On the evening of November 21, my office computer crashed. I won't say "I laugh at crashes" but I've taken them more "in stride" for the last few years because I'm pretty darned good at data recovery. Power supply? Motherboards? Eh. Who cares? So even though it's been a pain (and expensive) when our comps crash the one thing I never worried about (more than a little flutter of anxiety) was the data.
And then the hard drive crashed.
If the actual hard drive crashes, data recovery is a job for professionals and costs about $2,500. Effectively that means the data is lost. WHAT, you might ask, has this got to do with anything?
The office comp has -
The new client
all the new animated sprites
new items
refigured valued for monsters and items
the plan for monster placement
much of the internet site material that hadn't been posted
videos we made for the game
the comprehensive database for the game
the new mailing list
WHY was this all on the office comp and not backed up elsewhere? Because this WAS the backup. The other two main comps had already fried and because, simply put, I haven't been able to afford a new secondary external storage device ($100 on average).
I also had been waiting to send the data out to other storage until it was completely polished, which was a mistake. In the future I'll back up things daily, even if they aren't done. I very sincerely apologize to you guys for this. I know some of you have been looking forward to the new client. I'll do my best to get it out as soon as possible.
You will notice that Lowe's has been added to the list of places you can buy us gift cards for because I have to rewire a number of electrical circuits - so I need a better meter, higher grade wire, switches and outlets. Obviously, when I'm doing the rewiring the server will be offline but it should only be an hour or so at a time. I'll let you know.
Of course, this means I largely have to recreate everything that I lost which means it's going to be impossible to get the client out by Thanksgiving or to begin the Kickstarter campaign on December 1. We will, however, have Thanksgiving events. But we won't be playing "Capture the Turkey". At least not with a "real" turkey.
Other than me being occasionally grumpy, depressed and even more frantic over this (even if I have a kitty helm which makes everything better), your playing experience shouldn't change because of this. I'm trying to maintain an attitude that this is one more little bump in the road that will make the experience of having the game up, running smoothly with new monsters, new people and tons more diverting entertainment ultimately much more satisfying.
Keep comin' back!
This IS still the best little game on the internet.
