Images not sharing to some players

[maloy8920]

I just finished a session of DND and ran across an issue where 2 out of my 3 players were not able to see the maps i was sharing. They were able to see the tokens i was placing on the map but the actual map was just a gray screen. However 1 of my players was not having this issue and was able to see the map perfectly.
After further testing i came to the conclusion only my Hoard of the Dragon Queen module was not being shared properly. When I shared maps from other modules, they were able to see them just fine.
I'm not sure how sharing works but it seems like i have a problem just with the hoard of the dragon queen module. I tried "closing" the module and reloading it but that didnt help.

Help please. Thanks
I've attached a screenshot from one of the players who was having the problem

12352

[maloy8920]

I was able to fix it by nuking my cache and having my players do the same. To any newbies, you do this by clicking the small "nuke" symbol at the top right of the join game menu.

[JohnD]

Some of those map files are really big. What's your upload and what's the download of the three players?

[maloy8920]

I don't even know how to tell lol

[damned]

https://www.speedtest.net will give you a good guide to your upload and download speeds.

[Skellan]

Out of interest, what sort of upload/download speed is decent for FG?

[Nylanfs]

I "have" played on a 128k dial-up, and when FG first came out that is what was widely available. I would suspect that this is still doable, but would be an issue sith sharing images on the fly. For this I would definitely either pre-share everything or make a player DB.

[Griogre]

Out of interest, what sort of upload/download speed is decent for FG?

You can use standard DSL of 700ish down / 300ish up, it's just the WotC module maps are *huge* and if you have a DM/player with a flaky connection they may have problems. When you make your own maps you probably want them < 500K, if possible < 300K. I'd guess the WotC maps are multiple megabytes - they are very high rez and in at least 50 pixel squares.

Some things you can do if you have players without good connections, preload the map also, when the map is preloading don't do anything to alter the map image or mask until you get the spiderweb icon. Be aware that a player on a poor wireless connection might take a real minute or two to actually get the map.

[maloy8920]

The problem is solved but just to answer the question above; i ran speedtest.net and got 83mbps down and 76mbps up.

[damned]

The problem is solved but just to answer the question above; i ran speedtest.net and got 83mbps down and 76mbps up.

you will not have speed related issues from your end!


Out of interest, what sort of upload/download speed is decent for FG?

What is decent - I think anything from 1mbps and up is going to be ok providing you pay attention to image size. all the tips above about preloading images are good. if you are bringing in your own images aim for under 500kb per image - smaller the better. in many cases you can go as low as 40% jpg quality and still have a perfectly acceptable map.

Below 1mbps you really have to make sure you get your images right and get players to logon early - have your system online 45mins before game time so players can connect up and get synced prior to start.

[JohnD]

The problem is solved but just to answer the question above; i ran speedtest.net and got 83mbps down and 76mbps up.
Now, have your players do the same test and send you the results - you'll know who is always going to have trouble.

[Hecklerus Prime]

Try to think outside of the Fantasy Grounds box. We had a player who very, very rarely had the images load. We spent weeks trying to figure it out, thinking it was something with FG or his internet speed. Nada. In the end we found out that his router was giving his laptop low priority and his xBox high priority. So while we were trying to play game, his wife was streaming Netflix and hogging all of his bandwidth. We bumped up the priority for his laptop and BOOM! All images load fine.

Also, have the DM try to determine what maps will be used during the session. If they're not being used right away, the first thing he should do once everyone joins is preload the images. This can be done by right-clicking the image > sharing (speaking guy @ 9 o'clock) > preload (spiderweb @ 12 o'clock). Preload is especially useful for large images, since it give the slow computers time to download, but not display, the image.

[JohnD]

Try to think outside of the Fantasy Grounds box. We had a player who very, very rarely had the images load. We spent weeks trying to figure it out, thinking it was something with FG or his internet speed. Nada. In the end we found out that his router was giving his laptop low priority and his xBox high priority. So while we were trying to play game, his wife was streaming Netflix and hogging all of his bandwidth. We bumped up the priority for his laptop and BOOM! All images load fine.

Also, have the DM try to determine what maps will be used during the session. If they're not being used right away, the first thing he should do once everyone joins is preload the images. This can be done by right-clicking the image > sharing (speaking guy @ 9 o'clock) > preload (spiderweb @ 12 o'clock). Preload is especially useful for large images, since it give the slow computers time to download, but not display, the image.
All solid advice here. Funny how the wife messing up game sessions is a common occurrence for so many of us dudes.

[maloy8920]

So after continuing our session last night assuming our problem was fixed we ran into the problem again. The same 2 out of 3 players were not able to see maps i was sharing from hoard of the dragon queen. They logged out, cleared the cache, logged back in and it was fixed again. I'm glad that we have a solution for the problem but it's just weird that every time they join now they have to clear their cache to see the maps. It's even weirder that it's only 2 out of my 3 players.

[damned]

are they connected via wifi? try using a LAN cable or moving closer to the WiFi.

[maloy8920]

Ill have them try an Ethernet cable tomorrow in addition to running a speedtest to see if it's their connection. I would think if it was in fact a connection issue, the problem would continue and not be fixable by simply clearing a cache. It seems to me like when the cache is being created its being corrupted or something. I'm just speculating though, I dont know the inner workings of fantasy grounds. Like I said I'll see if I can rule out the connection issue tomorrow. Thanks

[damned]

in this instance i think its less likely a speed issue and more likely a reliability issue...

have them run a static ping to their router/gateway - the command might look like this:
ping 192.168.0.1 -t where 192.168.0.1 is the router address
and in another window run
ping 8.8.8.8 -t
are you getting many dropouts?
when one starts dropping out are they both dropping out?
as a rough guide you should get less than 1 in 1000 dropouts for the router and less than 1 in 200 dropouts for 8.8.8.8

[maloy8920]

Ill have them try this as well.

[Hecklerus Prime]

I'm not sure if it matters as far as how images are loaded, but I'd also double check that everyone is using the current version of the program.

I'm by no means a connectivity expert, but could it perhaps be that their routers are assigning them different internal IPs and this is affecting the images somehow? I ask because I had some issues as a DM with getting people to join my games and the fix was to assign a static internal IP to my desktop. Anyone with more experience have any thoughts on that? Might be worth looking into just to eliminate a variable.

[Hecklerus Prime]

I'm playing a session right now and one of my newer players says that he has to run FG as an Administrator in Windows to get images to load. So there's that.

[Trenloe]

I'm playing a session right now and one of my newer players says that he has to run FG as an Administrator in Windows to get images to load. So there's that.
That'll be due to the player cache file, where the shared images (and other data) is stored, not being able to be created on the local drive due to file access issues. This might be due to installing in a non-default location, or due to Windows applying some file access restrictions. Running specifically as Administrator will get around this issue.