itch.io

Funnily enough — no. I actually heard about the novel after I released Cthon, and have been meaning to read it ever since but haven’t gotten around to it. The concept of mines beneath a planet surface is eerily similar to the game though. The title Cthon was a reference to the Greek term of being “of or under the earth”, and fit well as the game uses a lot of concepts from an earlier unreleased rogue-like game I toyed with for a while about delving an ancient Greek necropolis, except Cthon sets things in the far future.

Hello! Thank you for purchasing CTHON!

There should be a "Claim Steam key" section beneath the download buttons on the game's download page. If that is not showing up, I would try contacting itch directly by emailing support@itch.io. This happened once to another user and they were able to get it solved.

And thanks, happy new year to you as well!

Hi! Thanks for buying it! By SMG I'm assuming you mean submachine gun? Otherwise it is a term I'm unfamiliar with. You can build the primary gun into a rapid fire weapon by activating several coolant pumps. I appreciate the kind words, and have not played One More Dungeon myself. As I'm working on a sequel to CTHON, I'd love to know what you felt was better executed here. Thanks again!

Hello, thanks for the comments!

You address a lot of good points. The creepy atmosphere and music will definitely still be a top priority (and hopefully scarier than the original).

I agree on your points about classes and difficulty. I plan to balance the classes a bit better this time by possibly adding some more unique elements or abilities to them so that they each have some way of dealing with or working around problems as they are encountered. The classes in CTHON could have started with more different traits from each other but they ended up fairly bare-bones, mostly due to time.

Difficulty will definitely be reworked as well. In particular easy was on the whole too difficult, which I plan to address. And yeah, I think it could be good to have both an enemy and secret counter accessible during the level, much like Quake.

Thanks again!

I'm glad! I hope it will exceed the original in every way possible.

Glad you like it! That's...interesting that the sound doesn't work on Wine. I have not tested CTHON on it myself though. It's possible that it's due to outdated sound drivers used by GM81, CTHON's engine. There are plans (eventually) to get the game ported up to the latest version of Game Maker which would hopefully resolve problems like that, but we've been heavily focused on a new project in the last couple years. Some day soon I hope!

This rules! I don't know how many hours I sunk into Dune II back in the day, but its one of my favorite games of all time. I read somewhere that you're working on a new/different project these days, but I hope to see you revisit RTS in the future, because this totally hits the nail on the head!

That’s awesome! I’m glad they were able to fix it and that you enjoy the game!

Hey there, thank you very much for the kind words! I’m glad you seem to be enjoying it as much as I had fun making it!

Thank you! I sent a response back.

That is quite strange indeed. Do you mind posting a screenshot of the page for me either here or send to gravity (dot) games (at) outlook (dot) com? It should look like this:

If you don't see that, I think you might need to contact itch.io support directly, as unfortunately I'm not sure if I can be of much help with this. You might also try a different web browser if you have not already. The support email for itch is support@itch.io.

Either way, please let me know if you aren't able to get this resolved after contacting them and I will see what I can do to resolve the problem.

Hello, thanks for purchasing! When you click the Download button on the game's page, it should take you to the "Download 'CTHON'" page. You should see two download buttons, one for the manual, one for the game. Then, underneath that should be a "Claim Steam Key" section with a button to get the key. Are you not seeing that?

Cool! I wish you luck in game development. Thanks for trying Pillage & Plunder, it’s not nearly as fleshed out as CTHON, but I hope you get some fun out of it!

I’d say you ought to still give it a try! Just because something similar already exists or is done well does not mean someone can’t do it better or differently, and there are certainly things about CTHON I could have done better on. CTHON was written in Game Maker as well, which is pretty easy to jump into and start using!

Hello, thanks! By doing, do you mean making a game like this?

Hi there, saving has already been implemented. You can only save and exit in between levels, and you can continue a game by hitting Continue in the main menu. If you die or quit during a level, the save file is deleted.

Thanks for your interest! I'm migrating to the Studio version of Game Maker for my next project, and I have plans to also port CTHON to the new engine so that it can be compiled under Mac and Linux. No timeframe for that as yet, but sooner or later! On a semi-related note, I have not tested it in Wine but I'll see what I can find out.

Hmm. That is pretty weird. Its not really apparent what the cause could have been, but if it does it again do let me know and we can keep troubleshooting it. Glad its working better for you now!

The previous version also dropped in performance? That is super weird. Here's what I would try first: delete the version you've been working with, perform a restart, and then download the latest version and give it another try. If its impacting previous versions there is either something not right with your machine or there might be a memory leak somewhere that I need to hunt down. I have reached out to the Game Maker community as well to see if anyone can shed light on the issue.

Yes, 21-27 FPS is not normal. It should be running at close to 60, ideally. On lower end machines I normally see it run between 55-60 FPS.

Which version are you running by the way? The latest is 1.11.

Hmm. The only thing I can think of that might have affected it at that time was the game's use of external files, but I'll double check to see what I did at that time. I wouldn't think it was software you installed. What happens when you run the CTHON_NONFORCED.exe in the folder?

EDIT: Whoops, I just now saw your previous comment in the other thread. Below is what I just wrote, but I'm guessing you have already tried this:

Hi, sorry the game isn't running well for you. Which version of Windows are you running?

One reason for the change could be that the game now uses some external files - config.ini (for control information and preferences) and a save file if you have a saved game. Both reside in the game's local directory. It seems as though admin rights are a major hurdle for the game, so if you haven't already you might try running the game as an administrator (right click -> run as administrator). I'm looking into ways to resolve this permanently, but I don't have a timeframe for it. Let me know if this helps.

That's strange... Do you have a middle mouse button or mouse wheel? That is what the blade is mapped to by default, so if you don't have one it may be that it is retrieving a key code that is mapped to something else entirely, and its confusing the game. You may need to set it to something else in the control options, like Spacebar.

Yep, exactly. I would like to port Cthon to Studio down the road, but there's a lot of stuff that will break that will need to be fixed, so it will be a fairly major project.

Thanks! I would like to port it to Mac in the future, but it will require moving it to a new engine, so it will be a while.

Oh yes. I have a highly critical view of DRM and don't plan to implement it. The sales lost from DRM being offputting outweigh those lost by piracy I think.

Hey, sorry for the late reply. Have you tried moving it onto the solid state just for kicks?

From the new video it looks like the game isn't so much laggy as it is running in slow-motion... very strange. Your video capture software isn't slowing it down is it?

Glad you're enjoying it. Sorry you're encountering a bug! Absolutely, send me a log file (it should create one on crash in the same directory as the game). The log file is called game_errors.txt I believe. You can send it to me over email, and my address should be displayed on the download page for the game. I will try to get it fixed ASAP!

That is drastically improved, though still very sluggish...that is so weird, this is the first time I've seen it drop in performance because of permissions. To further increase performance, you could try moving its directory over to your other drive, and also mess with compatibility settings by right clicking the exe file and opening properties. My computer thinks it should run in compatibility mode with Windows XP Service Pack 2, which is probably because GameMaker 8.1 is a dated engine at this point, though I have never had the performance drops you are facing.

Is the drive it is currently on a solid-state or regular hard drive?

Thanks very much for helping me troubleshoot it.

Also, you stated you had a similar issue with another game recently.Can you tell me which game it was?

This is really weird. Have you tried running it as Administrator? Maybe there's something your operating system doesn't like about it. We had problems with the forced-resolution version of the game, but if you're running 1.07 it should have resolved that.

The Logitech wireless mouse may well be what is causing the problem. Logitech mouse drivers seem to cause problems with GameMaker games in general, as far as I can tell; you might try switching to a wired and/or non-Logitech mouse and see what happens. Lowering the poll rate on the mouse may also help. I will keep investigating the issue.

I would try it with the defaults first and see what happens. Also, I was curious if you are using a mouse that utilized Logitech drivers? That's another one that seems to mess with GameMaker games. And yeah, 14-15% CPU seems a little high. 7-10% is what I've usually seen it consume.

Sorry for the forum spam ;)

Here's another thing you might try: forcing the game to run on the NVIDIA GPU; Game Maker games like Nuclear Throne seem to have similar issues.

1. Open NVIDIA Control Panel.

2. Go to Manage 3d Settings, then select the Program Settings tab.

3. Use the Add button to browse to Cthon's exe file and select it.

4. Click the Apply button and then run the game.

Just from searching around a bit the first thing that seems promising that you might try is to check to see if you have 'NVIDIA GeForce Experience' in your Programs and Features. You may try uninstalling it, rebooting, and trying the game again; it's an optimization tool but it seems to cause framerate problems in some games, even lower-tech ones like Cthon.

Dang, that's the worst I've seen yet. I'm sorry the game is running terribly for you. Thanks for the video capture and system specs. Let me investigate the issue and get back to you. Those specs should be more than enough to run the game. I will try to have an answer for you soon. If you check Task Manager while the game is running, is there anything consuming a huge amount of CPU or RAM (including the game itself)?

I would say intermediate for something like this. First person shooters (especially ones like Cthon, which could be extrapolated to a top-down shooter and still essentially play the same) are relatively easy compared to something like a real-time strategy game (super-hard), but they're more difficult that say a top-down/side scrolling shooter or puzzle game. The hardest parts of Cthon were making the player movement feel good; I did a lot of testing and tweaking to make sure collision detection felt natural and the field of view was ample but didn't cause motion sickness.

Hi, thanks for purchasing and playing! I'm glad you enjoy it for the most part.

Remappable keys are a major planned feature. Other than bug fixing, it is my top priority right now. At the moment, the game emulates a 640x480 display that stretches up to at least 1920x1080 in fullscreen; it originally forced the display to a true 640x480 resolution, but this has caused some problems on some systems. The plan for the final Steam release is - if it does not create major problems - to include multiple resolution settings.

No worries! Sorry for the confusion. I think I'll double check to see if that email is visible to buyers - it should be :/... A proxy address is actually something I never thought of - I should try it!

The support email should be accessible if you purchased the game. I would post it here but I want to avoid spam bots.