How does fantasy grounds compare to roll20?

[Ken L]

Maptool has the same problem as roll20 in that JAVA doesnt clean up after itself any better than web browsers (see the memory leaks in Minecraft), so FG wins on being able to unregister things from memory when you are done with them on both the host and client side.

I'm going to snipe in here to say that it's not a Java issue. The same could be said for pointer control in C and C++. It's based on the proficiency of the programmer to manage the complexity of the references they're creating. In java if you have anything still referencing an object that is reachable, it's not removed from the heap. Can't blame lawn over growth if you don't mow your lawn properly [guy thinking meme here]

Javascript makes this worse as it ignores many compile time errors and gives the illusion of productivity when things are failing silently while producing the 'intended' result. Astral / Powered VTT is a glowing example of this. The UI they have is rich, but man does it have bugs that fail catastrophically, and it happens more often than Roll20's.

[Andraax]

It's pretty well known (or at least should be...) that several standard Java libraries contain memory leaks. So, regardless of how well a programmer manages memory, if the libraries are used, there is a chance that there is a memory leak.

[GavinRuneblade]

- Eight players / player tokens on map
- One player is a druid that favors conjuration type spells, and often goes for the max on her conjure fey spirits, so that's an additional 8 creature tokens on the map during most combat encounters (when the situation allows, and for those unfamiliar with the spell she'll pretty soon have the ability to summon even more than that by casting at higher levels)
- Anywhere from 1 - 12 enemy creature tokens on map. Again, to try and minimize work load I try to keep skirmishes small and re-use dead creature tokens as needed to represent swarms / hordes / etcetera
- Combat maps are typically 7000x7000 pixels, though this varies higher or lower. Once a combat map is no longer applicable it's archived. I avoid using map files that exceed 1 MB but at the most I might hit 2 for a combat map.
- This is all excluding any potential ally NPC tokens being placed on the map

I often run two dozen or more tokens on a map. Recently I had a map with 40+ corpses that were being used as potential zombies and/or possession targets by a ghost; and that fight had 4 rat swarms that spawned giant rats under certain circumstances, plus a second undead, plus a 6-person party of PCs with one NPC. It was on a very big (but smaller than yours) map. Some players had lag but the fight went fine.

There's also an abundance of APIs we run in the background to help me manage the game, as the campaign we're running calls for swarm-type encounters quite frequently (both for story reasons and to help keep things a nice challenge for such a large party):
- Combat (turn) Tracker
- Group checks
- With the slow downs in performance we were already hitting, I also installed an API that generates and maps macros to player's character sheets to complete actions without needing to open the sheet itself and flip through various tabs. More below.

Fantasy Grounds automates those so you don't need extra programs running in the background. There are boxes on the bottom of each player's screen where they can put macros and hotkeys of their choice. You as the DM have them too.

When I'm the only one in the session, this is usually only hitting me for about 1.1 - 1.3 GB of memory, but once the whole crew is in game I'm usually pushing 3 GB, while my players are usually hitting around 1.5 GB. Roll20 doesnot handle this behavior well, and the net result is that both myself and players are usually experiencing between 3 - 5+ seconds of lag time to perform simple activities, which really slows down gameplay.

I have one player who has a really bad lag time, it is same as yours 3-5 seconds from when he moves his token to when we see it, and dice rolls sometimes don't ever make it to the chat window. But the other players don't have this issue it is on his end because he's using a 9-year old imac that was not top of the line when he bought it.

[shadzar]

It's pretty well known (or at least should be...) that several standard Java libraries contain memory leaks. So, regardless of how well a programmer manages memory, if the libraries are used, there is a chance that there is a memory leak.

Since Oracle took over from Sun Microsystems, expect more memory leaks and less fixes in those JAVA libraries also. God forbid if FGU uses any of them, it will be worse than FG Classic with memory leaks on both client and host sides of the table.

[Ken L]

The JVM is pretty tight in terms of GC. I worked with Java, C++, and C for years and I haven't had any leak issues with Java compared to C or C++, but I'd chalk that up to losing my pointers at times. The network libs may "leak" if you don't release the holds which is done purposely (servlet workers and keeping the connection alive, etc..) If the reference is alive, GC won't touch, and .... actually whatever, this is a whole other topic.

[Valyar]

No garbage collector will save you from bad programmers.

[Nylanfs]

We were having problems about 5 years ago with memory problems and then somebody ran a GC on our processes. It was interesting. https://www.jclarity.com/2013/07/30/...ter-generator/

[hawkwind]

Nice to see a friendly discussion about the relevant merits of both VTT's I think its interesting that Smiteworks allows this discussion while it would be quickly stamped on the Roll20 forums

[dulux-oz]

Nice to see a friendly discussion about the relevant merits of both VTT's I think its interesting that Smiteworks allows this discussion while it would be quickly stamped on the Roll20 forums

I think that's an indication of the relevant confidence in each publishers' view of their product - one is confident to let their product stand on its merits, while the other doesn't feel that it can compete favorably in an "open and fair" comparison.

Just my $0.02 worth.

[LordEntrails]

Nice to see a friendly discussion about the relevant merits of both VTT's I think its interesting that Smiteworks allows this discussion while it would be quickly stamped on the Roll20 forums

What that indicates to me, is one of the reasons I chose FG over Roll20