problem sending graphics

[CB Droege]

as of the latest version of FG2, I've been having some trouble sending files to my players.

Before, I could send a 700x700px map to my players in less than a minute. Now, it takes upwards of a half hour to send one. If I think ahead, I can do a lot of preloading, but sometimes, I need to send the image right before we use it, and waiting a half-hour for it to arrive is not acceptable.

If there is a band-aid for this please let me know, and get the fix out ASAP.

For my group, currently, FG is broken.

[EugeneZ]

I had this problem right after a recent patch. I moved all the tokens I didn't use out of the tokens folder (a considerable amount) and the problem immediately went away.

[Astinus]

Well a band-aid solution to get you back and gaming right away would be to pre-distribute your images via modules.

Just put all your images in a campaign, export them into a module saved as "Host" data, get all your players to drop the .mod file in their "Modules" folder, and at the start of the game force load the module on everyone's machines.

Then, when you open an image from the module, it will load locally on each client, instantly, irrespective of size.

It would allow you to play until the broader issue is addressed.

[CB Droege]

I tried removing all the tokens, except for the starting ones, just to see if that would do it, and it doesn't help at all.

I can try the modules thing, but I can never be sure which graphics I need for each session, so it wont always work.

This needs to be fixed, and I'd like to know that the developers are addressing it. Some of my players are talking about quitting because a quarter of our time is spent downloading files now... :(

[Spyke]

I believe that the recent changes added a feature where Fantasy Grounds automatically updates the client's machine with each tagged object that they had received in the past. If your players are moving from machine to machine, then there may be a backlog of these objects, and the long transfer times could just be the result of a lot of other transfers going on in the background. One solution might be to schedule a time when your players can log in and leave the machines to 'soak'. Once all the files had transferred you might find that the issue has gone away.

I imagine that if players are moving between machines the best way of avoiding long updates would be to copy the latest version of the Fantasy Grounds cache? Can someone confirm that?

Spyke

[CB Droege]

I believe that the recent changes added a feature where Fantasy Grounds automatically updates the client's machine with each tagged object that they had received in the past. If your players are moving from machine to machine, then there may be a backlog of these objects, and the long transfer times could just be the result of a lot of other transfers going on in the background. One solution might be to schedule a time when your players can log in and leave the machines to 'soak'. Once all the files had transferred you might find that the issue has gone away.

I imagine that if players are moving between machines the best way of avoiding long updates would be to copy the latest version of the Fantasy Grounds cache? Can someone confirm that?

Spyke

My players are not changing computers.

[CB Droege]

Okay. I did some experimenting with exporting a mod, and that didn't even help. It still took forever to load any files.

But, what we did realize, is that I have a pretty big image set, since I've been adding images over the campaign, and never removing them. The mod file of just images was up to 47MB.

It had been that high before the last update, as well, and hadn't caused problems, but the tokens idea led me to test the images folder.

I removed all the images from the images folder on my side, except for a single 1400x1400 graphic (that how big my maps usually are). When I tried to send that to the player who was helping me test, it arrived almost instantly.

So, I guess that's my band-aid. I'll keep the number of files in my images folder to a minimum. Thank goodness for the '/reload' command, or I wouldn't be able to add stuff on the fly.

[CB Droege]

double post

[Tenian]

It also seems like if FGII crashes (either the host or the client) the cache is somehow invalidated and those players are forced to reload the data.

I haven't really tested this, but I'll try to do so soon.

[leozelig]

It also seems like if FGII crashes (either the host or the client) the cache is somehow invalidated and those players are forced to reload the data.

I haven't really tested this, but I'll try to do so soon.

I have had similar issues with load times recently,and I can say that when one of my players crashes, it does in fact take several minutes for them to reload the data, suggesting that your thought is correct, T.

I'm going to try debulking my images folder as well since we are spending upwards of 45 minutes waiting for tokens and maps to load at the start of the session (tokens around 3 kb each, maps around 200-300 kb). Load times were never an issue for us until maybe October or so.