Important Notice: New Product Support ending June 24, 2021 - Fantasy Grounds Classic

[MadBeardMan]

Set the campaign to LAN and it should be quicker to reload.

I agree with Valyar about the 'current' performance.

With Traveller:
FGC - load 3.5s, /reload 2s
FGU - load 9s, /reload 9s (LAN based)

But people won't think that 6/7 seconds makes a difference, it does when you're reloading a thousand times to move those labels by 1 pixel....

However, when you do a reload with FGU you get everything reloaded, with FGC you lose tokens and it doesn't reload the base.xml. We also have to think that FGC is older, it's been worked on for many many years and FGU is newer, plus they're adding more and more bells and whistles, so optimisation is something you do a bit later.

Now we will save time as we don't have to check FGC and FGU and I'm sure the performance will get better so I welcome this news, though I would have thought we'd get more than 3 weeks notice, I just released a big update and I hope I can fix the nasty bugs before its frozen...

Cheers,
MBM

[damned]

My ruleset Im working on at the moment reloads in under 2secs on a pretty underpowered PC.
Maybe the tokens and images (which I dont have a lot of) is a big factor there.

[Jiminimonka]

Mine takes a while too. I have a stupid large image/token folder.

[MadBeardMan]

My ruleset Im working on at the moment reloads in under 2secs on a pretty underpowered PC.
Maybe the tokens and images (which I dont have a lot of) is a big factor there.

My PC is a beast of a PC, it's quicker under Linux a bit than Windows. But I have a lot of content with a lot of tokens/assets for FGU (damn me for creating so much content). But of course the same content is with FGC. Anyway, if they can just work on performance that a few of us have mention in the future then we're all happy.

Thinking as well, I also hope FGU remembers my screen position/size when I do the updates.

Huzzah

[Dax Doomslayer]

Do note that FGC wont stop working because of this date.
FGC will stop working at some point for other reasons - someone buys a Mac or a Windows update breaks things - but it wont stop working for your current group because of this announcement.

I totally understand and I'm not against what's being done - it was expected and it is totally understandable and is a step forward for Smiteworks. However, it is the notice piece that I was a bit disappointed with. When software is sunset, usually there's a bit of time given for transition. I have a lot of WotC books, modules etc. If they stop updating that for FGC with the bug fixes et. al. (which is how I'm reading this), it does have an impact. Eventually I will go to FGU. My issue, like I said, I have players with pretty old technology. I don't know how it's going to run (it was really slow with FGC). Also, I'll have to sit down and go over the changes (which seems mostly with how images are handled as best I can tell) and how lighting works and then teach my group on what changed which can be like herding cats at times with some of them...

[ddavison]

That being said, I think you should consider adding really big disclaimers to the store pages for FGC (fantasygrounds.com, Steam and possibly DMsGuild?, or wherever you might sell licenses).
There might be an argument to still allow buying FGC for some reason. It might even be technically necessary for Steam to allow for the upgrade bundle, I don't know. But at least new customers should make an informed decision.

That is the plan. We have alerts up on FGC licenses here and announcements on Steam for it. I need to find that bit of text and change it. We may have other areas that need to be updated that we have to locate and edit to be accurate going forward. For DMsGuild, I need to add that still.

I also have a question regarding new purchases after June 24th:
If I buy something after the FGC sunset date, will I still be able to use it on FGC and FGU, if the product is/was available for both?
Let's say I decide to buy "Savage Worlds Adventure Edition", which is currently available for FGC and FGU, after that date. Would I be able to use it in both?
(Obviously the FGU version might receive improvements later on which will not be available to the FGC version.)

This would still work. If you bought SWADE in November 2021 - several months after the cutoff, you would update in FGU and get the most recent version that works only in FGU. If you update in FGC, you will get the pre-June 24 version that was the last time it was updated for FGC.

[Trenloe]

For devs having large /reload times - look in your console.log file. FGU gives times to load specific things. This will help to identify what is taking a lot of time.

For example:

[6/7/2021 11:17:16 AM] MEASURE: RULESETS LOAD - 6.4175463 - PFRPG2
[6/7/2021 11:17:16 AM] MEASURE: EXTENSIONS LOAD - 0.0159582 - 3
[6/7/2021 11:17:43 AM] MEASURE: MODULE LIST BUILD - 27.3664167 - 817
[6/7/2021 11:17:47 AM] MEASURE: REFRESH IMAGE ASSETS - 3.6448787
[6/7/2021 11:17:47 AM] MEASURE: REFRESH PORTRAIT ASSETS - 0.0322312
[6/7/2021 11:17:49 AM] MEASURE: REFRESH TOKEN ASSETS - 2.4137092
[6/7/2021 11:17:49 AM] MEASURE: ASSET LIST BUILD - 6.0918182
[6/7/2021 11:17:52 AM] MEASURE: LOAD - PART 1 - 42.9208694

- 6.4 seconds to load the ruleset.
- Hardly any time to load 3 extensions.
- 27 seconds just to load the list of available modules - 817 modules in total! Wow! That's lots! Yeah, this campaign has the Universal Modules extension enabled, so FGU is basically unpacking and loading the definition.xml file for 817 modules.
- 3.6 seconds to refresh image assets.
- Negligible time for portraits.
- 2.4 seconds for tokens.
- 6 seconds to build the asset list.
For a grand total of 42 seconds to load just part 1 - before it moves on to load the campaign and opened modules data.

Removing the Universal Modules extension reduces part 1 to 15 seconds:

[6/7/2021 2:03:07 PM] MEASURE: RULESETS LOAD - 5.6420406 - PFRPG2
[6/7/2021 2:03:07 PM] MEASURE: EXTENSIONS LOAD - 0.0143472 - 2
[6/7/2021 2:03:13 PM] MEASURE: MODULE LIST BUILD - 5.691135 - 221
[6/7/2021 2:03:14 PM] MEASURE: REFRESH IMAGE ASSETS - 0.9240727
[6/7/2021 2:03:14 PM] MEASURE: REFRESH PORTRAIT ASSETS - 0.0168492
[6/7/2021 2:03:15 PM] MEASURE: REFRESH TOKEN ASSETS - 0.6651514
[6/7/2021 2:03:15 PM] MEASURE: ASSET LIST BUILD - 1.6060733
[6/7/2021 2:03:17 PM] MEASURE: LOAD - PART 1 - 15.024842

But then part 2 (loading of campaign data and modules) still takes 20 seconds:

[6/7/2021 2:03:18 PM] MEASURE: MODULE LOAD - 0.1830767 - FG Battle Maps
[6/7/2021 2:03:21 PM] MEASURE: MODULE LOAD - 2.5167697 - Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide
[6/7/2021 2:03:22 PM] MEASURE: MODULE LOAD - 1.4865127 - Pathfinder Lost Omens Ancestry Guide
[6/7/2021 2:03:22 PM] MEASURE: MODULE LOAD - 0.0293107 - Pathfinder Lost Omens Azarketi Ancestry
[6/7/2021 2:03:24 PM] MEASURE: MODULE LOAD - 1.3610592 - Lost Omens Character Guide - Player Guide
[6/7/2021 2:03:26 PM] MEASURE: MODULE LOAD - 2.2662763 - Pathfinder Lost Omens Gods-Magic
[6/7/2021 2:03:30 PM] MEASURE: MODULE LOAD - 4.4313198 - Pathfinder Lost Omens World Guide
[6/7/2021 2:03:36 PM] MEASURE: MODULE LOAD - 5.8711502 - Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rules
[6/7/2021 2:03:37 PM] RULESET: Pathfinder RPG Second Edition ruleset v2021-06-15 (PF2 release 18e) for Fantasy Grounds
Copyright 2021 Smiteworks USA, LLC
[6/7/2021 2:03:37 PM] RULESET: Core RPG ruleset (v2021-06-01) for Fantasy Grounds
Copyright 2021 Smiteworks USA, LLC
[6/7/2021 2:03:37 PM] EXTENSION: Extension (Dev: Conversion*Checker) loaded.
[6/7/2021 2:03:37 PM] EXTENSION: Extension (Dev: Properties Inspector) loaded.
[6/7/2021 2:03:37 PM] MEASURE: LOAD - PART 2 - 20.7562357

So, this should help to identify what areas can be reduced for those devs doing frequent /reload operations. In the above example, after disabling the Universal Modules extension, there's not much else I can realistically do to reduce the part 1 load time (as the main portion of that is from the PFRPG2 ruleset and the standard modules that PFRPG2 can open), but I can easily reduce part 2 from 20 seconds down to 7-8 seconds for the dev work I'm currently doing. So, in this example, I've gone from 57 seconds down to 23. Still more than FGC, but definitely a big improvement.

[Speculi]

That is the plan. We have alerts up on FGC licenses here and announcements on Steam for it. I need to find that bit of text and change it. We may have other areas that need to be updated that we have to locate and edit to be accurate going forward. For DMsGuild, I need to add that still.

Good to know you are on it. (That text is one of the foldouts on the FGC store page, btw.)
May I suggest to add it to the actual description on Steam? Not everyone will read announcements before buying and they might rotate out for newer announcements... The sunset date was only just announced, so I believe you will do the right thing.

This would still work. If you bought SWADE in November 2021 - several months after the cutoff, you would update in FGU and get the most recent version that works only in FGU. If you update in FGC, you will get the pre-June 24 version that was the last time it was updated for FGC.

That's what I was expecting, but wasn't entirely clear for me. Thanks for the confirmation!

[MadBeardMan]

For devs having large /reload times - look in your console.log file. FGU gives times to load specific things. This will help to identify what is taking a lot of time.

For example:

SNIP!

So, this should help to identify what areas can be reduced for those devs doing frequent /reload operations. In the above example, after disabling Universal Extensions, there's not much else I can realistically do to reduce the part 1 load time (as the main portion of that is from the PFRPG2 ruleset and the standard modules that PFRPG2 can open), but I can easily reduce part 2 from 20 seconds down to 7-8 seconds for the dev work I'm currently doing. So, in this example, I've gone from 57 seconds down to 23. Still more than FGC, but definitely a big improvement.

Hey Fella,

Thanks for the heads-up, that's really interesting, how do you disable universal extensions?

Here's my load times

[6/7/2021 10:49:38 AM] Reloading ruleset and data
[6/7/2021 10:49:38 AM] Tabletop scene exiting.
[6/7/2021 10:49:38 AM] Tabletop scene starting.
[6/7/2021 10:49:38 AM] NETWORK STATUS: [Server] [Connected]
[Server Type - LAN]
[6/7/2021 10:49:44 AM] MEASURE: RULESETS LOAD - 5.1687894 - MGT2
[6/7/2021 10:49:44 AM] MEASURE: EXTENSIONS LOAD - 0 - 0
[6/7/2021 10:49:45 AM] MEASURE: MODULE LIST BUILD - 1.5703149 - 65
[6/7/2021 10:49:45 AM] MEASURE: REFRESH IMAGE ASSETS - 0.1090255
[6/7/2021 10:49:45 AM] MEASURE: REFRESH PORTRAIT ASSETS - 0.0050003
[6/7/2021 10:49:45 AM] MEASURE: REFRESH TOKEN ASSETS - 0.080018
[6/7/2021 10:49:45 AM] MEASURE: ASSET LIST BUILD - 0.1940438
[6/7/2021 10:49:46 AM] MEASURE: LOAD - PART 1 - 7.5582883
[6/7/2021 10:49:50 AM] MEASURE: MODULE LOAD - 3.2102185 - Drinaxian Companion
[6/7/2021 10:49:50 AM] RULESET: Mongoose Traveller 2E Copyright 2016 Mongoose Publishing.; all rights reserved.
[6/7/2021 10:49:50 AM] RULESET: Mongoose Traveller 2E Core ruleset v1.2.4 (2021-05-29) for Fantasy Grounds Copyright 2019/2021 Mongoose Publishing
[6/7/2021 10:49:50 AM] RULESET: Core RPG ruleset (v2021-06-01) for Fantasy Grounds Copyright 2021 Smiteworks USA, LLC
[6/7/2021 10:49:50 AM] MEASURE: LOAD - PART 2 - 3.874416

I shall try and optimise things for the Companion and see if that makes a difference, but it's mostly MGT2 which will get bigger over time, though it too can be refactored. I suspect it's the large number of images that are to blame.

I am also slowly going to remove all extensions and place those as decals, that will help players.

But anything done inside FGU to reduce it by 10% is noticeable and most welcome, but as I said, optimisation comes later for most projects.

Cheers,
MBM

[Trenloe]

Thanks for the heads-up, that's really interesting, how do you disable universal extensions?

Sorry, I was referring to the Universal Modules extension: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...dule-Extension Edit made in my post to clarify.

This basically makes most (if not all) of the installed modules accessible to your campaign - so significantly increases stage 1 load time, as FG needs to scan all modules, not just the ones limited to the campaign ruleset.