Significant Lag with and without extensions in 5E game

[Dudin]

In my session last night, FGU got so bogged down that I could no longer do anything. Clicks/keystrokes would just cause it to endlessly buffer requiring me to restart FGU.

Map: Adrik's Folly Players (From "Rise of the Drow" module on FGU store)
LOS and Lighting are off
4 PC players, two friendly NPCS, 10 hostile NPCS (see Drow Pursuers encounter) in the combat tracker

With extensions, the session would begin to lag significantly enough within 10 minutes of combat that I had to restart FGU. This repeated two more times.

With all extensions off, it took about an hour of combat before FGU began to lag heavily again. We reached the end of our play session before it got bad enough to force a restart, but it was taking about 10 seconds for clicks/keystrokes to register (if at all).
Upon freshly restarting FGU, it would be smooth and responsive for a few minutes.

I attached the campaign file. Let me know if you need anything else

RAM: 16 GB DDR4
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core
GPU: RTX 2080 Super

[LordEntrails]

Log files would be helpful.

I haven't loaded this up yet, but by chance did you add lots of "tokens" to the map for things like furniture, dead bodies, or other decoratins?

[Zarestia]

I personally can't test it as I don't have that adventure but I found some abrupt DB size increase.

You have a "Drow Calvary Warrior" created with NPC Maker in your campaign which has ~4000 Spells. I'd advise to delete that NPC and try again.

[LordEntrails]

"Adrik's Folly Players" map is not included int he campaign. Which module is it from? That will need to be loaded as well to test.

[Dudin]

@LordEntrails I had two letter tokens on the map not tied to NPCS on the combat tracker to designate some non-combatants

@Zarestia I did try to use NPC maker to make it, but the functionality wasn't working for me. As I tried to make it using the extension, it would also lag out so much FGU would freeze. So I gave up using the extension and made the calvary warrior manually (at least I thought I did). I don't see 4000 spells on it though. I just see its three innate spells. When I try to edit the NPC, it shows nothing in the spells list. Am I missing something?

[Dudin]

From Rise of the Drow. I edited my first post to show that now.

[Trenloe]

I notice there's data in the campaign database for "combattracker_groups" - so I'm assuming you were running an extension that allows groupings in the combat tracker. The database shows two groups with names of "Drow Band" and "Bridge Trolls". Thre's also a reference to "AssistantGM" in the combat tracker data. This is just with a quick look in the database - I'm not saying those are the culprits, just highlighting possibilities. Disabling those extensions may have allowed you to go longer than with them enabled (1 hour vs. 10 minutes), but the data in the database may be still causing problems.

I notice all of the combat tracker entries are on the "Adrik's Folly Player" map. I don't have the product in question, but I remember that as a fairly large map when I ran Rise of the Drow years ago. And there's quite a lot of LoS occluders in the database for that map.

So - your issues may be twofold - extension/s causing slowdown and then lots of LoS occluders on a large map. Just my thoughts and observations from a quick look through the campaign files. Like I mentioned, I don't have direct access to the Rise of the Drow FG DLC so don't know if the image is specifically an issue or not.

[Zacchaeus]

I can't test either because I don't have this product; I'd echo @Zarestia above however that NPC must be causing you severe issues. It's clearly corrupted since it should not have that many spells (actually there's only like three spells but they're repeated multiple times). If you have other NPCs made with NPCMaker I'd remove those as well.

[Dudin]

The map does have A LOT of LOS points. That is why I turned it off. In both extension on/off case, I had both LOS and Lighting off.

I will delete the warrior NPC and see if there is improvement. I still don't understand how you see 4000 spells, let alone how they all got there.

@Trenloe I don't pretend understand what info can be pulled from the campaign folder. Yes, I was using Combat Groups extension during my extension run where I got significant lag. When I posted about this on Discord, MoonWizard asked I run without extensions and see if it occurred. I did so and experienced the lag (thought it took an hour to get to significant lag versus the 10 minutes with extension). I pulled the campaign folder before I re-enabled extensions, but I don't know if that prevents it from showing the settings/setup they previously had.

[Trenloe]

I did try to use NPC maker to make it, but the functionality wasn't working for me. As I tried to make it using the extension, it would also lag out so much FGU would freeze. So I gave up using the extension and made the calvary warrior manually (at least I thought I did). I don't see 4000 spells on it though. I just see its three innate spells. When I try to edit the NPC, it shows nothing in the spells list. Am I missing something?
Good spot by Zarestia! The Drow Calvary Warrior with the spells is in the NPC Maker portion of the database, so you may need to enable that extensions briefly to allow you to delete the Drow Calvary Warrior with all the spells.

[Zarestia]

I've cleaned the database file of all NPC Maker things. That extension probably did something wrong.
You can try it out if you want.

Otherwise try Trenloe's idea.

[Dudin]

Thank you, Zarestia. I will give this version a shot. I will delete all the custom NPCs I made.

[SilentRuin]

I notice there's data in the campaign database for "combattracker_groups" - so I'm assuming you were running an extension that allows groupings in the combat tracker. The database shows two groups with names of "Drow Band" and "Bridge Trolls". Thre's also a reference to "AssistantGM" in the combat tracker data. This is just with a quick look in the database - I'm not saying those are the culprits, just highlighting possibilities. Disabling those extensions may have allowed you to go longer than with them enabled (1 hour vs. 10 minutes), but the data in the database may be still causing problems.

I notice all of the combat tracker entries are on the "Adrik's Folly Player" map. I don't have the product in question, but I remember that as a fairly large map when I ran Rise of the Drow years ago. And there's quite a lot of LoS occluders in the database for that map.

So - your issues may be twofold - extension/s causing slowdown and then lots of LoS occluders on a large map. Just my thoughts and observations from a quick look through the campaign files. Like I mentioned, I don't have direct access to the Rise of the Drow FG DLC so don't know if the image is specifically an issue or not.

He's probably used or is using Combat Groups and Assistant GM - which will only decrease lag not increase it. Though there is a limit to how many CT entries even it can handle before you overload the CT. But he had them turned off for this "lag test" of his - and if you have an NPC with 4K spells in the DB (regardless of what it shows in FGU) then you have serious data issues.

[BushViper]

He's probably used or is using Combat Groups and Assistant GM - which will only decrease lag not increase it.

I have to strongly disagree. I had to completely stop using Combat Groups because it was causing a lot of lag despite the encounters not in use being both unloaded and hidden.

[SilentRuin]

I have to strongly disagree. I had to completely stop using Combat Groups because it was causing a lot of lag despite the encounters not in use being both unloaded and hidden.

Combat Groups does nothing with encounters and only with filtering the CT (among other things). Telling me that (for example) you can somehow get "more" lag with 100 CT entries displayed and being processed in the list than with 10 CT entries displayed is simply not possible. Can you have horrible lag due to a map with LOS and lighting not improving with the diff between that 100 CT entries vs 10 CT entries being displayed? Sure. That is possible. But that somehow reducing the number of CT entries processing visible on the CT is increasing lag? That is not possible. Something else would be going on. And in a large test case with tons of CTs being filtered out of CT on host and/or player side it is always less lag as there is less data being processed in certain areas. The CT entries are still all there - and for sure it does nothing with map/LOS/lighting if their are tons of tokens being displayed at same time - but that will be happening with more lag not less without the Combat Groups filtering the CT. In all cases. If you want to show me this case your seeing this additional lag just contact me in discord and I'll see if I can see what is really going on. But your statement that it "caused" the lag will be that it could not "solve" the lag due to map/LOS/lighting token processing - which it cannot solve.

This assumes you are only testing this "lag increase" without any other extensions - as conflicts can do anything of course.

[BushViper]

Combat Groups does nothing with encounters and only with filtering the CT (among other things). Telling me that (for example) you can somehow get "more" lag with 100 CT entries displayed and being processed in the list than with 10 CT entries displayed is simply not possible. Can you have horrible lag due to a map with LOS and lighting not improving with the diff between that 100 CT entries vs 10 CT entries being displayed? Sure. That is possible. But that somehow reducing the number of CT entries processing visible on the CT is increasing lag? That is not possible. Something else would be going on. And in a large test case with tons of CTs being filtered out of CT on host and/or player side it is always less lag as there is less data being processed in certain areas. The CT entries are still all there - and for sure it does nothing with map/LOS/lighting if their are tons of tokens being displayed at same time - but that will be happening with more lag not less without the Combat Groups filtering the CT. In all cases. If you want to show me this case your seeing this additional lag just contact me in discord and I'll see if I can see what is really going on. But your statement that it "caused" the lag will be that it could not "solve" the lag due to map/LOS/lighting token processing - which it cannot solve.

This assumes you are only testing this "lag increase" without any other extensions - as conflicts can do anything of course.

Your wall of text does absolutely nothing to refute the fact that my FGU client sees a significant performance hit with Combat Groups enabled and it mysteriously goes away when I disable the extension.

Regardless, I'm going to politely decline your invitation to "help" me. I prefer to keep my interactions with you at an absolute minimum and the minor benefits that Combat Group offers me simply isn't worth the necessary back and forth. Instead, I've simply decided to opt out of this particular brand of your so-called "risk."

Thanks for the offer though.

[Zacchaeus]

Let's not derail the reason why the OP posted. Let's see if the advice to clean up the NPCs made with NPC Maker clears up the issue before we delve into anything else.

[SilentRuin]

Your wall of text does absolutely nothing to refute the fact that my FGU client sees a significant performance hit with Combat Groups enabled and it mysteriously goes away when I disable the extension.

Regardless, I'm going to politely decline your invitation to "help" me. I prefer to keep my interactions with you at an absolute minimum and the minor benefits that Combat Group offers me simply isn't worth the necessary back and forth. Instead, I've simply decided to opt out of this particular brand of your so-called "risk."

Thanks for the offer though.

As Zac says no reason to clutter this here. I'll move a link to it in the extensions thread. And for sure, EXTENSIONS = RISKS, and there is no requirement for you to pursue why something is unusable before you toss it away. No worries :)