Progress Report

Well, I'm more or less on time for the progress report this time, so that's a plus! (I'm trying to do them every 3-4 days, if that hasn't been clear). I've also got good news, mostly. So that's also a plus! Now, let's take these one at a time.

Haven's Port

The last render for the last planned scene is running as I type. Even better, I've managed to squeeze in post-processing for ten of the fourteen scenes already. And I'll probably post-process the rest of them before I crash in a couple of hours. Admittedly, I'm about a day behind where I really wanted to be. But that actually had more to do with the Mixed Media short that it does Haven's Port. And there's no danger of a late delivery yet, not unless something goes wrong with the coding/writing side of things. With Left Hand Magic that's a major danger. With Haven's Port, much less so. So, barring outside interference by life, I'm fairly confident I'll meet my own self-set Hard Reset deadline.

Mixed Media/Comic

...Silas Station might have gotten a little bit out of hand. In a good way? As in, there are 22 renders in it. Which, I think, makes it the longest of the mixed media shorts? I don't really keep track of that sort of statistic. It's certainly considerably longer than the other Silas Station parts have been, though. That said, like with Haven's Port, the last one of those renders is running as I type this. Though it's being kinda slow and I don't expect it to finish before I crash.

Either way, renders should be done by tonight. Though I haven't processed any if them yet. I'm intending to do the post-processing on them and do a rough draft of the text today/tonight, before shifting focus to Haven's Port coding. I can edit it whenever I need a break from working on Haven's Port...in theory at least.

Short Story

Good news here, too. Rough draft is already complete, just shy of 5k words. It didn't quite cover events as well as I'd have liked, as I was still having some minor writer's block issues. But I think it's turned out decent, at least. Like with Silas Station, I'll be putting the rough draft to the side for now and focusing on Haven's Port. I can edit and post An App for That( Part 2) when I need a break from coding/writing. I really want to bare down hard on Haven's Port first, to make sure my Hard Reset plan works. Priorities after that are Silas Station, then the short story, as always! 

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As you can see, development and rewards was largely good news. The one bit of bad news is a frustrating bit about the laptop I had invested in to replace my current aging system. As I think I explained in the last progress report, while I do all of the rending for the games on a desktop specifically built (and recently upgraded even) for rendering, that isn't the case with other renders. Things like the Mixed Media/Comic renders, as well as things like the wallpapers on occasion, are all done on my now-very-much-aging laptop. I also do all the writing/coding on said laptop...and said laptop is starting to get a bit less than fully reliable. It's not too bad yet, but I live in a bit of fear of it dying on me, since that would cripple my production schedule.

As I had also mentioned, I finally bit the bullet and decided to order a new laptop to close that possible danger, as well as to expand my overall potential render ability. I had even ordered an open box laptop that was a very good deal and would have filled the niche I need it to very nicely. Would have. 

Turns out that, either out of ignorance or as part of a bait-and-switch scam, the laptop I actually got was the gutter-trash version of the same laptop series. I, of course, immediately went through the process of sending it back. As I'd acquired it through ebay, I'd been very very careful to document the entire process so that, worse come to worse, I could recover from the ebay guarantee program. So far, it looks like the seller isn't going to fight anything. We'll see.

But, even if they don't...that still leaves me looking for another option. I've got my eye on another one, this one brand new so there shouldn't be any possibility of shenanigans. It's...going to be a bit more painfully pricey and I won't get quite as much out of it as the other would have given me, if it had been to claimed spec. But it will work. It's just super frustrating and wasted a bunch of my time. Which is part of why I struggled with the short story, since I have a hard time writing when I'm not in a great mental space. Shit happens and we move on, I suppose.