For almost all of 2022, I've been working on the Switch, Playstation, and Xbox ports for Siralim Ultimate. As you know, the Switch port was released earlier this month. While I've been chipping away at all three consoles simultaneously, Switch took up most of my time since this console had the highest demand by our backers. Once Switch development started to wrap up, I shifted my full focus to the Playstation port. Initially, the game ran very smoothly on Playstation and didn't have any major issues. At some point in the last couple of months, however, Sony updated their technical requirements for games to be submitted to their store. This forced me to upgrade Gamemaker (the engine used to create the game) to a new version. That's when some severe issues started to happen.
I've been in a constant battle over the last few months finding major issues with the game, fixing them, then finding new ones over and over again. Until the last couple of weeks, I was very confident I'd be able to fix everything and release the PS4 version soon. Gamemaker has continued to receive new updates to fix some of the issues I've been finding, but each new update also brings a whole new set of issues. Recently, I've reached a point where I can say this port is simply not in a state I'd ever dare to release it in. It takes up to 10 minutes to load a save file, several minutes to save a file, and the performance of the game is all over the place - sometimes it's relatively smooth, and other times it slows to a crawl. I've done some serious digging to figure out what might be causing it, and I genuinely think the game is too big for its own good, and Gamemaker can't handle it when it comes to the Playstation side of things. To be clear, there is nothing to blame on the PS4 hardware itself - this is a problem with Gamemaker.
I was hoping to dig deeper into the Xbox port after Playstation was finished, but that has its share of issues as well. After Xbox accepted Thylacine Studios (and Siralim Ultimate) to their store, I signed the necessary documents to gain access to development kits and the software required to build the game. I was told I'd hear back from someone to finalize details about mailing the dev kits to me, as well as information on how to access the software. For some unknown reason, this hasn't happened yet, and my attempts to contact someone at Microsoft have been unsuccessful so far. So, there's absolutely no way for me to know how long this process will take, and I find it unacceptable to make our backers wait any longer.
While the issues with both of these consoles may someday be resolved, there is no way for me to know how long it will take, and I think our backers have waited long enough now. In short, I have no choice but to cancel the Playstation and Xbox ports of Siralim Ultimate. I cannot apologize enough to the people who've been waiting patiently for their Playstation and Xbox keys. Canceling these ports is the last thing I ever wanted to do, so please know that I've tried everything I can to make it happen, and if there was some other way to make things work out, I'd do it.
As compensation to our backers, I'm going to send out e-mails to everyone who chose a Playstation or Xbox key on their backer surveys. You will receive a free Steam key as an apology for the long wait and the disappointing news. In addition, you have the option to choose an additional key for another platform or to simply receive a refund.