Slow loading for players

[GR0PED]

Hey all I must be looking at the wrong keywords because I am struggling to find anything on people's problems with loading / preloadong images..

Either that or there aren't many rural players that use fg ~ my player base is all local and we all have a variety of internet capabilities.. but never to the point we would struggle to load images ~ when I share an image it can take over minutes for the players to load the image whilst I lagg so hard they cannot understand anything I say over discord.. is there a way to preload all the material without sharing then unsharing the material whilst everyone is afk in the server ?

[Andraax]

Before the players connect (or a short while before you're going to display the image), right click on the image, select share, then pre-load (icon looks like a spider web). This will load the image file to the player's computer as soon as they connect (or, if they're connected, when you do the pre-load). Then, later, when you actually go to display it, it will pop up immediately because it's already been downloaded to their computer.

[Nylanfs]

Also keep images below 2048 x 2048 and 1-2mb in size, and don't have too many tokens in your share folder.

[GR0PED]

It's curse of strahd adventure so all the images are pre done, it's great to know preloadong makes the players load it as they connect :) thanks guys

[Zacchaeus]

The capabilities of your players connection is not really too much the point but rather yours. Since all the players are uploading the image at once it can take a while (even in a non rural setting). As advised above you can preload but hen if they all connect at once you have the same issue. So if possible get your players to connect in advance of game time (they don't need to be sat at the screen - just connected to you). Also make sure that once you are done with an image - especially a map that is no longer needed, unshare it. It doesn't do any harm either for the players to clear their caches every so often.

[Trenloe]

It doesn't do any harm either for the players to clear their caches every so often.
If you're having slow download times then I wouldn't recommend clearing the player cache. Only if you have specific issues (errors, incorrect data, etc.).

The cache is specifically there so that data is downloaded once and then stored locally to be used when needed and not re-downloaded. If there is no cache data then the player will have to download it all again when they connect - which is useful to reset data if there has been issues, but can take a while to get all of the data, during which the GM side will be less responsive.

[LordEntrails]

One other thing that I'm not sure was made clear, since FG is single-threaded, when your players are downloading from you FG will become non-responsive or "hung". This is normal, as it's working solely on sharing the data. This is why the best suggestion is to pre-load the images you will want to share and have your players connect staggered before game time.

[Trenloe]

Just one gotcha with pre-loading images - the players will see the images immediately in their campaign Map/Image list and can open them. If you want to hide the image details, mask them before sharing so that the players can't view the details - then unmask when you want to show the details. If the name of the image is a bit of a give away, then use image identification and change the unidentified name to something generic.

[GR0PED]

Can I share then click the white p button (in images/maps) to take it away from viewable images to still share it ? Or will that make it unfownloadable?

[Andraax]

Can I share then click the white p button (in images/maps) to take it away from viewable images to still share it ? Or will that make it unfownloadable?

No; if you do that, then when you share it again, it will have to download again. If you have players that do stuff like that (I don't) then mask the whole image, and put some random garbage in the "unidentified" image name field, so they can't tell what it is.

[Zacchaeus]

That unshares it. So you would then have to reshape it.

[GR0PED]

No; if you do that, then when you share it again, it will have to download again. If you have players that do stuff like that (I don't) then mask the whole image, and put some random garbage in the "unidentified" image name field, so they can't tell what it is.

Ok thank you all for your help :) really appreciate it

[GR0PED]

Probably a stupid question but since your all being super helpful do you guys prep games by pitting all the tokens in before hand and make them visable as the game progresses roll20 style or as I have been doing just dropping them in as I think they are close to encountering them.

[LordEntrails]

Probably a stupid question but since your all being super helpful do you guys prep games by pitting all the tokens in before hand and make them visable as the game progresses roll20 style or as I have been doing just dropping them in as I think they are close to encountering them.
Nope :)

FG is setup to use Encounters.

First, before I explain, let me clarify something about FG. Tokens do NOT have stats or such attached to them. i.e. tokens are not he parent object. NPCs are the parent object and have tokens linked to them. The second thing to remember, is the golden rule of FG, Always place PC & NPC tokens onto a map from either the Combat Tracker or using the auto-placement from an encounter.

So, create Encounters. These allow you to pre-place tokens on a map. Then when you close/complete the Encounter the token will disappear from the map until you use the auto-placement icon on the encounter, then it will place the NPC(s) on the CT and on the map in one step.

What I do, is create a story entry. The story entry can be linked with a pin on a map. In a traditional dungeon crawl this is one story/pin per room or situation/event/encounter. The story entry has the description, any boxed text, a link to the encounter, the treasure parcel the map, and anything else relevant.

If you are creating your own adventures, I suggest you check out this thread; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?33538-Adventure-Module-Creation-Best-Practices

[GR0PED]

Nope :)

FG is setup to use Encounters.

First, before I explain, let me clarify something about FG. Tokens do NOT have stats or such attached to them. i.e. tokens are not he parent object. NPCs are the parent object and have tokens linked to them. The second thing to remember, is the golden rule of FG, Always place PC & NPC tokens onto a map from either the Combat Tracker or using the auto-placement from an encounter.

So, create Encounters. These allow you to pre-place tokens on a map. Then when you close/complete the Encounter the token will disappear from the map until you use the auto-placement icon on the encounter, then it will place the NPC(s) on the CT and on the map in one step.

What I do, is create a story entry. The story entry can be linked with a pin on a map. In a traditional dungeon crawl this is one story/pin per room or situation/event/encounter. The story entry has the description, any boxed text, a link to the encounter, the treasure parcel the map, and anything else relevant.

If you are creating your own adventures, I suggest you check out this thread; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?33538-Adventure-Module-Creation-Best-Practices

OH i was totally missing the fact that tokens were already placed but invisible to me... I was running curse of strahd and manually dropping everything in using the pins to find the encounters ^^;; the explanation is also super useful thanks again ! Should be a slightly better dm with everything that i have learned here today haha ~

[LordEntrails]

Glad to help.

If you can't ind the any answer that you need, just ask and someone will be glad to help out.