Hey friends!

Beauty and the Thug 4.1 is out in the wild, and many of you have already played it. I really hope you enjoyed the new content. Fun fact: this is the very first time we didn’t need a 4.1a, 4.1b, 4.1c… just a single clean “a” version! Even I was surprised, especially since the game’s structure had some major surgery this time around.

Now we’re hard at work on the next update – Amy’s route. The plan is to bring the story to that big milestone where Lisa and Amy officially become a couple. It’s not going to happen in one big swoop, of course. Their relationship will build gradually across three major events. And the first one, despite all the chaos and complications, is done!

Now, what would a report from me be without some good old-fashioned computer drama?

Lately, my internet kept vanishing… only on my PC. Everything else in the house was online and happy. The only “fix” was to reboot the whole computer. It used to be a rare thing, but then it became an everyday adventure.

After playing tech detective for a bit, I finally found the culprit: Norton Antivirus! Yep. As I was fool enough to pay for the whole year, I’d been putting up with its weirdness for a while, but this was the last straw. Not only did it miss a threat that cost me several thousand dollars (luckily, I got it all back – recently the bank ruled in my favor officially!), but it also kept flagging my own mini-apps as dangerous. Adding them to the exception list was useless. And now, to top it all off – it became the reason my internet was cutting out! So, I did the only sane thing: deleted it and switched to BitDefender. Problem solved.

BitDefender, by the way, is considered one of the top antiviruses out there. And more importantly – it actually likes my apps and never freaks out over them.

But wait, there’s more! A few days later, the drive that stores all my project files (including Beauty and the Thug) decided to take a nap and stop showing up. Not fun. Luckily, I use iDrive to back up to the cloud, so the essential stuff was safe – but the latest files for the new update weren’t synced yet. Also, reinstalling DAZ Studio and all its libraries would’ve taken days.

Thankfully, after waiting for 15 minutes and rebooting, the drive showed up again. As I found out, this was a known issue with the Samsung 990 Pro. Today I installed a brand new Western Digital Black 8TB NVMe, cloned everything to it, stress-tested it, and… problem #2 solved. I’ve already submitted a warranty request for the Samsung one.

Now for some good news from the land of Aqwaa – he’s upgrading his computer! The new one will be powerful enough for full 3D rendering, and we’re already setting him up to render scenes for our games. Actually, the drive issue I mentioned earlier started when I tried to archive and upload my 800+ GB DAZ Library for him.

What about the new content?

The next big scene happens in a park. Back in the day, Amy and Lisa had a magical ability to get themselves into ridiculous, awkward, embarrassing situations. You know, the ones you wish you could forget… but later laugh about until you cry.

However, it’s not just a “childhood thing.” Leave Lisa and Amy together for some time, no matter their age, and the chaos writes itself. Add Lisa’s well-documented talent for escaping her own clothes, and…

I’ve already started working on the next event, which will bring Amy and Lisa even closer emotionally and show some surprising new sides of their relationship.

Things are going a little slower than usual because image post-processing is taking more time than I expected – but I’m getting better at it. Aqwaa’s tasks are shifting too. Right now, he’s focusing on enhancing facial details and sharpening background elements using some online tools. Unfortunately, those tools tend to lag hard in his country, so we may need to reshuffle who’s doing what again.

A quick heads-up: I’ll be taking a short 5-day vacation at the end of July – beginning of August. I hope you’ll be kind and not throw rotten apples and dislikes my way!

That’s all for now. Once again, thank you all so much for your support. The 8TB SSD for storing my DAZ libraries, original renders, and animations (several gigabytes each!), the premium antivirus, the cloud backup system that keeps my projects safe even in worst-case scenarios, the new 3D assets, and the not-so-cheap post-processing tools I use – all of that is possible because of you.

Have an amazing week – and I’ll keep working on Amy and Lisa’s next big adventure!

Your zegamez and Aqwaa!