Topic: There is an email for support of the RM ruleset?

[Fusky]

Someone know an email to ask help or report bugs and problems of the RM ruleset for Fantasy Grounds?
I've a problem when I open a character sheet that one of my character had opened.
My computer (a very powerful machine) and the computer of the player, freezes for minutes.
The cpu is loaded to 70% and so Fantasy Grounds until someone closes the sheet.

[markc]

 I do not know much about Fantasy Grounds or where to get help but I might be able to help you with the connection problem.

 Thats strange that you have pegged the CPU at 70% and have a powerful processor? Can I ask what it is and how much RAM you have? Also what is the connection speed of your machine and your friends? Do you have anything running in the background? Like file swapping Software [SW]? Or virus protection SW? Or anything else?
 Also if you or your friend is having trouble sending info the software can hang as it is waiting for it or it is getting a lot of dropped packets or timed out packets.
 Did you take down your Virus Protection to install the software?

 I have been having problems with HP's Digital Image Monitor as well as some start up issues after MS new update. But I have updated my Virus Software and I think that has fixed the problem.
MDC

[Fusky]

My processor is a dual core 2.66 GHz. My ram is 3,00 GB.
My connection is 10Mb. In the background I had running only the anti-virus (Avira AntiVir) and the Hp Digital Image monitor (I closed all other programs). My friend had the same connection (we have the same internet provider, same modem). To ask your last question: I not took down the antivirus before installing Fantasy Grounds and the Windows Firewall has an exception for Fantasy Grounds.

Becouse it's strange that you named a program that gave you problems (the Hp Digital Image monitor) that I had open, do you think could be it the cause of the freezes on my computer? Next time I'll try to remove also the Hp program: any other advice?

Thanks for the answer :-)

[pastaav]

I know little about fantasy grounds, but I don't think the CPU load or the computer speed is a factor at all. If you detected that Fantasy Grounds used 100% CPU, or close to that you might start to consider if there was a bug in software that made it freeze, but that does not seem the case.

Most likely I think it is some kind of connection problem. It is often the case that data transmission over an active network socket is something that happens in background, but that new sockets is a blocking operation that prevent the rest of the application to get work done.

If the server software or some of clients is improperly configured you can end with the situation that the clients halt waiting for a socket to be formed, but that the request is intercepted by a firewall or the request is made into nothing so that the connection is never created. If unlucky the combined set of timeouts that determine how long each attempt should take can take many seconds or even minutes. There are multiple timeouts to configure so it is easy to mess up.

That the software eventually recovers could be explained by the Fantasy Grounds software testing different access methods until it find one that works. In most situations this would be considered a bug in the software. The reasonable way to program the software is to test each method with a very brief timeout, and only falling back on the long timeout periods if all methods fail. The absolute best would of course be if the client software itself could diagnose the problem and inform the user that some kind of firewall is preventing proper functioning. For instance I could imagine that the Windows firewall accepts outgoing connections for Fantasy Grounds and incoming connections from Fantasy Grounds for the same server that you connect with, but that it blocks incoming connections from other servers used by Fantasy Grounds.

With all this said I think it is also possible that HP Digital Image monitor is using the same port as Fantasy Grounds and this causing the intended traffic to the FG client never reaching it.

I think the first thing you should do is to determine what firewalls you are using (they might be included in your anti-virus software) and then search on the internet if there are reports of other persons having similar problems with Fantasy Grounds and your firewalls. Secondly you do the same type of search with "Hp Digital Image monitor" included and see if you find any such descriptions. Most likely your problem has nothing to do with the RM parts of the Fantasy Grounds software, so don't include RM or Rolemaster in the seach.

[Fusky]

Thanks for the reply, but by now I think is a problem with the RM ruleset.
The freeze was caused when I (the GM) and the player opened the same sheets, the same tables and lasted untill in one of the moments the computers came back to normal, one closed that sheet or table. I think is a problem with the RM ruleset, becouse I play with FG by four years and with other ruleset "this" never happened... and I hosted games for seven or eight players.

The next time I can I'll try to re-do the same things after had closed the HP Digital Image monitor. I hope that this program was the cause of the problems.

Thanks again for the answers.

[vroomfogle]

Fusky, have you tried over at the Fantasy Grounds forum?  There's a lot more experienced folks over there, and Smiteworks USA now handles all the technical support for all rulesets previously owned by DA.

[markc]

 It does sound like a provider problem. I know some providers over sell a cable line and it ca be much slower than the advertised speeds. If you have DSL then it still could be there servers that are hammered and thus slow.
 Also weather can cause problems such as downed lines, trouble with microwave and satellite signals. So traffic gets shunted to fiber.
 I am guessing that you are in Europe but that is a guess. The big problem I have heard of is with the Chunnel and that may have some impact on internet traffic. I do see why it would but it might.

 Also I have a friend that has been having trouble playing the new games with free anti-virus software. I think he is shutting down his network connection, turning off the anti-virus and playing the game. He is also looking for a new free anti virus program. He used AVG the last time I have checked.

Good luck
MDC

[pastaav]

Thanks for the reply, but by now I think is a problem with the RM ruleset.
The freeze was caused when I (the GM) and the player opened the same sheets, the same tables and lasted untill in one of the moments the computers came back to normal, one closed that sheet or table. I think is a problem with the RM ruleset, becouse I play with FG by four years and with other ruleset "this" never happened... and I hosted games for seven or eight players.

There is no contradiction between the error being in the core of the FG code and the error only happening for the RM ruleset.

There are two aspects here...improper configuration of the RM ruleset might lead to the RM ruleset depend on a certain socket link that is impossible to form. Yet on the flip side the client should not freeze when this happens, but diagnose the error. To have this kind of freeze is a serious bug in their core service.

If the internal timeouts are set correctly then you would only suffer a momentary freeze and then be given a diagnostic message...the fellows at FG should fix both issues even though fixing only one of them is enough to solve your problem.