One More Feature

It’s that time of year again when an explanation is in order for my disappearance. Anyone trying to get in touch with me will tell you that I don’t exist, and anyone playing Duck Game can tell you that I definitely haven’t been updating it. Not since the minor Steam updates in May, which where meant to be in preparation for a larger update, another PS4 patch for the 1.5 remaster and an update of the Switch version to 1.5. There where dreams of doing a beta for the PC changes shortly after the May updates, and grand plans of having the Switch version updated by the end of summer. In a sort of reliable fashion, It’s now November and none of this has happened.

There’s a stereotype that Canadians say “Sorry” too much, and honestly it might be true if I’m any representation of the average Canadian because I feel sorry as hell. I’m not sure I’ve ever written a blog post here that doesn’t have the word sorry in it and once again, like many posts on this blog, this one is an apology and another attempt to explain why it is that I disappoint. And another reiteration of the only promise it seems I’ve ever been able to keep, the promise that I’m trying and that something will come to fruition some day.  The reason nothing has happened since May is absolutely my fault, nobody else is to blame. I’ll also say that, like so many times before, I really thought it was going to happen this time. “Duck Game is finally going to be updated to 1.5 on all platforms this year, and it’s going to be incredible. Everyone will finally be playing the same version and it’ll be working perfectly. I’ll be able to fill in the eye on my Daruma.”

What happened? The year got off to a strong start with the PS4 version finally getting updated, a total rewrite that had been promised for a very long time. Things where looking good, the new code was running on Switch, and performance was great thanks to the Roslyn code generation stuff. Stress testing still needed to be done, and the online code needed to be ported into the new version of the SDK in order to allow friend invites and other fun stuff that came into existence on Switch after DG’s original release. The Proton support patch that came out for the Steam version in April helped get me back in the groove for doing Steam updates, and the patches in May helped prepare the Steam codebase for some of the new PS4 code. The first PS4 patch was basically lined up and ready to go. So why then, with everything moving so smoothly, did nothing ever come to fruition after May?

Exhibit A

I blame the The Shocker (once known as the Coil Gun, a long unfinished weapon of some renown). Or more specifically we can blame my poor attention span, a desire to get as much into one update as possible, and a guns blazing attitude when it comes to quickly jamming in new features at the last possible minute. Looking at the build, everything was ready to go and all that had to be done was to send off the PS4 update and move onto Switch- but something was missing. The change log consisted of a few (important) bug fixes and nothing else, and I thought “Wow, that’s really lame. Two weeks of cert and all people are going to get are a few bug fixes.” So I thought, what can be added on fairly short notice to make this update more exciting? What have people been asking for the longest? The answer was immediately clear- it’s The Shocker!! It’s a really cool weapon that probably wouldn’t take that long to get working. When you shock a live duck with it, they die. When you shock a dead duck, they come back to life. No problem. The Shocker was working within the hour, but once again… Something was missing.

The Shocker is a gun that shoots electricity, and electricity could be a really cool game mechanic. What if it could arc between metal objects, and run through wires to activate things?? This stuff had to happen so I got to work. It should also shock ducks who are in the water, and travel across the top of it. It’s a cool new gun so there has to be a few new levels to showcase it. Oh shit, it needs to work online too…  It was slowly getting out of hand, finally to the point where I sat down one morning and thought “Ah… I don’t even want to look at The Shocker today… What else can be done?”. There was some stuff I’d been sitting on forever that had been hastily pulled out before a previous update, where Chancy had a cheat menu and there was some pretty crazy stuff you could do with it. Instead of noticing that working on this would only get things more out of hand, I went for it. And it branched out from there, I’d promised to implement a friend’s Donut hat forever and decided upon putting it in that the hat should change colors in different temperature, that there should be a Donut you can actually pick up and eat (to unlock the Donut hat, of course), and that the donut should have it’s own special level that comes up really rarely. Oh yeah you should also burp after you eat it… and what if you could hold quack to hold in a burp? If you can do that then you should be able to hold quack through the entire game and let it out on the win screen… If you can store a burp like that, what if the burp did something cool? Like if you ate a ton of donuts and held them all in, your burp could become a laser beam that actually kills other ducks. Then you could let out a hyper burp to take the victory during your draw breaker match and it would be ridiculous. That’s gonna have to be synchronized online… But it’s gonna be great I can’t not do it, right?

These are just a few examples of the many things that got added to the update last minute, and each one of these things brought more questions and required more testing. There where still many unanswered questions and the new features desperately needed testing. So instead of just submitting a simple PS4 update with confidence, I had this mess of one that needed a good deal of attention before it was ready to go and that would probably have months of repercussions. The thought became that there needed to be a PC beta with these features first, to hold off on the PS4 update until the issues are worked out. I just had to finish up the new features and get the Beta out and then stuff would start moving again. It was almost ready too, almost all the features where implemented and seemed to be working perfectly- except for The Shocker. There was always another question being raised by The Shocker, and I could not for the life of me come up with even one good level design for it. I would sit down at my computer in the morning and think “Why haven’t I just released this beta already? Oh, oh yeah that’s right. The Shocker. UGHHHH”.

The right answer was to just go back on it, to revert the changes. Maybe even to go as far back as before the Donut/Chancy changes, all in the spirit of actually getting this update out and getting to work on the Switch version (honestly the Donut stuff was solid, it probably would have been fine). But reverting code is really hard to bring yourself to do after a whole bunch of work on cool new stuff and I couldn’t bring myself to do it, I was on the verge of having all this stuff complete but the unsolved problems and the anxiety of releasing it all in an update was keeping it from ever quite getting finished. I was losing sleep over The Shocker. It was summer now, company was coming over and an excuse to look away from Duck Game for a little while was just what this problem needed. It could all be solved after a little break…

In a way, that break is still happening. For some background on where my time has been spent the last few months: Back in 2015 or so, a friend and I started work on a game that was gonna be next after Duck Game. We spent years making the game but eventually stopped working on it, because -very very much just like The Shocker– it was getting out of hand (this is a pattern with things I work on and this isn’t the first Duck Game update it’s ruined). It was turning into an insane tree of features and complex implementation and we finally decided that we didn’t know where the game was going or if it would ever be done. After that, working with another friend we spent a year on a new project that ended up the same way. I had a lot of fun with those projects and will never forget the time we spent on them, but I’m sorry that my friends can never get that time back. The time they spent bearing with me on big dreams with little direction. 

The Famous 2015 Cancelled Project. I was programming, Dayton McKay was doing the art, and we where going 50/50 on designing it. 

How this all relates to this blog post though, is that sometime during all of the indecision and the Donuts and The Shocker-s, my friend came to me with a game design document he’d been working on for a while. It was a re-imagining of the game we had been working on in 2015 with totally different art and very different gameplay, and it looked awesome. It always bothered me that we never finished that game, and this was a chance to pick up the pieces and keep all that work from being a waste of time. To prove to him that I could work more concisely on a project and help keep it’s scope under control. So I got to work on a prototype right away, first working part time alongside Duck Game’s update and later working full time. So full, this time was, that the project became a bit of an unhealthy obsession and it has helped keep me from communicating with anyone or doing anything else but work. With all that’s been going on in the world and anxiety that has been getting worse with age, staring wide eyed through a computer screen and slamming code into it as fast as I can is like a drug and I’ve been getting blitzed on it every day…

But It kills the pain. People forget the past, beauty deteriorates and disappears while time grinds away at your will to care. Memories of good things are lost forever and the energy you once used to find new experiences is now spent in the morning, finding the effort to stand up.

As kids, we dream about what we can start.
As adults, all we dream about is when we can stop.

Hey, though, we’re working on it. This post is part of my three-hundred-and-eighty-seven step plan to become human again. And, despite the distractions and a little bit of burnout the Duck Game updates are still coming. They’re not cancelled and the plan is still to update Switch to 1.5 and to patch the PS4 version. Whether or not these updates will come with The Shocker- remains to be seen. I’ve been off Twitter, off Discord, barely on E-mail and will most likely remain reclusive until next year. I’m sorry for never messaging you back, for always taking forever and for the ups and downs. Good things are always hiding just beyond sight, but you don’t need to see them. You only need to know they’re there.

Rising above the city, blocking out the noon-day sun

It dwarfs the mighty redwoods and it towers over everyone.

I still remember, when that delivery truck came down our block.

What a lucky guy, I hear he got the last one in stock and the neighbors are just screaming.

They say, 

“That’s the biggest screen we’ve ever seen.”

-Frank’s 2000 Inch TV, Weird Al Yankovic