Hello, a lot of questions here ^^
Let’s cover the basics first.
Game Data vs. Assets
Your game data is as following:
Modules, systems, worlds.
This means that if you upload a module (not from bazaar) it will take game data. We have the bazaar though, so you don’t have to worry too much about using too many modules. An expanding world is also fair, and 500MB should be enough to cover all your needs in that area.
Your assets are:
All media files.
Picture files: “jpg”, “jpeg”, “png”, “apng”, “svg”, “webp”, “gif”
Video files: “mp4”, “ogg”, “webm”, “m4v”
Sound files: “flac”, “mp3”, “ogg”, “wav”, “webm”
You can read more about what the Assets Library is and what it can offer you here:
The Assets Library
Which is the cloud storage that you can use links from. This serves as the connection between files/images and your game, since you can’t use your local storage to connect to The Forge, but rather upload it.
Local Data vs. Forge Data?
You local data is stored on your PC, and don’t have attachable links, while The Forge stores them in the cloud. This means that all Assets in the forge has a link, that gets optimized and shared to all the forge assets servers, so your players can load them for the closest server. This means a person from Australia can load as fast as a US person in the same game. This is what we call Geo-distributed.
Where can I find the folder(s) for Game Data?
You shouldn’t have the need to find the folders for your game data. If so is wanted, you can export the module/world, edit it, then upload it with the Import Wizard.
Things can be a little confusing, I admit. So many different games or applications use different names for basically the same thing. Here is a list of terms that you may find confusing :
- Table: The Foundry VTT server instance that runs your worlds
- World: A single world for one gaming group. It will usually represent one gaming adventure.
- Game: A Forge game has a unique URL and is how you will interact with your games. A game can either represent a Table or be a shortcut to a table’s World.
- Asset: This is an image, a video or an audio file that you use in your games. Your Assets are stored in the Asset Library and have their own quota.
- Database: Every game needs to keep track of what’s in it, this is saved in the world’s database and makes sure you come back to your game the same way you left it. The database is saved in your Data storage and has its own quota.
- Module: A module is Foundry’s terminology for a software add-on that enhances the VTT features. There are many modules to choose from.
Foundry VTT usually stores files on the local hard drive (The “User Data folder”) to store the state of your worlds and the systems and modules you have installed. Those files count towards your Data Quota. The world database stores your journal entries, the character sheets, the position of the tokens, the dimensions and settings of the scenes, your chat log, etc…
On the other hand, your worlds will often reference media files (avatars, tokens, maps, music, animated backgrounds, etc…) that are part of the world but don’t need to be stored in the local drive, as they can be hosted anywhere. In the Forge, those assets are stored on a distributed network of servers around the world, providing high performance and download speeds.
The reason for two separate quotas is because the data is separated by The Forge to provide you with the capabilities of its CDN for your media files. Media files are usually large and take up most of the space, so the Game Master tier gives a generous 3GB of quota, while the world database is usually small and the quota is 500MB, which should also be more than enough (we’ve found on the forge servers that worlds take an average of 6.1 MB per world, enough for at least 75 worlds before reaching the quota)
