DM Lag With Maps

[Egon Spengler]

Hello,

I am relatively new to FGC through Steam and am using it to attempt to run my D&D 5e campaign as I enjoy the way that combat is handled with FG over Roll20. After a significant amount of time setting things up for my four players, we decided that the best way to learn how to use the software is to just dive in and slowly get used to it.

I'm currently experiencing an issue with loaded maps. Essentially what happens is that at some point while I have a map shared with my players and they are all viewing and interacting with the map, I get inoperable amounts of lag for the map window and a little bit of lag for everything else within the software. The delay for moving the map window is about 20-30 seconds, but any other action such as trying to move tokens or scroll/zoom/close the map window just will not happen. The only way to resolve the issue is to forcefully close the game and have my players rejoin after putting the server back up. This lag also prevents me from closing the map window. I also can't roll or interact in the combat tracker once this issue starts. This only happens when I have a map actively shared with my PC's. It doesn't trigger if I am alone in the server or when I preload the map image with the players. It also doesn't trigger with the combat tracker open by itself. My players and I are currently running combat with a map open in Roll20 that my players use to track movement since the map isn't functional for me in Fantasy Grounds.

Aside from the above, I can still interact with almost anything else in the software once the map begins to experience lag. There is a minimal amount of lag once the issue starts, but I can still open and close any of the buttons on the right side of the screen, open up tables, source material, and NPC's. I can look at PC's, open up abilities, spells, type in chat, roll the virtual dice, etc...

Other things that I should mention are that this tends to happen more frequently if I alt tab or move my mouse over to my second monitor to look information up online, then click back into the FG window. The game doesn't minimize, as it is run in a window. My resources, per Task Manager, for CPU/GPU/RAM are all less than 50%. None of my four players are exhibiting this issue, they can scroll around, move their tokens and interact with the map just fine. About 2-3GB of ram is used up when I look at the task manager while I have everything open by FGC Ultimate. I did do some reading in other posts and reduced the size of the resolution in my maps to no avail. I even made a blank white map to just use for combat with a basic grid, the file is only 3kb in size (700 x 700 pixels), and I still exhibit this issue. I did have a 14-point font and Fantasy Language Font extensions and disabled them. I tried setting my launch option in Steam as -force d3d9 to run FGC with direct x9 (or I think this is the command for it). Source books include most of the 5e core books and supplements so (PH, DMG, MM, Volo, SCAG, EEPC, Xanathars, Mordenkainen's, both Eberron books (Rising and Wayfarer). My players use material from all of these books, so I need the source materials loaded I believe, right?

Computer Specs (all drivers and versions are up to date):
OS: Windows 10 64 bit
Memory: 16GB DDR4 RAM
CPU: 4.00GHz Intel Core i7
Video: Radeon RX Vega 56
Internet: 100MB down / 10MB up


TLDR: Almost everything in the software works as intended. However, when I share a map with my players and they all load it and start interacting with the map, at some point (5 - 30 minutes later) my map window just flips out and lags tot he point where I can't interact with anything.

Any assistance on how to resolve this would be greatly appreciated. I will check this post after I get off work tomorrow. Thank you for your time!

-Egon Spengler

[damned]

Welcome Egon

How much RAM is FG using when you are playing?

[Egon Spengler]

Hello Damned! Thank you for replying to me.

The game consumes about 1.06GB of ram. I had one of my players join the server to see if it would increase the usage and it seems pretty stable at about 1GB.

[damned]

Your symptons sound like it might have been excess RAM usage (3.3GB on a 64bit machine) but that isnt the case.
How big is the map in pixels and in kb?
Generally maps should be under 2000x2000 and 1mb however you can run larger maps but they will impact performance.

[Egon Spengler]

I tested the issue with a map that is just a 700x700 pixel, white square with no features except adding a grid in game. File size is only 3 kilobytes and I still exhibited the issue.

[Moon Wizard]

I don't remember seeing this before; at least not recently.

* Can you zip up your campaign folder; and provide it here?
* Also, you might try loading your map; and re-exporting as JPG file and then trying again. (Even if already JPG file; sometimes image files can have problems that re-outputting solves.)

Regards,
JPG

[Egon Spengler]

Most of my maps are .png files. Do they really have to be jpg's?

Could you explain what you mean by re-outputting? I'm still new to the program and am not familiar with that jargon. If you mean deleting the file and dragging it into the folder again, I have done this. I have also tried right clicking on the map and using the "pre-load" feature (icon is a paper airplane) and letting things sit for a bit while I start the game and give my players a recap (if that's even what this feature does? I'm not actually sure).

I have attached my zipped campaign folder for you to view. What are you looking for in the folder? If you don't mind me asking?

[Moon Wizard]

I meant opening your image in an image editing program (like Windows Paint); and using the Save As option to re-save the file to a different format (or even the same format). Where did you get your images from?

For the campaign, it's more trying to load the same campaign on a different system to see if we see the same results as you. In order to fix any problem in any program, you have to either be able to recreate using exact data and/or exact steps; or, if possible, make a guess about where the problem might be. Obviously, the getting the data/steps is far superior at actually tracking down issues. It also lets us look at the image dimensions/sizes/formats and campaign data files to see if anything else stands out.

The Preload option basically just shares the image data node with the players when they connect (or while they are connected).

Regards,
JPG

[Egon Spengler]

Okay, cool, thanks Moon Wizard!

In the case of the 3 kilobyte file, I used the Snipping Tool to cut out a blank white background from a Word Document and saved it as a .png. I typically use the Snipping Tool as I can choose the file to be a png or jpeg and the file sizes are typically much smaller than finding an image and saving it directly from a website. Unfortunately I don't have another computer to try loading my campaign from, otherwise I would. I know that doesn't help you guys in terms of troubleshooting. Anything else that I can do to try and provide information to narrow things down?

[Moon Wizard]

I didn't have any issues when I tried opening and messing around with your campaign; or any ideas when looking at the file sizes.

However, I did notice that you are using very small grid sizes for several maps (<10), which have been known to cause some issues with FGC. It doesn't handle grid sizes smaller than 10 very well, but it doesn't usually come up very often since people don't normally go that small on grid size for a map. Most maps I see are in the 20-50 grid size range. You might try making your map resolution larger, and setting the grid size larger.
Beta Site Cave Entrance (player).png - Size 10
Beta Site Cavern 11 (player).png - Size 5
Beta Site Cavern 11 (player2).png - Size 4
Beta Site (players).png - Size 6

Regards,
JPG