Roadmap update:
The Bazaar is (partially) done and has been removed from the roadmap. I’ve added two tasks to the roadmap now : Improving the payment management interface, and infrastructure change.
Here is a copy of what I had originally planned for the Bazaar, it might help keep track of the progress.
Bazaar
My current task is to work on the Bazaar. The Bazaar is the “Systems & Modules Installer” of The Forge, or you can also think of it as the “marketplace”, but I don’t like that term because it implies buying, but the Bazaar will be a mix of many things, and most of those will be free.
The reason why I think this is one of the most urgent features is that other than providing a way to install systems and modules (and worlds and assets) and having those packages auto-update when you launch your game, one important feature of the Bazaar is that if you install a package from it, it does not count towards your data quota.
I know that a lot of users think the 500 MB Data quota limit is low, but it’s actually quite high if your Data is only used for your worlds, because on average, a world takes only 6.1MB (according to the average of 2233 worlds from all user data directories), so 500MB is enough for a hundred different worlds, much more than you would ever need.
The real problem is when you install many modules or big systems (D&D 5e takes 61MB, PF2 takes 81MB and WFRP take 147MB for example) that take a lot of space, but I want everyone to be able to install modules without using up any disk space at all.
The urgency is made greater with the recent release of music and map packs modules which can take a couple of hundred MBs. I’ve made a temporary solution for that, but not everyone is aware of it and also not everyone knows that the modules are not supposed to use up your quota.
Post-release thoughts
The Bazaar is up and running for a few days now, and it seems to be going pretty well! It’s doing exactly what I wanted it to do, which is to free up everyone’s Data from system and module use.
What I originally had in mind was a bit more elaborate, with a complete and slick user interface. Think of your favorite Play Store, where you can search, see screenshot, reviews, comment on a system or module, etc… That’s what I wanted, but I didn’t get time to do it, and realized it would take a lot more effort actually, while the integration I did with Foundry’s installer worked out great already, so it became less of a priority.
This means that the Bazaar isn’t done yet, there’s still the UI portion of it that will need to come back into the roadmap eventually. For now however, I’m happy with what I have.