Questions about Module Loading and Sharing Images

[ironsplitter]

Hi everyone,

I'm DM'ing a Fantasy Grounds Classic game. A couple of my players have older hardware and it takes quite a long time for them to load modules and to receive shared images. I have a few questions below:

1) It seems that once players load modules the first time, the modules are cached forevermore? Meaning, when players log in at a later date for another game session, they don't have to go through the process of 'loading the modules' all over again, correct?

2) During my previous session, while some players were waiting for their images to load, I read up on pre-loading images. This certainly worked for the later maps we were using in the game. For next time, I was considering having the players' with older hardware log in about fifteen minutes before everyone else so I could start the pre-image load for them. However, do I have to wait for this set of people to all log in before I start pre-loading for the lot OR, as soon as the first player joins, can I start pre-loading for them and when the next player joins invoke another pre-load?

It doesn't seem there is a method to choose a particular player for pre-loading. (As opposed to normal sharing when I can drag the image to their portrait).

3) Another pre-loading question: Is there an indicator somewhere that displays the status of the pre-load so I know when it is finished for my players?

Thanks!

[Griogre]

Hi everyone,

I'm DM'ing a Fantasy Grounds Classic game. A couple of my players have older hardware and it takes quite a long time for them to load modules and to receive shared images. I have a few questions below:

1) It seems that once players load modules the first time, the modules are cached forevermore? Meaning, when players log in at a later date for another game session, they don't have to go through the process of 'loading the modules' all over again, correct?

Correct, maps along with everything else shared, go into the cache and stay there. Should someone's cache get corrupt and they need to "Nuke" it you would have to share images again.


2) During my previous session, while some players were waiting for their images to load, I read up on pre-loading images. This certainly worked for the later maps we were using in the game. For next time, I was considering having the players' with older hardware log in about fifteen minutes before everyone else so I could start the pre-image load for them. However, do I have to wait for this set of people to all log in before I start pre-loading for the lot OR, as soon as the first player joins, can I start pre-loading for them and when the next player joins invoke another pre-load?

It doesn't seem there is a method to choose a particular player for pre-loading. (As opposed to normal sharing when I can drag the image to their portrait).

I would wait for all of them to log in before the share. I found it probamatical to start to pre-load for someone have them still loading and then have someone else join then pre-load again on large maps. I also found you don't want to mess with the map at all until it complete's preloading.


3) Another pre-loading question: Is there an indicator somewhere that displays the status of the pre-load so I know when it is finished for my players?

Thanks!

It been a while but there use to be a "Spider Web Icon" on the map when the map was preloaded. But I think it was when everyone connected was preloaded. If some have the map preloaded and some don't I'm not sure it will show.

Just a few things about pre-loading, obviously players can open those maps so don't forget to mask them before the preload if you don't want them to see them. And for the same reason make sure you Map Names aren't spoilers. Though you can have fun with this: "Ambush on Third Watch" is a fine name for an Inn :)

[ironsplitter]

That's all good to hear. Yeah, I was careful to mask maps and change map titles - the title of the image is certainly something to think about.

I've been doing some tests by connecting to my game as a player with another FG client (over localhost), and it appears that any image that I had earlier marked as 'pre-loaded' is automatically downloaded to my test client upon connection, without me having to invoke the pre-load on the GM side.

So I've marked several images / maps that we may use in the next session as 'pre-loaded' and have asked all my players to log into the game (which I just keep up all the time) at their convenience before the next session so that the preloaded images will download. Hopefully that will work, we'll see.