The Current Situation of the Super Immortal Role Playing Engine

So I was installing Rise of Nations Gold edition on my laptop on the 17th. Everything was going fine,until it just stopped at 99%. I wasn't really paying much attention, until I started to hear "click-click-click-click" from my hard drive. Then I noticed the mouse didn't move. Thought to myself, "this is weird," so I restarted. And that was the last time I was on my laptop.

Why this is bad:

I had no backups of the Super Immortal Role Playing Engine. Everything is lost,and it's literally back to sqaure one. Not to worry though--the engine is immortal :) At the start of the project, I knew things like this would come up, but I made a vow to myself to never let the engine die. I've already started working on a new version (and I promise to back things up daily.)

This new version is going to be a lot better. Instead of treating everything to this point as a failure, I've decided to see what I can learn so far.

Things I've learned:

Mainly, the way I approached the engine the first time around. I was making things up as they came along, and everything was messy as a result. Planning from start to finish, all the different values and files that are needed is definately a better way to go when making an rpg. This is a big thing I've learned. Everything is so much cleaner and easy and properly labled, making everything more simple and effective.

Secondly, to do lists. If I would have kept at the rate I was going the past few weeks, then engine would have been playable by the end of this weekend. And the reason why is to do lists. So much time is wasted staring into space, and lists of what to do make the work that has to be done mindless and fun.

Lastly, back things up. If you have any sort of sensitve data on your hard drive, BACK IT UP RIGHT NOW. GO GO GO! My hard drive failed out of nowhere, and it can happen to you. I plan to email myself the engine after each day's work on it, and also, back it up to re-writable cds from now on. Hopefully I won't have to start over.

Tommorow I'll tell you more about what I already have done on the new version, and also, what kind of computer I'm working on now. (Hint: slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww)