Largest number of maps?

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xavram
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Largest number of maps?

Post by xavram »

If I have a campaign with a ton of maps on it, will it impact the performance of a game? Our GM is having all sorts of lagging/rubber banding issues and seems to think its because he's got like 20+ maps on this campaign.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me though...I mean, everyone is only on one map at a time, so why should it matter how many there are in the campaign?

Can one of the map tool gurus confirm this?

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Full Bleed
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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by Full Bleed »

xavram wrote:If I have a campaign with a ton of maps on it, will it impact the performance of a game? Our GM is having all sorts of lagging/rubber banding issues and seems to think its because he's got like 20+ maps on this campaign.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me though...I mean, everyone is only on one map at a time, so why should it matter how many there are in the campaign?

Can one of the map tool gurus confirm this?
Memory wise, it doesn't matter much so it not likely to be the accumulation of maps that's a problem, so much as one particular map that could be a problem.

However, if the campaign file is really large, the auto-save may cause performance issues during the save. But, for the record:

1) The autosave is currently broken (only the first save works), so he may as well turn it off. If his issues persist, it's not that.
2) If he has an SSD drive, have him set up his data-directoy on it. It seriously mitigates the issue and will increase file access performance significantly.

I've used a campaign file with upwards of 30 maps that was about 84Megs. The autosave took longer, but since it was saving to an SSD it was virtually unnoticeable.

A more likely culprit for "lag" type performance issues is how light/vision/VBL/FoW is being used on a particular map. He can test this by switching to another less complicated map and see if his his issues vanish. If they do, look around the forum for best practices when it comes to optimizing more complex maps.
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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by Phergus »

As FB says, the number of maps don't matter except in terms of how long it takes to save out the campaign.

Turning off the autosave is a good first step to see what may be the issue.

Also check the network traffic in Task Manager (or equivalent utility) to see what kind of network load he is experiencing. At the same time he can see what the CPU load is.

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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by xavram »

Thanks for the info on number of maps, I didn't think that was the issue either.

The problem is, we seem to be having this issue with lots of his maps. But honestly, I've seen his VBL and it doesn't appear overly complicated. Light wise, I think the only lights are the ones the players are carrying, so like 4-5 light sources.

One thing we noticed, that really didn't make sense. We had several areas where player vision was limited to just 10 feet. So he would switch the player tokens to this vision type and when he did this, it seemed like the lag got even worse.

Wouldn't limiting player vision to such a small space, in general, improve lag? Since there's just a small area that has to rendered/evaluated by an individual's instance of maptool.

We are using Maptool 1.4.0.5...would there be an benefit to upgrading to 1.4.1.7?

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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by xavram »

i confirmed with the DM, he had no individual lights on this map, other than the players.

Here is an image of the VBL on the map, does not look overly complicated to me.

Image

https://postimg.org/image/4w0qa3p3x/

We are using Individual Views/Individual Fog of War for the server.

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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by Phergus »

Nothing overly complicated about that VBL. I always use Individual Vision/FoW and that map shouldn't be problem.

Check the map settings and see what the Vision Distance is set to. Dial it back to only as far as is needed for the map in question. The longest corridor or longest straight line shot from one room to a connected room. Having too high a Vision Distance will definitely slow things down.

As always, save the campaign before making changes. Especially so for the Edit Map operation.

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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by Full Bleed »

xavram wrote:The problem is, we seem to be having this issue with lots of his maps. But honestly, I've seen his VBL and it doesn't appear overly complicated. Light wise, I think the only lights are the ones the players are carrying, so like 4-5 light sources.

One thing we noticed, that really didn't make sense. We had several areas where player vision was limited to just 10 feet. So he would switch the player tokens to this vision type and when he did this, it seemed like the lag got even worse.

Wouldn't limiting player vision to such a small space, in general, improve lag? Since there's just a small area that has to rendered/evaluated by an individual's instance of maptool.
Unfortunately, individual FoW is a performance killer. The more you move around a map the more complex the shape gets that is stored on the token. It's why you often read about tokens becoming difficult to move after awhile.

And, oddly enough, the 10' vision distance has a chance to create an even *more* complex FoW shape to render because it's rendering new additions to the shape more often. If you can only see 10' that means that you're only walking 5-10' before adding some new data to the FoW exposure (which is a single rendered geometric shape.. if you could see the data you'd fully understand what I'm talking about). If the FoW were to update ever 5'-10', the shape would be more complicated than updating every 15-30'.

This has been discussed many times, and I always come around to the same conclusion: Don't use Individual FoW unless it's essential to some map. Until some developer builds in a way to see the individual FoW data on a token in game, have it provide some kind of information regarding the complexity of the current shape and its current performance implication, and have an easy way to clear it and/or optimize it as you use it... it's a hazard that players run into All. The. Time. The return just isn't worth the pitfalls as it's currently implemented. Individual Vision alone, while not quite as nice as having individual FoW with it, still keep players from see seeing anything "active" on a map that their character can't actually see.

And I also suggest that GM's do manual FoW exposures (you can create a simple macro button for this if you don't want to use Ctrl-I.) You'll do a lot fewer exposures if you do it manually because every move really doesn't require it and it's a judgment call the GM can make as the players move around a map. One, shared, less complicated FoW shape will do wonders for your MT performance.
Last edited by Full Bleed on Sat Feb 17, 2018 7:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by Full Bleed »

xavram wrote:i confirmed with the DM, he had no individual lights on this map, other than the players.

Here is an image of the VBL on the map, does not look overly complicated to me.
That VBL is perfectly fine. It's obvious he's already using tips from the forum to make it. It's not the problem.
We are using Individual Views/Individual Fog of War for the server.
Dollars to donuts, as mentioned above, it's the Individual FoW.
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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by xavram »

Thanks for the tips guys, we will try to implement these next time!

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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by Full Bleed »

xavram wrote:Thanks for the tips guys, we will try to implement these next time!
Btw, if you try turning off Individual FoW, be sure to select each player token with Vision and "Ctrl-Shift-O" them. That's supposed to clear the individual FoW that's currently stored on them.

It's also in the context menu as Expose>Only Currently Visible which is, honestly, a really weird description for what it actually does.

Your GM can use the following function in a macro to manually expose FoW. Select "Apply to Selected" in the macro settings. Select a token you want to expose vision for, and click the macro button. This is equivalent to using Ctrl-I on a selected Token:

Wiki: exposeFOW()

To clear/remove all stored FoW data on a token and exposed only the area they can *currently* see they can make a macro with this function. This is equivalent to using Ctrl-Shift-O on a token:

Wiki: exposePCOnlyArea()
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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by wolph42 »

there is an alternative solution for using iFoW and that is to reset the FoW each move. This will keep things clean and snappy and everyone can only see what they have cleared. Drawback however is that there is no 'FoW memory'. The fast way to implement this is to drag the two BoT (bag of tricks) tokens onto the map and then in the BoT settings turn on the reset FoW on each move (not sure its *actually* called that, but it should be in the toggles tab and look like something like that).

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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by Full Bleed »

wolph42 wrote:there is an alternative solution for using iFoW and that is to reset the FoW each move. This will keep things clean and snappy and everyone can only see what they have cleared. Drawback however is that there is no 'FoW memory'.
I think this is great for when players are in a maze (or in a dungeon where you want to discombobulate players), but on regular maps it really becomes a memory game to remember what's been explored. It's pretty tough on players.
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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by xavram »

FullBleed, I actually have a macro that the GM uses, for when the party opens a door and things like that.

[h : exposeFOW(selectTokens(getPC(),0,","))]

...but I will keep it in mind that if we switch to not using Individual Fog of War, to use the Ctrl+Shift+O to clear that out.

Let me ask you this though...when you copy/paste player tokens from one map to another, should you clear the fog on their tokens each time? Is it keeping the VBL info from one map to another?

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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by wolph42 »

Is it keeping the VBL info from one map to another?
yup. ALL iFoW is stored on the token. the only way to clear it is using cltr-shift-o or the macro.

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Re: Largest number of maps?

Post by xavram »

Ahhh...thanks Wolph, that is much needed clarification.

So if a token is moved from map to map to map, its constantly getting a "glut" of VBL information, from maps that it may not even need again. But if you use Ctrl+shift+o, you'll clear all that. Of course, if you have to go back to one of the original maps, you'll lose all that information and the token will esssentially be "blind" again (IE, won't see all the areas its already exposed).

But if you DON'T use Indvidual Fog of War, then its not stored on each token, right? So moving back and forth between maps and using Ctrl+Shift+O won't lose what the party already exposed...yes?

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