MapTool 1.3 Development Build 60

[Thanlis]

I built a DMG for Mac users:

http://www.innocence.com/games/rptools/ ... .3.b60.dmg

It's almost 19 megs, which seems consistent with previous DMG sizes. Az, the trick was making sure the original disk image didn't allocate too much size, then copying it to compress it. But I did it by hand using Disk Utility, so.

[Azhrei]

I built a DMG for Mac users:

Thanks. I've put it on the Download page for the main site.

[...] But I did it by hand using Disk Utility, so.

Yeah, I'm trying to automate it. I want my script to grab the ZIP file, create the DMG package, then upload it back to the main site. It would be great if I could find an version of diskutil that would work on Linux, but the HFS filesystem isn't supported in a r/w version. I may also look to see if the DMG can be in a format other than HFS and build it that way...

There won't be any progress on this until late next week at the earliest, however. (Since the DMG for b60 is now on the main site, this isn't a problem until b61 comes out. )

[Thanlis]

[...] But I did it by hand using Disk Utility, so.

Yeah, I'm trying to automate it. I want my script to grab the ZIP file, create the DMG package, then upload it back to the main site. It would be great if I could find an version of diskutil that would work on Linux, but the HFS filesystem isn't supported in a r/w version. I may also look to see if the DMG can be in a format other than HFS and build it that way...

Yeah, I figured. Automator's a bit cranky about making disk images too.

[nwelte1]

Ran a game and had two problems occur:

1. Players would suddenly have no control over their token. Even disconnecting and reconnecting did not fix the problem. I had to restart the server to clear the issue. Seemed to occur when I had an automatic death state appear on a token. This issue occurred again about part way through the session.

2. Initiative tracker would add people multiple times even though they only rolled once. I would cleat the extra occurrences in the initiative panel and they would reappear. (Oh and I was experiencing the initiative overwrite bug)

[cubeblue]

I ran a game last night and we experienced some problems but I believe they were only based on one player's terrible connection. However, since some of the behavior is similar to what others have reported, I wonder if the cause is not MT but just one or more players with flaky / weak connectivity.

We frequently would not see this players tokens move even though he said he moved and it looked right on his screen. He would run macros and see the results, but we wouldn't see them until 15-45 seconds later. Once, this eventually led to all of us locked up in MT. I got a pop-up that was titled "Error" but nothing in within the frame of the error pop-up. I could click the "X" to close the pop-up and another would appear ad nauseum. I had to kill the task to get out.

One other thing I've noticed as early as b59 but failed to report since I just didn't remember and it wasn't a big deal: when editing a macro, in the textbox for the group name, sometimes selecting text with the mouse in this textbox causes an error. I can close the error pop-up and edit fine, but it is annoying. I'm sorry I don't remember the error off the top of my head, but it might be a Null Pointer Exception.

Anyways, everything else went smooth and everyone but the guy with the poor connectivity had zero problems. This was a 6 hour session too.

Thanks,
Jeff

[MeepoLives]

This is the exact same thing that happened to me. 1 player had Maptool crash and then all the other players stopped receiving updates. I also could not close Maptool, but could save with no problems. I had to kill the Java process and restart to get the connections up.

Each time a player got disconnected, I had to restart Maptool.

I played a game on Friday and noticed this problem as well. My new Acer Netbook appears to be having some video issues, so about once an hour while running MapTool, my computer would lock up completely. No way to get out of it other than a hard reboot.

Every time it happened, the other players stopped receiving updates and the server had to be restarted. I eventually had to give up reconnecting and play off my wife's computer since she was playing as well.

While I realize the constant crashing is my issue to resolve, it would be nice if it didn't have such a huge impact on the other players.

(Though, if anyone has any ideas how I go about diagnosing the crashes properly it would be much appreciated. I'm running on Vista with 2GB RAM, I suspect the video is the problem because I have some visual glitches with other programs like Character Builder and I've heard nothing but bad things about Intel GMA 500, which is what the Acer Aspire One uses. If you have any hints, feel free to PM me.)

[barinax]

This is the exact same thing that happened to me. 1 player had Maptool crash and then all the other players stopped receiving updates. I also could not close Maptool, but could save with no problems. I had to kill the Java process and restart to get the connections up.

Each time a player got disconnected, I had to restart Maptool.

I played a game on Friday and noticed this problem as well. My new Acer Netbook appears to be having some video issues, so about once an hour while running MapTool, my computer would lock up completely. No way to get out of it other than a hard reboot.

Every time it happened, the other players stopped receiving updates and the server had to be restarted. I eventually had to give up reconnecting and play off my wife's computer since she was playing as well.

Everyone, I was finally able to test last night over a period of about an hour. I had 3 people connected plus the server I was running. The same guy that had the connection problems last time also had the same issues this time. Each time his connection dropped, all clients stopped communicating w/ the server. I had all of them delete their ./maptool directory and re-download from the launch page. Same problem occurred.

Here was my test setup. Was running 1.3B60 with NO campaign loaded, only the default grasslands. I added a few player controllable tokens (the ones bundled with Maptool) and some basic macros to do some simple DnD 4e math and had a small mock encounter. As soon as my problem player crashed/disconnected, any updates between the server and all clients stopped. I waited up to 2 minutes to see if they started communicating and still nothing. I know that a user previously said after ~45 seconds his clients would reconnect, but that didn't happen to me. If I tried to shut down the server, I would get the aforementioned blank "Error" window and had to kill the java process and restart the Maptool server in order to keep playing.

[dorpond]

Barinax, perhaps you should let Trevor know when your next test session is. This way he could be connected and looking at code behind the scenes. It may be the only way since he and I cannot create this issue.

Your environment is perfect for testing this, by the sounds of it.

[FdL]

Ok, on my last session the last sunday I had some small problems with the program.

I run two instances in my laptop for my pnp game, so one I DM with and the other I use to project as a client to my players, through a TV. They are connected together, of course.

It usually runs smooth enough, but at some point I got some unusual jerkyness and slowdown, it lost responsiveness and I couldn't shake it no matter what I did.

The laptop is pretty powerful, Windows 7 enabled and all, 3 gb, dual core, etc. So it's never given me performance issues.

Also, at some point it went back to normal. I rebooted after this happened, but the problem persisted and finally left by itself.

I'm going to try to recreate it by myself to find the reasons why it happened.

I'll also note down the error I consistently get when I connect the two instances of MapTool together.

[dorpond]

It usually runs smooth enough, but at some point I got some unusual jerkyness and slowdown, it lost responsiveness and I couldn't shake it no matter what I did.

Did you check the performance monitor while it was slow and jerky? Next time, check that out and copy/paste a few entries where the numbers are high.

Funny you mention Win7; I played last night also and was floored how well Win7 worked compared to my Vista. I even pinged Trevor and told him how great it was performing.

Was your campaign heavy with VBL, lighting, macros, etc? Is the campaign file large and coud it have been autosaving?

[age000]

I posted earlier saying we had experienced similar problems to barinax and Laser Wolf.

We played again on Sunday and this time we were able to get things working. I was not hosting but we were all discussing what to try to make it work (only 3 people total, the rest of our group didn't bother to show ). The host started by turning off all virus scan, firewall and anti-spyware software. He started a campaign using the newest DeviantNull framework (4.3). About 5 minutes in both players lost connection to the server. As near as the host could tell, we were both connected still and we could both still save and manipulate our tokens on our local machine but no information was being transferred back and forth. The other player had some odd behavior in Ventrillo at the same time (appearing as multiple instances), but nothing serious.

At this time, I updated Java (.14 to .16) and the host turned off Open VPN (the only other program connected to the network beyond Ventrillo and Maptools). We all restarted Maptools and then reconnected. Everything work for the remainder of the session. We had a few slow downs and some odd behavior with macros a couple times, but no disconnects.

I'm not sure when we will play next (DM is on vacation next week), but I will post if I have any new information.

[trevor]

@ barinax if you are getting an error dialog, it should technically be logged in the log.txt file in your .maptool directory, could you take a look and see if you are getting errors in there ?

[LaserWolf]

@ barinax if you are getting an error dialog, it should technically be logged in the log.txt file in your .maptool directory, could you take a look and see if you are getting errors in there ?

I will say that despite getting a multitude of error windows, there was nothing in my log that seemed to correspond. Maybe barinax had better luck?

Assuming a critical mass of players shows up this weekend (unfortunately not a guarantee) I'll be hosting a game. Sunday 1 PM EST (UTC 18:00). I'll fill you in on details if you want to spectate. I can't guarantee the bug, but we'll give it the old college try.

Still haven't heard back from the player that had the disconnection issue that seemed to spark the whole shebang. Will continue to keep you posted.

[barinax]

@ barinax if you are getting an error dialog, it should technically be logged in the log.txt file in your .maptool directory, could you take a look and see if you are getting errors in there ?

I will say that despite getting a multitude of error windows, there was nothing in my log that seemed to correspond. Maybe barinax had better luck?

Assuming a critical mass of players shows up this weekend (unfortunately not a guarantee) I'll be hosting a game. Sunday 1 PM EST (UTC 18:00). I'll fill you in on details if you want to spectate. I can't guarantee the bug, but we'll give it the old college try.

Still haven't heard back from the player that had the disconnection issue that seemed to spark the whole shebang. Will continue to keep you posted.

Same w/ me Laserwolf. Nothing in the logs that indicate what actually happened. Only a few UPnP errors. I also have 1 player that seems to be the cause of the disconnects. It doesn't look like we will be playing this weekend, but I will report back when we do play.

[FdL]

It usually runs smooth enough, but at some point I got some unusual jerkyness and slowdown, it lost responsiveness and I couldn't shake it no matter what I did.

Did you check the performance monitor while it was slow and jerky? Next time, check that out and copy/paste a few entries where the numbers are high.

Oh, I didn't know that existed. I'll keep an eye on it in the future.

Funny you mention Win7; I played last night also and was floored how well Win7 worked compared to my Vista. I even pinged Trevor and told him how great it was performing.

Yeah, it's a pleasure to use actually ^^

Was your campaign heavy with VBL, lighting, macros, etc? Is the campaign file large and coud it have been autosaving?

Well, not full-framework heavy. My stuff is pretty modest, really. And the file is not that big. Under 20 mbs IIRC. Also, autosaving is probably not what happened, since it happened right after I reloaded it after rebooting too.