Working on 1.1 release

Progress reports and musings from the developers on the current gaming tools.

Moderators: dorpond, trevor, Azhrei

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trevor
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Working on 1.1 release

Post by trevor »

I sat down this morning with an idea that would offload the image loading. While looking at it, the number of classes that would need to change kept getting larger.

So instead of shoehorning a solution into the existing system, I've decided to focus on getting 1.1 released so I can get on to the more interesting solutions.

With that in mind, I've gone through the list of bugs for 1.1 and moved out anything that was a non critical bug in 1.0 (figuring if they've lived with it this long they'd be willing to live with it a little longer).

Keep sending in your bugs and features, if the bug is critical I'll try to get it fixed for the 1.1 release, new features will automatically be moved to 1.2.

I'm going to work towards getting 1.1 into release candidate status by the end of next week. That will leave me free to work on the network rewrite the next week.
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Post by heruca »

There's one thing that should be very easy to fix, even for 1.1.

Right now, Mac users with a single-button mouse must simulate right-clicking by Command-clicking (to drag the map or access contextual menus). Can you please change this to the commonly-accepted standard of Control-clicking?

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

I've got a two button mouse on my mac mini and it works as I would expect it to.
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Post by heruca »

Yes, my comment was about simulated mouse clicks with a single-button mouse.

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Post by dorpond »

Yeah, doesn't a MAC simulate a right mouse button click by Control Click?

I think that is the standard for all MAC users since they have a single button. I think it is second nature for them to Control Click.

Probably a good idea but whether it needs to be done now - I will let Trevor decide that. :)

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Post by dorpond »

BRING ON 1.2!!!

I am all for it Trevor! I think we hit a brick wall with performance atm and moving to 1.2 only makes sense to me. Why keep kicking a pony when a warhorse is being born? :)

The sooner the better I vote. :)

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Post by Phergus »

Part of the problem Dorpond is just the nature of cable/adsl broadband connections. Your outgoing bandwidth probably tops out around 45 KB/sec. Takes 22 seconds for you to upload 1 MB of info to someone.

4 maps at 3MB each is 12 MB. 12 x 22 = 264 secs or 4 mins 24 secs. Multiply that by 6 players and you are looking at 27 mins 24 secs of time spent transferring.

Using smaller, lower resolution maps would cut down on the time. Uploading an archive of the images to a central server with the necessary bandwidth would also help with downside of having given the players all the maps to look at as they wish.

Leveraging some P2P tech might be an interesting path to explore. Send different parts to different player clients and let them serve them up to each other.

Definitely needs to be some work put into managing the sending/receiving of data to the players such that the chat doesn't get lagged.

You can check your upload speed btw at places like http://www.testmy.net/

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Post by dorpond »

Phergus wrote:Part of the problem Dorpond is just the nature of cable/adsl broadband connections. Your outgoing bandwidth probably tops out around 45 KB/sec. Takes 22 seconds for you to upload 1 MB of info to someone.

4 maps at 3MB each is 12 MB. 12 x 22 = 264 secs or 4 mins 24 secs. Multiply that by 6 players and you are looking at 27 mins 24 secs of time spent transferring.

Using smaller, lower resolution maps would cut down on the time. Uploading an archive of the images to a central server with the necessary bandwidth would also help with downside of having given the players all the maps to look at as they wish.
Yeah, I agree that is a lot of data.

Remember when I made those buildings in the Town Map Project originally? They we designed for a grid setting of 40. Know what I heard from the community? Everything was pixilated. :P

So I made them at a higher resolution. Know what everone said then? They love them. :P

Guess what? We can't use them. :P

I should have used my better judgement and kept them at Grid 40. Well the good news is that we can size them down anyway.

So yeah, low resolution is the key lowering the bandwidth hogging. As technology gets better, things can only get better.

Rock on!

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Post by dorpond »

Here are my results. Whopping, arn't they? LOL

:::.. testmy.net test results ..:::
Download Connection is:: 2677 Kbps about 2.68 Mbps (tested with 2992 kB)
Download Speed is:: 327 kB/s
Upload Connection is:: 449 Kbps about 0.45 Mbps (tested with 748 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 55 kB/s

I am going to be changing to FIOS I think. Anyone have it? Does it work well? I was thinking around a 30.00 package if they have one.

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Keep in mind that larger images are just fine for use, you just have to distribute them before the game.

For dungeons where you want to keep the map hidden that might be tricky.

For basic room floorplans, that shouldn't be a problem. Just create a zip file with all the various floorplans of buildings in it, have your peeps download and install pregame, and you don't have hefty downloading when sitting down to play.

The key is that the important thing is not the floorplan, but what you put on the floorplan, which they gleen from just looking at the map.

Thinking outloud about the hidden image problem, we might be able to come up with a way to distribute a password protected zip file that is opened by MT when the campaign starts up.
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Post by Phergus »

Perhaps just a password protected campaign file (that could be zipped)?

If a GM client loads it he is prompted for the password after which it would load normally. If a Player client loads it, MT queries the GM server to match it with the campaign loaded there and verify that the GM has provided a password on his end for it to load.

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Post by dorpond »

trevor wrote:Thinking outloud about the hidden image problem, we might be able to come up with a way to distribute a password protected zip file that is opened by MT when the campaign starts up.
Yeah, I like that idea. I am not really keen on giving players anything that they can peek at.

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Post by Styles2304 »

What did I see a couple days (week or so) ago about sending someone your .maptool directory? They were saying something about putting all your tokens on a map, then sending the directory over and it made things go faster? Is that the gist of it or am I going crazy?

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Post by trevor »

That's the gist, but since then I've formalized the process so that you don't have to do anything manually, except add a directory of images to your MT :)
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Post by dorpond »

Trevor, does the player have to worry about where they put these images that the GM gives them? Does it have to be the same exact directory structure as the GM?

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