Combat Tracker causes program to freeze

[MrKraken76]

Hello guys,

i'm having trouble as DM in managing Combat Tracker. Every time I have to load a new encounter with more than 6-7 NPCs, the program freezes for about a couple of minutes if I am connected with other players (our group is 4 members, me included, and we all have ADSL or fiber connections). I have what I believe to be an adequate broadband connection (70 Mbps Download and 20 Upload) and I have no problems with RAM saturation while playing (the system as a whole never takes more than 6.5 GB while playing).My hardware is quite old but it seems to meet system requirements for FGU anyway:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 MHz
GPU: Nvidia GTX 750 TI, 2GB VRAM.
RAM: 8GB

We're using MoreCore.

Any ideas on how to solve this problem?
Ty

[Zacchaeus]

The first thing that you'd usually want to do is check to see if this problem persists in a new campaign without any extensions (including themes). If it can't be reproduced in that scenario then one or more of the extensions you are using may well be the culprit. Disabling extensions and then enabling them one at a time until you can reproduce the issue will point to the one that's causing the issue.

If you aren't using any extensions then it may be related to your hardware/internet. Since you say that it only happens when there's a lot of NPCs maybe that's just more information than your system can deal with comfortably. Maybe you could split encounters and only add a few at a time instead of all of them.

It's one of these situations that is probably quite difficult for someone else to replicate given the amount of moving parts. However maybe uploading your campaign folder here might help someone diagnose the issue.

[damned]

What size is your db.xml?
Can you share it?

[MrKraken76]

Thanks Zacchaeus and Damned for your replies. As for my extensions, i have just very few of them (namely Sounds VLC - which i can disable or even remove anyway giving i never use it - FG Light Theme and Basic Card Tables). Disabling them does not seem to have any effect or significantly reduce the loading time of encounters in Combat Tracker (though i should try this in a real session scenario). As for your suggestion to split up the uploading of a single enconunter into several mini-encounters (maybe 3-4 NPCs each), it sounds like a very interesting idea and it is definitely worth a try, although it can become cumbersome in the long run. As for Damned request, i'm attaching my db file: I'd appreciate it if you'd give it a look.

Thanks again guys.

[damned]

Im really sorry - I cant download the file - it keeps downloading an incomplete version. Can you please zip it and upload again?

[Moon Wizard]

If you can, please zip up your entire campaign folder, post on DropBox/OneDrive, set to share for anyone with the link, and provide the link here.
That way, we can look at everything set up in your campaign to see what might be happening.

Regards,
JPG

[MrKraken76]

Here's the link for the zipped file of my campaign folder. Please do not consider the file named "db.original": i've created it since i had to turn off the system abruptly and all my data were gone, so i created new db from a previous session.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/v7t3q8oyvkhsozol3s4ze/Un-Regno-in-Bilico.zip?rlkey=h2x5fdqi94gyc1phdtq7bft4f&dl=0

[damned]

Hi MrKraken,

I dont think there is a) anything wrong or b) much you can do to improve things.
Your NPCs have a LOT of detail in them. Many have 3000 lines of data in them. All of this is copied to the CT when you add the encounter.

[MrKraken76]

Well, if as you say there's not much I can do, it's also true that I can still do something (such as streamlining my NPCs' sheets a lot :D). The fact that Combat Tracker loading times are significantly higher when there are other players connected makes me think of some synchronization problem between clients when it comes to processing a certain amount of data (depending perhaps on the quality of the respective connections). Splitting an encounter into several parts (e.g., mini-blocks of no more than 4 NPCs in the CT), as Zacchaeus suggested, might be, if not the solution, at least a good workaround. I will test it in the next session and then give you feedback: if it works it might be useful to those who have the same problem. Thanks everyone for your support.

[damned]

There are two main contributors from a technical perspective.
In games like D&D5E the NPC stat block is very consistent and so many things can be reduced to a single word and a dice string and a single simple dice mechanic. As MoreCore is supporting many different systems and a huge number of dice mechanics we could not so that. 5E attacks are like the Attacks field in MoreCore but that is largely deprecated in MoreCore in favour of Rolls so as to support other mechanics. These Rolls - especially if they have description text in them which many of yours do - contain a lot more data than the 20-40charcaters in an Attack string.
The second contributor is when dragging a link into a list it can be programmed to either drop a link or to copy the entire data for that object. I chose to copy the data to make it easier for customising the PC/NPC, again to better support more systems. In your situation links would make a big difference.

The data from these large NPCs has to upload to each of the player computers when you add them to the CT and that is definitely contributing to the time.
You could possibly have a copy of all your items, attacks, spells, attributes etc etc that have all the data in them for PCs and another set that doesnt have all the descriptions for the NPCs. This could cut down on the data read/write/transfer...

[Dakadin]

One possibility to keep the data so it is easily accessible from the NPC but not actually stored with the NPC is to create a story entry with the data and then just drag the link for it to the NPC where it will take links. Then you can have the best of both worlds.

[MrKraken76]

I'm not sure how to do it concretely. When you say "create a story entry with the data" you mean i have to create one single story entry (e.g. "Dragon") containing all rolls, skills etc. which belong to a specific NPC? If this is the case, where am i supposed then to drag those links (e.g. saving throws, attacks etc)? NPC Sheet? Because, in that case, the data - and not the links to them - will simply be copied into NPC sheet, making this operation useless. From what i know, Story entries become links only if you drag them into an image, not in a PC/NPC sheet. But probably i don't understand what you mean...

[Dakadin]

Sorry I misunderstood what the issue was. I thought you had a lot of notes associated with the NPCs and I figured you could just put all the detail into a story entry and a link to it. It doesn't look like that is the case looking through your campaign db.xml file. Sorry about that.

[Laerun]

This could also be related to large and complex maps, if appliciable, and maybe some networking issues between players and the host. It almost sounds like a bandwidth or ISP data throttling issue, potentially. Your encounters and expectations do not seem crazy or unreasonable. I would make sure the availability of bandwidth is decent between players and clients, limit loaded books and assets, especially on an older machine.
Best of luck and happy gaming.