Pointers losing control

[Mardragon7]

Hi All,

Haven't ran a session for a while and reinstalled everything last week.

Played first session yesterday.

We tend to use pointers to represent Torch and Darkvision, as examples and bring them with the party as they explore.

I don't remember this being an issue, but for the player yesterday he could use the pointers for a while, but in a few minutes, they lost their small squares, so he could no longer interact with them.

We had to remove and recreate them, and then they work for a few minutes again. Player creates his pointers.

Any idea why this would be? I can't find anything anywhere about it.

Thank you in advance.

[LordEntrails]

What type of pointers? The 'quick' ones created with right/left mouse combo or the 'permanent' (until deleted) ones off the right mouse radial menu?
What Extensions do you have loaded?
What is the process size of fantasygrounds.exe on the player client?

[Mardragon7]

Hi, Thank you for responding.

The ones player created out of the radial menu, but I believe he tried the quick one with right and left too.

Extensions are DOE sound, base, weather.

Versatile and Off Hand Weapon Handling by Stalker

Extension: 5E - Curse of Strahd Extension v0.2
Visit (LINK) for more gaming goodness

Process size I guess I will have to come back with when we get a chance to connect again.

[LordEntrails]

If using the quick pointers, make sure they are not accidentally deleting them (I do that all the time). I don't know if any of those extensions could be causing the problem, but I don't think so (but its possible). On process size, that's either 1.3 or 3 GB, depending if they are using Windows 32 bit or 64 bit.

[Mardragon7]

HI, thanks again.

Yeah, they are not deleting them, cos that is our fix to the issue. I (as DM) delete all pointers on map, with the radial command, and then players recreate them(with radial) to move onwards.

What are we looking for with process size when we connect again? I notice I have 32 bit myself, is it a problem if he has different?

[LordEntrails]

It's not a problem if GM and players are running different version of Windows. If you right click on your task bar, you have an option to "Start Task Manager". Sort that by "Memory" so the high use things are on top. If fantasygrounds.exe approached 1.3GB it will start to become unstable (this is an issue with 32 bit Windows, not actually FG, and effects any process that gets that large). At that point what you need to do is the image unshare and player cache deleting.

[Mardragon7]

Right. Thanks.

Sitting alone I can see it is at 641,7 mb during preparations.

I'll check what we are at when we are connected each of us.

Cheers

[LordEntrails]

Player and GM applications handle memory differently, player client is less efficient and may be the issue. Good luck and let us know. You could also tryy Discord and see if anyone can test with you. (I' can't at the moment.)

[Mardragon7]

Hi again,

We just had a super short session, to get his memory while we played a little with pointers. Memory sat at around 300-500 for player and 1,100 for me, both 32 bit. I had a gazillion other unecessay stuff up at the time. Closing down loads of stuff, it sits for me at 600

Could it cause a conflict if he carried the same color as DM? As it affect pointers and dice color?

We finished where he had only blue pointers and we did it for a bit without having problems, but we had to stop with RL. Maybe just luck that it lasted.

Is there a reason color could be a problem? Is there something where if a character becomes the owner of a pointer, not the player of the character? 1 player can be in charge of up to 5 characters in our games.

We will be having extended sessions on the weekend and will learn more.

Thanks again.

[Zacchaeus]

Each player can have a different colour and each character that the player controls can also have a different colour. If your players are controlling 5 characters ther could well be all sorts of conflicts and confusion if each character doesn't have their own colour and the colour is different from the DMs. Sounds like possibly there is some confusion because the colours are the same and someone is moving the wrong thing. I'm not sure of course never really had this issue since pointers etc usually get deleted once their purpose has been served.

[LordEntrails]

Hmm, ok, not a memory issue then.

Color... interesting thought. I don't know. Each character can have it's own color set, and then each client/player can control more than one character, but only one character can be active at any given time. (By setting each character to different colors, it's easy to know which character you have active.) The color does affect pointers, and maybe only the active character can delete a pointer they made? I don't know, I've never tried.

[Mardragon7]

Thank you all for your assistance :)

We got 3 hours in without a repeat of our problems.

We did apply seperate color code to all characters and seperate from DM. Played smoothly. All he had to do was swap back to the "correct color owner" of the pointer to move it.

Torch and Darkvision pointers are permanent tools for us during exploring, so we never delete them.

Happy hunting!