Curious Error Message...What's it mean

[DMdomination]

My players get this error message every time we start playing. It doesn't stop or interfere with play. I'm just curious what it means. The message is:

Could Not Complete file transfer of file portrait_id-00010_token(http/ 1.1 404 NOT FOUND)

[Griogre]

Are you using the 4E ruleset? If so I think that is because the ruleset may be trying to use the portrait on the PC's character sheet instead of the one of the server - and until someone opens the character sheet I don't think the ruleset finds the portrait. It also might be some sort of initialization error.

Regardless, the error doesn't seem to cause any harm other than to worry the players.

Edit: Actually now that I think about it I think you get that error on the d20_JPG ruleset too.

[DMdomination]

i'm sorry please forgive my ignorance but i dont understand. Are you saying someone is using their own picture instead of one of the ones i loaded? What can i do to fix it?

[Oberoten]

The problem lies in how the ruleset handles user images. Basically if you have a token taken from a charachter-portrait placed somewhere on a map it'll give this error message if that character/player isn't connected because that image is not stored at the GM's computer but at the players.

No real solution to it, but no real harm either.

- Obe

[DMdomination]

Thanks, it wasn't hurting anything but i was just curious.

[Griogre]

You can report the bug over at Four Ugly Monsters. I'm not sure if they know about it or not - it would be an easy bug to miss.

[Moon Wizard]

Is this really a bug, or a limitation of using client-side images? What would be the way to fix this issue?

Thanks,
JPG

[unerwünscht]

Well I'm not a coding genius here by any stretch of the imagination, but I am thinking it would be less of an issue with the ruleset code, and more of an issue with the fantasy grounds code. It would seem to me that the solution would be to have Fantasy Grounds save a copy of all that stuff on the host system for redistribution, rather than hosting it from the players end.

Tho this would also start a small debate on copyright issues up again, I would think, and I honestly have no advice whatsoever when it comes to this particular function of the copyright handling.

[Griogre]

I think it may be a bug, but it depends on whether Moon_Wizard can get to the server portraits. My logic is the server *can* see all the character tokens placed on a map but the players can't see the portraits of unopened PCs. The images are on the server but apparently the clients can't see them unless the character is actually open.

Thus if when FG loads a campaign it also loads the character's portraits and if the portraits are accessable to the ruleset then I think he could fix the problem by doing a "if nil, then use server portrait." Something must be stored because when the GM opens a map, all the PC tokens are there. What isn't clear is if Moon can get to the right images. If he can't there isn't anything he can really do and the problem is the portraits on the character sheet are just not accessible until the sheet is opened by a player.

[Foen]

I think it occurs in all rulesets, and arises when a character portrait was first chosen on one client and that client doesn't log on to a game. So player Andy creates a character called Alaric and assigns a portrait. Later, player Andy isn't around and so player Brenda runs Alaric for him. The portrait isn't on Brenda's machine (in spite of being cached on the host) and I think it causes the HTTP error.

I could be wrong, so it would be interesting to see if these are the circumstances causing it for other folk.

Foen

[Moon Wizard]

One bit of confusion for me in this discussion. Portraits are different than tokens.

Portraits are chosen on the client side only via the button on the upper right for selecting portraits. Once selected for a character, the portrait is shown in the upper left character list. They are purely to represent a picture of a character who is logged in.

Tokens are selected on the host side only via the token bag. They can also potentially be dragged by clients from the map to a tokenreference control. The 4E_JPG and d20_JPG rulesets allow a token to be assigned to each character, which is then added to the CT when the character is added via dragging. The tokens are only for creating an image to use on maps.

Which one are we talking about here?

Thanks,
JPG

[Oberoten]

This error appears when you have made a token from a portrait by dragging the portrait to tracker or battlemap.

- obe

[zabulus]

Aye, Obe is right. I can easily reproduce this error message by opening my intermission screen (a picture with player tokens dragged from the combat tracker to indicate who is afk and who is not). At one point, I had logged in a client from my host-laptop with a player portrait of DM (from the dungeons and dragons cartoon series) so I could show if I was away or not. Now, if I open my intermission screen without connecting my client first, all clients receive this error.

[Griogre]

Sorry Moon for any confusion. Obi nailed it exactly.

[DMdomination]

pardon me slowness but i dont understand what you mean, its because i use player images for tokens? How can i fix it?

[Oberoten]

Simply put : YOU can't fix it, it is a problem with the code that SmiteWorks will have to fix, you'll notice that said tokens are still there despite the error message.

- Obe

[Griogre]

However, the players can't see the tokens they get the error message(s) on. If they need to see the other PC tokens, free the character and have another player open the character. Once the character has been open by the player it's token will appear on the map when you re-share. Even if the player then closes and releases the character the token will continue to appear on the map.

[Oberoten]

I see. .... I need to get out from behind the GM screen in other words. ;)

- Obe

[DMdomination]

I am completely redoing my server for my game because the error has begun causing serious problems. What do you suggest to prevent getting these errors again...and on a seperate note is there a way to save my personalities and things like that without bringing this error with me. There has to be a way to not get the error because we went months at first with never having it.

[Phystus]

Out of curiosity, what sort of serious problems are you having, and how do you know it's related to these error messages?

As to avoiding it, did it start occurring when players started making their own portraits for their own characters? That's when my group started seeing the errors. We haven't seen any problems beyond the annoying error messages, so we haven't made any effort to fix them, but I suspect if everyone were to install a copy of the custom portraits in their \portraits directory the problem might go away. Worth a try, anyway.

You might also try picking up all the tokens on your maps before you close them, and closing all the shared maps before folks sign off. Of course, that's not practical if you were in the middle of a fight...

~P

[DMdomination]

The problem is that until a player on my server gets the error messages they do not get the maps, after they get them, literally as soon as they get them everything is instantaneous but until the messages come across we are stuck waiting and for some people it takes up to an hour. I'm not sure what causes them to come up or else i'd do it and get them out of the way and move. As for when it started, it happened so long ago and it has been so long with no trouble I do not call what specifically started it but i do know we had been dragging the tokens from the start.

[Dragonstar]

We have just started getting this error since the last two updates. We haven't played in a while. :) But what happens is that FG slows to a dead crawl while it looks for the files. Our DM says: " have that but the file name has been changed too "portrait_id-00004_file rather than "portrait_id-00004_token". The portraits show up on both the DM side and the player side, but the lag time is horrific. For example, to open any of the tabs in the character sheet takes more than five minutes, and frequently upwards from there.

He has changed nothing since the last time we played, except for the last two upgrades.