Best performance for players

[Caratacus]

I wish to ask all the experienced FGU GMs about improving the performance for my players.
Should I remove from the ongoing campaign files such as tokens, maps, stories, etc. once I've used them for an adventure, and they're unlikely to be needed again? Say move them to my own laptop storage?
Would doing so improve the players' download speeds? If not, is there any other streamlining I might do to help?
I'm asking as I find that after a few sessions, it seems the overall speed of uploads appears to be slower than during the first couple of sessions.
Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated.


Thanks

[BronzeDodger]

General concepts I'll let those with more expertise cover: I ran one that was all homebrew. I kept one dev campaign for things like NPC names, world map, campaign notes (to pretty tiny) and then for a given chapter, would export each into it's own module (it was travel-based so I could be pretty confident they would not go backwards, so it was one-and-done for most chapters). So I'd load Chapter 1, play that (included all maps, images, story entries, etc.) and then when we finished that bit, just close the module and now all the image sharing and overhead disappears from the players' computers. As DM you can always reactivate the module if you need to dig up a detail - but in general it's gone once you're through a chapter.

Doing it this way kept it succinct for me (i.e. i only had current info to comb through, not all the chapters) and kept the overhead on the other computers minimized.

[LordEntrails]

Once something has been shared and downloaded, it should not need to be downloaded by the players again unless they have deleted their cache or are using a new/different computer.

That said, I use development campaigns for each section or chapter of my campaign and then export modules from those and open (and close) the needed modules. It helps keep shared images to a reasonable amount (which can easily become a performance issue).

That said, just try to practice good hygiene, remove what you no longer need. Note, I expect slow performance degradation over the life of a campaign just as you have more and more content, both specific to the campaign, but also to FGu in general (i.e. Adding new images, etc to assets).

If you have specific cases or situations where you see performance degradation, let us know and we can help figure out why.

[Caratacus]

OK, so in a nutshell, only keep active what you expect to use in each session, and remove anything obsolete.
I believe I understand the module concept, I just haven't used it yet in the way suggested.
We've had a couple issues lately of maps taking forever to download, or in one case, not downloading at all for my players. Looking at the maps themselves, they don't seem significantly different to others I've used
, and others loaded afterwards fine. I'd just like to keep it working at their end.

[Zarestia]

What's your upload speed and how many players do you have at your table?
How big (in MB) are the maps in question?
How big is your campaign folder?

You can share maps while no one is connected. The maps will then get downloaded when people connect the next time, this might eliminate some of your issues while gaming.

[LordEntrails]

Note that if you share maps before players are connected and do not want them to see the image, either add a global mask or enable LOS so that the map is concealed. Also you may wish to use the non-ID name and mark it unidentified.

[damned]

Also how big is the db.xml itself.
Its possible this has grown very large and is impacting performance.

[ColinBuckler]

Also how big is the db.xml itself.
Its possible this has grown very large and is impacting performance.

I tend to choose a convenient time to create a new campaign, export all the characters from the old campaign and import them in the new campaign.

Running weekly, I found approximately every 9 to 12 months is a good time frame for this.

In Waterdeep/Mad Mage I chose to do this as the party moved between level 3 and level 4 as the campaign has been running around 18 months and the db.xml was well clogged up. You can retain the old campaign for reference.

[SilentRuin]

Here are the number one lag busters IF you have decent network/machines for host and clients (all bets are off if you don't)...

1. LOS in Maps - this IS the number one lag generator. In order to reduce this you should check if the map has all the LOS layers active at once (or is one giant LOS layer) and break that map LOS into different areas that you can turn off when players are not near that area. This can be turned on and off in groups of LOS if you have enough individual layers so you always have the minimum active you need.

Well... crap. Really that's all I have to say on lag. This is the number 1 trouble maker.

[Shapeshifter1923]

Here are the number one lag busters IF you have decent network/machines for host and clients (all bets are off if you don't)...

1. LOS in Maps - this IS the number one lag generator. In order to reduce this you should check if the map has all the LOS layers active at once (or is one giant LOS layer) and break that map LOS into different areas that you can turn off when players are not near that area. This can be turned on and off in groups of LOS if you have enough individual layers so you always have the minimum active you need.

Well... crap. Really that's all I have to say on lag. This is the number 1 trouble maker.

I have to agree.... I ran a Call of Cthuhu encounter with 80+ cultists on the map (LOS, lighting, layers sFX). It was the circular columns' LOS that was slowing everything down to a crawl. Freehand-drawn irregular walls, circles, and ellipses are the worst culprits as they can have masses of points on the LOS, try to minimise these, and things will run smoother.