Welcome back to another devlog!

This isn't the type of devlog I wanted to be writing this month. Originally, I was going to release the demo for Catgirl Care and maybe include some small updates in that post. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen this month. This post is going to largely be my attempt to explain why this is and what's next.

What Happened?

On the morning of June 15th, I accidentally wiped my projects drive and was only able to recover most of my files.

Here's how it happened:

I installed and later uninstalled Linux. This all went fine but I noticed after finishing that one of my drives had locked around 300GB of empty storage and would need to be formatted. At that point, I made a mistake and either I backed up the wrong drive or formatted both that drive and my projects drive, wiping all the data. Either way, I mistakenly placed backed up non-project data on my projects drive, overriding many potentially recoverable files.

I was able to recover a lot in the end, likely more than 2/3rds of the data. Unfortunately, a lot of critical files are missing and I'm still sorting through everything since the file names and folders were lost.

All of my game development, art, music, video projects, character lore, and more were on that drive. Some of that was recoverable, some wasn't.

Data Loss Breakdown

Everything prior to Sep '22 - fully recovered

External backup

This includes all my visual novels (Date a Mink, A Night With A Bat Girl, etc.)

I thought I had a backup from January but I can't find them

I plan to create backups more regularly going forward

Website - unaffected

Art - mostly recovered

All finished art was backed up on my site

Some .clip project files were lost

Music - minimal loss

Some project files were lost

Most exported songs were recovered or are recoverable in a lossless format

Released games - mostly recoverable

Recoverable from itch and Steam

Some project files and documents were lost

Rockin' Resort - development can continue

3D models, some docs, and some code recovered

Files from the demo and updates since have all been recovered

Catgirl Care - mostly lost

So far, only the 3D models and custom character code have been recovered

This is by far the most impacted project

Sweet Tea - partially recovered

Her Text-to-speech code, Transcripts, and Transcript selection were lost

Her animations, assets, partial animation code, and project structure was recovered

I've already rewritten the missing scripts so she should be approaching back to normal now

Youtube Videos - mostly recovered

Pokemon Black video: Easily recoverable. Rendered first half recovered

Sweet Tea Devlog: Most files recovered. Needs new voice over

Character Lore & Project Docs - some lost, some recovered

I can rewrite a lot of this from memory but there may still be some I haven't recovered yet

It's okay if you don't check every bullet point but the summary is this: Most of my projects were recovered or are recoverable. My active projects, Rockin' Resort, Catgirl Care, and Sweet Tea took the most damage but I've already managed to recreate Sweet Tea.

It will take some time to restore as much as I can but the damage could have been much worse.

Rockin' Resort and Catgirl Care

Rockin' Resort and Catgirl Care are my primary active projects and are the most impacted by the data loss. Fortunately, a lot of files have been recovered, but both projects have been delayed at least partially.

Rockin' Resort is mostly in a good state. I plan to rebuild the project from the packed files in the demo's binary. I've made a few adjustments since the demo but those few changes were fully recovered so there's very little stopping me moving forward with development.

Catgirl Care took a nasty hit. I think the data loss might be worse with newer files. I'm very happy that the character model project files (I spent a month or two on that) and the character customization code (likely half a year of development) were recovered but very little else is usable now.

Without a binary to extract project files from, It will likely take me a few months to rebuild Catgirl Care. This is a huge delay and I'd like to apologize to those of you who were looking forward to the demo release this month.

What's next?

Unfortunately, I'm not ready to dive back into Catgirl Care development as-is. I still want to go through my files and see what else I can recover before I return to that project or Rockin' Resort.

In the meantime, I really want to get a new project out. There's code from Rockin' Resort and Sweet Tea that should kick-start this idea so I'm going to try to make a demo for the Lust Potions sequel: Marry the Dragon!

I want to do some tests but if they go well, I hope to have that demo out by Halloween. After that, I plan to return to Rockin' Resort since there's less work needed to restore that project. Catgirl Care is not canceled but I'd like to take a break from that project after a little under a year of development. It'll likely be my next project after finishing Rockin' Resort.

-

Thank you for your support, especially during a difficult month like this. I was fairly devastated at first to lose a chunk of my projects but I'm trying to view this as an opportunity to do it again but better. I'm more experienced now than before after all. I don't plan to stop despite this setback so expect more art and game soon!

I'll keep you all updated next month on my data recovery efforts and information on the Lust Potions sequel, Marry the Dragon! Thanks again for your support!