Help with Player Continuosly Disconnecting During Session

[Temmpest]

I was hosting a game tonight with a new player. There were four other players who had no issue but the new person kept disconnecting. It was a 5e game, not that I think that matters. I'm attaching his game log. I hope someone can help. Let me know if you need any other information.

[Zacchaeus]

Most likely something is blocking Fantasy Grounds like their anti virus software or something on their router such as flood protection or QoL settings. Some advice and things to look out for here https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/1303052290/Whitelisting+or+Creating+Exceptions+for+Antivirus+ Applications and here https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/1981349889/Network+Troubleshooting

[Temmpest]

Thank you for the tips!

[LordEntrails]

Its also very possible that the player was having flooding protection type of issues. i.e. since this is an existing campaign, you probably have a lot of images and content shared. When a new player joins, they have to download all of this data that you have previously shared. This can hit as a security concern (flooding) and their security apps will will block them (disconnect them). Then they join again and get to download another 5 or 20 percent of the shared before they get blocked again. This continues multiple times and can be very frustrating.

Three ways to solve this that I know of, and you can mix and match these;
1) unshare all the old stuff so the new player doesn't need to download anything but the current map and sources
2) have the player join well before (days) before play time. Work through the multiple disconnects until all downloads are completed
3) have the player alter their security apps so they don't have flood protection etc as the link Mr Z talks about

[Temmpest]

Its also very possible that the player was having flooding protection type of issues. i.e. since this is an existing campaign, you probably have a lot of images and content shared. When a new player joins, they have to download all of this data that you have previously shared. This can hit as a security concern (flooding) and their security apps will will block them (disconnect them). Then they join again and get to download another 5 or 20 percent of the shared before they get blocked again. This continues multiple times and can be very frustrating.

Three ways to solve this that I know of, and you can mix and match these;
1) unshare all the old stuff so the new player doesn't need to download anything but the current map and sources
2) have the player join well before (days) before play time. Work through the multiple disconnects until all downloads are completed
3) have the player alter their security apps so they don't have flood protection etc as the link Mr Z talks about

We altered his security apps. I like your theory! We will try your tips. Thank you so much!

[Nylanfs]

Does the work around of the GM connecting to another machine (or one of the other players) and send the new player the downloaded campaign in a zip file still work?

[LordEntrails]

Does the work around of the GM connecting to another machine (or one of the other players) and send the new player the downloaded campaign in a zip file still work?
I believe it still works, I have not done that in years.

FYI, as GM, connect to your own game, go to the cache and zip up the campaign cache and send to your player. Then they unzip and place in their cache and it saves downloading via in the FG.

[Temmpest]

I believe it still works, I have not done that in years.

FYI, as GM, connect to your own game, go to the cache and zip up the campaign cache and send to your player. Then they unzip and place in their cache and it saves downloading via in the FG.

I will give this a try!

[Temmpest]

I believe it still works, I have not done that in years.

FYI, as GM, connect to your own game, go to the cache and zip up the campaign cache and send to your player. Then they unzip and place in their cache and it saves downloading via in the FG.

What is supposed to be in the cache? There doesn't appear to be that many files.

[Laerun]

I was hosting a game tonight with a new player. There were four other players who had no issue but the new person kept disconnecting. It was a 5e game, not that I think that matters. I'm attaching his game log. I hope someone can help. Let me know if you need any other information.

Also, the player could be experiencing wireless connection drops too

[Temmpest]

No. He bought an ethernet cable and it still happened. But we will try the cache trick.

[LordEntrails]

What is supposed to be in the cache? There doesn't appear to be that many files.
So their should not be too many files. The campaign.dat file is a encrypted file that generally contains all the images and other campaign content. This file could be very large. The modules folder then contains the shared books/products. Finally, the usersettings has options (I think) and hotkeys (i.e. the function keys).

[Trenloe]

If there isn't much data in campaign.dat (i.e. the file size isn't that large) then I don't think there's any advantage in sending the player a copy of the file. This was something we occasionally did years ago if a player was on a very slow connection - to get them started with a large data download before connecting to FG. I really don't think this is needed now - and if the player is getting regularly disconnected, I doubt this will help with that - investigate the cause of the disconnections.

[MrDDT]

First test I would do is see if they are disconnecting on another GM's table.
Next test I would do is see if they can connect from another location.

[Temmpest]

Update: it seems he has not been disconnecting. What's been happening is his game will lock up on him and his portrait will display three "Z"s. Can someone look at the log I attached and see what may be causing this issue?

[Zacchaeus]

Update: it seems he has not been disconnecting. What's been happening is his game will lock up on him and his portrait will display three "Z"s. Can someone look at the log I attached and see what may be causing this issue?

That suggests that they are running out of memory or maybe video memory. I note that the user is using a build in graphics card which does not have any video RAM. In order to run FGVTT the recommended set up is a video card with at least 4Gb of video memory (or maybe even more than that now). If your player has a dedicated video card in his machine they should make sure that Fantasy Grounds is using that rather than the build in graphics on his motherboard.

[Temmpest]

That suggests that they are running out of memory or maybe video memory. I note that the user is using a build in graphics card which does not have any video RAM. In order to run FGVTT the recommended set up is a video card with at least 4Gb of video memory (or maybe even more than that now). If your player has a dedicated video card in his machine they should make sure that Fantasy Grounds is using that rather than the build in graphics on his motherboard.

Oh, wow. He needs a video card.

[Temmpest]

Would this work: Discrete:
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3050 (6 GB GDDR6 dedicated)

[Trenloe]

Update: it seems he has not been disconnecting. What's been happening is his game will lock up on him and his portrait will display three "Z"s. Can someone look at the log I attached and see what may be causing this issue?
There's nothing obvious in the logs in post #1 as these don't appear to have been collected during a game - can you collect the logs immediately after the player experiences the issue?

Additionally, if the player is locking up, is it during a specific operation - for example, when a map is shared? When rolling dice? When a large map with LoS/Lighting/effects is open? Does the player have other applications open that might be clashing? More details of when it happens might help track down the issue. Windows 11 with an Intel 630 graphics and 16GB of VRAM should be fine - we'll need to identify what may be causing the issue before thinking of buying additional hardware (as that probably isn't needed).

[Temmpest]

There's nothing obvious in the logs in post #1 as these don't appear to have been collected during a game - can you collect the logs immediately after the player experiences the issue?

Additionally, if the player is locking up, is it during a specific operation - for example, when a map is shared? When rolling dice? When a large map with LoS/Lighting/effects is open? Does the player have other applications open that might be clashing? More details of when it happens might help track down the issue. Windows 11 with an Intel 630 graphics and 16GB of VRAM should be fine - we'll need to identify what may be causing the issue before thinking of buying additional hardware (as that probably isn't needed).

He has a very cheap PC with integrated graphics. No graphics card of any kind. He's getting a lower end gaming PC. with this graphics card: Discrete:
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3050 (6 GB GDDR6 dedicated)

[Trenloe]

Getting a new PC may well help.

However, an Intel 630 should be able to run DirectX v12, but it looks like the PC is running DirectX v11 - both versions should be compatible with Fantasy Ground, but running v11 may indicate older drivers that might be causing an issue with lockups.

You may also want to check this: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000087834/graphics.html Might be worth seeing if the drivers can be updated.

[Temmpest]

This has been ordered: OMEN 16L Gaming Desktop TG03-0055t PC, Windows 11 Home, Intel® Core™ i5, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3050

Hopefully this solves the problem. If not, I'll be back!

In the meantime, thank you guys for all your advice. This community has always been super helpful. You guys are the best!