RAM Usage Question

I have a fairly large campaign and I'm working on the second floor of a three floor dungeon (both floors are 100 x 100) and I noticed it was using a lot of RAM in Firefox: Will it only load what's around the player if they don't have enough RAM to accommodate this much load? Why is it using so much RAM? Does it have anything to do with me being GM? Maybe there's a memory leak? (I've left the campaign page open and running since yesterday) EDIT: Seems to sit at half as much RAM usage on a clean restart of the campaign. So I think there may be a memory leak somewhere if it grows to such sizes over time. What I'm worried about is - say I have a player with only 4 GB of RAM - Are they only going to load what is visible on the map and load/unload as they scroll or do something of similar fashion to allow them to play on a resource-intensive campaign?

Roll20 will load all content on the page at load in, unfortunately. Its why the "This page may be too big" warning pops up when you increase the page size to 100x100. Extra character sheets, Dynamic lighting and Advanced fog of war increase the load as well. 

Franky H. said: Extra character sheets, Dynamic lighting and Advanced fog of war increase the load as well.  All of which I am using on my 3 x 100 x 100 pages.. The campaign has really gotten big and I'm trying to backup my data and move the players between games after deleting a bunch of old content in the new game but when I copy a game none of the sheets, handouts, pages or anything except "My Library" is carried over.

That's weird, are you checking the options on the right side of the Copy Game page? If you have too many characters you might not want to do that anyway. You can manually copy the things you need using the Transmogrifier (bottom of the Settings tab, within an open campaign). What a lot of people do to keep file size manageable, is to have two Campaigns set up: their Main Campaign, and an Archive Campaign. In the main Campaign, you have only what you need for the upcoming sessions, and copy out everything else (using transmogrifier) then delete it. Then get in the habit of using your Archive Campaign to set up characters, handouts, etc., for the future, and transmogrify them into the main campaign as and when needed.

Yeah that's what I was planning, an archive / workshop campaign and an active campaign. And yes, Copy Game isn't copying anything. All I need to worry about is the right side then click bottom button right? I unchecked / rechecked all checkboxes and going to see if that made a difference but I doubt it will.

Yes, those settings should copy everything (you probably also want to select the character sheet if you're using one). If nothing's copying with all those boxes checked, it's definitely a bug and you should raise it in the bug forum. It may hint at an issue with the campaign that could be making your lag worse, too.  On the other hand, if you want to reduce campaign size, copying everything probably wont help you. You might be better off copying nothing, and then just using the transmogrifier to copy the specific things you need right now.

Where do you go to use transmogrifier? I went to "Game Settings" and checked the whole page and didn't see any mention of it.

You find it when the campaign is open, right at the bottom of the rightmost tab:

OH! It's hidden quite nicely. Thanks for all the help.

Yeah, i had trouble finding it too back when i first heard of it :)

have you tried logging in as a player with only one character sheet attached to you to see what that load looks like?  It may only be affecting you as DM since your computerr has to process every token that has sight, every character sheet, etc.  But your players will only have ot process character sheets actually assigned to them and only the sight of tokens they control.  I always lag out way before my players do.

I believe that sheets are processed whether you control them or not, but I could be wrong. Sight however, is local.

This is how much RAM usage I get out of launching as a player on a separate account (and this is starting on and loading one of the 100 x 100 dungeon floors): It capped out here and periodically dropped / rose. So roughly 1 GB less give or take 100 MB than running as a DM loading on that very same 100 x 100 dungeon page. There might be some truth to what Walrus said.

Kastion said: There might be some truth to what Walrus said. It was quite by accident, I assure you.

Would be interesting to compare to Chrome.  Empirical evidence suggests that firefox itself has some memory issues, particularly if left running long.

The Aaron said: Would be interesting to compare to Chrome.  Empirical evidence suggests that firefox itself has some memory issues, particularly if left running long. Exactly. As I noted, I left my campaign open since last night to this morning and it was at nearly 6 GB. I suspect a memory leak of some sort somewhere in Firefox's code. I don't think this issue can be replicated in Chrome as I've left my campaign window open for days with no RAM growth.

I typically run my day-to-day internets in Chrome (across 4 different profiles.. =D), and for Instances of playing on Roll20, I open Firefox, play, then close it entirely. 

I know there's a new version of Firefox (Quantum?), and I don't know about that, but the older version definitely has memory issues, and they are worse in roll20. I've often had it crash on me in roll20 mid session and had to restart, and leaving it running overnight is definitely not a good idea.

FF Quantum is what I'm using.  It's nice and fast in Roll20, for the most part, but still a bit of a memory hog.

The Aaron said: FF Quantum is what I'm using.  It's nice and fast in Roll20, for the most part, but still a bit of a memory hog. Better a memory hog than constant crashes when moving between large pages and infinite loop warnings I get with Chrome.

Agreeing with most of the above thread -- Firefox has a history of memory leaks, most browsers often work better after restarting if it's been open for a long time. FF Quantum, which I'm on now (Mac here), generally works fast(er) for Roll20 but uses a ton of computer resources. I always restart the whole computer and browser before Game Day, just to clear some of the cobwebs. Franky H. said: Roll20 will load all content on the page at load in, unfortunately. Its why the "This page may be too big" warning pops up when you increase the page size to 100x100. Extra character sheets, Dynamic lighting and Advanced fog of war increase the load as well.  That's true for the GM, at least in-so-far as whatever section of the Page the GM is zoomed to. Roll20 cleverly does not need to always load everything on the map page, especially for players, as Roll20 has ways of loading only the section or the zoom-level that is in the Player's view at that time.  For example, if you're quite zoomed-in (like 120% zoom) on 20x20 section of a 100x100 page, you might be only loading a section of the map in Max detail. Whenever you upload a new map/jpg to your Library, Roll20 automatically makes a few differently optimized and sized sibling-copies of that graphic. At a certain size of graphic (in pixels, or unit sizes) Roll20 automatically generates it as sectional tiles, like cutting a huge map into 4x4 maps. And vice versa, if you're quite zoomed-out (say, 30% zoom) then Roll20 generally loads a Thumbnail (.thumb) or a small/reduced/optimized version of the underlying uploaded graphics from your library. Another example is Fog of War, players browsers don't necessarily load all parts of graphics that are hidden behind solid fog. However the GM is seeing thru all Fogs (with opacity) meaning closer-to the full page contents must load for the GM, including GM layer, including Characters/Journals that are only set to GM view. The adage that Character Sheets / Journals, DL, and Advanced Fog increase the load, is so true. Those factors are often a bigger factor. You can easily have a 100x100 page absent (without factors like) DL, AFoW, Labeled Hex Grids, and without Attribute bloat.

Seems to sit at half as much RAM usage on a clean restart of the campaign. What does 'a clean restart' mean? Have you cleared out the chat log?

OldSchoolChris said: Seems to sit at half as much RAM usage on a clean restart of the campaign. What does 'a clean restart' mean? Have you cleared out the chat log? Clear Chat Log Kill Firefox Processes in Task Manager of Previous window (Still was using large amount of RAM) Join in a different account than GM account so I'm not entering as a GM and clicking "Rejoin as Player"