Players having Issues

[gEiStToG]

Good Morning! A few issues I would love to see if anyone has a solution for them...

First, a prospect player said that installing the program broke their computer and that they had instant memory crashes and even after restarts, their computer seemed broke until they deleted every trace of fantasy grounds. They got really pissed at me for having them install a program that destroyed their PC. So they won't install the program (yet along run it as an admin) because they don't trust it and say the program just screams intrusive and such and such..........but I can't fathom that it's actually the programs fault right? Just happened to have computer crashes during the install?

Second. One of my players had full on memory crashes which made their computer lock up during a session and even after restarting, their computer continued to lock up and they tried uninstalling fantasy grounds and the installer wouldn't uninstall it. Then their machine continued to stay locked up and continued giving them issues even after, which is making them like the first person, not trust the program and say it sketchy etc etc and how they refuse to run it as an admin because of the problems their computer had without running it as an admin, yet alone what they imagine they'd have to deal with if they ran it as an admin.

Then this player reinstalled fantasy grounds and said its even sketchier because they didn't have to re enter their log on and password in the settings because it pre populated the field even though they uninstalled the program. And when they were installing it the second time, the installer seemingly ran forever and they had to restart it 5 times before it actually installed. Then they had the same issues trying to run the update.

So third and final issue, now that the one player has gotten it reinstalled, we are going to try our next session and I am not going to share anything with the players except the map for moving their tokens on it for fear of causing a memory crash on the one player again. Which, this player is running 64 bit (and please don't say run the program as an admin, she won't trust the program enough to do that). I can provide her computer specs if its needed.

So any thing able to be done to fix these issues?

Thank you!

[Zacchaeus]

So in all cases these players just tried to install FG and had crashes or did they install it successfully and it was only when joining your game that the crashes began?

There is no reason at all why FG should crash at the install stage and I haven't heard of anything like this ever.

[damned]

Hi and welcome gEiStToG

Firstly you should not run Fantasy Grounds as Admin.
You can do it as a test to determine if there are permissions issues causing issues but you shouldnt do it as your normal method.
Why not?
Because its unnecessary on a properly configured system.
If FG doesnt run without you Running as Admin - fix the permissions issues instead.
Generally if you have to run as Admin then you may have installed to a non default location that you dont have permissions to or your user profile is already damaged.

To memory issues.
Export your current PCs as XML.
Start a new campaign and re-import them.
Load only the PHB and whatever adventure you are running.

Have one player connect and have them check their memory usage.

As for the computers going fubar after an FG install...
I have literally installed and troubleshot FG installations and connections on maybe two hundred different computers.
I have one time seen an FG install crash and even crash the computer. The user admitted he had many issues with the computer.
He installed FG when he replaced his computer later on without issues.

Of course its absolutely possible that FG is crashing their computers.
Computers and software are incredibly complex and there are trillions of combinations of configurations so its very likely some combinations are not compatible...

However in my experience the computers likely already have issues if they are crashing just on install or launch.
The easiest thing you could try is to have one of them create a new user on their computer.
Log in as that new user and try installing FG again.
If that user account can run FG it is just a damaged user profile.
If that user still cannot run FG then there are likely deeper issues on the computer.

In regards to the user information being saved...
It is very common practice for applications when they uninstall to not remove data from the registry.
FG license info is stored in the registry.

[gEiStToG]

Exactly what I said to them both about these issues..couldn't find anything about it.

First player (the prospect) couldn't get past the install and raged very loudly for a while and actually quit talking to me because she thinks I purposely tried to destroy her baby by having her install malicious software on it since her computer wouldn't even turn on after trying to install it.........

Second player did install and play for a few sessions without many issues (aside from lag when loading a module). But after last weeks session she had her computer totally lock up on her due to running out of memory and when she restarted, she had memory issues still and tried to uninstall the software but uninstall didn't work until after a few tries when she got it to work.

Second player then waited a few days to reinstall, had issues reinstalling because it kept locking up on her and or never actually progressing in the install (she said it installed forever multiple times before she force quit it because it clearly wasn't installing anything) and when she finally got it to reinstall, after pointing out how sketchy it is that she uninstalled the program but when she reinstalled it, her log on info was still inside it) she joined my server to check her computers memory and she loaded the DnD 5E PHB and noted that her memory usage went up to 1gig just from the PHB being loaded. But that the program didn't cause her to crash again. So if this stays working, the fix I proposed is I screenshot and share images to discord instead of into FG, and she not load any books in game ever again and just manually type in the ability names to her skills and spells from her real life books.

[gEiStToG]

Thank you damned, I'll pass the info on to the current player having issues! :D I'll update if any of them work...and yes I did tell her about the registry! And how FG has been around for over 10 years so I doubt its malicious malware.

[gEiStToG]

Zacchaeus, my bad for missing your other question. IN regards to crashing when joining my game, the first one couldn't get past the install (I legit think she built her pc from scratch badly and blamed me for it dying right as she tried to right to its drive, which she even admitted later she had to replace it..............) but the second one had no issues connecting to me for a few weeks until last week when she got ran out of memory issues.

[damned]

There are absolutely users experiencing memory issues in situations where:

1. typically they are using newer reference material like the 5e, Call of Cthulhu and Pathfinder stuff - some of the Savage Worlds and Castles and Crusades stuff has also been reworked. Much easier to use but more memory hungry.
2. they may be on a low spec'd machine - 32bit typically.
3. the GM has shared unneccesary resources - dont share DMG, MM or Adventure Module. Dont share all of XgtE, Volos, SCAG and PHB - just because you can... if its not needed close it
4. dont share big images - smaller than 2048px in any direction is a good guide - much smaller for non map images.
5. dont share lots of tokens and dont even load lots of tokens

Yes that sounds a bit miserly but its not really.

[gEiStToG]

I am going to attempt all that. If a player wants info from a source book other than the PHB, they can manually type it in and if they spell it right, the game will still work when they drag it to the chat box to cast or use right?

And the player that is having current issues is running 64 bit (I saw that the devs are making a 64 bit version but haven't yet) and says her 32 bit excel gives her the same issues as the FG program if the excel file is too large which led her to think the issue is 64 bit versus 32.

[Zacchaeus]

If the player who joined was running fine and then had memory issues that point to sharing too much with the players. You can safely share all the player only material (PHB, Volo, XGtE etc) without issues but what else are you sharing? Large maps? Tokens? things that the player should not see like the DMG or MM?

How much memory is FG using on the players machine when it is running?

As damned says above; create a new campaign with nothing shared; get a player to join and check what memory is being used by FG. Then you can gradually add shared stuff. If memory use starts to get to the 3Gb mark that's when you will begin to see issues.

[Trenloe]

Also ask the player to clear their cache (click the "nuke" button in the top right of the "Join Game" screen). This will clear out any old, maybe problematic, data on the player side - it will mean all data will be downloaded to that player again.

[JohnD]

Might help to know what the system specs are of the systems that are having issues.

[gEiStToG]

Might help to know what the system specs are of the systems that are having issues.

Here you go!

So update, my apologies on the delay since our game was Saturday, but got busy...

Her using the fresh restart and playing on a fresh campaign where only the current adventure and PHB was loaded, showed significant memory improvements and she had no issues playing.