4th Edition Ruleset specific issues

[spite]

So I've titled this 4e specific as that is pretty much the only ruleset I use FG for.

Firstly:
LOS makes the maps incredibly laggy and slow. I drag a tile and it's moving like it's in slow motion, that is if it doesn't outright freeze or crash Fantasy Grounds which is over 3/4 of the time. No extensions loaded. Only one module loaded (FG maps) and using one map from assets.

Large modules of NPCs, powers, feats etc cannot be loaded without absolutely nuking performance.
- 4th Edition as around 5000 NPCs that can be loaded from the compendium modules, and several thousand items in each of Powers, Feats, and Items. These would load with virtually no issue in FGC, and could be searched and used concurrently with no performance issues. In FGU this appears to no longer be the case, with everything seemingly loaded into memory at all times. Having these three modules loaded (but not open) sends memory usage over 5gb. FGC manages this under 500mb.
While the obvious response to this is "have smaller modules" that is not so easy. The compendium is no longer available, and as such there is no longer any way to make a module using the old scraper, and short of hand building every NPC again, hand coding every item and item template, and hand writing every feat, there is no way to get the content back to Fantasy Grounds. Which would make 4e virtually unusable (because there is no official content) for Unity over FGC.

It's worth noting that this is also using my "slim" versions of those modules that have no art, no tokens, nothing that would inflate it other than the text.



PC specs:
AMD 7 2700
DDR4 16gb RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
FG is running on an SSD

[LordEntrails]

Which map?

Performance of large lists are known issue.

Please read the stickies at the top of this forum to save yourself time and so that you know which functions are not yet implemented and which issues are known. Also please check the forum for similar issues before starting a new thread, and add any new and relevant infomation to those threads.

This will help reduce the amount of time it takes SmiteWorks to identify and track issues and gives them more time for development.

[spite]

Yup I read them, and the Known Items thread doesn't actually mention that at all. Other performance threads I could find were mainly around maps, which I did also add my details into but also wanted it posted with the performance issues I was experiencing with modules as well.

The map in question was the Castle Naerytar ground floor map. I had only put in 14 points of LOS walls and even that was enough to nuke it. The file itself was 1688x1250 resolution

[spite]

Edit: double post!

[Moon Wizard]

FGU will not handle thousands of items in campaign lists well at this time on any platform. (It's one of the performance areas we're planning to look at.)

I actually think that the majority of your issues are related to overall performance of the application.
* Does your computer also have an onboard graphics card?
* Can you use the graphics or NVidia control panel to specify which graphics card that FGU should run with?

Regards,
JPG

[spite]

I do have an onboard, but I have checked Windows settings, and also in NVIDIA control panel and it is definitely utilising the correct GPU.
With nothing loaded this is the program's draw is https://puu.sh/FlN8o/8dfc2b3464.jpg. Memory seems really really high

[Moon Wizard]

Can you try in a brand new 4E campaign with no extensions?
Can you try turning off any extensions for the current campaign, and checking the memory usage?
Also, can you try removing any custom tokens, modules and extensions completely from the FGU data folder? (Or rename data folder and do a new update/install?)


When I run my basic 4E test campaign on my development machine, I'm only getting ~370MB. So, there is something eating up a ton of memory; and that's probably part of the problem. We just need to identify what is causing it. Removing any custom material is the first step to figuring this out.

Regards,
JPG

[spite]

Will do a full reinstall fresh now and get back to ya shortly

[gamerhawaii]

Not that this is the FGU problem, but just for testing, you can actually use the existing 4E parser to make smaller modules IF you saved off the text files it downloaded. If you did, you can copy the file "All Valid Sources.txt" to "Valid Sources.txt" and then remove all the sources you do not want. For example, for a module with just the new monsters, keep the two lines for "Monster Vault" and delete all others. Then start the parser, enter the "Required Module Info", and select the downloaded text file(s). Then pick "Parse Files & Create Module" and a new module with all entries that are not in one of the sources in "Valid Sources.txt" will be gone. (Alternately, if you saved off the text files and have them as separate files (e.g., by record type such as feats, items, etc.), you can do the same thing without limiting to specific sources. The parser can create new modules from just the text files.)

[spite]

Yea I've been fiddling around with the text files I had when I did my modules to try exactly that. Thanks for the tip, will try to get some ideas for splitting off feats and powers etc (maybe by class/tier or something similar). Though I think that'll be considerably more difficult.

[spite]

Fresh install does appear to make an improvement Moon. The draw on an empty unutilised 4e campaign is around 400mb.
The map LOS performance is still extremely poor, and while doing so, the GPU and CPU draw doesnt go above 5-10% so not sure why it's doing that. Maybe the fact it's a sort of large map?
I'm going to work on making smaller modules for the 4e stuff. Are the limitations on list management somewhat resolved when opening more modules if they're smaller? Or will opening all the content be impossible at present?

[Moon Wizard]

How big is this map in pixel dimensions? Is the map available online somewhere for us to test? Is it only this map?

Regards,
JPG

[spite]

This map was 2494x1875
Tested with a slightly smaller 1332x1178. It was improved in performance but still after a few minutes of fiddling with LOS and layers it hard locked FGU which I left for 15minutes before giving up and closing via task manager.
32282

And
32283

[Moon Wizard]

I'll ask Carl if he has any ideas for anything else to think of.

Regards,
JPG

[Moon Wizard]

Just asked Carl. He was saying that the size of the image does not affect LoS performance, just the complexity and number of tokens. Do you have a sample campaign that you can zip up and provide which causes the big performance hits (without all the module data loaded)?

Regards,
JPG

[spite]

Yup, here's the one I have freshly made since my reinstall. 32295

[Moon Wizard]

Thanks, I've forwarded on to Carl to see if he can spot anything and/or verify whether he sees performance issues as well.

Regards,
JPG

[Shimrath]

Hello spite!

One of the other 4E DMs here. . .are you running 4E on Unity, and if so, how is it going?

Thinking about moving to Unity for my 4E game, but wanted to test the water a bit before making the leap. . .

Thanks,
Shimrath.

[kevininrussia]

Hello spite!

One of the other 4E DMs here. . .are you running 4E on Unity, and if so, how is it going?

Thinking about moving to Unity for my 4E game, but wanted to test the water a bit before making the leap. . .

Thanks,
Shimrath.

I run a 4e game every week for some months now. 5 players on average. Have not run into any issues in the past month.

[spite]

I've been running on FGC for the last while. Haven't made the full switch to Unity, waiting for lists to not lag everything out got me fatigued with bothering to try so I just stopped.

[kevininrussia]

I've been running on FGC for the last while. Haven't made the full switch to Unity, waiting for lists to not lag everything out got me fatigued with bothering to try so I just stopped.

Have you tried Unity lately? They did a major update a month or two ago that reduced the list lag significantly. It was one of my biggest complaints but now its very usable and I rarely experience any significant lag.

[spite]

Just tried it today.
Still have list issues with Items and with Monsters with my modules.
And with the removed compendium, I can no longer make smaller modules :P

[Shimrath]

Thank you both for your field reports!

I guess i'll just have to test it out one of these days. . .

-Shimrath.