
Hi,
firstly I wish to say that I'm really honoured to be using such a great tool in Roll20 and that I love the work; kudos to the guys and gals who set this all up. I've only just started using it and its blown me and others away with its versatility and vision.
I have a few questions which I hope you can help me with, mainly regarding connection speeds/bandwidth requirements and possibly recommended computer specification to run roll20 smoothly. I'm in the UK and I have GM'd a short adventure with 2 friends I have in Poland - apart from some problems with audio ie getting each other to hear each other which I believe was down to personal audio settings, everything was pretty plain sailing over 4 or 5 session that we played. Last night, I introduced some new players to my adventure, all of which reside in the UK: 3 players and myself in total. While generally, we could see and hear each other (we used webRTC), we would sometimes get one player who lost the audio of another player when it was there seconds ago - then when they tried exiting the game and rejoined, the loss of audio swapped between the two players who were having the problems! One player could not get his mic to work at all and yet could get a level on the mic in his computer settings and hear everyone else perfectly. All the players said at one point my video box disappeared behind the table top grid and could only see about 20% of my video box. I'd say in a three-hour session, each player had exited and re-entered the game about 5 times to "reset" or "cure" the issues.
Please don't take this as a complaint - it seems to be just technical issues I'm sure. It did get me thinking though about each person in the game as to what specification of PC/laptop and their internet connection and whether therein lies our problem. I use a fairly decent desktop PC with a reasonably fast speed connection for the UK - my players however, are on some varied gear and varied connections. The guy who couldn't get audio full-stop lives in a rural area, which in the UK means about 2mbps at best on his connection and then he's using the connection wirelessly on-top of that. Another player (I don't know his connection speed) when rolling dice, I was seeing the result (3d dice) about 7-10 seconds before him, when he was initiating the dice roll! All my players would've been connected wirelessly whereas I was connected hard wired.
So, did we just have a bad night or is there a kind of benchmark for computer specification/internet speed and does it raise per player in the game particularly when each player uses a webcam and mic? Is there some sort of peer-2-peer going on or is everything being played out server side? How do you deal with such a variation in bandwidth/latency?
l'lI finish by saying we still had a lot of fun though and we're planning another session!
firstly I wish to say that I'm really honoured to be using such a great tool in Roll20 and that I love the work; kudos to the guys and gals who set this all up. I've only just started using it and its blown me and others away with its versatility and vision.
I have a few questions which I hope you can help me with, mainly regarding connection speeds/bandwidth requirements and possibly recommended computer specification to run roll20 smoothly. I'm in the UK and I have GM'd a short adventure with 2 friends I have in Poland - apart from some problems with audio ie getting each other to hear each other which I believe was down to personal audio settings, everything was pretty plain sailing over 4 or 5 session that we played. Last night, I introduced some new players to my adventure, all of which reside in the UK: 3 players and myself in total. While generally, we could see and hear each other (we used webRTC), we would sometimes get one player who lost the audio of another player when it was there seconds ago - then when they tried exiting the game and rejoined, the loss of audio swapped between the two players who were having the problems! One player could not get his mic to work at all and yet could get a level on the mic in his computer settings and hear everyone else perfectly. All the players said at one point my video box disappeared behind the table top grid and could only see about 20% of my video box. I'd say in a three-hour session, each player had exited and re-entered the game about 5 times to "reset" or "cure" the issues.
Please don't take this as a complaint - it seems to be just technical issues I'm sure. It did get me thinking though about each person in the game as to what specification of PC/laptop and their internet connection and whether therein lies our problem. I use a fairly decent desktop PC with a reasonably fast speed connection for the UK - my players however, are on some varied gear and varied connections. The guy who couldn't get audio full-stop lives in a rural area, which in the UK means about 2mbps at best on his connection and then he's using the connection wirelessly on-top of that. Another player (I don't know his connection speed) when rolling dice, I was seeing the result (3d dice) about 7-10 seconds before him, when he was initiating the dice roll! All my players would've been connected wirelessly whereas I was connected hard wired.
So, did we just have a bad night or is there a kind of benchmark for computer specification/internet speed and does it raise per player in the game particularly when each player uses a webcam and mic? Is there some sort of peer-2-peer going on or is everything being played out server side? How do you deal with such a variation in bandwidth/latency?
l'lI finish by saying we still had a lot of fun though and we're planning another session!