Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

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SzassT
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by SzassT »

I tried reducing the Map Vision Distance to 100, no change. So I started a new campaign (to have a blank slate to fiddle with) and found the cause of the rather quickly! It appears to be the BoT. With a clean map, imported map, VBL, multiple light sources, over 100 tokens, a couple dozen large images (20-50mb each), and 100 small images (700kb-1mb each), 0 to negligible lag. As soon as I put BoT in, I get the lag spikes. The spikes are tied to anything edited, moved, added, or removed from the Token, Hidden, and Object layer (the background layer seems unaffected). There is a several second (3-5) anytime something is added, edited, moved, or deleted. At first, this didn't seem like such a big deal, but as soon as combat rolled around, it was awful. Any suggestions to lighten the load of the BoT? My current settings are as follows:
Check All Maps on Start up
Automatically swap to map for interpads - Do not change AND Store coords
Scale Teleportation
Summon Token Macro (PCs - Player, NPCs - Basic, Summon Property Types - Basic, Summon Special - [Default list])
Use Start Up map and coordinates
Set map to open at start up (Specific map, it's my world map)
Set coordinates to centre map on start up (1,19)
No Exclusions on Initialization
PropertyTypes that do NOT trigger onTokenMoveEvent [default list]
Toggles - Check Special Pads, Lock Movement for Locked Tokens
No General Events
System settings have not been altered.

I have the Transportation, Map Creation macros, VBL macros, Other, and Function Macros features enabled.

BoT Tokens on campaign:
lib:OntokenMove
Lib:EventMacros
Image:none
lib:Coords
Area Marker
centreOnMePad
DoorLeverToken
GridCoordMarker
VBL-Brush
Blue Feet
Red Feet
Purple Feet
NILDIKS ROOM DESCRIPTION TOKEN
2 Interpads (1 matched pair)

*Note, I am not utilizing (or really sure what to do with) the Image:none, lib:Coords, Area Marker, centreOnMePad (I know what this is for, but I'm not using it), DoorLeverToken, GridCoordMarker, VBL-Brush, Blue Feet, Red Feet, Purple Feet, or NILDIKS ROOM DESCRIPTION TOKEN (Again, I know what this is for, but I am not using it). I only put these tokens on the map because the instructions on the BoTs installation guide said to drag the contents of the zip onto the campaign and I wasn't certain what was essential and what wasn't. This very well could be my problem, I don't know, I'm not good with macros :oops: (I've only made one for "whispering" so when players use it, the whisper is sent to the chosen other player and the GM (usually me) and a "Create Attack" macro my players can use to quickly make an attack macro, pretty basic.)

I love the teleport function of the BoT and would like to be able to utilize the scatter/build forest functions. Pretty much everything else I can do without (I would actually probably love to use some, such as the open/close door, but I've done without them for so long, I can manage without them.

Again, I appreciate any help provided and patience :wink:

EDIT: I realize I just made it sound like I'm blaming Wolph's BoT. I didn't mean to make it sound that way. I realize the issue is likely on my end and as many people utilize BoT, it would be highly unlikely something is wrong with it. As the old turn of phrase goes, it's likely EBCAK! (Error Between Chair And Keyboard).

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wolph42
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by wolph42 »

thanks for the assessment. Strange as ive not encounterd this. what you can initially do is in the bot settings turn all the toggles off. read them (there are tooltips) to see what they do and then turn them off and see if it makes any difference. Then if this does make a difference, turn them on one by one (which you like to use) and see if the lag appears again. If so: let me know what the culprit is and ill delve into it.

SzassT
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by SzassT »

Alright, I went through the settings disabling them one by one. There was no significant change in lag time even with all of them disabled. So, I then removed all BoT Tokens, Macros, and the table. This roughly halved the lag. So I exported the map and imported without BoT and with BoT onto a blank campaign. This had no new effect on the lag time. I then created a new campaign, blank map, and imported campaign settings, copy-pasted layer by layer the map over to the new campaign, and then installed BoT with the same settings I was originally using. Then I repeated this process, only installing BoT first. Results:

BoT by itself causes no to little lag
Vision on/off/night had no noticeable alteration in lag
Fog of War on/off (I did not test clearing various amounts as in none of the situations was FoW cleared more than a 30ft radius area) had no noticeable effect on lag
Token layer had a noticeable, yet slight, impact on lag (There are 58 tokens of varying sizes, all with sight ranging from 60ft-120ft, several with auras ranging from 20ft-40ft)
Adding the Hidden layer had a noticeable impact on lag (there are 96 hidden tokens, including a few with auras and 48 with light sources, but no tokens are in the area of the light sources)
Adding the Object Layer had no noticeable impact on lag (there are 73 Object tokens, including 6 light sources)
Adding the Background Layer had a noticeable(1s-2s) impact in lag (There are 102 backgrounds, covering a contiguous rectangular area roughly 6000x4000 feet)
Adding the VBL layer had a noticeable impact on lag (roughly 1s-2s) (the formerly mentioned backgrounds are tunnels (its and an Underdark map))

So, as far as I can tell, BoT isn't actually the culprit, but instead just added at the wrong point (initially it was added before anything on the Token/Hidden/Object layers, but after Background and VBL). As far as experiencing it on the previous trial, I believe the problem there was the same, adding it immediately after the primary culprits for the lag (VBL and Backgrounds). In combination with the VBL and Backgrounds, BoT does create a noticeable change in lag, but I believe its more "added weight" at that point then the actual problem. Apologies for not realizing this sooner. To confirm this, BoT causes no lag on my "more manageable" maps (dungeons and small overland areas). I'm going to spend the next couple hours fiddling with my map to see if I can do anything to reduce the lag without cutting it up into multiple maps (My players, and myself, were hoping to have a contiguous exploration style use of the map instead of single dungeon or encounter style use, so I'm trying not to cut it up). Again, your time and help is appreciated. If you have any suggestions for me, let me know.

SzassT
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by SzassT »

Continued testing - The problem is purely the VBL. It apparently is far to much. I noticed that the BoT has several VBL related macros. Is it possible for me to copy/paste huge areas of VBL (So I could, say, move areas currently not in use to a different map and then bring them back when I needed them?)

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wolph42
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by wolph42 »

very nice test report. can you share the complete and laggy campaign file (through e.g dropbox) whith some pointers of where to look to experience the lag. this allows some experimenting of myself and see what i can do or let you know what you can do to solve this issue.

question: when you speak of vbl are you talking about blue vbl or yellow or both (if you don't know what im talking about im guessing: blue only).

as for copy pasting huge areas of vbl...yes thats possible but i've never tried that. it requires some macros.

SzassT
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by SzassT »

I'm using blue VBL only, haven't messed with the yellow stuff yet. I will share the campaign file, but it may not be until tomorrow afternoon/evening. I've been up for 36 hours at this point and am starting up running a session that will probably go for 10-14 hours, so I'm going to pass out super hard in the morning. I'll be sure to get the campaign to you first thing after some rest though!


SzassT
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by SzassT »

I've uploaded the campaign file to Dropbox and PMed you a link. Let me know if there is anything else that you need!

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wolph42
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by wolph42 »

well the first try I gave to load the map rendered a gc overhead limit error. Memory shortage.... ill keep trying. This by the way means that you use HUGE memory hogs.

ok after clearing my cache and upping max mem to 8gb it loads.

hmm, weird, I pried open the campaign file and it turns out that you're not using huge assets. The biggest file is 26mb which is very modest.

you do have quite some FoW data stored on several maps. One thing I did is hit ctrl_shift_O on every map and then saved it which took of 20mb of (zipped!!) data.

If you have some pointers on which map, which tokens are sluggish then I can check that out!

SzassT
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by SzassT »

It's map "6. Underdark", the issue is anytime you open a token to edit and select "Ok", regardless of if anything was actually edited. It will lock up for several seconds after doing this.

Edit: All of the lag issues I'm experiencing are on "6. Underdark", but beyond the above mentioned issue, there is noticeable lag with moving tokens and adding tokens/objects.

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wolph42
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by wolph42 »

ok I had a quick look at the underdark and that map is simply MASSIVE with a HUGE amount of VBL. Its a miracle that map even works. Your problem lies with the vbl layer and Im guessing with the number of large pics on there as well. I noticed for one that all the map pics are png files, you can try to convert them to jpg and then reimport them. You cansimply do this (the reimporting) by double clicking on the token go to the config tab and drag the new image over the old. but overall I strongly suggest that you cut that map up into pieces and divide them over seperate maps. You can use the border teleport of maptool to stitch them together. That way when a token moves over the border (in a hallway) its automatically teleported to the map where that part of the map is.

SzassT
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by SzassT »

When you say the border teleport, is that a built in feature or are you talking about using a teleport pad? Also, if I do that, is there any easy way to transfer the VBL? Or perhaps I should just export the map and then import it multiple times, each one cutting into a new section so I don't lose the VBL and have to redo it?

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wolph42
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by wolph42 »

the telport is a feature, the long red ones. and yes export as map and import them again and then cut them out is the way.

SzassT
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by SzassT »

Alright, I cut it up into 4 sections (North, South, and the center into East and West). North, South, and West have no problems now, but East still does (Which is the original map). I disabled vision on all the NPC tokens on East, but it still has some lag. I'm assuming this is because it is still the most VBL complexity as this area has the highest tunnel density. Since I don't want to cut the east area into 3 or 4 tiny maps, I'll just deal with it for that part. It is noticeably reduced lag and as long as it doesn't get worse, it should be fairly manageable. When I run Collect Performance Data, the lag is on "2. Calcs-1" (usually around 1000ms when altering a token). That's about 1/4th what I was getting when altering a token and I no longer get lag from moving them, so I can live with that. So, I would call this issue Resolved. I do have a few quick questions about the BOT, if you don't mind.

1) Is it safe to move the lib tokens to another map?
2) Is it safe to put the lib tokens on a map that cannot be accessed by players?
3) For using Transportation, Map Creation, VBL, Other, and Function BOT Features, which additional tokens, beyond the libs, are necessary? I currently have a little cluster of tokens (If you look on the campaign file I uploaded to dropbox, they are on Map 6. Underdark, next to the lib tokens) and I'm pretty sure I don't need the vast majority of them.
4) The centreOnMePad token, can there be one of these per map or are they only for when initially opening the campaign?
5) Can the centreOnMePad be on the Hidden layer?
6) What is image:none and lib:Coords for? If they are necessary for the BOT to function, then I don't need an explanation of their role, just that they are necessary, but if they do something particular, like they are used for certain commands/features, I'm curious what those would be.
7) Is there a guide somewhere for how to make doors work? I know the BOT allows you to open/close doors, but I'd like to know how to actually do that. Or maybe I'm mistaken?
8) I want to have random dead magic zones, is there a way to use the Scatter command to scatter a single Hidden token and make it of various sizes/rotations or would I need to have a group of various tokens to do that with? Also, is there a guide for this/where is the guide?
9) Do you ever get tired of solving problems for everyone else?
10) Is there something I could do to help out?

Thanks!

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jfrazierjr
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Re: Bag of Tricks and Teleport Macro Help

Post by jfrazierjr »

On each PC token, right click and somewhere under there is a menu option for "remove exposed FOW". Because of the way maps and tokens work, the places you have been as a token is stored on the token itself. So depending upon how you cut that map up and where each token HAD been, it could very well have loads of geometry which is no long relevant(because it's on a different map). Just realize that this means those tokens will act as if they just "poofed" into the middle of that map and have no exposed area. You can of course, move the tokens around to re-expose what they have done before. HOPEFULLY, this would clear up more of the geometry which is causing some of your lag. Worst case, it stays the same and you wasted about 15 minutes of your time.

One issue with this approach and the teleport pads is that eventually they will earn it all back. This is a side effect of using per token vision that you just have to deal with OR make new copies of tokens from map to map and clear the exposed areas as you move. The latter works perfectly fine for cases where you would normally not expect players to backtrack much. I tend to do it anyway, since my game is in the underdark and, well.. tunnels collapse, etc and quite honestly, if you are traveling miles and miles in cave systems, you will not remember every single side branch in vivid detail until you see it again.
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

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