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State of Foundry VTT – 2020 Q4
🕑 Added 2021-01-14 22:32:23 +0000 UTC
Esteemed Foundry Virtual Tabletop community, I hope you will enjoy this “State of Foundry Virtual Tabletop” post which I try to publish quarterly. This is intended as the 2020 Q4 installment and is therefore a few weeks late. I apologize for my tardiness, but I hope you will all appreciate a glimpse into the status of software and community development.
Before getting into those developments, I would first like to share some words of gratitude. Current events have given us all plenty to worry about, but the Foundry VTT community continues to be a bright spot of caring, helpfulness, and enthusiasm for a hobby that we all love. I would like to thank all of you for contributing towards that in such a positive way. Please keep being awesome!
Core Software Updates
During Q4 there were several major expansions of the core Foundry software which saw the release of the 0.7.x series of updates which focused heavily on improvements for Lighting, Vision, and Fog of War, the addition of the Active Effects system, an overhaul of the Dice API, and a huge amount of minor feature enhancements.
Between October 1 and December 31, the core Foundry VTT software had 129 code commits, 389 issues resolved on GitLab ( https://gitlab.com/foundrynet/foundryvtt/-/milestones ), and 6 software releases ( https://foundryvtt.com/releases ). My development progress slowed slightly towards the end of the year due to some exciting, but life-changing events, which temporarily reduced my own bandwidth. These changes are now settled, and I look forward to clear horizons in 2021 as I continue to devote myself full-time towards Foundry Virtual Tabletop development.
Work on version 0.8.0 – the next major milestone for Foundry Virtual Tabletop – has been underway since early December and is bringing some amazing improvements for the software which will empower new core features and bring powerful capabilities for module developers. I am hopeful that 0.8.0 will be available for highly unstable alpha-channel testing near the end of January. You will hear this a lot as 0.8.0 approaches release but it bears repeating as much as possible – the early versions in 0.8.x will (probably) be dangerously unstable and are ones you should stay away from unless you actively want to participate in the testing and feedback process for prototype features. We will work together to iterate towards a stable 0.8.x release which will be safe for everyone hopefully by March 2021.
Community Content Development
While the core software updates in Q4 have been exciting, the explosion of community-developed content is even more impressive. The Foundry Virtual Tabletop ecosystem now boasts over 100 published game systems and over 800 published add-on modules. Not only are more packages being published, but these publications are coming from an expanding pool of developers with 353 distinct authors of community content.
Collaboration with talented artists, musicians, and storytellers continues to be a priority - we have enabled premium content packs available to all Foundry license owners from exceptional creators including The MAD Cartographer, MikWewa, Limithron, Loot Tavern, Humperdink’s Wares, Caeora, Tabletop RPG Music, and more. You can find a full listing of the available exclusive content for Foundry VTT here: ( https://foundryvtt.com/packages/exclusive )
In addition to these exclusive content packs, I have been overwhelmed and honored to see so many fantastic artists making Foundry Virtual Tabletop content a cornerstone of their Patreon membership programs including Tom Cartos, Miska’s Maps, The MAD Cartographer, CzePeku, Caeora, and MikWewa – all of whom have Patreon tiers specifically providing content for Foundry VTT.
Lastly, there are two new partnered hosting service providers, Molten Hosting (https://moltenhosting.com/ ) and Worldmill Online (https://worldmill.online/ ) which offer customers new options for dedicated hosting of their Foundry Virtual Tabletop server.
Premium Licensed Content
In addition to community developed content, I am thrilled that Q4 heralded the arrival of the first wave of official licensed content created in partnership with major RPG publishers. The launches of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 4th Edition system from Cubicle7, Savage Worlds Adventure Edition system from Pinnacle Entertainment, and the “Bloody Blueprints & Macabre Maps” pack from DeepDark Designs are the first of what I am confident will be a substantial number of official publisher partnerships as we move forward.
In addition to official publisher partnerships, we also have recently celebrated the inclusion of Foundry Virtual Tabletop content as part of several recent Kickstarter campaigns including “Legends of Omeria” by DM Dave, the outstanding new Token Vault service, “Kibbles' Compendium of Craft and Creation”, “The World’s Greatest Inserts” from Hammerdog Games, and more. It is an important aspect of the Foundry Virtual Tabletop software license that allows creators like these to create and sell content built for Foundry Virtual Tabletop without the required overhead of contracts, revenue shares, or other agreements. It is wonderful to see talented and creative people beginning to take advantage of that to offer content for Foundry Virtual Tabletop.
Community Growth
In terms of community growth, we recently passed the incredible milestone of 25k Discord members. In October, our server was awarded official partnered status and we are glad to support such a rich and diverse community through the Discord platform. Our community is incredibly active with nearly 12k distinct active users per week creating over 5,000 messages each 24-hour period. In addition to the expected locus of North American membership, we see 40% of server membership coming from other geographies including significant recent growth in Germany, Brazil, France, Australia and elsewhere. After deploying more recent offerings for community voice channels, we have seen a noteworthy uptick in informal chats and streams. Announcements posted in the official discord are subscribed to by over 500 different Discord servers worldwide. None of this would be possible without our exceptional Moderator and Community Helper teams who contribute their free time towards making our Discord community friendly, inclusive, and informative.
Community growth extends far beyond the borders of Discord, with some amazing sub-communities. The unofficial Foundry Virtual Tabletop subreddit (https://reddit.com/r/FoundryVTT/) supports a community of over 13,000 members helping each other to exchange inspiration, user tips, and support. Similarly, the League of Extraordinary FVTT Developers (https://discord.gg/jrAeFNB) offers a haven for software developers creating Foundry systems and modules to share learnings and help each other to create amazing module content. We recently partnered with the League to sponsor the first (possibly annual) “d20 day” on December 20 with a community hackathon where 38 developers participated to stream for 24 consecutive hours showcasing the creation from scratch of 27 new Foundry VTT modules. We have also recently seen an expansion of news and documentation projects including the launch of the new Encounter Library website (https://encounterlibrary.com), continued work on the unofficial Community Wiki ( https://foundryvtt.wiki/ ), and the forthcoming Foundry Hub project – which I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about soon.
Looking Ahead to 2021 Q1
The next 3 months will herald several exciting changes, ranging from the 0.8.x series of updates, redesigned API documentation to assist developers, renovation of the website knowledge base, and new commercialization models to support creators offering premium Foundry content.
Stay tuned for more details in each of those areas in the coming months. Thank you all for your steadfast support of Foundry Virtual Tabletop and for actively participating in our communities to share your feedback, knowledge, talent, and passion for roleplaying games. I can’t wait to reflect in early April on the first part of 2021 and see everything that has been accomplished.
Cheers and happy gaming!
Andrew
Comments
HiddenRealm
You guys did some great work with all of this, I can only hope more people become familiar with Foundry and switch to using it!
Ryan from the Token Vault
Haha you’ve proven my point entirely with a response within just a few seconds! Yeah we’re excited to build an integrated token vault module next so I’ll definitely be in touch!!
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
Thank you Ryan, fantastic to see the community engagement with artists and creators and how Token Vault is making the most of that also!
Ryan from the Token Vault
Just thought I'd drop a note on here to say how nice it is to see the Foundry community growing! Also the support to both creators and users is way above what other VTTs are offering. Anathema has been a huge help to me over the last couple of months and overall Foundry just works way better for me than any other system! Keep up the good work everyone and I can't wait to see what comes next!
Tanner Donald
I need to thank mxzf for being an amazing help. I wanted to give them a tip but they said patreon, so here I am!
Dread Maps
What would help me is if the api had the possible values for the fields in the decimation... for example, under the wall api it would have been nice to list out all valid wall states,types, etc
Joseph
Eh, I just hope that if we do get support it doesn't nix being able to work with dndbeyond imports of stuff.
Joseph
Yes @Nathan. Lots of TRPGs use card decks for things, and is super handy to have. There is an unofficial card support mod right now, but it is lacking in a lot of areas that having actual card support built in would alleviate.
Ren
That's so great to hear, you really rock. I just want to say I greatly appreciate your community approach with this project in general! Thanks so much for all of the work you do, there's so much I'm excited for about the future of Foundry.
Celestian
Please do continue to seek out a relationship with them. I imagine they would need to have a secure marketplace for the conversation to begin? I'm not so much interested in the relationship because of 5e but in hopes they will also license their other versions of the game like AD&D as they have with other companies. I would love to see more platforms with content for AD&D. It's a fun system and everyone should get the opportunity to play it ;) Great work, I am amazed every time I look at the new update notes.
Kurt Kroh
I am very grateful for all the hard work by both the Foundry development team and the community. I have been inspired to create some content to contribute to the efforts. Kurt Kroh
Nathan Fish
What do you mean by cards? Like drawing cards from a deck?
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
I would like to say that it's on the horizon, but unfortunately at this point the answer is no. There are a number of new official publisher partnerships coming soon though. I would, of course, love to explore official WOTC content - but I have not yet received any response to my inquiries. It's certainly a situation where it's up to them when (or if) they want to come to the table as they already have a very established digital distribution solution with D&D Beyond.
Laurent C
Thanks for your good job ! Any D&D official licence at the horizon ?
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
Thanks for your support!
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
I completely understand. We are currently working on both areas actually, the API documentation will be reorganized as part of the 0.8.0 update and we are working on a new format for knowledge base articles that should help newcomers to more quickly grasp the material in an organized way. Documentation is hard to do, so I don't want to over-promise. It will be a process to continue improving it, but it's certainly something I want to maintain a focus on.
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
There isn't a committed date for card support since it wasn't chosen as the voted feature for 0.8. It will either re-appear on the list for voting on 0.9.x or I will use my executive choice to prioritize it. I'm still weighing things here, it's definitely still a priority - just a matter of ranking it.
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
I'm confident we will get there, but modules are able to move much faster than the core in this regard, so it will be a matter of time
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
I can't wait, it's going to be an exciting year
Darshyne Izumi
Thank you for all this hard work !
Ren
All great stuff happening! I'm brand new to coding and am trying to learn javascript so that I can write my own macros and modules (or at least understand how the available ones work!). I would definitely love more content on either the knowledge base or API documentation sites to guide beginners in how to learn Foundry API stuff. It's hard for me to figure out without a background in programming or computer science!
Joseph
Card support still coming soon?
Miriadis
Thanks for all the work! I'm really excited for what's yet to come. Each new release feels like a precious gift every time 😁 I'm really hoping for compendium editing and improvements to core active effects as I only had headaches with DAE so far, probably because I'm importing from D&D Beyond. Speaking of that, the absolute dream would be official D&D Beyond integration, but they seem to be so far away from a public API that I won't hold my breath.
SecretFire
New year, new challenges! ;-) All the best!
Lance Moore
Very excited about what's to come in 2021, this is the only VTT we use!
Foundry Virtual Tabletop
That is correct - the major features being focused on for 0.8.x are: 1. Infrastructure improvements (some BIG things coming from an API perspective) 2. Audio system renovation 3. Overhead tiles In addition to this, there will probably be 1 "bonus" feature that I'm not ready to confirm yet, but I believe it will extend one of the new features added in 0.7.x in an exciting way.
Denis Ricard
Great update! Thank you for taking the time to keep us informed (and for all your hard work on FoundryVTT)! Did you confirm what features will be included in the 0.8.X series? Is it sound and roof tiles?
