Hello Forge users!
It's been quite some time since our last livestream, but we're excited to share our many updates with you. We've been hard at work making numerous changes to improve The Forge experience, many of which are in the background and may not be immediately visible, but are crucial for the growth and stability of our platform.
If you'd like to watch back on the developer update stream, you can view it here.
Otherwise, below is a rundown of all the latest developments.
Project Management & Hiring
As our company constantly grows, we’ve been refining our internal procedures and project management processes to keep up with our expansion. This has involved a lot of work to ensure that everything runs as efficiently as possible.
We're still on the lookout for talented individuals to join our team, particularly a Software Developer and a second DevOps Engineer. If you think you have what it takes, we'd love to hear from you!
Improvements to Stability
We've introduced some changes to make the Forge's asset library feature more robust and stable, allowing it to adjust for issues that may arise. We still have more work to do on this in the short term, so stay tuned!
We have also introduced various other backend improvements and internal tools to enhance The Forge's performance and stability in the long term. One recent change is requiring email verification before subscribing, an extra step we've introduced to insure better security and account stability for new users.
D&D Beyond Integration
D&D Beyond integration will no longer require Patreon access, and will instead be tied behind Story Teller access. We've also improved how we handle the integration data, allowing updates to it faster.
Our team has also been diligently working to fix support for both the
We’ve been busy improving the D&D Beyond Integration, which no longer requires Patreon, though we’re keeping it for a few more months. And lots of improvement to our processes as well, allowing us to push updates to the integration more quickly.
Our team has also been working diligently to fix support for both the 2014 and 2024 PHB rulebooks, due to changes in how D&D Beyond releases this content. Please note that while the new rules can be imported, not all content is available yet.
V12 Support
We've done a lot of work to get V12 working on The Forge. This includes fixing problems with premium package installation, fixing the User Manager feature, and ensuring that the asset library integrates correctly with V12.
We've done a lot of polish work as well, including improving the wording on the "ECONREFUSED" error to become more user friendly, and notify users that the world is taking some time to load. We have also improved support for viewing the V12 logs, with tabs for viewing logs between V12, and earlier versions of Foundry VTT.
World Launch Screen
This is the final outstanding polish issue to be resolved before we recommend V12. Version 12 of Foundry VTT has a longer server startup time on The Forge. What this means is that starting the server from idle can take anywhere from 15-60 seconds. While loading times have improved with recent updates, users are still often left waiting for their games to start up, with no visible feedback on the wait.
To address this, we have added a world launch screen that provides more feedback to users when their worlds do not launch right away. We are excited to announce this feature will see release within the next week. Once it is out, we will begin recommending V12 of Foundry VTT on The Forge.
Privacy & Pricing
We take privacy seriously, and are proud to say that we do not sell your data to third-party companies. We further pride ourselves on being transparent about how data is handled as well.
We've added a page on our website detailing our data processors, so you can see exactly how and where your data is handled. While it might not be the most exciting topic, we believe it's essential for our users to stay informed, and we encourage users to always stay informed on how their data is handled from company to company.
We've also updated the pricing page.
New World Creation
One of the most asked questions on our chat bot is "How to create a new world?" on The Forge.
To help new users get started, we have improved the new world creation process. The Forge's homepage now has a "New Game" button, allowing for quicker setup.
We’ve also added additional guidance for users during the world creation process, making it easier and more intuitive than ever.
A Constellation of Interviews
It’s been a while since our last livestream, but we’ve been busy interviewing some incredible creators.
We recently featured interviews with Mammoth Factory Games, Bearworks, McRoMusic, and PeaPu.
Each of these interviews has been incredibly insightful glimpses into the art world of digital TTRPGs, and even into the general TTRPG industry.
We highly recommend checking them out if you haven't already!
Bazaar Showcase
We showcased the following packages during our developer update:
And that's it!
Thank you for reading through everything and for being a part of The Forge community! We’re constantly working to make The Forge better, and we can’t wait to bring you more exciting features in the future. Stay tuned, and follow us at the following social media channels for more news and updates about The Forge.
https://forge-vtt.com/discord
https://forums.forge-vtt.com/
https://twitter.com/ForgeVTT
https://reddit.com/r/ForgeVTT
https://www.instagram.com/theforgevtt/
https://facebook.com/ForgeVTT
https://www.threads.net/@theforgevtt
https://bsky.app/profile/forgevtt.bsky.social
https://patreon.com/kakaroto