Forging ahead...

Note: There's an important announcement at the end with regards to The Forge, so if you tend to skip my posts, at least read that (about an upcoming temporary disruption of service).

Update: Check out VTTAssets's giveaway. I'm offering a year subscription to The Forge for one winner! :)

Hey everyone!

I wanted to first start by welcoming all the new patrons that have joined us in the last week. I don't know if you've come here as a thank you for the recent Beyond20 release or because you're interested in The Forge, but seeing so many join everyday is incredible. I personally sent you all a welcome message and been reading your responses (looks to be about 50/50 about Beyond20/Forge), but I'd like to thank you all again for supporting me. It truly means a lot to me.

I announced the Beyond20 release a few days ago, and today I wanted to talk a little about The Forge. I haven't said much about it here since the last post a month ago but I've been working on it relentlessly and I think it's shaping up quite nicely, the website is coming along beautifully and I'm very proud of all the progress I've made this month, and I want to thank all of you beta testers who have provided me with so much feedback and helped make it look and feel better.

I want to keep this short (as much as I can and in comparison to my other posts...), so here's what I want to talk about : 

• If you hadn't seen it yet, there's a forums now which is just starting out so not a lot of content, but it's a great place to ask your questions or keep track of the progress of the project. I've filed my plans and features and known issues there so you see where I'm taking the project in the short and longer term. The forums are integrated with The Forge, so you don't need to create a separate account there if you have one with The Forge.
• One big issue I'm having is with the assets upload and download speeds. I'm disappointed in my current service provider who is causing all sorts of latency and speed problems to those who aren't living in the east coast of North America. I am well aware of this problem and I am switching to a new provider which I've tested with the help of others and it will be able to provide amazing speeds to everyone everywhere in the world. More about this below...
• The server/website has become relatively stable, and I think that once I add the systems and module installer and the options to delete worlds/systems/modules from within The Forge directly, I'll have finished the basic functionality for the first tier that I was aiming for. Then I plan on spending some time writing text instead of code, both for the terms of service, the FAQ, but also documentation, tutorials, and howtos. I'd like to thank Nick and Kevin who have been and are helping with the setup of the forums and tutorials so newcomers will find it easier to get accustomed to both The Forge and to Foundry VTT itself.
• With the fast growth I've seen, I may need to spend more time on the infrastructure and scaling up the operation so nobody experiences any slowdowns. After that, I'll start working on the Story Teller tier features.

Now for the important announcement : As I am moving to a new server that should be faster and better, this means that there may be a short service disruption sometime in the next few days. I don't have a specific date set yet, but I'm going to try and find a way to make it have as little of a disruption as possible (even trying to make the move happen without people noticing it if they are actively playing a game, but don't know if I can achieve that). I expect it will be sometime next week for the whole server change.

I will try to keep track of which games are running and will do it at a time where the least amount of people would be affected. In the meantime, if you have a tendency to keep your browser open and logged into your Foundry Table overnight, it would be helpful if you avoided doing that so I know which games are idle and which aren't, this way I can try to do the move when nobody is using their game.

However, I will be moving the assets library to the new server later tonight (or early tomorrow depending on which continent you live in). That shouldn't affect anyone other than seeing your game suddenly load much faster. I plan on also fixing at the same time, the slow upload issue some of you may have experienced when importing a huge amount of assets at the same time. I think those are the biggest issues hindering the use of the forge today and they are my highest priority. The actual server move will not appear to have much of an actual impact on you, but will be better for me on the long term.

That's it for me for today, I'll keep you informed on how things are progressing, or you can follow it all yourself in the ticket system I've created in the forums.

Thanks!