March 2020 Donations & Finances

[Cipher]

Hey everyone!

 

I hope you have all been enjoying testing Page 5 (Builds 1 & 2) of Issue 26! We really appreciate all of the testing and feedback you have all provided us. For those who are unaware, we are currently testing the latest build for Page 5 on our beta server. For more information on how to connect and copy your characters see this and this.

 

We have a few additional expenses starting this month which increases our monthly operating expenses by $43. The first new expense is a Paperspace Air instance as we needed an inexpensive server with a GPU to use as a rendering node both for current internal and future public-facing services (more information at the bottom of the post!). The second new expense is 6 more failover IP addresses from OVH. The first new failover address is used to move our authentication server to another physical machine in the event that we need to (such as during the hardware failure that we had earlier this week), and the other four addresses are for our beta, staging, and development shards.

 

Finally, we have received the invoice that we recently received from our primary law firm for their services rendered through January 31st to be paid early in March.

 

---

February 2020 Breakdown

Last month we accepted $5,971.53 in donations - $56.66 over our target for the month.

 

Here is the breakdown of what the January funds went towards:

• $4,820.39 to OVH for our hosting
  • + $15.00 for 5 new failover IP addresses (failover for the box we had a hardware failure on and new addresses for our beta & staging shards)
• $953.32 to our lawyers for their services rendered through December 31st
• $96.00 for our Google G-Suite Business account
  • + $12.83 for Google Voice
• $30.00 for our 1&1 IONOS domain & outbound email service
• $22.00 to Paperspace for an Air instance with a dedicated/static IP address
  • This is $22/mo for the Air instance; an additional $3/mo will be charged starting in March for the IP address
• $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira Cloud instance (10-user)
• $9.73 for security / administration software

 

 

---

March 2020

As previously stated, we received the next invoice from our primary law firm for their services rendered in January totaling $375.30; this will be paid in early March. We still have $21.04 overrun from February which will be put towards the donation target for March.

 

In total, the donation target for March 2020 is $5,376.21. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated:

• $4,838.39 to OVH for our hosting
  • This includes the new $18/mo for the failover addresses
• $375.30 to our lawyers for their services through January 31st
• $108.83 for our Google G-Suite Business account
  • This includes the $12.83 Google Voice line
• $30.00 to 1&1 IONOS for domain services & outgoing email
• $25.00 for the Paperspace Air instance
• $9.73 for the security / administration software
• $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira Cloud instance (10-user)

 

---

Paperspace Rendering Node

As stated at the beginning of the post, we now have a Paperspace Air instance ($22/mo base + $3/mo for a static IP). This server is currently being used as a rendering node for a scalable character / costume rendering system that we’ve been building to render characters both on-demand and automatically as they log out for use in an internal system and future public-facing web projects. Here are a couple of renders of GM characters (note that this service is still a W.I.P.):

 

(Fun fact: this system is also how I generated a headshot for my forum avatar!)

 

---

 

Donations are now closed; thank you for the support! The next donation window will be on Saturday, March 28th.

 

Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $5,376.21 and will automatically close once that target is met.

 

Thank you yet again for your continued support!

 

• The Homecoming Team

 

[Abraxus]

In, and done.  A pleasure to contribute to the continued success of Homecoming.

[Dallayna]

Know it isn't much (everyone wishes they had more) and haven't been able to play as much as we wanted to this month but, still, got our "subscriptions" in at least.

Can only hope it helps.

 

Thanks to everyone, you folks are really doing some amazing work.

 

[Peerless Girl]

Got my $15.00 sub fee in for the month! Keep up the good work guys!

[Marine X]

Once more on the ledger, keep it going folks.

[Rylas]

Hooray! My first time to make it in before the donation goal was met!

[Xandyr]

FINALLY!!!  I finally beat the crowd and was able to donate! Huge THANK YOU to everyone working on our game. 

[SwitchFade]

$30 on it. Good show!

[Doggirltoo]

Was able to get my $15 "sub" in again this month! (It's funny how it feels like a blessing to pay now, when it felt like a bill on live lol)

 

Thanks again for all you're doing! 

[MrBinks]

Happy to have contributed to the ongoing upkeep, that’s for your continued work

[_NOPE_]

<Insert post bemoaning the fact that I missed the contribution window, yet AGAIN.>

Edited February 29, 2020 by The Philotic Knight

[skoryy]

Closed in less than three hours?  Fantastic!

[Asacledhae]

3 hours ago, Doggirltoo said:

 (It's funny how it feels like a blessing to pay now, when it felt like a bill on live lol)

 

Thanks again for all you're doing! 

Couldn't have said it better myself. 

[VileTerror]

Might have something to do with knowing exactly where the money is going.  If we got to see how much money went to the actual Developers and server maintenance costs versus the publishers, maybe that little bit of information would provide the context we needed back then to feel like we were adequately informed on our purchases.

[Kendalls]

So happy to donate again. 

I think this is my 5th donation.  I'm starting to lose track.

Edited February 29, 2020 by Kendalls

[lkellum1600]

This was the first time I was able to get in there and donate before the donation window closed.  I am so glad to have this available to me and my family again.  This was the first game I introduced my son to gaming on and now I am sharing the same game with my daughter.  She loves it!  

 

I can't tell you how much I appreciate having the game available again!  Keep up the great work!  As long as the window is open, I will donate!  We have 5 gamers in the family and it helps us to all run together even though we are spread out in 3 different states.  

 

Way to go, guys!

[JayboH]

I apologize for being a noob:  what are the lawyers for?

[_NOPE_]

5 hours ago, JayboH said:

I apologize for being a noob:  what are the lawyers for?

The fact that that game is running, um, ILLEGALLY right now, and they don't want it to? 

Edited March 20, 2020 by The Philotic Knight