DevLog: RAM Failure? In This Economy?

Quick reminder: You can follow development more closely on the Trello board.

TLDR

• Yes, really: RAM failure - I'm typing this on my MacBook 💻

• Still (kinda) working on the scene!

🛠️ Current Development

What I'm working on right now:
In between dealing with below (RAM stuff), I'm still able to get some work done - it's just a little degraded in output (my render rig will be a RAM donor until replacements arrive).

⚙️ Technical Corner

Welp. I'll keep it short. Actually, no I won't.

You'd think, hardware problem after hardware problem, I'd just be able to keep dev'ing without any more issues. Sorry to say, that's not the case. Off and on, coincidentally ever since I switched to Linux (honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, it was probably due to the motherboard issue), I've been having just super strange crashes that couldn't really be traced in logs anywhere. This would happen maybe once a week with absolutely no common thread that I could find; I could be rendering, I could be browsing the web, I could just be listening to music - didn't matter, it'd crash so intermittently that I couldn't figure out what the issue was.

That's until I decided to finally do a Memtest; if you don't know, Memtest is just a software tool to test your PC's RAM's integrity. If your RAM is bad (even just one stick), then it has the high likelihood of hard crashing your PC.

Aaaannd....

I'm no linguist but I believe "FAIL" is not good.
I'm not super 1000% sure that this is what was causing the crashes, but I've got nothing else to go on.

Okay, now what? Well, here's my plan of action:

• Using 2 of 4 sticks of RAM (might help stability?) for now

• RMA request to the RAM manufacturer (still under lifetime warranty!)

• All RAM for this PC has to be sent to the manufacturer; them's the rules

• Going to steal borrow RAM from my BlenderMan render rig

• I have little hope for a quick turnaround - so I'll have to re-evaluate at this point

Obviously, while this is not ideal, it's far better than if these RAM sticks were NOT under warranty. The RAM prices have gone up about 4 times the amount; for context, I paid $307USD for 4x32GB=128GB, if I were to replace just one stick, it'd be about $300USD. So I'm grateful.

Currently, I'm at the step where I've sent in the RMA request... and now I wait. 🤞

👀 Sneak Peek

I don't have any 😭

💬 Community Corner

I'll be real, I'm exhausted and just feeling jaded with setback and slowdowns. It feels like as soon as I start to get movement, something else yanks me back. So over the next few weeks, I'll have to re-evaluate where I stand with what needs to be done.

Discord
Unless you've been living under a rock, you may have heard some news about Discord. Now, while I have no plans to remove or delete or close the Echoes of The Cataclysm Discord server...

I will let you know that I absolutely do plan on expanding the community beyond and including Discord. This is just a move to hedge bets on the off-chance that Discord takes a turn downhill - not that I anticipate that.
I've been passively evaluating other options, and I'd love to hear if anyone has suggestions or opinions on the topic.
So just keep your eyes peeled for a small announcement of another place to host community information.

Thank you everyone for your continued support, I do appreciate it and need it.

Don't forget to check out the Trello board for detailed progress updates! ❤️