FGU conflicting with Discord Bot

[moostik]

Rolemaster is one of the rulesets that I think place the heaviest load on FG because of all the tables being integral to pretty well everything you do in a game. It's right up there, perhaps (perhaps not) a step below the D&D Classics ruleset in terms of the stuff going on in the background for most rolls.

After several years of frustration with not being able to get FGU to perform at a level I considered to be baseline acceptable when running what is a normal game for me I bit the bullet and went out earlier this year and bought a laptop that is similar to what the OP has posted - I added more ram - up to 48 gb based on my experience with FGU - and I think it has made a difference. A "normal" game for me is 8+ PCs and 2x to 3x that NPC/enemies in combat (FWIW FGC handled this and more just fine).

This system can run a FPS like Escape from Tarkov on full graphics and have horsepower left to spare, yet FGU with LoS, a few ambient lights and one token with a light spell, another with a lantern and a 3rd with a torch seems to place a heavier load, especially if the map is "big" and the CT is "well populated". There has only been one map this new laptop struggled with and it is quite large and I had tokens spread out all over the place.

I like using FGU to it's fullest capacity to run and realize my game scenarios, so suggestions like minimizing CT population only works if you aren't in a situation where logically you would have "a lot" of actors in there.

If there are a lot of light sources, I want to have them, not hand wave and engage in half measures - as soon as you provide things like lighting and LoS, they aren't half measure type things in my opinion, so if I'm using them, I'm using them... not using two and hand waving the rest because FGU chuggs. Personally that approach doesn't work for me.

Several things I do before each game:

1. Reboot. Not a restart but a complete shut down, walk away for a few minutes and then start up again. Seems to make a difference (anecdotal).
2. Load FGU 30 minutes or so before game time and let everyone know it's up and waiting for them to connect. This helps avoid 8+ people connecting at once and bogging things down, which sometimes seems to have carry over impacts for the rest of the session (anecdotal).
2. Put an effect on each PC like VISMAX: x where x is the distance you want the token to have visibility out to, depending on your LoS and lighting effects.

I think personally this VISMAX effect has made a big difference. I don't know programming but I suspect that FGU normally calculates vision on each and every token on a map, out as far as possible until hitting the end of the map or intervening LoS blocks, and sends that data back and forth between every token on the map or in the CT, even if say 120' of 140' of that data is essentially "darkness - can't see". I could be wrong about that, but VISMAX has made a big difference for me. Personally I use x=75 for humans and people without special sight and x=90 or 120 for those with darkvision, infravision, etc.... You might think that this isn't very realistic, but in dungeons how often does someone really need more than say 75 feet of vision when torches are half that and lanterns a little more than half... its an accommodation I personally can live with compared to the alternatives.

Hope this gives some ideas/perspective to the OP.

Thanks for this, JohnD, I could try VISMAX for sure. My PC does not seem to be struggling in any way during sessions, the freeze happens regardless. CPU, memory, and bandwith are peaking at nowhere near max performance during sessions but then I move a token or make a ranged attack (or even do nothing) and the whole thing freezes, windows warns me Unity has become unresponsive, and it simply does not recover. It has also crashed to desktop with no warning or error message.

[moostik]

It is unfortunately the case that when a player connects the GM client does mostly stop other tasks and just handle the new client.
It should not crash either side.
How big is the campaign folder?

I've had people drop off and then reconnect during session. GM side client is fine, it doesn't freeze but in worst case scenario it takes a slight pause (about a second) to think about it.

[moostik]

If its a newish campaign then that is probably not an issue.
Is there anything that you are leaning towards it being?
Does the issue occur when a particular player is connecting or doing something?
Does it happen when moving to a new map or adding a new encounter to the CT?

I really wish I had some idea. I've had anywhere from 1 to 6-7 freeze-crashes during a single 3 hour session. It may happen at any time, but most frequently it happens during combat. Since it did also happen during a combat-less session, it can't be the source of the problem, just a frequent trigger. I am hoping people who have had similar problems may have an idea of how they fixed it, being the only GM with a bug makes it very difficult to figure out the source of the trouble.

If it's due to a single player conneting, or if it's due to anything relating to players being connected, it really should absolutely not crash the GM client unless the networking code in FGU is very bad.
Imagine a Call of Duty server exploding every time someone with a bad line connected....

[Nylanfs]

Also just in-case you weren't aware your computer is the server, Smiteworks server is only there for the connection brokering.

Maybe it's an over zealous anti-virus program? Although one would think that would be triggered nearly every time you update.

[moostik]

Also just in-case you weren't aware your computer is the server, Smiteworks server is only there for the connection brokering.

Maybe it's an over zealous anti-virus program? Although one would think that would be triggered nearly every time you update.

Yes, I am aware that the GM client is the server. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I still think IF anything connected to the server causes it to crash, the networking code in FGU itself is not working as intended. I'm still not sure if that is the case, although many here have have suggested it is network or bandwith related.

My firewall and my antivirus software are both configured to let traffic through the ports used by FGU.
I have no issues while connected to other peoples games as a player.

[JohnD]

I feel for you moostik... sounds very frustrating. I sure know I was frustrated for a good 18 months with slow downs, spinning circles and non-responsiveness before I bit the bullet and threw $ at the problem.

[Lo Zeno]

I really wish I had some idea. I've had anywhere from 1 to 6-7 freeze-crashes during a single 3 hour session. It may happen at any time, but most frequently it happens during combat. Since it did also happen during a combat-less session, it can't be the source of the problem, just a frequent trigger. I am hoping people who have had similar problems may have an idea of how they fixed it, being the only GM with a bug makes it very difficult to figure out the source of the trouble.

If it's due to a single player conneting, or if it's due to anything relating to players being connected, it really should absolutely not crash the GM client unless the networking code in FGU is very bad.
Imagine a Call of Duty server exploding every time someone with a bad line connected....

Total shot in the dark here, but I figured it's worth asking to exclude any possible cause:
Are you, by any chance, using a remote desktop connection to manage your computer when DMing? I ask because a couple of times I had to use my laptop to remote into my main PC to run a session (because I didn't want to copy campagin files back and forth between computers), and those times I did experience similar freezings, window becoming unresponsive, and crash to desktop.

[Moon Wizard]

Does it happen in a new campaign too?
How big are the map/image files you are using?
How many tokens do you have on the maps?

In the case of slow performance, the data you are using is usually the key.

Regards,
JPG

[moostik]

Total shot in the dark here, but I figured it's worth asking to exclude any possible cause:
Are you, by any chance, using a remote desktop connection to manage your computer when DMing? I ask because a couple of times I had to use my laptop to remote into my main PC to run a session (because I didn't want to copy campagin files back and forth between computers), and those times I did experience similar freezings, window becoming unresponsive, and crash to desktop.

No, not using Remote Deskotop (Although my Windows is Win 10 Pro)

[moostik]

Does it happen in a new campaign too?
How big are the map/image files you are using?
How many tokens do you have on the maps?

In the case of slow performance, the data you are using is usually the key.

Regards,
JPG

Thing is, I don't have performance issues. The whole thing just freezes. I go from 30% CPU load on 2 cores and 40% mem usage to total freeze up and FGU is unresponsive. Nothing is ever slow, it runs fine then explodes.
The freeze is not the running circle kind, either. The window gets a layer of windows-whiteout (transculent white) over it, and the window title gets (not responding) added to it. In the taske manager, mem usage is then static, not changing, and again Not Responding. CPU use drops to zero. I can still X the window out to close it, but that's it. No error log.

The maps I use are tiny default FGU ones, some bought ones by Gabriel Picard (used by thousands of GM's), and some tiny ones grabbed off the internet.
In addition some i made myself, those are larger in size. The thing is, we had this problem before I even added my own maps.

The campaign size is 73 megabytes by the looks of it.

Last session it crashed so hard it wouldn't boot up properly again. We lost the the session (all progress we had that day) and FGU rebuilt the campaign file. I then had to restore from a backup, combat data and positions on the map was gone forever.

Maps are genrally 10mb or less, with the largest one ever used was about 150mb. Note that the 150mb one, although ridiculously huge, was only used last session, and we had crashes every one of the 6 sessions prior to that one.

Tokens on map vary, we've had 10 and we've had 50. No difference really.