Introduction
On The Forge, users get two data quotas- one for assets (images, audio, video) and one for game data (all the intricate world and module information). Assets will usually consume far more data, which is why we have apportioned more asset data for our users.
Sudden Increases in Game Data
Occasionally, users will note that the use of their game data will suddenly increase, going from low utilization (10-20%) all the way to 80% utilization, or even higher.
This is actually intentional Foundry design. Whenever users in Foundry change something, it adds an update to relevant files- this is a neat trick that helps make database operations as fast as possible, without risking data corruption if the app crashes in the middle of a change. For example, if a user moves a token ten spaces using their keyboard, there will be (temporarily) 11 copies of a scene within a database file. This is how files can explode in size, with little warning.
After a certain number of operations, Foundry automatically compacts these changes, removing duplicated lines created by these changes. It also does this when opening Foundry. Therefore, if a world is consuming too much data, you can temporarily close the world, and then reopen it to return the world to its original file size.
How We Handle This on The Forge
Again, this is normal Foundry behavior- and because of this, The Forge has a temporary padding of 100mb above the quota limit, which allows Foundry to take this padding into account, and safely use its database compaction method.
If you are having issues with game data exceeding your quota, we recommend restarting the server/world, in order to fix the problems with your data usage. If you are still experiencing data issues after doing this, we would recommend checking through your data files under the Forge Setup Menu. Doing so will help you find the problematic world/module consuming your data storage.