Latest test game in TEST server - that was painful
That was painful. I just ran a 3 hour attempt to run with TEST server on my FGCON16 map tool art subscription assets created maps with lighting.
Last week I ran through the same maps and had a few blackout issues. This week - I had a ton of blackout issues and then horrific eventually unplayable random lag followed by total lag for everyone.
It was a LAN game. I would see the things happen instantly that a player did - but they would not see the player rolls until much later. As time progressed it became unplayable for us all. Some were like 2 minutes behind on things that had happened. Even after I shutdown the maps.
Here is what we found:
When a light equipped player did an end turn, random blackouts. One or multiple players and it varied. Sometimes it would be fixable by resharing the map. Sometimes it would be fixable by player closing map and reopening it from images. Sometimes they had to logout and back in. Sometimes only removing the token and CT entry and replacing it entirely would make it work. Sometimes the DM had to exit the game entirely when none of those things worked. Never happened when a non light effect CT entry had end turn.
A player with a torch had waypoint movement lag issues with a torch.
A player with a torch only saw grey (darkvision) even with a torch effect - everyone else saw color. Reshare map and they see color.
A player with darkvision could see no other player tokens unless a torch was turned on. GM could see them as light green when looking through their eyes and would not clearly see them either. Not sure which of the "blackout" workarounds above fixed this one.
If I had a token with lighting - like an NPC swarm of bats - active (blue light) - and removed it out of combat tracker blackouts happened (most consistent way to get them after end turn).
Removing a combat tracker entry and replacing it with another combat tracker entry controled by player the token was lost completely. Sometimes. Never found the pattern for this and it was the hardest to workaround when it happened. Setting Party vision and movement - which we did not want - seemed to make this a little better even though the player was the owner of the DB combat tracker entry.
The lag started gradually and only with one player. Then another - then eventually all of us. This was not normal explainable network lag in my option it was something else. I now understand all the lag complaints which I did not before (because last week I didn't have any with the same code and maps - only after this latest TEST server update).
I don't know what happened or how this is being tested. But unless the developers are running their tests with multiple players over the network (not local) and running decent sized maps with a moderate amount of lighting in them and on the tokens via effects - then that is not a test and you won't see any of this.
I can do this locally all day and never be hit by this stuff as a GM. This needs to be tested in a big map with real LOS in it like pits and lights etc. I had a max of 4 light sources going at any time in all of this.
Was most frustrating time I've ever had with this game.