Fog resetting between sessions

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xavram
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Fog resetting between sessions

Post by xavram »

So we played a session 3 weeks ago and explored a large cave system. Exposed a lot of the map (server was set to individual fog of war), saved the campaign and called it a night.

We played again on Friday and when we all got in...all of the revealed fog was "re-fogged", for all the player tokens. All we could see was the area that our tokens sight could see, nothing revealed that had already been exposed in the previous session.

This is the 2nd or 3rd time this has happened. I thought all the fog stuff was stored at the token level, so why does it seem to be re-setting?

Running Maptool 1.4.0.5

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aliasmask
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Re: Fog resetting between sessions

Post by aliasmask »

During the last FOW update and optimization this behavior was introduced. Because the data was stored on a it would cause lag if not cleared. I think they clear FOW data on restart. I'm not sure, but if you turn off individual views and let it be stored on the server then it will carry over between sessions. This is mostly speculation on my part but someone who actually did the coding like jagged may know better.

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Re: Fog resetting between sessions

Post by xavram »

Ugh, turn off individual views? Then all the players can see what everyone has revealed? That seems like a step backwards, since I really don't want the "Normal" vision human to be able to see what the "Darkvision" Dwarf has revealed.

Am I not understanding that right?

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aliasmask
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Re: Fog resetting between sessions

Post by aliasmask »

Yes, they'll be able to see exposed pieces of the map but not tokens that they couldn't normally see.

xavram
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Re: Fog resetting between sessions

Post by xavram »

Thanks for the clarification AM, at least I can stop trying to chase down, "What did I do to cause this???" issues...:)

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JamzTheMan
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Re: Fog resetting between sessions

Post by JamzTheMan »

FYI, I was able to replicate this in 1.3b91 so it's been this way for at least that long if not longer...

The server does remember the revealed FoW if you just uncheck "Use Individual FOW" and still get individual "views" for each token, perhaps that will work for you?
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Full Bleed
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Re: Fog resetting between sessions

Post by Full Bleed »

aliasmask wrote:During the last FOW update and optimization this behavior was introduced. Because the data was stored on a it would cause lag if not cleared. I think they clear FOW data on restart. I'm not sure, but if you turn off individual views and let it be stored on the server then it will carry over between sessions. This is mostly speculation on my part but someone who actually did the coding like jagged may know better.
If this is indeed the case, it's not a good solution.

There should be a simple way to look at the FoW information stored on a token... and be able to clear it individually at the same place. That way if people are having performance issues, they can look and see about when it starts to happen and clear it. It might even be nice to be able to set a few options:

1) A warning for when the individual FoW on a token reaches a certain size.
2) An auto-clear threshold.
3) How about a way to have it start clearing earlier FoW data first at a certain threshold so that it keeps a relatively static amount of individual FoW data and the token only "forgets" older FoW instead of forcing users to "clear all"?
Maptool is the Millennium Falcon of VTT's -- "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

xavram
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Re: Fog resetting between sessions

Post by xavram »

Jamz, will bounce that option of our group next time we play. Most maps, its not that relevant, since you get through them in a single session...which may be why I hadn't noticed this, all this time. Its just the bigger, multi session maps that matter.

Full Bleed, agreed, would be nice to have other solutions.

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Azhrei
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Re: Fog resetting between sessions

Post by Azhrei »

Full Bleed wrote:1) A warning for when the individual FoW on a token reaches a certain size.
2) An auto-clear threshold.
These two are options, with a caveat. The slowdown (based on performance profiling that I did a long time ago) is in a Java library routine that is beyond the reach of application code. There's no good way to predict when there will be a slowdown because it isn't based on the "amount" of FOW on a given token, it's based on the shape of the aggregate FOW of all tokens. The issue is that there's a single shape that records the exposed area for the FOW for each token. Those shapes are then merged together to create an overall area that is exposed. That shape becomes so complicated -- with combinations of straight and curved edges -- that the Area object in the Java library gets bogged down processing the clipping region.

The above is very much YMMV because I had trouble generating repeatable instances of the problem. A slight change to the FOW on one token could cause abrupt and significant changes in the shape of the overlaid FOW, thus having drastic results on the processing time.
3) How about a way to have it start clearing earlier FoW data first at a certain threshold so that it keeps a relatively static amount of individual FoW data and the token only "forgets" older FoW instead of forcing users to "clear all"?
There is only a single shape stored on the token so there's no way to store individual time stamps -- "earlier" can never be determined.

The vision system that Craig has planned will allow for entirely new FOW to be calculated on the fly for every token and it will be faster than the existing system (based on some benchmarks of his). We just need to get it implemented... :(

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Full Bleed
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Re: Fog resetting between sessions

Post by Full Bleed »

Azhrei wrote: There's no good way to predict when there will be a slowdown because it isn't based on the "amount" of FOW on a given token, it's based on the shape of the aggregate FOW of all tokens.
There is no way to pull the timing on the exposure at the end of the FoW render?
There is only a single shape stored on the token so there's no way to store individual time stamps -- "earlier" can never be determined.
Interesting. I can see how shapes could get very complicated very quickly (particularly with irregular VBL). But it's too bad it can't be generating multiple "shapes" and then exposing them in series so that you *could* remove earlier exposures.

Even if, for example, every token had a maximum of 4 FoW shapes to render if would probably help significantly.
The vision system that Craig has planned will allow for entirely new FOW to be calculated on the fly for every token and it will be faster than the existing system (based on some benchmarks of his). We just need to get it implemented... :(
My guess is that this feature would be pretty far down the list at this point... but it would be nice.

I, personally, shun Individual FoW due to the inconsistency. It's a nice idea, but not worth the potential performance issues it can cause.
Maptool is the Millennium Falcon of VTT's -- "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

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