Dial-Up

[Yenooc]

Here's a quick question for those of you in the know:

Is there any technical problem with dial-up connections and FG? And with dial-up players joining in with those using high-speed connections?

One of the guys soon to join my group lives in a rural area with nothing but dial-up available (as far as he knows). I'd like to learn of any potential problems before we are confronted with them in reality.

Thanks

[Yenooc]

Being the backwards person that I am :o I did a search on dial-up after posting my question, above. I found some threads with posts indicating that slowness in uploading maps for a DM using dial-up could be an annoyance, but that otherwise it's not a big problem.

If there's something else I should know, please educate me. :D

[richvalle]

Maps and images will load slow for that client. The DM doing a 'preload' on images will help in this regard. Start it up as soon as you know the image will be needed.

There were some ideas that having someone with a slow dial up connection on at the same time as fast lines causes isses with FG on the host side. Random people getting logged off/crashes or token weirdness. I don't think that was ever verified though.

If speed becomes an issue you can zip up the images needed before a game and email them to him the day before the game with instructions on where to unzip them. You'll have to trust that he won't peek at them. Note: Not 100% this works as FG might still try to download those files.

rv

[Yenooc]

Gracias again, Senor Richvalle. ;)

[Griogre]

Consider you maps carefully. They are normally the biggest thing you push out to a player. Do what you need to to keep them small file sizes. You want the files less than 100k, half that if you can. If you have large maps with high detail and lots of colors you may be surprised how big they are. The file format matters here. FYI just about the abosolute smallest maps are the line maps you and your players draw on the fly inside of FG.

As richvalle mentioned on the slow connection possibly causing stabilty problems. When you preload an image don't do anything with it at all once you send it out - until you get the "spider web" that says it was successfully sent. Tell your players to be alert to error messages that say file "so and so" failed to transfer. Also keep in mind the map mask is a seperate file and don't use it if you can avoid it (don't be paranoid about this - but if you really don't need it - don't use it).

[Yenooc]

Thanks, Griogre--I'll keep all those things in mind. I guess I'll have to put off using all those pretty maps I've made with Dundjinni when connected to a dial-up player. ;)

[TarynWinterblade]

Thanks, Griogre--I'll keep all those things in mind. I guess I'll have to put off using all those pretty maps I've made with Dundjinni when connected to a dial-up player. ;)

I wouldn't worry too much about pretty maps and dial-up players. My group has been playing with a dial-up user for a long time now with only minimal problem. After the first few sessions, you start to figure out ways to minimize any downtime.

My maps tend to be ~1 MB (rather largeish jpegs) and if you can preload them ahead of time (the session before the one you want to use it in is perfect) then there's no problem at all.

[Yenooc]

Thanks, TarynWinterblade--We'll be pushing our limits when we link to the dial-up in a couple weeks (perhaps, I hope, after 2.0 is released :D ), and we'll see how far we can go.

[Griogre]

One of the unsaid things about 2.0 is that some of its "new" features probably require more bandwidth usage though not necessarily a lot. Dial up users would feel the impact of this more.