Conic vision making MapTool heavy and slow

[VisibleMusic]

Hello, we just ran a session and MapTool (b89) suddenly started getting very heavy and slow for everyone. Selecting a token took no less than half a minute since we clicked, and so on.
Turns out, we found out that it was a character's conic (and coloured, if it matters) lantern's fault. Once it was removed, MapTool ran as smoothly as ever.
We thought it might be that kind of vision forced MapTool to do very heavy calculations, having irregular vision blocking lines, fog of war, and a big map with many light sources (I don't know how big exactly, but the GM said it's quite big, anyway, if it counts, when loading it MapTool caches 72 tokens).
We tried to replicate the slowness in another map with that light type and a large amount of irregular vision blocking lines, but it went very smooth with no trouble.

Any advice on what to do for that current map and how to avoid it in the future so that the conic light can be used freely?
Since that character chose that kind of lantern, we wouldn't want him to make a forced change due to avoidable (I hope) technical issues.

[JamzTheMan]

Light sources + FoW cache can kill performance.

If you reset the FoW on that map, it would probably speed back up. Or like you did, kill the light source. (Usually it takes several) Also, just have a lot of tokens with "vision" on seems to drag MT down as well. If I have a lot of NPC's on the map, I'll turn their sight off with macros until I need them...

We're sort of stuck with this for now, we have several ideas on fixing it but it requires some overhauling and it requires some other precursor work...

[Full Bleed]

Any advice on what to do for that current map and how to avoid it in the future so that the conic light can be used freely?

My suggestions:

1) Don't use individual FoW on complicated maps (Individual Views is fine). I actually suggest that people don't use it at all. It stores growing data on tokens that can get bloated quickly, eventually causing major performance problems.
2) Make sure you set a conservative vision distance on the map setup.
3) Use the "Hollow rectangle VBL" tool to frame any map so tokens don't "see" outside it.
4) When drawing VBL, try to have clean intersections, use more solid shapes with as many perpendicular connections as possible, and limit the use of the Poly Line tool (since that's where people really tend to create over complicated VBL).


Look around the forums for tips on building efficient VBL. Usually, when people complain about MT performance problems it turns out their VBL use is an inefficient horror show.

[JamzTheMan]

Any advice on what to do for that current map and how to avoid it in the future so that the conic light can be used freely?

My suggestions:

1) Don't use individual FoW on complicated maps (Individual Views is fine). I actually suggest that people don't use it at all. It stores growing data on tokens that can get bloated quickly, eventually causing major performance problems.
2) Make sure you set a conservative vision distance on the map setup.
3) Use the "Hollow rectangle VBL" tool to frame any map so tokens don't "see" outside it.
4) When drawing VBL, try to have clean intersections, use more solid shapes with as many perpendicular connections as possible, and limit the use of the Poly Line tool (since that's where people really tend to create over complicated VBL).


Look around the forums for tips on building efficient VBL. Usually, when people complain about MT performance problems it turns out their VBL use is an inefficient horror show.

I agree with most of that.

1) True unless you constantly erase "history". I use Wolf's BoT and turn on the option to erase after each move. This of course depends on if you want FoW history or "Just show me what my players can currently see". It's a trade off.

2 & 3 Solid advice!

4 Still solid advice, however in practice, I don't follow it. I've had pretty complicated VBL along with bad VBL from other GM's. If 1-3 are followed, you'll generally be OK in my experience. BUT, if you don't, and have a LOT of lights or extreme vision, and/or long FoW history, then #4 is going to compound the issue.