FGU - "Blue donut of death" and "Not Responding"

[Aiddar]

Hi there.

Having major connectivity issues. Using FGU with the default cloud option (I am the DM, with an Ultimate license - the others (3 of them) are players with the free licence).

There have been lagginess issues since the major update last week, but tonight it was unusable.

The first round of combat seems to go OK, but thereafter, extremely laggy. My players keep getting "Not responding" or the blue donuts of death, as it looks to timeout. As the DM, I also seem to have the same issue. After a few mins, I then get a "Not Responding" as well, and it then crashes out. When we restart, I get an error about "Save Points", and the round seems to reset to the previous round...

At a guess, I would suggest that at the end of each round a restore point is created on the cloud, but there seems to be a problem with the save? I appreciate I am shooting in the dark, but is it possible there is a load balanced server not responding? That might explain the fact that it sometimes works, the timeouts and lagginess?

Any ideas appreciated - we had to cancel the game after the 6th restart (what can I say? We are persistent - to a point, anyway :-) )

Thanks!

Paul

[Moon Wizard]

Can you please provide a copy of your campaign folder zipped up for review?

Thanks,
JPG

[Aiddar]

Hi there - happy to do so (I am running the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, nothing else for this game) - however (sorry to be dense!!) can you tell me where to find it? And do I then just email you, PM you etc?

[LordEntrails]

On the FGU start screen is a folder. Inside that folder is a folder called campaigns. Inside there is a folder with your campaign name on it. Zip that folder up and place on a shared drive somewhere. Then email [email protected] and link this thread as well as a link to the shared zip folder. You can try email the zip file direct, but it might be too large to email.

[Aiddar]

Thank you - appreciate the rapid response!! Done, and email sent to support.

Cheers!

Paul

[Aiddar]

Hmmm - did a reply that seemed to vanish - oh well! Trying again....

As a workaround, I tried to reduce the server/comms load by removing all the historic map/image shares that were still in use (about 20-30 removed). When we tried to play last night, it was (barely) usable - we had the game, and only had 3 resets. We still got the blue donut while it looked like the system was struggling, and also a number of "not responding" (including on my side, as DM) messages. We struggled through, played the game, and it SEEMED to be better than the other night, but the deletion of the additional images my be causal, or completely co-incidental - no way for me to know, but thought it worth passing the info. over.

Are there any options to play "locally" as opposed to the cloud version? Is that a possible workaround at all?

Thank you!

Paul

[LordEntrails]

Are there any options to play "locally" as opposed to the cloud version? Is that a possible workaround at all?

On the start screen, change from Cloud to LAN. You will need to insure that port 1802 UDP is or can be forwarded from your public IP to your host computer.

[Briarios]

I’m DMing with an Ultimate license as well, having the same problem. Follow up to the post immediately above... LAN = Local Area Network... would that mean all the users have to be on the same network (mine?) - or just that I’m hosting them from my network? (So sorry, I know this is a newb Q)

[LordEntrails]

I’m DMing with an Ultimate license as well, having the same problem. Follow up to the post immediately above... LAN = Local Area Network... would that mean all the users have to be on the same network (mine?) - or just that I’m hosting them from my network? (So sorry, I know this is a newb Q)
No, users do not need to be on the same LAN for a LAN game to work. Perhaps the name is misleading. What a LAN game does require though is that the host/GMs network allow UDP connections via port 1802 from the public IP address to the host computer. It may be solved with your modem using UPnP, or it may require you to manually configure port forwarding.

[Aiddar]

Hi there.

Latest update. We ran a game last night, following the update deployed yesterday. The result was far better than we anticipated - we had two issues of "not responding" and a couple of blue donuts, but for about 10 secs or so. Overall, happy gamers - seemed to play well (we continued to use the default "cloud" installation).

I do not know if the reason it worked was because of the patch, because there would probably have been far fewer overall users on the system on a Wednesday evening (UK time) thus a much reduced server load, or whether sunspot activity just decreased :-)

In any case, for me at least, it now looks to be usable again (not perfect, but usable) - yay!!

Paul

[Moon Wizard]

@Aiddar,

Thanks for the campaign folder sent to support. I noticed in the campaign data that you have about a dozen modules loaded. With the current performance limitations within FGU, I would recommend unloading any modules you personally as a GM don't strictly need to have open during play. (i.e. XGtE, EE Player, DMG Player, DMG Maps, etc.) We are recommending just the PHB/MM/DMG and adventure module when possible.

What kind of hardware are you running on? (CPU, GPU, HDD (SSD vs. mechanical), laptop vs. desktop machine, OS and version, etc.)

Regards,
JPG

[Aiddar]

Hi there.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have cut down on the modules (was not aware that there would be a limitation - not sure what effect there will be from not loading the DMG Players items for example - will they lose the magic item descriptions?). That said, it is now:-

1. Monster manual
2. Players Handbook
3. Princes of the Apocalypse
4. XGtE - Players (assumes I don’t need the full book? Bit of a shame, as I paid for it �� )
5. FG Battle Maps
6. DMG

In terms of hardware, please see below:-
1. OS – Win 10 home, V1909
2. HD – 1TB SSD
3. RAM – 32GB
4. Processor – I7-9750H CPU @2.6GHz
5. Graphics Card – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070
6. Base platform - laptop
7. Internet link - speed tested for 35Gbit download, and about 12Gbit upload (was sold as "Up to 50Gbit!!" - so almost reasonable.... ;-) ). Has been fairly solid as well - running wired connection, not wireless.

Hope that helps! I am (obviously!!) keen to get back to trouble free gaming, so any and all help appreciated!

Paul

[LordEntrails]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have cut down on the modules (was not aware that there would be a limitation - not sure what effect there will be from not loading the DMG Players items for example - will they lose the magic item descriptions?).
What you load and what your players load are separate. You do not need something loaded in order for your players to be able to load it. And just because you have something loaded does not mean they have it loaded.

As GM you load what you need. As GM you can mark content that you allow players to load (green/red check mark), if they chose to load it. But then your players have to load it if they want access to it.

Don't mark adventures or DM resources to allow players to load. That would give them access to everything, including DM information, that they should not have.

[Aiddar]

Thanks for the response - so to confirm, if I have the DMG loaded (visible and accessible only to me, as DM), but do NOT load the players DMG element (which normally, I make accessible to the players), will the players be able to see the description of magic items (for example)?

Cheers!

Paul

[Moon Wizard]

Just to clarify what the 2 DMG modules hold. The main DMG module (for GMs) contains all the magic items, traps and DM-specific chapters. The DMG player's module only contains character building material from the DMG, not any of the magic item material. (i.e. evil domains, etc.)

When a module is loaded on a client, then that entire data pack is loaded for that machine only. That is why GM modules are blocked by default; so your players can't read the MM or the adventure. However, player modules are shared by default (though they can be blocked too). What the GM has loaded does not affect what the player has loaded, they are separate data sets.

On top of that, the GM can "share" any record they have loaded, which is how the characters, party sheet, combat tracker, maps, etc. get shared to the players during a campaign session. However, the players have no control over whether GM-loaded data is shared, only the GM can control that.

Finally, any items added to the PC sheets or party sheet are actually full copies of the original record, so you don't need the original modules loaded once the copies are made. This is the same for PC traits, features, spells, items, etc.

The end result is that you only need modules loaded from which you need to use to actually run the session. If you're running a pre-build adventure as-is, you really only need the adventure module open. If you like to run ad-hoc encounters, you probably need the MM and DMG open. If you need to help build characters, you probably need the PHB loaded.

Regards,
JPG

[Briarios]

...any items added to the PC sheets or party sheet are actually full copies of the original record, so you don't need the original modules loaded once the copies are made. This is the same for PC traits, features, spells, items, etc.

The end result is that you only need modules loaded from which you need to use to actually run the session. If you're running a pre-build adventure as-is, you really only need the adventure module open. If you like to run ad-hoc encounters, you probably need the MM and DMG open. If you need to help build characters, you probably need the PHB loaded.

Mr. Moon Wizard! I have the same dilema and was worried that if i unloaded modules that it would break any links the players used to access their new spell data, etc. This is fantastic news because i thought i might have to rebuild their characters without the additional modules, etc. Thank you! Thank you! This is HUGE INFO for anyone having this issue! Let the unloading commence! my day just got a bit better.

[Aiddar]

Had a good game last night, running for about 3 hours or so, only very minor issues. However, at about 22:45 (UK Time), the system just went into go slow. Blue donuts, timeouts, system crashing etc. Was there anything server side at around that time that caused an issue? I am becoming more convinced (granted, from the outside looking in :-) ) that there is a performance issue on the core servers.... Luckily for us, we were closing down at around 23:00 or so anyway, but a worrying development. I had hoped by removing all the spurious files etc, we would be stable again...

Edit to add:- we restarted the service a couple of times, in case it was something local, but that did not clear the issue.

Cheers!

Paul