Archiving... What does it ACTUALLY do?

I run a large campaign (10 GMs, about 50-100 players at any given time, each player with up to 2 characters), and I noticed the load time/resource strain for the campaign has been enormous. Usual load time is about 1-2 minutes, with the game taking up about 1 GiB of RAM or more. This also makes gameplay a little... spotty at times. Refreshing and restarting has become semi-commonplace. I suggested to my other GMs that we archive some of our old resources (monsters, handouts, and maps). I was under the impression that archiving assets meant that they were not loaded completely when the editor is opened and therefore would cause less strain on players' computers. However, one of my GMs pointed out this post from the Devs when the Archive debuted: " Basically, you can now archive Characters, Handouts, and Pages. Doing so will remove them from the main listings (in the Journal tab and in the Page Settings bar) and place them into an "Archived" link. You can access them there and restore them from the archive any time you want. When archived, the items won't appear to players even if they would normally be able to see them. So it's a great way to keep your campaign clutter-free without needing to throw away something you may want to give your players access to later. A quick note on this, though: when you can delete, do so! The larger your campaign gets the longer it takes to load and the harder it will make your computer work. So if you can delete an item, you should do that instead." So What does the archive actually do? Does it help with load time by eliminating or limiting loading of certain assets, or does it just move certain things around, off to the side? Is it inherently any better or different than just putting everything in a folder? Will archiving actually help our load times or should I just have people Vault assets over to a storage campaign until they want to use them? Now, I know the "Well, duh" answer to my problems is "Delete some crap," but since deleting some of our stuff means that we would have to go through a lot of work to set up to re-run adventures for new or lower-level players, I was wondering if there were any other options or ideas that could be a little more productive than that for my group. Cheers!

They changed how things load somewhat recently anyway. Shouldn't matter how many pages or handouts you have now. They load dynamically I believe.

SkyCaptainXIII said: Shouldn't matter how many pages or handouts you have now. They load dynamically I believe. And yet it does. A 3-player campaign I ran a while back only takes up about 250 MiB of RAM and loads within 10-15 seconds. I'm not sure what "loading dynamically" is supposed to do for me, but I've still got issues.

I archive my maps a session or two after I've used them to keep the maps bar uncluttered.

Andrew R. said: I archive my maps a session or two after I've used them to keep the maps bar uncluttered. I mean sure, great, but does that actually impact the load time? Sort of asking for someone with knowledge of the roll20 code to say "yes, archiving will help you out" or "no, archiving will only help you keep things uncluttered and roll20 will still fully load all of the maps and sheets and handouts even if you can't see them." If I've got over 200 archived maps, will deleting some clear up my load time? Visible clutter is not the issue here.

Matt W. said: SkyCaptainXIII said: Shouldn't matter how many pages or handouts you have now. They load dynamically I believe. And yet it does. A 3-player campaign I ran a while back only takes up about 250 MiB of RAM and loads within 10-15 seconds. I'm not sure what "loading dynamically" is supposed to do for me, but I've still got issues. It means pages, handouts, etc. aren't being loaded until you are actually trying to use them. Previously, all non-archived maps were loaded when you signed into the VTT. Now, maps are only loaded when you try to look at them. Large background images on the map are also automatically broken up into multiple images to help rendering speed, so you only have the portion of the map that's on-screen in memory, instead of the entire background. This change happened some time ago.

Brian said: Matt W. said: SkyCaptainXIII said: Shouldn't matter how many pages or handouts you have now. They load dynamically I believe. And yet it does. A 3-player campaign I ran a while back only takes up about 250 MiB of RAM and loads within 10-15 seconds. I'm not sure what "loading dynamically" is supposed to do for me, but I've still got issues. It means pages, handouts, etc. aren't being loaded until you are actually trying to use them. Previously, all non-archived maps were loaded when you signed into the VTT. Now, maps are only loaded when you try to look at them. Large background images on the map are also automatically broken up into multiple images to help rendering speed, so you only have the portion of the map that's on-screen in memory, instead of the entire background. This change happened some time ago. Ok, so maps are fine in the archive, but you're also saying that journal entries are not even loaded unless you open the sheet up or have a linked token on the active map? If this is true, why does my game take forever to load...? Furthermore, does this mean that putting journal entries in the archive serves no purpose, since they wouldn't be loaded anyway?

Archiving is more of an organizational use now than performance enhancer. If you are having long load times, check any extensions or add-ons by disabling them one by one. I know I had a few that caused load issues until I whitelisted various components of roll20.

Yeah, I basically just whitelisted everything roll20 to prevent any issues. Good suggestion.

Newbie question: whitelisting?

It is putting certain pages or sites on an approved list in an app, extension, or addon. You can google the term "whitelist" to read the official defination.

Ah, thank you 

I keep a back up copy of my games to use as a repository for anything that is not current. Anything I want to delete I make sure to transmogrify over to the repository first. I don't archive anymore. It seems to have helped. Maps with lots of individual tiles and tokens and drawings (and DL) slow the load speed for me but I see a big difference when I clear my browsing history before launching Roll20. Also, it helps during game for me to occasionally clear my cache when things start to lag. A network engineer told me that I should use a hardwire connection to my router, rather than wireless, to get faster connection. He said the difference could be as big as experiencing the Internet through floodgates rather than sipping it through a straw.

Doug E. said: A network engineer told me that I should use a hardwire connection to my router, rather than wireless, to get faster connection. He said the difference could be as big as experiencing the Internet through floodgates rather than sipping it through a straw. Yes, this is very important.  As we all know, wifi signals are now coming out of everything.  So, when a device sends out a signal, i.e. comp to router, router to comp, they have to sort the signals they want from all the rest out there. However, in order to know which signal is needed or not, ALL have to be checked in some way. Now, a special filter is used to try to catch the ones with focus, but it still takes time to catch the signals, put them all in the correct order, then use them.  However.. a direct LAN hardline directly from you comp to your router cuts out all that extra time to find/catch or find/ignore, and then order the info.... in the direct line.. it's all already done and direct and totally relies on the amount of data that can be sent over the cable which is WAY faster.  Hope any of this helps.

As the original question has been answered and this thread has drifted off topic, I'm closing the thread. If anyone has a roll20 question, please feel free to create a new thread.