cant seem to use two screens.

[Rich Shuey]

I am a noob! I just bought FGU and am having an issue with using a dual screen. I am using a windows 10 from my laptop with a large monitor to the side. I would like to be able to use both screens. I have used roll20 and been able to place my character on one screen and the map on the other screen without any problem.

However I am having difficulty doing it with FGU and can't figure out why. I can place the main screen on one or the either screen no problem. But when I try and move the combat tracker or another table across to the other screen it seems to drag behind my desktop image. As I can see it scroll across the very edge of the screen behind the desktop screen image and my icons.

I know this must be some simple fix, but can't figure it out. I am not that technical minded. Any suggestions?

[Willot]

You will have to extend the screens, then stretch the FGU window across the two screens, then drag the CT over.

FGU is one application and the windows with in it cant be dragged out of it.

[Weissrolf]

As a workaround you can open two instances of FG and connect twice to the same server (need to use different usernames). Then you use one instance per screen and thus use one for maps and other public content and the other for your character specific stuff.

[LordEntrails]

As a workaround you can open two instances of FG and connect twice to the same server (need to use different usernames). Then you use one instance per screen and thus use one for maps and other public content and the other for your character specific stuff.

Make sure that only one of these instances is the GM/Host instance. The other needs to be a player instance.

[Trenloe]

As a workaround you can open two instances of FG and connect twice to the same server (need to use different usernames).

Don’t do this.

As Lord Entrails says - don’t run two instances of the same type for the same campaign. Don’t run two player instances connecting to the same campaign on the same computer, for example. FG accesses local files (campaign data for the GM and cache data for the player). If two instances are accessing the same data then it will result in data corruption, an inconvenience at best and potential disaster for the ongoing campaign data at worst.

[Weissrolf]

What kind of data does FG write as a player instance that would lead to data corruption, though?

Character data can only be accessed by one of the instances, because the character is owned by the instance with the correct player name. I assume shared/public GM data to only be read, but not written. Both instances would display different windows, though, so they don't access the same "obvious" data at the same time anyway.

Of course I don't know what other session relevant data is written in the background (yet), but I will take a look at it for those of my players who sport several screens. If push comes to shove one could maybe install two separate instance of the program and use separate data directories as a workaround. Personally I had 1 GM session + 4 player sessions running yesterday to test some stuff, but I did not perform a full combat in that test-run.

When you try to run two GM instances then the second instance will popup an error message about a backup database being found. This does not happen with multiple player instances.

[Trenloe]

The only way you can run two player instances on the same computer is to run one within a VM. Data directories and other info is stored in the Windows registry, so you can’t store the player cache data in per instance locations.

Like I said, don’t run two player instances connected to the same campaign on the same computer. They’ll try to read and write to the same cache files and the best you’ll get is unpredictable behavior or errors, the worst you’ll get is corrupt/lost data.

Don’t do it.

[LordEntrails]

Look in the cache folder and you will see what is written there. Their is only a single file for the hotkeys (no big deal) but their is also only a single file called 'campaign.dat'. That is where all the player specific campaign data is stored and two processes trying to write to the same file leads to corruption (as I think you know).

Note note sure why you would need to run 4 player instances, one instance can claim as many characters as desired. and you can then activate whichever character you want as desired via selecting from the top left portrait list. (Note, set different die colors for each character, so I can tell more easily which character is active).

[Weissrolf]

I did not want to claim them, but keep them in ownership of the original players. Does an instance without character even write to campaign.dat? If not then that second instance could be used to just show images and stuff.

[Trenloe]

Does an instance without character even write to campaign.dat?

Yes. It's a cache of all data shared with that instance - a PC is specific to a logged in instance, but images, story, rolls, etc. are shared to all instances.

Like I said - there's no way round this, other than using a VM.