Common FG Problems I'm experiencing.

[Rylan Storm]

Hi all,

As a group, we've been experiencing some issues with Fantasy Grounds (Classic) since we started our campaign a few months back but it got so bad last night that I figured that I'd need to put some serious effort into resolving the issues.

Here's the issues we've been having and I wonder if anyone has any suggestions.

1) Targetted attacks not actually targeting the NPC. - Medium Impact

This only ever happens when players attempt to target an NPC and never happens when I, as DM, attempt to target a player. The combat log will clearly show that the player is targeting a creature and when the perform their attack roll it just shows an attack and a number. I then have to do the manual calc which isn't a big deal but it's a frustration.

What is interesting is that it only ever seems to effect one person at a time. It's become a running joke "Who's going to get the no target bug this week?"

2) Dice not reflecting the result. - Low Impact

I'm not sure if this is actually a bug but other players frequently see different dice than the person rolling. As an example, the entire group cheered last night when we saw the Rogue's dice come up as a nat 20. The total output to chat as a 12. The rogue didn't understand the fuss as he saw the dice land on a 12.

3) Maps not loading - High Impact

Map loading is really slow for us. A 5mb map can often take nearly a minute to get to all of the other players. My upload speed is not great admittedly and it takes 17 seconds to upload the same map to a file share but there is clearly a difference using FG.

The pre-load map function seems to make no improvement at all, in fact, it's much worse. Last night I pre-loaded 2 maps at the start of the session and, when the time came, I attempted to share them to the group. They could only see a grey space where the map should be although they could see their own tokens and the grid. The only fix was to copy the map with a completely new name and rebuild it on the fly, adding in a new grid and populating it with monsters.

4) Masking/Unmasking maps causes FG to hang and/or crash. - High Impact

When players join my server FG does this weird thing where it seems to stretch downwards over the task bar and the display resolution looks terrible. It's like a minor hang and I can't interact with anything. Once the player has loaded in the window snaps back into place and the resolution is fine. I can then control the screen again. This happens as each of my 4 players join but it's manageable.

When masking/unmasking maps the problem is much worse. I unmask a section of the map and the game seems to hang for 10 to 15 seconds. If I unmask a large section of the map there's a very good chance FG can crash.



On balance, FG is still a really good product and these issues aren't generally enough to stop using it. But if every session were like last nights with maps not loading and the game crashing, things might be different.

I'm on a reasonably decent computer. I7 CPU, 8gb RAM, 1070 TI Graphics Card, SSD. Doesn't have any instability issues in other applications. I've reinstalled FG (using Steam) to see if that's an issue. It's fully updated etc. If anyone can suggest any fixes for these things I'd be really grateful

[Trenloe]

It's definitely worthwhile bringing issues/questions to the forums. Don't suffer in silence!

Some quick comments:

1) When this happens to a player, ask them to check that they haven't accidentally clicked on the disable targeting button in the modifier stack below the chat window. If it looks like the following (red rather than greyed out), then targeting will be disabled:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=38402

3) You don't mention if you're using FGC or FGU (Classic or Unity). For a while now we've been recommending GMs to keep map file sizes below 1MB if at all possible - to reduce share time.

That said - if the image takes 17 seconds to upload to a fileshare - multiply that upload time by the number of players you're sharing the image with. So 1 minute for a number of players sounds about right based off your fileshare example upload time. If you're using maps outside of a module, see if you can reduce the file size a bit - we recommend using JPG compression at 70-80% quality - aim to get as close to 1MB in file size as you can. If using FGC, try to keep within 2048x2048 pixels as this affects memory used and FGC has limited memory due to it being a 32-bit app.

Your preshare issue might depend on whether you're using FGC or FGU.

4) Are you using FGC or FGU?

[Rylan Storm]

Sorry, you're right. I forgot to mention that. I'm using Fantasy Grounds Classic and have edited the post accordingly.

Thank you for you input.

1) I don't think this is the issue given how it weirdly jumps from one player to another each week. I accept that could be coincidence though and it's only happened in 6 out 9 sessions but I'll ask next time it happens.
3) Ah, I'd seen that FG was using TCP but I had assumed that it was uploading the maps to something like a shared resource and the players were getting it from there. Silly of me to do so. I guess I just take that sort of stuff for granted these days. Still, we're usually online for a good 20 minutes or so before I call a map into play. We do recaps etc, chat a little. This wouldn't be an issue if I could use pre-share but this seems really destructive because, when players get the grey map issue, I cannot use the same map name again.
4) As mentioned, FGC.

[Trenloe]

What ruleset are you using?
What extensions (including themes) are you using?
What operating system?

For #4 - yep, players joining will make FG unresponsive for a while. FG is single threaded and does a lot of processing and data upload when a player joins.

For the masking issue - what is the resolution (pixel width x height) of the maps that cause these issues?

[Rylan Storm]

Ruleset: 5E.
Extensions: CoreRPG Audiooverseer, LAE Expanded Options, and a custom decal. Default theme.
OS: Windows 10 Enterprise 64-Bit

The resolution on Old Owl Well that I shared last night was 3300 x 2550. I downloaded about 150 maps from Venatus' site as is and just drag them in as I need them.

OK, so it looks like I need to find an app then that can go through my maps folder and do some downsizing then it sounds like.

[Zacchaeus]

It isn't just the map you are sharing at this time but also the cumulative amount of stuff that you have shared. Make sure that your players aren't getting close to the FG memory cap of around 3Gb when they are joined to your campaign. Unshare images that are no longer needed. Unshare modules that aren't being used. Make sure you haven't shared any tokens.

[Rylan Storm]

Thanks.

What would contribute to the memory cap? Just shared images? We've only been playing for about 9 weeks so I've only shared .,..perhaps 10 images total. Does unsharing them remove them from their machine? I don't expect they'll ever head back to the Cragmaw Hideout so I could unshare that I guess.

Also, I have not shared a huge amount of tokens with them, but I did share the tokens they could select for their own characters so they could pick. Is this bad?

Finally, I have moved a lot of maps into my campaign map folder so that I can bring them up on the fly. Is this loading into my memory?

[Trenloe]

The Venatus maps are great. But, yeah, for FGC reduce the resolution a bit and try to also reduce the file size.

[Zacchaeus]

Check how much memory FG is using on your end as well. And yes, many images will eat up memory since they all get loaded into the client when you open the campaign. The advice is really to not share any toens at all (via the tokens/shared folder) but a handful won't have much impact. It's when you start sharing hundreds of them that it becomes a problem.

Just as an FYI my internet speed is crap with a capital C and it does take a while to upload images - even ones which are of the recommended size. I always preshare any images that are going to be used in the next session and that works just fine for me. That means that the lag is confined to when players join the game rather than mid session.

[Rylan Storm]

So, how does pre-share work? I had assumed that a pre-shared image was only shared with those people connected at the time it's shared. I figured it was just a push instruction. Can I pre-share images whilst nobody is connected and then just ask them to connect at some point when we're not playing for them to get it?

Also, any ideas why any of the images that I preshare load in as just grey boxes? Also, is there anything I can do to recover this if it happens again? As I mentioned, the only thing that I could think of last night was totally rebuilding the map with a new filename.

[Zacchaeus]

Preshare means that you set the image to load when the players are not connected and when they do they'll download the image when they join. I don't think anything will happen if you prehsare a map when the players are joined - I'm not sure on that. If players are joined then you would use share rather than preshare. If you are using preshare when players are joined this could explain the gray boxes because the image isn't downloading. But as Tremloe says above if you are sharing large images those could take several minutes to load for the players and until it does load it'll be a gray box.

[Trenloe]

The issue with pre-sharing is that the players can go to their images campaign data list and open the images. Sometimes even seeing the name of an image can be a spoiler - I had this in a record one-off game, I went to the images list to open a previously shared image and the names of some of the pre-shared maps spoiled it a bit for me. So, if you do pre-share, use image identification (not ID'd at first) and also put a mask on the map so that if the players open it they can't see it.

Presharing when players are already joined should cause the players to download the image into their local cache, so that sharing in future is essentially just the same as opening the image, as it's already there. I've never experienced any issues with this, and I haven't heard of the behaviour mentioned in post #1. The next time this happens, please ask the players to take a screenshot - the Print Screen button on the computer keyboard will take a complete screenshot of the FG window and store it as screenshotXXXX.png in the FG app data directory.

[Rylan Storm]

So, I resized all my images down to the recommended size over the past few weeks and, in our session on Thursday night, we did experience much better loading times and less lag when unmasking parts of the map. We still had one crash though when unmasking the app which is really frustrating.

The bigger issue, and what I need to focus on today, is that we were plagued with targeting issues throughout the night and it's now getting to the point where my players are asking me to consider moving away from Fantasy Grounds altogether in favour of another VTT. It's just becoming a running joke now which isn't good.

Let me show you some examples.

Issue 1 38908

Durin targets the Ogre, Gog, with Guiding Bolt. This is shown in the screenshot and I can confirm there was no change in targeting between the roll and the screenshot. The chat log clearly shows Guiding Bolt rolling against Durin's AC and failing to hit. Gog has 11 AC so this should have hit.

Issue 2 38909

In this picture we see the chat log showing that Lucius has Gog targetted. He casts Firebolt but the damage is applied to Orc 4. I checked the combat tracker - again, Lucius had Gog targetted throughout.

Issue 3 38910

Lucius targets Orcs 1 and 8. He is attempting to use the Twinned Spell, Firebolt. Damage is applied to Orc 2.



This sort of thing happened about half a dozen times throughout the course of the evening. It's happening to all of the players. There's no real common theme but I'm just spending so much time manually removing damage from untargetted mobs and manually running calculations on the mobs that should be affected and, as I say, my players are just building the perception that Fantasy Grounds is unreliable.

I don't know where to start troubleshooting this but would appreciate any help as I've got a lot invested in this platform to attempt to move to another system.

Many thanks!

[LordEntrails]

What date version are you running? Have you visually verified ALL of your players are using the exact same date version? Not just asking them if they have updated, but having them actually verify the date code? (Many times using say they have done something and maybe they have, but they may not tell you about error messages or other things they ignore.) Have you turned off ALL extensions, themes and decals?

When this happens, grab your log files from the /console, plus grab your chalog.html as that will help diagnose.

[Rylan Storm]

We're all using the version released on the 25th. All party members have confirmed that they updated before the session on the 27th and I believe them because this has been going on for long enough that we are hypersensitive towards troubleshooting.

I am running the following extensions;

5E ruleset v3.3.11 for Fantasy Grounds Copyright 2019 Smiteworks USA, LLC
CoreRPG ruleset v3.3.11B for Fantasy Grounds Copyright 2019 Smiteworks USA, LLC
D&D Official Language Fonts for Fantasy Grounds Copyright 2015 Smiteworks USA, LLC. D&D Copyright 2015 Wizards of the Coast LLC
LAE: Expanded Options v1.9 for FG v3.3.7 5E ruleset. Designed and Implemented by Laendra.
AudioOverseer - CoreRPG version 1.23. by Celestian, 2020 ---
Extension (Decal_LMOP) loaded.
November Decals by Tony Platts.

I will disable all of these before the next session for troubleshooting purposes.

Didn't know anything about /console but I'll give it a try next time. The chatlog though is pretty clear on the issue;

[TURN] Durin Blackhill
Durin Blackhill: [CAST] Guiding Bolt [at Durin Blackhill]
Durin Blackhill: [ATTACK (R)] Guiding Bolt [1d20+2 = 13]
Attack [13] -> [at Durin Blackhill] [MISS]
Durin Blackhill: [DAMAGE] Guiding Bolt [TYPE: radiant (4d6=8)] [4d6 = 8]
Damage [8] -> [to Gog]
Durin Blackhill: [1d6 = 1]
Effect ['GRANTADVATK'] -> [to Gog] [by Durin Blackhill]

As you can see, Durin (with Gog targetted) casts Guiding Bolt. The spell resolves against Durin and he rolls a 13 against his AC of 16. It therefore misses Durin but should have hit. We therefore confirm that Durin is still targeting Gog. He is. I tell him to roll the damage and, as you see, this goes off Gog.

Later on we see Lucius targeting Orcs 1 and 8 and hitting 2 for 1 damage.

[TURN] Lucius Tenebril
Lucius Tenebril: [CAST] Fire Bolt
Lucius Tenebril: [ATTACK (R)] Fire Bolt [1d20+6 = 23]
Lucius Tenebril: [1d20 = 6]
Lucius Tenebril: [DAMAGE] Fire Bolt [TYPE: fire (1d10=1)] [1d10 = 1]
Damage [1] -> [to Orc 2]
Lucius Tenebril: [2d4 = 7]
Lucius Tenebril: [DAMAGE] Fire Bolt [TYPE: fire (1d10=1)] [1d10 = 1]
Damage [1] -> [to Orc 2]

This is a trusted group of friends. If they weren't updating they'd admit it. Similarly, if they were targeting the wrong NPC they'd own up to it and we'd laugh about it. It's definitely not a user issue at this point.

[Granamere]

Are they doing all of this through combat tracker and their action tab or are they dropping the dice on the map for hit and or damage?

[Rylan Storm]

They are targetting the NPC using the Ctrl key, I am witnessing the Combat Log show the character name and clearly showing who they are targetting, and then they are rolling for the attack using the Dice icon on the Actions tab of their character sheet.

[LordEntrails]

Rylan, if you have time etc, have you tried jumping on Discord and seeing if anyone can walk through this real-time? I would offer myself, but am going to be in and out the rest of the day (for me, -7 UTC). I should have time tomorrow if you want to work something out. But there are lots of others who might be able to help too.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36377-Official-Discord-Server

[Rylan Storm]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've joined and have put something in the support threads now.