No image loading/Token Transfer Problems/Module Problems....

[mr_h]

I attempted to run a 4E Playtest/Demo for my buds last night but we ran into a number of issues. I was hosting FG2 behind a firewall with port 1802 open. None of us have made any modifications to things since the last time we played (several months ago), and everything was working fine then.

I've been testing this at work today as well and have been having issues.

Issue 1: Images are not loading: I'll try to share a image with the PC's of varying size (from 30K to 600K). All they get is the blank screen showing 'Loading' and nothing else. It's happened despite reboots and the like.

Issue 2: Here at work, the client Im running is receiving errors: 'Could not complete file transfer of file tokens/shared/directoryblahblahblah' (it lists a number of directories where my shared tokens are). Check your network configuration. Confusing, espically since my client already has these tokens and there should be no need to download them again.
I moved the tokens to Host only and this error didnt pop up.

Issue 3: Modules: Last night while attempting the playtest, I tried to have the pcs receive the 4epowers.mod via force loading. Not a single one of them received it, despite multiple tries. I even sent the module to one guy and had him put it in his directory, but no go :(

Issue 4: Ruleset transfers. This one confuses me a lot. I connect to the server and try to download the ruleset. I received a number of errors that it could not download certain aspects of it (Runtime Error: Error downloading 'ruleset/fonts/smallcontrolbold.fgf or ruleset/desktop_classes.xml, etc). The vast majority of files go through fine, and even the files that it says had problems with? I received them completely.

To top it off, I already downloaded the ruleset and put it on the client computer so I wouldnt have to waste time downloading.

Any suggestions?

[Griogre]

1) How big was the size of image in x and y pixels? And how big was the uncompressed version of the file? The file is actually transferred uncompressed if it was really a large file it - really may have been still transferring. Did you preload it and ever get the spider web?

2) It is my experience that tokens are apparently a low priority transfer and FG "gives up" (times out) pretty quick when you first transfer a new ruleset. Eventually they usually get transferred over several sessions. Obviously keeping the number of shared tokens to a minimum helps here. In FG2 there is not a lot of reason to have large numbers of shared tokens.

3) It sounds like: a) the common module was not built right or b) you ran out of up bandwidth. Force load forces a file transfer to the clients. If you were also trying to load an image and you had 5 or 6 players and were using voice you may not have had much up bandwidth available. How many players did you have and what is your "up" bandwidth?

4) Did you check to see if those files are corrupt? Try connecting to yourself but starting a host, starting a second instance as a client and see if there are any ruleset transfer errors. Putting a ruleset on a client, depending on the content of the ruleset will have zero effect on the need to transfer the ruleset. IE you will have to transfer common data anyway to the cache on the client.

To me (aside from any pure connection problems) it seems like there were two possible problems:

1) I would say you ran out of up bandwidth. If you had been hosting on dialup sending large amounts of data, the symtoms would be just about what happened to you. I believe that it is quite possible the transfers would have happened eventually (other than the tokens that just timed out). My suggestion is have just one player connect to you and see if you have the same problems. Preload the images and give the images up to 5 minutes to load. If you use voice don't talk and don't change anything on the image until you get the preload "spider web." FYI. Stuff does get cached on the clients so if it is a bandwidth problem having a couple of players get the ruleset and images early will solve your problem. Also take a hard look at the size in pixels of your images/maps. If that 60k map is really 1024x1024 you are not transfering the 60k you think you are - you are probably trying to transfer megs of map data. The more likely culprates are those 300k maps.

2) The other possibility is either your ruleset is corrupt or your common modules are built wrong or both. It's also possible the powers module and ruleset are not really compatible.

[mr_h]

1. The original version of the map was huge, some 600K and something like 1500x1000. I scaled that down quiet a bit, still had the problems. I managed to get the size down quiet a bit.
When testing it locally, it appears to work, and when I tested it at work today it worked fine (but under a different ruleset)

2. I was guessing the tokens were hogging bandwidth, which is why i moved them to host only. That removed the error, Im guessing it'll clear out some bandwidth as a result.

3. Tested the module on the local computer (hosting and clienting). It works just fine locally.
When I tested the module from remotely the name shows up in Module Activation, however it has a Spiderweb icon and the name of the module with the green check mark to the side. HOWEVER, if I go into the library, all the information from the module is there, just no pictures.


4. Locally the ruleset copied over just fine. Remotely it still gives errors on a few of them.

I'm gonna keep toying with it, the more I try the more I think it may have been a bandwidth issue causing the majority of my problems.

[Oberoten]

Fg is a bit of a bandwith hog. It doesn't LIKE sharing. Generally I have found that some programs work less well with it than others. mIRC seems to be a major no-no.

[mr_h]

It appears to have been a bandwidth problem after all. I tested it one more time remotely and it worked without anything else hogging it up. That'll teach me to 'share' 21 megs of tokens :b

[Griogre]

On the map size, if you can reduce the bit depth that can help quite a bit on transfer size and depending on the map style you often can reduce the color depth from 32 bit to 256 colors with very little loss in esthetics - and on a parchment or simple dungeon style map you can often go down to 16 colors. Because this effects every pixel’s data you get real saving in uncompressed image size.