Percentage of Free Cloud Space Indicator

[GMGordon]

It would be helpful/informative to know how much cloud space has been used and how much is still available. A simple indication of percentage free would be useful.

GMGordon

[Zaphod Beebledoc]

Indeed. +1

[rob]

This is absolutely planned. It will be part of the Manage Account interface, which is currently very minimal. In fact, we're not going to police the limits strictly until we can give users a clean way to monitor their own usage. So users don't need to worry about being "cut off" from the cloud without having any way of knowing that they've gone over any limits.

Our goal is to be reasonable about this stuff, especially while we're still getting all the pieces into place that allow users to responsibly manage their own content.

[Jaynay27]

Just a quick addition to this question.

With content purchasing/marketplace on the cards, how will data limits be handled? Do we have a set amount of cloud storage and once we reach that we can't go any further (or have to buy more data blocks etc...like Dropbox or Google Drive)?

The reason I ask is that if I end up buying a lot of published content from the marketplace, I don't want to hit storage space limitations with this content and not have any more room for my own stuff. Especially if published content comes with a lot of maps/images etc...I imagine published material, say an adventure path, would be a pretty big file.

Sorry is this is unclear - I am just not sure how cloud access works or how it is measured. I am an Alpha Wolf backer if that makes any difference.

Thankyou.

[rob]

@Jaynay27: The architecture is such that importing shared/purchased content should only impact your storage by a comparatively small amount. Basically, if you import a big setting (e.g. a Dragonlance or Eberron book from D&D 3rd), we will NOT be copying all the data into your storage. That's just silly if we have thousands of users copying the same information over and over again. What we'll do instead is create a bunch of references to the shared content within your storage, which will be vastly smaller. If you use the imported content without changing it, all we need to track is things like whether it's been revealed and to whom - the content itself is the material that was shared/published.

The only time we have to chew up your storage is when you start making changes to the material, since we now need to copy those portions and then apply your changes so that it's uniquely yours. But we only need to do that for the portions you actually modify. If you only make a few changes, 99% of the original content will still be referenced and not need to be copy/edited.

So, I guess the bottom line is that importing shared/published content WILL consume some space out of your available cloud storage, but it will be very small compared to the size of the actual content that was shared/published. I don't know the exact size ratio at this point, but my best guess is that it will be less than 10%. If this causes you to exceed your available cloud storage, then you'll need to increase your allotment, but the actual requirements will be far smaller that you're likely envisioning.

Also, since you're an Alpha Wolf backer, I don't think you need to worry about this too much. If my memory is correct, Alpha Wolf backers get the top tier cloud service for the life of their account. Once we have the marketplace going, there will absolutely be higher tiers of service, and the top tier will probably cover everything you need. Of course, you may want to grab truly vast amounts of content, so you might need to go beyond the top tier, but I'm guessing not many Alpha Wolf backers will run into that situation.

Hope this makes sense!

[EightBitz]

Will we be able to download purchased content for offline use? And will we be able to choose what syncs and what doesn't?


Say we did want to buy a huge realm, wanted it all available offline, but not eating up our cloud storage. Could we do that?

[rob]

Originally Posted by EightBitz

Will we be able to download purchased content for offline use? And will we be able to choose what syncs and what doesn't?

Say we did want to buy a huge realm, wanted it all available offline, but not eating up our cloud storage. Could we do that?

I don't honestly know at this point. It's not part of the initial plan, and doing that would make things more complicated. If there's enough demand, though, we will be striving to make users happy, so it's definitely something we could invest the extra effort into. It will ultimately all boil down to how much work it entails versus how much benefit it brings to users (which is heavily influenced by how many users express a desire for the capability).

[Mystic Lemur]

I don't know how the pricing will be worked out, but if every time someone purchases content it will duplicate it on the server, maybe include the cost of data in the price of the content and not have it count against limits.

Or find a way to not have to duplicate it for every purchase.

[Jaynay27]

Originally Posted by rob

@Jaynay27: The architecture is such that importing shared/purchased content should only impact your storage by a comparatively small amount. Basically, if you import a big setting (e.g. a Dragonlance or Eberron book from D&D 3rd), we will NOT be copying all the data into your storage. That's just silly if we have thousands of users copying the same information over and over again. What we'll do instead is create a bunch of references to the shared content within your storage, which will be vastly smaller. If you use the imported content without changing it, all we need to track is things like whether it's been revealed and to whom - the content itself is the material that was shared/published.

The only time we have to chew up your storage is when you start making changes to the material, since we now need to copy those portions and then apply your changes so that it's uniquely yours. But we only need to do that for the portions you actually modify. If you only make a few changes, 99% of the original content will still be referenced and not need to be copy/edited.

So, I guess the bottom line is that importing shared/published content WILL consume some space out of your available cloud storage, but it will be very small compared to the size of the actual content that was shared/published. I don't know the exact size ratio at this point, but my best guess is that it will be less than 10%. If this causes you to exceed your available cloud storage, then you'll need to increase your allotment, but the actual requirements will be far smaller that you're likely envisioning.

Also, since you're an Alpha Wolf backer, I don't think you need to worry about this too much. If my memory is correct, Alpha Wolf backers get the top tier cloud service for the life of their account. Once we have the marketplace going, there will absolutely be higher tiers of service, and the top tier will probably cover everything you need. Of course, you may want to grab truly vast amounts of content, so you might need to go beyond the top tier, but I'm guessing not many Alpha Wolf backers will run into that situation.

Hope this makes sense!

Thanks Rob - this actually covers most of what my main concerns were.

[Bidmaron]

There is something that bothers me about not being able to work content I've legally purchased without an internet connection. You really MUST make this something we can work with locally. Digital products are nebulous enough without the ability to even put them on our own hard drives.