making lots of small reveals? Does that have a negative impact? Does the uniformity of the reveal have a hit? (free form vs square reveal).

Also, what is an appropriate map size? Is there a point of diminishing return? Is it better to have multiple maps that add up to the same size as a single larger map? Is one more efficient?

I ask this in relation to how FG handles these things to make sure I'm not causing undo burden on folks with spotty network or slower computers.

Any tips are appreciated!

etro

[Zacchaeus]

I can't give you technical details, but generally smaller maps are faster to upload than large ones but that probably depends to some extent on your connection speed.

I haven't found any performance hit on any maps on any occasion on any kind of masking or unmasking whether large, small or anything in between.

[Trenloe]

The key thing is file size, as FG transfers the whole image file to the players. A compressed JPG can be bigger dimensionally than an uncompressed file but still be smaller in file size. Try to keep your map file sizes well below 1MB, the smaller the better. Use compressed JPG for your image/map files. Experiment with JPG quality, 55-75 works OK - the lower the quality number the smaller the file, but you will begin to lose image data and the map/image will begin to look pixelated so you'll get to a point where you don't want to go any lower in quality.

Masking is a small black/white image that is transferred to the players from the GM side. You can see these in the campaign \maskedimages directory (don't mess around with these - leave FG to manage them). The more complex the mask the larger the mask file will be, but even a complex mask will only be a few dozen KB in size, so it's usually not an issue. But, if you constantly make minor changes to a complex map, then the transfer of the masked file could add up - if you're encountering slow mask issues then either keep the changes to a minimum, or briefly unshare the map and then reshare after doing all the mask work. But the need for this should be fairly rare.