CoreRPG Combat Highlighter

[daddyogreman]

I haven't had time to go through everything, but I'm suspecting that it's a problematic interaction with the Combat Groups FGU extension. I have tons of hidden combat tracker entries on different maps. I suspect when moving the mouse over the combat tracker, the highlighter is trying to highlight all of the hidden entries in between the ones that are visible, which happens quickly, but takes just long enough to be laggy.

Think that could be it?

So I was just poking around some and discovered there IS lag when hovering over the CT Tracker, but only if you have the 'Combat Tracker Hover On Selects Matching Token' option on. However, this doesn't have anything to do with my extension. If you turn this off you won't experience the lag, but the lag is on Fantasy Grounds' side when you select a token. I get about a half a second lag whenever I just left click on a token - no extensions involved - just a straight left click. This is what that option essentially does, but it does it for EVERY tracker entry you hover over. And it definitely can make things annoying if you're hovering over a bunch of CT entries. There's nothing I can do on my end to fix that though - aside from tell you to just turn that option off if it's bothering you.

[mattekure]

I've been playing around with this recently. Love the extension. Great work!

[rocketvaultgames]

I just turned off 'Combat Tracker Hover On Selects Matching Token' and it all works perfectly now. Thanks!!

[mattekure]

So I was just poking around some and discovered there IS lag when hovering over the CT Tracker, but only if you have the 'Combat Tracker Hover On Selects Matching Token' option on. However, this doesn't have anything to do with my extension. If you turn this off you won't experience the lag, but the lag is on Fantasy Grounds' side when you select a token. I get about a half a second lag whenever I just left click on a token - no extensions involved - just a straight left click. This is what that option essentially does, but it does it for EVERY tracker entry you hover over. And it definitely can make things annoying if you're hovering over a bunch of CT entries. There's nothing I can do on my end to fix that though - aside from tell you to just turn that option off if it's bothering you.

I wonder if this delay could be due to having lighting/los and the Player Vision Preview setting turned on. With the preview setting turned on, every time a token gets selected, it has to recalculate all of the line of sight, which could cause those delays.

[daddyogreman]

I've been playing around with this recently. Love the extension. Great work!

Glad you like it! Let me know if you have any suggestions - I've got a few ideas queued up myself, for whenever I find the time.

[daddyogreman]

I wonder if this delay could be due to having lighting/los and the Player Vision Preview setting turned on. With the preview setting turned on, every time a token gets selected, it has to recalculate all of the line of sight, which could cause those delays.

I've used both Combat Groups and Situational Awareness, and both result in lag when selecting a token. I would assume the same as you - the LOS calculations with all those tokens on the screen is causing big delays. It got pretty bad for me with a map that I had about 80 or so tokens on.
As a test, I then removed all tokens, disabled both Combat Groups and Situational Awareness, queued up a battle with 8 tokens and the 'Combat Tracker Hover On Selects Matching Token' option turned on, and the lag was almost non-existent.

[MrDDT]

I've used both Combat Groups and Situational Awareness, and both result in lag when selecting a token. I would assume the same as you - the LOS calculations with all those tokens on the screen is causing big delays. It got pretty bad for me with a map that I had about 80 or so tokens on.
As a test, I then removed all tokens, disabled both Combat Groups and Situational Awareness, queued up a battle with 8 tokens and the 'Combat Tracker Hover On Selects Matching Token' option turned on, and the lag was almost non-existent.

Yeah, both CG and SA doesn't remove the tokens from being tracked for LOS.

You can test this with no CG or SA and load up 80 tokens and see it will still lag. It's not the ext, its the issue of FGU just can only handle so much going on with LOS and token data.

[daddyogreman]

Yeah, both CG and SA doesn't remove the tokens from being tracked for LOS.

You can test this with no CG or SA and load up 80 tokens and see it will still lag. It's not the ext, its the issue of FGU just can only handle so much going on with LOS and token data.

Yeah, not trying to blame the extensions directly. Just that they can result in a situation where you have a ton of tokens on the map. On one map it's gotten pretty well unusable for me to have that many tokens. I love the idea and maybe I just need to scale back how much I have things prepped, but either we need a way to exclude tokens from calculations or I apparently need a better computer to make either of those extensions worth much to me. I've honestly just started adding a 'Battle Prep' layer folder only the GM can see to the map and stamping tokens into that folder as tiles. That way I can turn it off visibility even for the GM for the entire folder and load up an encounter at a time.

[MrDDT]

Yeah, not trying to blame the extensions directly. Just that they can result in a situation where you have a ton of tokens on the map. On one map it's gotten pretty well unusable for me to have that many tokens. I love the idea and maybe I just need to scale back how much I have things prepped, but either we need a way to exclude tokens from calculations or I apparently need a better computer to make either of those extensions worth much to me. I've honestly just started adding a 'Battle Prep' layer folder only the GM can see to the map and stamping tokens into that folder as tiles. That way I can turn it off visibility even for the GM for the entire folder and load up an encounter at a time.

I think the system of having encounters works great, you prep by making an encounters.

(CG) or (SA) are great for setting up encounters a couple ahead of time or where they might be seen or stumbled into while another thing is going on. What you don't want to do is set up 5+ encounters on your map because you can prep them all ahead of time. Just set up the ones you think players will be hitting either as they are in one encounter or the next one they might come up on.
I've seen people set up a whole 2+ sessions in the CT and it's going to make it laggy, even if it's not a lot of stuff it will still slow up the game a little. Stick to 1 session, and even then I would only put stuff in the CT that they will be running into or likely running into at that moment.

If you have boss guy on level 2, and they are on level 1. If boss guy is not going to be doing anything with the encounter on level 1 even if they make a ton of noise etc. Then don't preset boss guy up yet. Just add that encounter to the CT after the players are done with the other encounter.


The biggest issue comes into is how many tokens on the map with how many LOS point on the map does it make until its laggy? Even only the party tokens and 2 or 3 NPC tokens on the map with a larger LOS map can make things laggy, then add in other types of lighting. This to me is one of the biggest issues SmiteWorks needs to work on, as it shouldn't me laggy at all with a good-sized map with 5 to 10 tokens and some lighting.

Currently SmiteWorks is putting out that we need to limit our maps to 4000x4000, which in my mind is the starting point of a major issue I have with FGU if this is going to be their stance. Anyways, I digress. Point is try to limit your LOS/Lighting/Token numbers on a map will help greatly in laggy gaming for FGU.

I've found the current best way is to only prep tokens on the map that you really need. I would suggest no more than 3 encounters ahead of time.

[spencerg]

Love the idea here, apart from a few things. The first is that it would be nice for the hovering events to have a debounced implementation., give it a second or 1300ms before firing off target/highlight (x). , this will make it far less volatile and allow me to hover over a token in the middle of a group of tokens, have it select and scroll to in the combat tracker, and be able to hover away to access the tracker entry i wanted to scroll to, without running over other tokens and causing them to immediately throw off what i was trying to find and manipulate in the tracker. The second, if you can't add a debounce, is adding the option to just manually select a token, and on select only, go and scroll/select it in the tracker.

As it stands, even with all the options there are, it steps on its own toes.

example. A group of 14 goblin tokens, all within close proximity. I want to hover over one in the middle of the group, have it scroll to that entry in the tracker and highlight...ok good...now i need to mouse over all the outer goblins on my way to the combat tracker to add/remove effects...oops, I just lost my place in the tracker due to hovering over the outer goblins.