MapTool 1.3 Development Build 61

[torstan]

I have had a similar lock-up bug to others, but I am using b60. There are some differences to the standard behaviour.

I use this build and the same laptop for two games. My work game runs through the work internet connection and has no problems at all. My home one runs through a slower internet connection. This is the one that has had problems.

I started the game with a large campaign file (13Mb) and it took quite a while for people to receive the images. That was expected. One guy got the image pretty fast, the others took a while but eventually got there. Then they switched to another map. On this map the background image was tiny (around 200k). They didn't get it at all. They dropped off the connection and had to jump back on. From this point on we had consistent problems with them connecting.

I assumed it was an asset transfer issue. I stripped out all the images I didn't need and got the campaign file down to 5Mb. I then sent it to them. They opened it to cache the images and then came back on to the running campaign. This immediately allowed them to see the map they opened on. No problem. However as soon as they wanted to switch maps they had the same problem. It took 10 minutes or more for them to switch over and maptool would drop them off at 96% sometimes or every now and again it would go through.

Eventually they did get onto the current map. We ran a combat. They were experiencing lag (perhaps a minute or two) which got progressively worse. They were booted a couple of times. I ended up taking screenshots and uploading them to a Google group to get around the issue.

I restarted maptool a number of times. This did not solve the problem.

Whenever there was lag on the maptool side we had problems with skype being garbled. Towards the end of the evening I was finding it hard to understand either of the groups I was playing with. This suggests to me that something was saturating my internet connection. It's also possible it was maptool saturating the connection of the group in trouble. If this were the case then it would only show up on slower internet connections (hence my work game is fine). It feels like an asset transfer problem - with the latency and huge load time - but there should have been no images transferred due to the fact they had the images cached. Has something changed in that code?

Happy to help test in any way I can. This bug really slowed down my game and I'll be rolling back to an older version until it's fixed.

[kristof65]

torstan - that's an interesting observation. I wonder if it might be worth it to gather some additional data from people who are and aren't having the problem - like speeds, providers and wireless connections in play? Note that I know very little about the possible issues in the program, but for 25+ years my job has been troubleshooting electronics and sometimes the most important part of finding the problem is simply nailing down the common conditions/symptoms and looking for a pattern.

I would suggest that everyone having the problem and a few of us who aren't provide the following information for each GM/Player:

• If they've seen the issue or not
  What version of MT they're using
  Wired or wireless internet connection
  Type of internet connection (DSL, Cable, Satellite, Microwave, etc)
  Speed of their connection (I'd suggest everyone use the same site to measure their speed - the only one I know of is speedtest.net, someone here may have a better choice)
  Who their internet provider is

I'm sure we could get into more specifics, like router types, network cards, etc but I think at first this might be all we need to determine whether its a speed issue, and even the most technically disinclined players should be able to provide most of the above info off the top of their head.

I'll be playing my next game Tuesday, I'll ask my group for all that.

[dorpond]

Trevor and the team have been working hard at resolving this issue along with improving macro performance. I have a strong feeling B62 will be released this week but in this industry, one can never tell. My hopes are that B62 will be the new rock solid stable version and all you B56 fans can move forward.

Thank you all for all the helpful info! Yes, we do read it.

[torstan]

Glad to hear it. If there's anything we can do to help, just say. Looking forward to seeing a new stable version.

[dorpond]

I created a new thread fo the networking issues. For those having the problems, please discuss it here:

http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12440