Doing The Unstuck

I feel like I should give an explanation for my silence lately, and for all the things I promised earlier in the year that I’ve been floundering on for so long. The reason I haven’t said more about the progress of all things Duck Game, why I haven’t been replying to everyone on Twitter, and why I haven’t made any new music or posted any progress on anything lately is because frankly I’ve been waiting for better news to give.

That’s not to say that things are looking bad, things are actually looking really good. They just aren’t moving quite like I thought they would. I’ve been working, but it’s felt like digging my own grave with a little coffee spoon like the ones from McDonalds (I don’t know why it’s that important that I’m buried but I just keep digging because I love those spoons). Everything I’ve come up with lately has been all wrong, and anything I’ve thought to say hasn’t felt like me. So rather than trying to come up with a hopeful hint about the state of things, and rather than trying to reply to anyone with the severe lack of words I’ve felt lately, I chose instead to wait until tomorrow. Again and again. Because tomorrow is going to be better, tomorrow I’ll finally find all of the positive words that have been just waiting to party with me when I least expect them.

Still, I want to try to share as much as I can about the state of Duck Game to help get some mysteries out of the way. I don’t really know how much I’m allowed to say, but I’ll start by saying that the Switch version of the game is constantly on my mind and I’ve got big plans, but it’s going to be some time before I can say any more than that. Some time being a manner of months at least, so I’m not gonna use the word “soon” again here because it doesn’t belong but I’m working to make something happen because god I love the Switch. I’ll also be doing a whole lot of work on the game over the next few months, it’s too early to say anything yet but the plan is to have at least one more big update for all versions of the game!

The PS4 version is another story, it’s something I can never seem to stop apologizing for. But I’m Sorry!! I mentioned earlier this year that I was working to fix its online connectivity issues, but I ended up running into an issue with getting the right version of the PS4 SDK. Duck Game was ported to PS4 by a company in Europe, and the version of the Sony API’s that they where using have since gone out of date. Sony deprecated the code base for that API and they no longer offer a download for it. I was also led to believe that they would no longer accept game submissions using the old version, so I would be forced to re-write the PS4 integration code in order to push a patch for the game. That would be a ton of work, and I’ve never worked with PS4 code before so I’d be starting from square one.

Recently though, I talked with a few porting companies and it sounds like I might be able to push an update using the old API’s after all. The new submission rules might only apply to new submissions and not to updates on old ones. So I’m working on getting access to the old versions of the SDK. With all of the new multiplatform stuff being worked on, though, it might make sense to wait a bit longer and just totally re-work the PS4 network code. But unless I can make some awesome surprise progress on it sometime soon, it’s going to be at least a few months again. There’s a lot wrong in there, debugging on PS4 takes more time and I’ve never dealt with their certification process before. If you’re looking at getting the PS4 version to play with your friends online please wait for now, I’m not sure how deep the online problem goes but it seems pretty likely that you’ll run into trouble. I’m sorry again to everyone having trouble with this, it will be fixed one day I just don’t know how long it’s going to take at all right now because I’m on my own with it.

So that’s basically the state of things, I’ve been working but it’s been slow going and I haven’t been in the best state of mind. I’ve been reading Twitter but I haven’t been saying anything, the kindness there always makes me feel better and I’m sorry that I haven’t made that clear, especially to everyone who’s sent me messages lately both internet friends and real life ones.

It looks to me like a lot of the world has been feeling sad lately and I’ve been feeling it too. I want to find something positive to say, I don’t like sharing these lost feelings with everyone because so many people feel lost already and that feeling is already big enough. But even with so many awesome things to talk about I’ve had a hard time finding positive words that feel sincere because my mind has just been in that sort of dark place lately. It’s a funk that I’ve been in before, But it passes. It always always does. I don’t know if the world is really in a funk right now, but if it is, I know that’ll pass too.

So the short of it is that I’m back working on Duck Game, big updates are coming but it’s going to take some time. More Duck Game things are in the works that I can’t talk about yet, those are pretty exciting too! The first step is to finish up and properly release the Steam Beta I’ve been sitting on for months, so expect that within the next month. I’m still fixing the PS4 version, but uncertainty about the process has kept me from having any absolute news about that. It will get fixed, and I’m sorry to anyone feeling frustrated with the connection issues.

I’ve been in a weird mood but it’s getting better. I tried listening to The Cure for the first time this year cause I wanted something dreary to listen to and I guess they felt like a funny sort of obvious choice. But I got a verse from them that I didn’t expect which ends this post pretty well:

“But it’s much too late,” you say “for doing this now. We should have done it then.”

Well it just goes to show how wrong you can be, and how you really should know:

That it’s never too late, to get up and go.