itch.io

Oh sorry to hear about that! Your theory makes sense, that's very unfortunate timing, an interesting hole in our game flow. Your workaround hack sounds like should be safe - I think that painting has no real purpose, but I can't say for sure what might happen if you tried to paint a new one now.

I believe our inventory debug hack should also still be available in the game, which we added as an emergency backup in the case that anyone hit any unforeseen issues with the inventory system. I believe it can be activated by holding the Spacebar key in the crafting bench screen for 10 seconds straight, which then lets you add any item to your inventory - just be careful because you could probably break your game if you over-used that and flooded your inventory with too many items.

Thanks for the heads up! And glad to hear you enjoyed the experience!

Thanks! I'm sorry to say I swapped out my prologue last year for space reasons. It was a very tough decision to get rid of such a beautiful synth, especially with how much I enjoyed my custom plugins. Unfortunately I no longer have any logue devices and won't be doing any more development for the foreseeable future.

I'll agree that it's your opinion that it's a fact. Like I've told you in the past, if you find someone who wants to take over this project let me know! Thanks.

Man, I appreciate how you keep coming back to say the same thing every 6 months or so. It means a lot, even if I don't agree with your opinion. <3

Still sore about this? I would sell the whole project if someone was actually interested. I've been way too busy making new things to do anything more with this one.

That sounds very strange! I'm not sure why a particular patch would have that kind of issue saving a setting like that, but I'm glad to hear other patches were working as expected, and that it's not just my effects that are causing the issue.

So nice to hear that my oscillators and effects have been useful to you!

All the best!

Gabriel

Hi Gina,

I'm curious if that happens for all custom fx or if it's just something about the ones I made. What synth are you running this on? I have my prologue packed up at the moment but I can try testing this when I have a chance if this bug is specifically related to the waver effect.

Cheers!

Gabriel

Thank you for the incredibly kind words. It's a wonderful feeling to wake up on a Friday and having this message as one of the very first things I see. It kills me that the game is not better known as well, but that can only get better as time goes on so my fingers are perpetually crossed. Thanks for reminding me that we created something unique and worthwhile and I hope we'll be able to do something as impactful again in the future.

An update ~2 years later - I still have Steam keys available and folks have been making $10 donations to other organizations in exchange for a key.  Feel free to contact me about it!

Hi, glad to hear you're enjoying the game! I believe the musical notes are played using only the Left and Right Triggers and the Right Stick pointing up/down/left/right. So the Left Joystick shouldn't be a part of that. Let me know if that resolves your issue!

You're close! There's a few books that aren't found on the bookshelf. One of them is full of birds...

We're working with a publisher and I believe they are planning to release the game to a few other PC storefronts including Steam. You'll have to stay tuned for that.

There's no steam version available at the moment. Itch is the only place to get the game for PC right now.

I assume you're talking about the story when you mention the politics, and I'm not entirely clear on how it "ruins" the game. The creative mode lets anybody instantly bypass the story and provides full access to every level and mutation, so there's nothing to prevent anyone enjoying the game without engaging with the campaign.

I had a moral dilemma in the middle of developing this game because I felt like selling a game full of mindless violence did nothing to make the world a better place, and I wasn't okay with that, because there's already enough mindlessly violent games out there. I wouldn't necessarily argue that the story of the game does make the world a better place, but it does help contextualize the  violence in the game and makes it all a little less mindless, if not more difficult to digest.

As an artist, I'd much rather create polarizing work because that's infinitely more worthwhile and interesting to me.  Making this game independently meant that I was free to externalize the difficult conversations I was having in my head and share them in the game, which some people have enjoyed, and other people have not enjoyed.

I'm happy that you think the game is perfectly good, and I hope you enjoy playing the creative or vs mode where I promise you won't find any 'politics'.

Thank you for your patience. I just uploaded a new Windows build that should have a fix for level 76 so that both characters have space to spawn. I haven't had a chance to test the rest of it thoroughly yet, although I don't anticipate any other problems popping up. If you encounter any more issues please let me know. Thank you for raising this issue to my awareness as well!

Oh dang! I just confirmed it here, and I'm very sorry about this because I know it's a lot of work to get through this mini-game. I'll work on patching this immediately. Let me know what platform you're on so I can prioritize it. It was all working previously so I'm not sure exactly how it broke but my deepest apologies on this one.

Hello, sorry to hear about this issue! I've heard of this happening for 1 or 2 other people but have had no luck determining the cause yet and have never encountered it myself in all my testing.

There is a secret inventory hack for cases like this, but unfortunately you need to have fixed the roof already in order to access it.

Fortunately, since you're playing on PC, if you send me your save file I can debug it for you and get you that missing rooftile. Just shoot me an email at ghosttimegames@gmail.com

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Hello, unfortunately there's currently no alternate control options to use WASD instead of the arrow keys. I could investigate adding a quick hack for that specifically for you, but it might be a few days at the very least. 

Hello, some mac users run into issues with the permissions when trying to run the game. There's a couple other threads here that can walk you through the fixes, but feel free to email me (ghosttimegames@gmail.com) if you're still having trouble. We haven't had anyone unable to run the game on Mac after following all the steps to get it through the permissions issues, so we should be able to get it working for you too.

Hello and sorry for the inconvenience. I believe this thread has links to two solutions that usually work, as well as a video walk-through for both of them. https://itch.io/t/1777652/video-fixing-tux-and-fanny-for-mac

If you're still having issues trying to get the game running after that just give me a shout.

Thanks for the heads up! I'll get this fixed and uploaded again right now!

Interesting, no, that doesn't sound normal at all. What platform are you running the game on - and is this the demo or full version? If you're able to record any video of the issue that might be helpful too, since I don't think we've ever encountered anything like this before.

Thank you Adrian! Your help is greatly appreciated!

The password entry in the terminal is confusing because I don't think it shows any of the characters you've already entered (not even as *******), so you have to enter it blindly there and then hit enter. It will only tell you if your password was accepted after you've hit enter. Let me know if that helps.

Hi, sorry for that inconvenience. There's another terminal trick that seems to help if you want to try following the same steps as before but replace the previous command with: 

sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine

Let me know if that does the trick, otherwise I'll find another solution for you.

Hi, this is an issue that some Mac users run into, but so far we've been able to get it running for everyone eventually.

Try these steps first:

1. Open a window in Terminal.

2. Type or paste sudo chmod -R 777  into the Terminal window

3. Add a space to the line, and then drag the game file directly into the Terminal window, where it should add the file path to the text

4. Hit return/enter and you will be prompted to enter your main computer password.

5. After confirming your password the permissions for the game should be updated and it should be able to run.

Let me know if that works for you. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Thanks for your support Stakker! I think I might have initially started digging into the custom  oscillator stuff just so I could make these sounds - I'm really happy that other people are connecting with it too. I wouldn't be surprised if Korg expands the dedicated knobs on future devices now that they've seen there's a community ready to create content for it.

Yeah, I definitely could have added more options for people who were already in full agreement. It was difficult trying to determine where each branch would end up, so I generally leaned towards trying to handle people who were less comfortable/familiar with the topics. I was wary of providing an easy out by way of full agreement too. Ultimately I think I tackled too many different subjects to go too deep into any one of them, and I'm sorry for the redundancy to folks already much better versed on the subjects than I am.

I get where you're coming from. I actually did make some major modifications to the controls shortly before launching the game that added support for just pushing the left stick/arrow keys to make the titans 'auto-walk'. I was hoping that would be the compromise that opened up the controls to everyone but watching more people play it seems like it still wasn't enough.

I'm interested in what you would consider to be the standard. I know there's not a ton of physics-based games out there so it's hard to find good precedents. Ultimately I wanted something that rewarded mastery in a satisfying way, without being nearly as frustrating as something like QWOP. I'm sorry to hear that even the tutorial was a barrier, since I added plenty of difficulty options to breeze through the game for anyone who got the basics down but struggled with the combat.

At this point I would try to include a friendlier control option but I'm not even sure what it would feel like, especially since I'd have to build it on top of my existing physics behaviours.

It definitely takes some practice to get the hang of it. And it's not for everyone. I think one of the biggest obstacles is that it's so different from everything else, so it's tough to just jump into it. It's like relearning how to walk with a totally new body.

Thank you!

I get where you're coming from. It was important to me that I didn't add a way to opt out of these narratives (except for playing in the Creative mode). The push-back against politics in video games made this an essential part of the game for me, and I didn't want to add to the heap of games full of violence and destruction without also forcing the player to pull out and acknowledge their complicit role in so many systemic problems. I knew going into it that some people really wouldn't like it, but compromising on that element felt like pulling the soul from my game.

I honestly do think that Candy Crush should take your suggestion and insert some meaningful  dialog between levels. 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts anyhow, and I'm glad to hear that you're not disputing any of the talking points at least.

(EDIT: Rude replies will be deleted. If you're not interested in meaningful discussion here then please don't bother to post angry rants. I'm just one person so please be considerate. Thank you!)

Yeah, I do have some, I'm just not allowed to sell them anymore. You can send me an email at ghosttimegames@gmail.com

Hi, I have removed the game from Steam in protest of Valve's lack of moderation towards racist and toxic communities. 

Unfortunately I'm no longer able to offer Steam keys for the game since it's no longer purchasable on that platform.

The latest updates should be live now. I'll probably try to write a little devlog for it too.

Thanks for the feedback. I have found the Right/Left leg controls provide a much higher level of accurate controls than the auto-walk prompted by directional controls, it definitely takes some practice to get the hang of that. Titans getting bent in on themselves also sounds like it might be a titan specific issue? I've definitely had some titans whose arms get stuck routinely. I feel a core component of the game is trying out different titans and trying to mutate something that moves in the most responsive way possible. I know the controls will always be a challenge, but hopefully you'll find some titans that work better for you.

Re: the text, there's some filters that should make the text/UI easier to read. I opted to include the UI in all of the post-processing for the aesthetic, but depending on the display resolution it isn't always the easiest to read by default.

Wow! Thank you! That really means a lot to me :)

I'll update this thread once I get the latest updates live. Just need to give it a bit of testing to make sure it's solid.

Yeah! Sorry, I had been getting 1 or 2 sales a month on itch so I had been updating here a little less frequently, and then this bundle caught me off-guard and hundreds of people probably ended up downloading an older version. I'll try to get the very latest updates posted here in the next day or two.

https://ghosttime.itch.io/test-tube-titans