Everyone who has worked extensively with a computer knows that sooner or later, one way or another, without intending it and inevitably realizing it has been done after the fact, will destroy an incredible important document. Forever.
This just happened to me. Well, actually, I think it happened yesterday. I only learned about it today. I destroyed the publisher file that had all the design for the harpy keep that I posted last week. As of right now, the only copy I have is the one on the blog.
Hurm.
I needed that for this Saturday's game - not just in a picture form, but in an interactive form. Worse, there were changes that I'd already realized needed to be made to it - but as it's now a picture and not a file, I can't reasonably make those changes.
The only thing to do is to redo the whole image, from the beginning. I called it five and a half hours of work. So it will be. Not because it would take that amount of time to do it again (I have the original as a template, after all), but because I have learned so much in making the rest of the keep that I'll be trying to make it better.
I am so looking forward to showing the party the work I've done - and all my gentle readers next week. Admittedly, I am stealing images like crazy from a site called Dundjinni, because I am a horrible, nasty thief and because after looking through their demo it turns out that their service is more or less useless for my needs. Much of what they have is on line, however, a lot of it as transparent pngs, so I am fitting in little images along with things I am drawing and designing from scratch.
It has been a profound week. It is going to be a great game on Saturday (and only the beginning, since I don't see the keep getting cleaned out in one evening).
Okay, to work.
It's a very sketchy process but it's possible to recover the document still as far as I know, even if you've gone into the Recycling Bin and emptied it.
ReplyDeleteYour computer's file system usually doesn't bother overwriting files once they're deleted (unnecessary extra work) so instead it just has a bunch of disconnected garbage sitting on your hard disk, which could be reconstructed into the file if the whole thing was found.
Unfortunately, the only way to actually find and reconstruct it is usually to get some third-party software to scan through your entire disk and spit out anything interesting it finds, which is more or less secure depending on how much cash you fork out to the maker of said third-party software.
I don't think it may be worth it here if you have the energy to redo it (and maybe even improve!) but it's something to keep in mind.