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rev_dynamo
April 29th, 2007, 03:33
My GM and I have been having some problems with the presentation of images in Fantasy Grounds. I will try to break down the problem as much as possible. This problem only happens on new images that are sent by the DM. Other images that have been sent prior to our last game are working fine. For reference: I use FG version 1.05f.

The problem is the image takes forever to load; and by forever I mean that it will never finish loading.

We tried several things to fix the problem:
1. He emailed the image to me, which I then placed in the correct directory. When he attempted to load the image, I noticed that Fantasy Grounds was overwriting the image I already had in my directory, rather than calling the image into the program. The resulting overwritten image contained no data, not even size data.
2. We tried using a smaller image and removing any masks before he called the image. The same problem occured.
3. I decided, on a whim, to set the image as Read-Only and remove the strange "This file is from another computer" dialog that I found in the image properties (some Windows Security setting I have never seen before today). This actually worked and allowed me to view the image, but any new image he sent to me still locked up in the "loading" phase.

It would be a shame to have all images emailed to me then marked as read-only. There has to be some reason why FG is doing this, but I am unable to find it. Anyone have any suggestions?

Griogre
April 29th, 2007, 04:21
Basially you are timing out on the map transfer is what it seems to me. Are you on dial up? Or does your GM have a large group? Or does he have a slow connection? The problem is that in a non commercial connection to the internet typically the ammount of data that can be uploaded is 1/3 to 1/4 and for the GM that amount is divide by the number of people connected to his computer. If you are using voice that further decreases available up bandwith.

On why the image is being overwriten, FG does do some checks to see if the image you have is the same as the GM's. If it does not match it will begin to overwrite it again.

You should be able to get away with him e-mailing you the map. One of the groups I am in has a DM who likes to use huge maps and he had all kinds of problems. It would be good if your GM could keep the file size of his maps less than 300k in size and smaller than 1024x1024. Using masks on large maps in FG1 is bug prone. Some of the other things we found where that if someone began changing the map, including the GM *before* everyone had gotten the map it forces the map to begin reloading. We had someone who when bored would draw on the mask and that was causing problems because that would change the map the people still trying to get - forcing the map to start to reloading to the people who had not yet gotten it and eventually if you keep doing this the map times out.

Tell your GM to try preloading the map. And tell him not to share the map or do anything to it himself until he gets the spiderweb saying everyone has it. The other problem is you may have a corrupt version of the map. If someone continually had map problems in one of FG1 games I would tell them to exit the game and delete everything in the campaign image folder and drawing folders. Just so you know, the map can be fine but if the map's mask image is corrupt you will continually be forced to reload the map also.

If it was me I would dump my two graphic folders for the campaign and ask the GM to just put up the server outside of your normal game and see if with just the two of you he can send you the map.