Performance updates a week or two ago... are they retroactive to older maps?

Features, Bugs, and Questions
1

Several weeks ago I built a map in shmeppy that was… rather large. I used actual blueprints to create a to-scale floorplan of a large convention center in San Francisco. (zombie/exploration map)

(Mod note: removed link to game since there’s no access controls in Shmeppy yet and anyone would be able to join)

I then hid the entire thing with fog of war which took several minutes, and I noticed a big plunge in responsiveness. I loaded it up and sent the link to 5 others and we could not play at all. Constant disconnecting and lag made it unusable and after 20 mins we called it and logged off.

I mentioned it on reddit and got a response, and then came here soon after and noticed that a week or two later that there was a performance update and that it may fix lag issues.

Well, I am getting ready to try that again tonight and upon pulling it up on two devices, I am noticing that it is working better, but still has some lag. (and I havent added the tokens yet… I will be doing that during the game in the fog because there were hundreds last time)

My main question is, do I need to rebuild this map again in a fresh map of shmeppy for it to work better? This map just while I was moving a token as a viewer caused the host computer to reconnect for 5 seconds. Adding or removing fog of war (small areas) sometimes has a lag time of 5-15 seconds.

Or is this map just too big?

If the map is too big, here is my next question… how can I help this? I dont want to have to send out multiple links just to try and get everyone from one map to another…

One thing I had thought would be a benefit to this would be the ability to copy and paste map sections from one map to another. Then I could create the map in a separate document and paste the necessary pieces in as needed (and move them around) before removing the fog.

The last part I have wondered… for me, I dont really change the base map much once it is built. (Though I have created ad-hoc maps in the fog while the players talked before and that is nice)
I would imagine that the map being one single static image (of these blocks) that is basically baked into one thing and set as the background could help the speed. I dont know the technical requirements of how you have built it (I am a UX designer, not a coder ha) but it seems like having less code to try and keep track or, replaced with a baked image of BG could speed things up in my own head theory.

Anyways, I will give it a try again tonight in shmeppy. As an alternative I do have the map I made in shmeppy saved out and pulled into a roll20 document in case we need to switch to it, but I hope it isnt necessary because I like this tool better.

Thanks!

2

Thank you so much for posting about your performance experience. This is hugely helpful to me.

The performance enhancement I landed last week is retroactive, which is bad news: it means there’s not much for you to do yourself.

I see the map is just one big area, and I can see why you don’t want to split it up. I wouldn’t want to either.

I have two pieces of good news, but they’re really lukewarm if anything:

  • I can reproduce the problem: your map is slow on my computer. This is unusual as most of the performance issues people report don’t appear for me on my computer (I’ve got a modestly beefy machine). I’m going to download it into my dev setup and play around with it. I may be able to figure what’s slow and make it faster quickly (maybe even in time for your game). I’ll try and let you know what happens from that, but the most likely result is that I’m not able to fix this for you.
  • Performance is the highest priority issue at the moment, and it’s the bulk of the work in this coming month’s roadmap. It’ll take some time to really get the improvements nailed down, but Shmeppy will be fast enough for big maps like these (and way bigger) before long. Like, I think it’s safe to say that 2 months from now Shmeppy will be plenty fast.

I wouldn’t bother trying to use Shmeppy with your party tonight :frowning: (unless I’m able to push a change to fix the problem today). I think it’ll just be frustrating. If it’s laggy right now, it’ll only be worse with tokens (especially token labels).

Shmeppy is still just not fast enough.

3

Ahaha holy shit this is a surprise. I’m actually making very good progress improving the performance of this map. Indeed I already have a change that speeds it up from 140ms per render on my computer (joined as a player) to just under 50ms.

And I have (I think) a good idea that should be very impactful now that I know something that I didn’t before about how my browser’s drawing API behaves.

I can’t thank you enough for making this map, it’s so nice to have a map that is slow on my computer (my most powerful/useful performance tools only work well when things are actually slow). Can you reach out to me via DM on Discord? I think I can probably have this be speedy enough for you to use Shmeppy tonight in your game if it’s not for a little while (and you’re interested in doing that still). I’d like to coordinate a little with you to see if I can make that happen.

4

I just pushed a bunch of performance improvements in Fly Shmeppy, FLY! (Performance Fixes). Your map is now much faster on my computer. I’m going to keep poking at it though.