Our First Blog Post!

 




Welcome to our website blog.  We hope to make this an important source of a news, how-to's and announcements.  Initially our discord support staff will be creating articles, then as members show an interest we can open the blog to them as well.


Now for the real first post.

I have been working for the last couple of months on a new version of the website and underlying infrastructure.  The goal is to add some new features, improve performance, and lower costs.  It looks very promising.  Let me go over some of the new features.

  1. Download recovery point as a zip file.
  2. Reset foundry and hosting configuration files.

Yes, finally,  you will be able to download your whole game server data as a single file.  This will be a zip file that  you can download.  Any unzip tool will be able to open the file and access your data. Some people have asked for an ability to upload a zip file and build their server.  This is problematic and I think would cause more issues than solve.

There is a file in your game server data called  options.json.  This file is created by our system and used by foundryvtt.  People can freely edit this file.  Therein lies the problem.  Sometimes the file gets edited and errors are introduced.  Now you will be able to reset the file to original state and  your game server will start.

Performance and cost.  We all want more horsepower however it usually comes at a cost. 6 months ago I dropped the price on the entry package for new customers from $5.95 to $4.95.  A single dollar may not sound like much but when you add it up, it affects the bottom line.   Our current infrastructure sits on a cloud hosting platform.  While this offers convenance and ease of use, it comes at a premium cost.  Cloud platforms make there money by over selling their equipment.  What this means is that while you think  you are getting the full resources you pay for, performance can suffer.  We will be moving our infrastructure to what we call bare metal.

What does this mean? Well I sure as hell hope it means more horsepower! We have secured our own monster computers, the same ones the cloud providers use.  We will get the full exclusive use of all the resources as there will be no other users on the machine.  We will triple the real server resources that will power  your games. 

The downside to this endeavor is it requires more work on my part. I have to build more automation to replace the ones normally provided by cloud providers. Initially the cost will be more, however we would be setup for long term growth, stability and outstanding performance.

Will you notice the difference?  I hope not.  What I mean is that your game server will run as fast as possible with no infrastructure bottle necks.  The over all performance of your games will always be at the mercy of your content and how efficient you are with your digital assets. As we grow, you will not be affected by additional customers as there will be plenty of resources.  That is what I mean by "I hope not".

In the immortal words of Star Trek, "Scotty, I need more power!, aye aye captain you have warp power"

I will post more information the closer we get to the transition to the new equipment.

May your games always be fun,
Pencils forever sharpe,
and your rules books at the ready.

Dax (Brad)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I surrender :(

Sunshine and Rainbows

Smoking gun and a dead chicken.