MapTool 1.1 Development Release Build 26

Post by **trevor** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 1:13 am

Bear with me as I make a bunch of releases in an attempt to stabilize the 1.1 codebase. Kind of a necessary evil as we approach the 1.1 release.

This release specifically targets bugs in the networking code:

Build 26 (10/13/06)
* Add failover of image loading to ImageIO if image can't be loaded with Toolkit.
* Fix Bug: tokens would keep requesting images on each screen redraw until the image arrives
* Start preloading tokens when a map is activated
* Put a spacer on the right side of the status bar so that the OSX window resize widget doesn't cover up the transfer lights

Please focus on remote connections where you don't already have the tokens in your cache

Post by **dorpond** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 7:31 am

That is great Trevor! Thanks!

I want to specifically test some of the failed tests that I did in the past. Most of the testers may already have my images in their cache. Can you describe how these users can clear their cache before I test this weekend?

Thank!

Post by **trevor** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:45 am

delete this directory:

c:\documents and settings\<username>\.maptool\assetCache

Azhrei · Post by **Azhrei** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:30 am

We tried using Beta26 tonight and it didn't work well at all.

I couldn't get the server to start on the DM's laptop. Nor would it render the images that went with my tokens onto the map, although they showed up in the Token panel.

Since I couldn't start the server, I went back and grabbed B23; I recalled having played with that one and not having any problems. I also had the players go the ZIP directory, download the ZIP, extract it, then double-click on the main JAR file.

Then I had a problem (as DM) of not being able to left-click and drag tokens to a new position!? (Weird.) It seems that left-clicking would cause the mouse pointer to disappear, and dragging the mouse wouldn't cause a path to be shown...

I plan to grab and use successively older development releases until I find one that works well (the last one we actually played a session with was either B18 or B19, I don't recall). And I'll host the corresponding ZIP on my own web site to make it easier for the players to grab-n-go.

We don't play again until Nov 19th, so now I've got some time to play and test. I plan to grab the latest version as we get closer to Nov 19th and check it out, then go back to an older version if necessary...

This is just a status report on my use of B26. It wasn't a good showing by MapTool.

Post by **trevor** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:53 am

Bummer.

Does it happen with a new campaign ? Happen every time ? Can your players move owned tokens ? Does the token popup menu show up on right click ? Does b25 work ?

Anyone else bumping into this ?

We might have to schedule a 1-1 to track the problem.

Nomad3k · Post by **Nomad3k** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 10:42 am

Just thought I'd give some feedback on our last session using B26, where we had some sever memory problems.

The server went up at 7pm, and I ran a campaign that I'd had running previously. While I was waiting for the game to start at 8pm I decided, after seeing dorpond's stuff, to create an unbounded forest map and drops loads of new trees in. I was worried that the players would run out of dungeon pretty soon and would need to move on to the next part of the story.

As it happens though the players progressed very slowly. Apparently doors are really tricky things that need a rather slow rogue to test each time. Anyway, the game was set to run till 11pm, but at 10:30pm we'd started to notice that MapTool's performance was spiking. I glanced at the memory readout and we were running at 122mb. I was aghast, as it normally runs at 66mb with my campaign loaded. I thought it may be my new map, so I deleted it. It still ran at 122mb for a long while, but eventually dropped back to 62mb. (At this point I thought a garbage collection button would have been nice) The performance spikes were still there though. MapTool was intermittently using 50% processor, while nothing was apparently ocurring. During a spike the program seized, most obvious was the fact that you couldn't even type in the chat window. This was an effect that all my players were reporting. The performance was poor until I restarted MapTool. From this point onward the program ran fine.

Is there any logging features I can turn on, so that should the problem recurr I can at least post a log?

IMarvinTPA · Post by **IMarvinTPA** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:01 am

The memory graph is also a garbage collection button.

IMarv

Nomad3k · Post by **Nomad3k** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:03 am

I did wonder, as the memory dropped a short while after I clicked. But with no feedback to tell me that was deliberate, it was just a guess.

Post by **trevor** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:18 am

That's really odd.

Nomad3k wrote: Is there any logging features I can turn on, so that should the problem recurr I can at least post a log?

There isn't right now, but I'll see if I can think of good information that I can put into a logger and get it into one of the next releases.

So, once you restarted the tool, the spikes went away ?

Could you send me the campaign you were working with ?

Phergus · Post by **Phergus** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:47 am

Nomad3k wrote:Is there any logging features I can turn on, so that should the problem recurr I can at least post a log?

You could run it from the command line and capture the output to a file.

java -Xmx256M -jar maptool-1.1.b*.jar >mtlog.txt

Chances are good that there were several exceptions at some point during the session and it just finally got to the point were it wasn't stable any longer.

Steel Rat · Post by **Steel Rat** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 2:20 pm

Phergus wrote:You could run it from the command line and capture the output to a file.

java -Xmx256M -jar maptool-1.1.b*.jar >mtlog.txt

Now that's just ingen... ingenui..... SMART!

Nomad3k · Post by **Nomad3k** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 6:16 pm

I'll give that a shot. There wasn't really any stability problem per se, I think that the system was just running on too much memory and the spikes were caused by RAM being cached to disk too frequently. But that's just a guess.

Azhrei · Post by **Azhrei** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:13 am

trevor wrote:Does it happen with a new campaign ? Happen every time ? Can your players move owned tokens ? Does the token popup menu show up on right click ? Does b25 work ?

1. Didn't try -- no time.
2. Tried twice with one campaign file, then tried again with a slightly older campaign file. Happened all three times.
3. Yes, the player machines seemed to move their tokens fine. That's what the players reported, anyway. I don't recall if I saw the player tokens immediately move on the GM window or not.

I did have the GUI stop rendering at one point (switching to another window and back, the repaint event either was ignored or never seen).
4. No, there was no popup menu. In order to select a token, I double-clicked on the token in the Token Panel. But moving it was too painful.

We only get 4 hours a couple times a month (if we're lucky) so I didn't spend game time working on it. I'm taking vacation time next week with the wife, so I'll try to play some more, but I really need that "quality time" with her, so I wouldn't count on it.

5. Since it happened with B26, I wanted to jump back far enough that I had actually tried the build with my campaign. I *thought* I'd tried B23, but there were some slight issues with it as well... I'm guessing it must be some campaign file-related issue?

We might have to schedule a 1-1 to track the problem.

Hmm. That could be tough. I might be able to schedule something for the week of Oct 30th, as long as it wasn't Thursday night (I'll be flying home from a business trip). I'm going to play some more with this and I'll post here again with any further data.

Thanks, trevor.