Stability Tips & Number of Players?

[Diana]

Tonight I had a record number of players (6 + GM) and major stability issues. The GM Client did not show the images in the image folder or all of the token bags in the token folder. The GM client machine also stopped showing text and dice rolls, though maps, text, and rolls still showed for players. Restarting the game seemed to fix these issues.

One player could not get his local character's information to persist in game after crashing out repeatedly due to connection issues.

I've concluded from this that the ideal number for me to host is probably four to five, and I will probably build a new version of my campaign because there may be corruption in this one due player connection's issues. I've hosted a total of four FG sessions. With four or fewer players, the hosting machine has been rock stable, but five or more, either players or I have had stability issues.

My computer has one GB of RAM, I host on DSL, and I don't run other programs except a firewall and Ventrilo, so I am very surprised to encounter such strange stability issues. The same computer and DSL can host a larger number of players for a DMed Neverwinter Nights 1 game without difficulty.

Would anyone have any further tips about how best to achieve Fantasy Grounds stability?

Thank you,

Diana

[Stuart]

I suspect many stability issues are local problems; I run three groups regularly with 7 players and this in itself does not cause problems on my machine (same config as yours pretty much) and in a couple of sessions I had 8 players.

Tokens seem to cause more problems than anuthing else on my machine.

[Toadwart]

-Backup your campaign files before/after each session. FG does create a backup that can be restored if the main db.xml file is corrupted (which I have only seen happen once, when my PC completely froze during a game and had to be reset) However, I'm not sure how often that backup gets created (before every game?) so am not sure how 'up-to-date' it is.

-Set up a hotkey for "/save" and use it as soon as anyone crashes out (often a crashed player re-joining will kick off other players and/or bring the host down)
I'll also take a screenshot at that point too if in the middle of combat. Makes it easier to set the map/combat tracker back up as it was if the host crashes.

-Send cash, lurve, and your first born child (but only if trained in c++ programming) to Smiteworks and make offerings (dice and old charactersheets) to the gods of v2.0

[Griogre]

No comfort, but I almost never crash when running a server in my Friday Night Game. I don't think I have crashed in months. Now in my Saturday pick up game I crash about once a month or so. I agree absolutely with Stuart, I also believe that most problems (with a few exceptions) start at the client side and migrate over to the server.

Should you believe the server has become unstable the best thing to do if you are not in the middle of a fight is to tell everyone to log out then shut the server down and restart. Some obvious signs of an unstable server are hps not in synch, as well as duplicate pointers or tokens.

I have to tell you, I believe the number one thing leading to crashes is players messing around with stuff in their FG folders. Try telling you players not to touch or open anything in their folders.

Another thing is tell players not to "lock down" their maps. IE the player can scroll the map over and right click to "stick" it in place. The problem with this is if the DM moves the view while the player has locked the map, FG often crashes.

Also tell them not to download movies or do anything else that will use up all their bandwidth.

2.0 is suppose to be a big improvement in stability.