Data Recovery Update

I'm technically still waiting on some more information, but I'm tired of waiting and want to share what's going on.

So, last time I mentioned that my primary hard drive failed recently, and my life has been upside-down ever since. I'm gonna paint you a little picture as fast as I can. These are the problems that all struck at once:

• Hard drive failed, meaning I needed a new computer.

• Hard drive failed, meaning the years of work and data I didn't back up is gone (we'll discuss this at length).

• Family drama stuff that's completely unrelated but has been fraying at my sanity.

• 5 days ago I got hit with the worst fever I have ever had. I don't believe I've ever gone three nights in a row of the horrible "cold sweat delirium agony" thing instead of proper sleep. I ate almost nothing for 3 days. I still vomited on the third day after drinking tea (wtf).

I comfortably put this in the top 3 most stressful periods of my life.

Now, my family helped me get a new computer, which is now up and running, and it is certainly kickass. So that's solved!

The illness is finally on the mend, I've had two decent nights of sleep now, I am still quite sick but getting better. So that's good!

The family stuff is what it is, don't worry about it.

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But the data.

So, the data recovery place I went to called me back and said that they can't retrieve the data. This shook me, I was genuinely not prepared for him to tell me that. The guy recommended he send it to another technician with more expensive equipment to see if they can get it. Problem is, the new cost is going to be much higher (more than double), which is simply beyond my bank account.

I have a friend who very kindly made the offer to help cover some amount of this cost, but I have my doubts the price will be reasonable enough even for him.
Regardless, still waiting to hear back from the new technician.

Now I found a lot of data on my laptop this morning, data which I thought was gone, and holy fuck that helped boost my mood! But it makes me even less likely to accept an expensive data recovery option for the data that's still lost.

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As I said in the previous post, this has notable ramifications for LLRR, but I don't think I properly painted the picture last time, so this time I'm gonna try to more clearly mark out to you what I have and what I lost.

The Data: Status Report

Alright, so what do I have?

I have ALL of the work that got entered directly into the Samantha update. This means writing/coding, the outputs of all Samantha animations I had made recently, all the renders that I plugged in, etc.
And thank fuck, too. Because guys, I'm serious, if I hadn't backed this work up right before leaving on my trip and came home to discover all of that was simply gone, THAT would have broken me. We don't need to dwell on that.

What else do I have?

As I said before, I have the character project file, which I am going to back up on my game page (privately, but I'll make that public when the game is done).
I have all environment files except for the camping one...I think. The camping background might exist in a corner of one of these files because I copy shit haphazardly a lot, but...it doesn't matter that much. I was done with it anyway.
I have the two .blend files devoted to Amy's beach content only. This means I have the beach environment, though that also probably doesn't matter much anymore.
I have the .blend I used for the Samantha update long ago, her first big update, so there's a solid amount of good stuff in there (not everything but a lot).

Now, what do I NOT have?

Pretty much every fucking .blend that I made in the last 2 years for LLRR is gone. There are a few exceptions, like the aforementioned Amy beach ones, another Amy one (fluid animation with jiggle physics, which is a good thing to have for reference), and the most up-to-date version of the character sprite file for everyone.

So to clarify, the Samantha update has all these Samantha animations in it, but the blender files that MADE those animations are all gone. I can't edit them, I can't go back and change things, I can't re-render out for better quality, I can't use them as a starting point for something new. I made what I made, and now we're all gonna live with it lol.

All the Kelly blender files that I really liked are gone. Every fuckin one. The ONLY way I can even salvage that Kelly climax animation is by downloading the gif off of Patreon right here and splitting it up into frames again, because I had not put that into the game yet. There are other Patreon posts I made that are essentially serving as the only remaining copy of certain other renders, too.

There's some good Julie blender files that are still around but it's sparse. Lost several of my favorite pieces, but at least the animations will live on in the game.

Basically all commission blender scenes are gone. Some rare exceptions, such as Amy wearing Stella's shirt, because I made that in a different file and happened to throw that on the external hard drive one day.

I think there were some random images I made that I liked, that you guys are never gonna see now...but not a lot.

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Suffice to say, this is a notable blow. And like I said, this has ramifications for LLRR.

It's time for a mentality change.

Sometimes I read through the early sex scenes in LLRR and I marvel at how short and simple most of them are. I used to be a lot more okay with...a lot less.

I like that my sex scenes have greatly improved (at least in my opinion), but I need some of that old "me" back. I need to get this across the finish line.

What does that mean in tangible terms? I don't know. Basically that I'm done making tons and tons of new animations and stuff. There will be some, but it's time to be happy with what I've made and figure out how to get from point A to point DONE.

Alright, back to work! ~💕🎵