Chatbox says "sync'd" but I get no map on screen ..

[hongkongwargamer]

This is REALLY driving me up the wall.

In case the time has anything do with it .. I meet my buddy @sunoftzu on Tuesday evening to do our Objective Schmidt campaign game - that's Tuesday morning 0900-1100 NY time.

We have been doing it for a long while .. and lately the performance is really bad and I thought it's my Mac. But now I wonder if it is entirely my Mac, especially since I can watch other people play fine on other evenings .. and I play fine in my other 3 time slots.

Tonight it gets VERY delayed. When I fired another computer up I can't even get the map even though the chat box said I am "synced". We tried for 30 minutes. I was able to get the map up once but he can't see my pieces move. The rest of the time I can't get the map to pop out at all even though we are "sync'd".

We even tried peer to peer at the end. No joy. Any thoughts? Clues? I tried 2 of my Macs on this thing. Is Tuesday morning just bad for playing?

 

[von Marwitz]

Bytimes, I have experienced something alike:

It says 'synced' but no map to be seen.

I thought that I might not have the map which the guys were playing on, but with current versions of VASL, I believe, these should be pulled from the VASL-Server automatically.

Sometimes, I experience delays in the maps showing due to my personal setups, which usually include a link in a draggable overlay to a picture-source somewhere in the net (to add a picture to the scenario). In case that the connection to the server the picture is pulled from happens to be very slow at the time, then the "loading" of the file or the syncing process may take longer. I am not sure, though, if in such a case VASL tells me that it has already synced.

I have the feeling, though, that neither of the described reasons is behind the problem that you describe.

von Marwitz

 

[Tuomo]

I recently started up again with live VASL play and noticed some behaviors that I thought had been squashed a while ago:
1) moving pieces picking up the counters underneath them
2) my opponent's moves not being sync'd to my screen

Does VASL suck?

 

[Vinnie]

Yeah VASL suck balls. Why we put up with it I do not know! The fortune I've spent on the upgrades and every six months having to buy a new version? I can hardly justify it to my wife anymore.

 

[Vinnie]

More seriously, this did happen to me on Friday, the map eventually came up but did seem to take an inordinate amount of time.

 

[witchbottles]

large overlay counts, complicated maps such as Bloody Red Beach, extremely heavy counter density, large numbers of draggable label overlays on or around the map - all of these can lead to added loading times, in my experience. I can load an in progress Red Barr CG III rather quickly, with little or no delay. Loading a Dinant in-progress CG play test takes about 4 times longer to load, with a significant and longer delay - this on a Win 10 machine with scads of RAM and video RAM. the only real diff is the amount of artwork on the map and larger size of the Dinant map- all things considered

One other delay feature for VASL loading is whether or not you are using a virtual machine connection to your desktop CPU from a remote interface such as a small laptop, or whether your VASL files and/or program are loaded onto an external or internal storage media.

 

[hongkongwargamer]

I recently started up again with live VASL play and noticed some behaviors that I thought had been squashed a while ago:
1) moving pieces picking up the counters underneath them
2) my opponent's moves not being sync'd to my screen

Does VASL suck?

I have seen both behaviors

 

[hongkongwargamer]

large overlay counts, complicated maps such as Bloody Red Beach, extremely heavy counter density, large numbers of draggable label overlays on or around the map - all of these can lead to added loading times, in my experience. I can load an in progress Red Barr CG III rather quickly, with little or no delay. Loading a Dinant in-progress CG play test takes about 4 times longer to load, with a significant and longer delay - this on a Win 10 machine with scads of RAM and video RAM. the only real diff is the amount of artwork on the map and larger size of the Dinant map- all things considered

One other delay feature for VASL loading is whether or not you are using a virtual machine connection to your desktop CPU from a remote interface such as a small laptop, or whether your VASL files and/or program are loaded onto an external or internal storage media.

This is the last day of Objective:Schmidt CG. So it does have a high counter density. I wonder if changing the Preferences in VASSAL helps? The Importer JVM bit .. right now I have 512 (initial heap) and 1024 (max heap).

 

[witchbottles]

I have seen both behaviors

yep both of those are now preference selections - just check or uncheck the box as desired in the preferences tab

 

[witchbottles]

This is the last day of Objective:Schmidt CG. So it does have a high counter density. I wonder if changing the Preferences in VASSAL helps? The Importer JVM bit .. right now I have 512 (initial heap) and 1024 (max heap).

PM Joe Ueckleman here on GS or at Vassalengine.org - he's the main guru on how the Java encoding resource limiting works - and could answer that question well. Or Dave Sullivan here on GS - he also has a large experience in how the java encoding interacts with memory allocations.

 

[Sully]

PM Joe Ueckleman here on GS or at Vassalengine.org - he's the main guru on how the Java encoding resource limiting works - and could answer that question well. Or Dave Sullivan here on GS - he also has a large experience in how the java encoding interacts with memory allocations.

Not really, other than I know it sets the amount of memory available to VASSAL+VASL during play. In theory if you didn't have enough memory you'd get an error and the bug dialog would show up.

I play CG regularly and I've never encountered these issues where I could not explain what happened. E.g. I've seen where my opponent's moves where not showing on board, but one of us had dropped our connection to the server. That would be a place to start - look for messages to that effect in the log.

 

[Sully]

This is the last day of Objective:Schmidt CG. So it does have a high counter density. I wonder if changing the Preferences in VASSAL helps? The Importer JVM bit .. right now I have 512 (initial heap) and 1024 (max heap).

Have the VASL boards for OS been released?

 

[hongkongwargamer]

Have the VASL boards for OS been released?

That’s from the two of us playtesting the CG

 

[hongkongwargamer]

Folks you know what? It's probably not VASL. I think it's SKYPE. Since then I moved Skype off to my phone and leave my computer to VASL, no issues since then.

Sorry about this!

(I started using Discord with my other games as well ... does Discord have a smaller footprint than Skype?)

 

[zgrose]

Trust me when I say you can and will continue to see odd things in VAS(SA)L when using Discord instead of Skype.

 

[Abe]

I use discord instead of Skype, but sound quality drops markedly when Vassal is up and running. I think they might both be resource hogs. I use my phone for comms now, although both Vassal and Skype are too quiet using the speaker so a headset is a must.
There was one point I was using one hand to hold the phone to my ear and the other to use the mouse. Flipping through the rulebook was a challenge.

 

[hongkongwargamer]

Trust me when I say you can and will continue to see odd things in VAS(SA)L when using Discord instead of Skype.

.. and you are right. Witchbottles and I just had a Discord session where every time I speak, I heard a racket on my headset like movie gunfire. So we switched to having Skype running over my cellphone to my headset.

 

[zgrose]

@Abe intereestig, never seen anything like that. I discord with 20+ people in WoW and that’s WAY more of a program than VASSAL.

 

[Abe]

@Abe intereestig, never seen anything like that. I discord with 20+ people in WoW and that’s WAY more of a program than VASSAL.

My computer is not the fastest.

 

[hongkongwargamer]

You know what folks? I dunno if this has anything to do with it .. and we are close to the end of the O:S CG anyway.

But ..

@sunoftzu suggested that I delete my copy of playtest map .. he sent me his .. and I restarted the game with the "new" copy of the playtest map.

Performance shot up. Moving counters don't lack. Screen don't jiggle. FIXED!!

Dunno .. will map files get corrupted when .. VASL gets stopped abruptly? My Mac does have a habit of restarting itself when no one's around ..

But hey -- FIXED