Hey Everyone,
Still don’t except the game released next week, but we’re making progress. Here are some screenshots and some more info about the new and changing features.
Battle amulets play a major role in how much XP you will earn at the end of the battle (they all give some bonus % to the net stage XP). There are plenty of them, but you don’t have to keep in mind which ones are done or unavailable, and which should you pursue. Just roll over the Battle amulets “button” in the header, and a floating info panel will tell you about what’s available. Some amulets have 3 different tiers, like “build 2 shrines” has its “4” and “6” variants, but only the one you are the closest to obtain is shown (so if you have 3 shrines built, then you have obviously already gained the “build 2 shrines” and the next one is “build 4 shrines”, so it’s the only one in the list).
But how do you know how much of a given action you have to make to get a battle amulet? That’s what the Stats panel is for. It shows your performance in real time, listing only those stats that are connected to battle amulets, so you don’t have to read through dozens of stats in the heat of the battle. As in GC0, you can review all your stats in the Stats screen accessible from the map (stage selector).
A kill counter with a shrinking red backround shows you your current kill streak. If there’s no new kill before the time runs out, the kill streak is over, otherwise the timer starts over and waits for yet another kill. In GC0 it wasn’t there, and kill streaks just ended with seemingly no reason. Now you can see when it wants to end and help it roll on with a gem bomb.
Gem target priorities: Now you can see it in some of the screenshots (look at the bottom of the floating gem info panel). The final variations are: Least hit points (great for sticking to a wounded target), most hit points (to pick a giant monster or some other major threat), fastest monster (to take down those nasty runners), random (to spray poison or other specials), and structure (fires at monster beacons and nests even if there are monsters in range). For technical reasons, targeting the monster farthest/closest to orb was left out, but these 5 modes will still give a great way to make your hits count more.
Amplifiers: it still needs a lot of balancing, but the game mechanics is implemented and working. If you place a gem in a tower or trap next to an amplifier, the gem in the latter will give some of its attributes to the active gem. The gem info panel shows the amplified (grand total) values as well as how much was given by the amplifying gem(s).
And finally: If you run out of mana and a monster reaches your orb, it will blast to tiny shards. Nothing functional, just a fancy effect.
Next time (it can be 2 weeks or 4, I don’t know) I’ll write about and show the victory panel, the amulets screen, the map of the labyrinth, the battle mode setting selector, and the skill selector. By then the game will be almost complete content-wise, but it will still need lots of playtesting. If we need beta testers, I’ll announce it here in the blog. Again (and again), thanks for your patience!
WOW!!! GREAT!
I LOVED THE NEWS.
The new gems’ sprites look great. Congratulations Peter!
I can really wait for this the necessary time.
You guys should use your Facebook page more to post these types of updates as well so I know to come read it.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Game-in-a-Bottle/240576070898
Thanks, all previous posts are up there now, and I’ll try not to forget updating it.
You can set up Facebook to automatically pull in new posts via your RSS feed. There’s a built-in version, but it’s not very good. I’d recommend using the app “RSS Graffiti”.
There was a comment on a previous blog entry regarding super gems and running games for “weeks” to get as high of a score as possible. I think Peter suggested that some such super gem ability be locked until you beat the main game, then open it for people who want the highest scores ever.
I am in favor of that suggestion, assuming the super gem idea is the same as in GC0. I replayed GC0 a few times with traps only, and mostly trivialized 90% of every level by loading up gems into a prismatic and getting the firing rate super high. I know people can anger waves to increase the difficulty, and I love pushing the game as far as it can go, but for the main game I would rather be more reliant on actual strategy than just loading up one gem for every single level.
If one’s going for the highest score ever, it is necessary to expand score box so it cna hold more digits. Especially since most of top bar is unused.
Great job with all the news and detailed description of new features in-game. No more starring aimlessly at every next wave.
I too am constantly on this website hoping to see a response to this query. At the end of the day, I’ll still buy the game, but I would love to see the supergemming cap/limit suggestions implemented, especially as I cannot forsee it being overly difficult (or am I wrong?) And as far as balance goes…
Anyway, Game Maker Peter, keep up the good work. If you have any thoughts on the supergemming conundrum do post a response – other people get responses for just saying stupid things!
To be honest I could wait for months for the game – I have a lot of other things to do and I know this game will kill my current productive streak stone dead! But oh how I look forward too it..
Some players want supergemming gone, others build their playstyle on it, so it was a tough decision, but it’s done: gem combining will be (is already) adjusted so that it won’t be worth combining a high grade gem with lots of lower grade gems. After a while, the resulting gem will be no better than the original high grade gem. I know it will take away many players’ favorite glitch, but I’m sure there will be new ones waiting to be abused. 🙂
Wow well thanks for the reply! I’m sure you’ll get as much criticism as praise for the decision, but I do think the game will take a lot more strategy to complete as result.
Anyway, I await patiently. Cheers
I don’t normally post of blogs or updates for games like this, but I just wanted to say that it looks awesome, and I’m so excited to play it. Keep up the great work, I’m sure most people would rather wait for a game that’s flawless then get an unpolished game, thank you for the update.
PS: If you need a beta tester count me in.
if ever the near-infinite mana will be reached, those amulets will only matter a little time. However if not, you might think about which amulet to pursue first, and keep in mind that you’re not immortal.
Also I would like to see a “pause-action” state of game, at least to make a breather to view stats and think about something to be done in the next couple of waves (perhaps even doing something in between, but not necessary), maybe you might move your gems in inventory while in pause – well, this thing will require balancing of actions allowed and mught delay the release/beta-stage, and I don’t want to wait long, but will if anything 🙂
Thanks for keeping up informed.
I agree with Vesper – a “pause-action” state would definitely add to the game. Perhaps when you lose you could get maybe 1% of the experience that could have been gained, angering and early wave bonus discounted to prevent spamming. This would give a psychological effect of going somewhere – I’m always frustrated when I lose and I feel like I wasted time there.
I had some thoughts about different kinds of gems and waves that I wanted to share with you as well. I am not sure about colors, but there are some other powers that might be interesting.
Waves first since they are easier:
– the difficulty of the game seems pretty low. It is really really easy to win. I think that there should be some levels that are really hard, like with all kinds of enemies that really burn a lot of mana.
– new wave type : mana burn : enemies have super high mana cost to banish (like 300)
– I would also make the boss levels much harder as they were some of the easiest in the game, although I think they were some of the most fun as well.
Gem Powers
– multiple attacks at the same time : a new gem color that shoots more than one shot at a time. Very low damage/shooting speed
– increasing speed over time : another new gem color that starts out shooting slowly, but increases over time until it is a certain percentage of the maximum (such as 500%). again low damage/shooting speed
– knockback : new gem color that knocks an enemy backwards on the map
– explosion : new gem color that makes the dead body explode if it does the final hit to kill it. Explosion deals a certain percentage of hit points to surrounding enemy units
Those are just some suggestions that I thought of. What do you guys think? I hope that some of them are practical and could be used in the game or at least considered.
lol
I don’t know, part of your post is about how easy the game is, and the next parts are about new gems that seem kinda overpowered. He’s already busy balancing the new stuff he has, adding any of these gems would require a lot more balancing.
I’m not saying I don’t like some of the gem ideas – multi-shot and knockback both sound pretty great for example – but they would trivialize the game. Multi-shot because of supergemming (I don’t care how low the damage is, supergem it and it’s overpowered) and knockback because it will add considerably to the maze length of every map, giving you that much more time to kill the creeps.
Like I posted a while ago a new gem would be he burn effect gem.First of all a good idea with it is that it is mainly in small levels.The burn efect is kinda like the poison but diffrent.You see the damage is extremly weak but lasts until the monster dies.It couldn’t over lap unless a stronger burn efect gem hit the monster that was already burned.In that case it will br burned by the better gem
color:pink
damage min:1 every two seconds max:three every second
please reply
For GC Labyrinth, we’ll keep the 8 main gem types, but for later chapters, we can introduce new types and more new rules.
I think I mentioned in an earlier blog about having new types of gems. I suppose any new gem types introduced in future will need considerable testing and balancing to ensure they’re not under or overpowered.
Ok thank you for the info.
Well, I wouldn’t say Gemcraft 0 is too easy. Gemcraft 1 was, however.
The main thing that strikes me is the lack of orginality in many waves… there is a lack of unique waves like a few armored monsters (but a lot heavier armor than the normal armor waves), or waves with heavy armor but very low HP, or just a very weak wave, but one which cannot be angered (this wave should be used to create/combine gems while killing the monsters).
However, I’ll see a lot of progress in this new game, and it definately looks great.
I can’t say I agree with removing the “Target monster closest to the end” option. It just leaves you WIDE open if a monster is heading STRAIGHT for your tower, and your tower, even though it’s in range, won’t target it and instead will target some OTHER monster instead.
The random option sounds great though, and would give the Poison towers a better use (In GC0, gotta say that the Poison gem was the weakest in towers, but the absolute strongest in traps)
You could have never-ending skills – skills that you can keep upgrading. Also, more maximum mana is actually a negative skill in gemcraft chapter 0 if you are mana pooling frequently.
Here is how never-ending skills could work – I’m not sure whether this could be implemented or not. What you can do is geometric deterioration – a skill deteriorates in increased effectiveness by 80% per skill point invested. So if you put an infinite amount of skill points in there, it does not keep getting better and better, the limit as the # of skill points invested approaches infinity is 6x better. I think that it would add another layer to the game and entertain those who wish to pursue incredible challenges.
actually you might even have arithmetic deterioration – say, “more initial and maximum mana” you get ~20% more per next level, but that level costs 1 more skill point than previous. So, based on GC0, level 11 adds 20% and costs 7, level 12 adds another 20% and costs 8, etc etc. Of course some skills should not be neverending, like say Armor or Forge, otherwise you’ll end up gaining mana by creating gems – what good it will do? However, geometric deterioration can also apply to some skills that should naturally be capped, like Recharge.
A way that your arithmetic idea could be implemented is that the problem results from putting the number in the denominator – so by saying (taking for example, Armor), 4%, then 8%, then 12 %, instead of increasing the numerator (or increasing the denominator), it decreases the numerator and denominator. If when you say 4%, you mean, it would have been 4% more expensive to banish a monster than before, then it could go on until a very large number and you would still have a banishing cost.
But, even then, it’s useful to have a cap so that monsters that costed 5000 to banish don’t cost 1.
Basically, the point of having implementing the arithmetic idea is to have skills that keep getting better and better until infinity. The point of having geometric deterioration is to have skills that increase by arbitrarily small amounts, but there’s still some improvement.
Those withdrawal symptoms are just not funny anymore! The twitching, convulsing, shivering, sweating, throwing up–please please PLEASE all I need is just some more glorious glorious GEMCRAFT!!!!!!! I’m begging you PLEASE as I curl up in a foetal position, sobbing and shaking…please.
***
All joking aside though, I must really congratulate you guys and gals. Gemcraft 1 and 0 are, hands down , two of the VERY best games I’ve ever played.
I’m looking forward to the release of Labyrinth, but I understand that it takes some time to do a good job.
All the best, S.
The most inbalanced thing in GC0 was that mana+splash combination. As soon as you got Max DGM, Max SplashGemSkill and Max ManaGemSkill (which was, hmm, ~50 lvl?) the game just becomes a child’s play. No level is too hard if you have this combination.
I hope that You will do something about this in GCL. Maybe removing the possibility to increase gem’s strength (or lower the increase) when combining higher level gem with >2 grades lower one.
The next thing – more skills. Maybe this is kinda obvious as you are adding The Amplifier, which of course needs it’s own skill too (better stats bonus or something). But what I am thinking of is a skill tree… combined with default skills like they were in GC0. For example if you choose 5% more gem power skill at that skill tree, the upgrade/skill which gives you 5% faster firing rate is not available anymore (or IS available but at high costs or finding an artifact, etc.).
Gem bombs.
I have played the game back and forth and I really didn’t need them. Probably because of this “combine higher gem with lower one and get superb power”. Although I haven’t tested Gem Bombs with GB skill maxed, I used them only once per 20 levels. Mostly in sudden death mode. You need to make them more useful. The only thing that they were worth for was angering the waves. And maybe finding artifacts (or whatever you want to call them).
Speaking about those badges/artifacts/runes/whatever – it would be nice if they really helped you somehow. Experience boosts are good, but not that necessary as You can replay the levels, each level has ~10 modes, there are vast choice of levels. Do the math. I am speaking about artifacts that gives you boost if you have them in your inventory/bag at the start of the battle. Maybe even placing it in a tower or amplifier. Plus they could be obtained as drops from various monsters. For example a rare amp gem that gives you +5% to max damage, but is found only in the strongest waves, with drop increase when the wave is angered. Same goes for boss fights.
This system should need a major testing though as it could really unbalance the game at the start if you are lucky enough. Maybe level requirements for those artifacts? Or maybe they get stronger as you level up?
Those who read everything I wrote probably got the idea that those ideas come from RPG games. But why not? GC always has raised the bar of TD games and as we all know, it is not that different from RPG either.
More ideas coming soon, waiting for beta.
With love
Mārtiņš “Pieshels” Piesis
this news made me try to beat the Gem of Eternity again…I failed, probably because I am only lvl 83…but I managed to get 6 grade 7 Gembombs and 1 grade 6 gem…I would just have had to have about 4000 mana more T.T
only 83? i beat it at 76 and i’m nowhere near being the best st this game.
Hello!
It’s me again.
Some more ideas about challenge modes:
– Fixed mana challenge. You start with fixed amount of mana (5000 for example), no mana gain from monsters/regeneration/mana gems. No mana gain at all. Use that mana wisely.
– Fixed count of buildings/gems that can be created/built. For example no more than 5 towers and/or traps allowed. Or no more than 5 gems in towers/traps at a time (and you WILL need to move them from tower to tower to succeed).
– No “waves” challenge. Enemies spawn at fixed times (1 enemy per 1 second). And of course after 10/20/30 enemies they get stronger. Level ends after certain amount of kills/score/mana is achieved.
– No towers/traps/mana(?) challenge. Use anything but them.
Yours
Mārtiņš “Pieshels” Piesis
If amplifiers give a % increase in stats, that will greatly increase the effectiveness of supergems.
this game rocks! give u time making it, don’t finish it too early!
and make infnity-wave modes =)
I am still waiting patiently for news 🙂 Hope it is up soon. Did wish it was a bit earlier so I could spend my holidays on it!
Lets just hope that t comes by the time christmas is here.I can wait plenty more.
Sounds like some great new features. I especially like the Target Priority system. Though you have Random (which should work great for Poison and Slow) I was hoping for an option to shoot at unaffected targets. Random can hit a poisoned target again, but if I could set it up so my poison gems ignore monsters that are already poisoned (or slowed, or down to 0 armor) that would be ideal.
Another idea: when your mana reaches 0 and a monster reaches the end, normally the game is over. How about instead, it starts destroying your existing gems? That way, I could probably recover from having my mana go to -5 (which is an annoying way to lose), but nothing’s going to save me if I’m doing poorly.
Just some thoughts. I’m sure there’s plenty of cool new stuff in there already to keep me occupied for weeks.
For a future gemcraft, maybe the badges (e.g. 10,000 kills) would give you a tiny stat boost (1% damage for gems). Otherwise, they seem worthless – why should I struggle to get 100 arcane guardian kills for ~1500 xp when I can do an endurance for 1,000,000 xp?
Just wanted to let you know I’m eagerly waiting the next gemcraft game still. I check this blog semi regularly for updates. Hope all is well working on it and I’ll be watching for that play tester announcement!
Oh I really need this new GC. I’m driving crazy without news. Are you alive Peter?? XD
It’s great work your doing.
Hey Peter,
I gave you a shout out on Reddit and it seems I’m not alone in anticipating your game. It’d be great if you could chime in over there – Reddit.
Sorry – that was http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/dq755/in_case_anyone_is_a_gemcraft_addict_like_me_you/
I have waited long enough! Do you have a release date yet? How about a demo, 2-3 level demo?
I just can´t wait anymore, I’m very anxious.
Yeah, i cant wait any longer too 😉
Any relevant news?
hi, this indeed will be a very nice game, i cant wait to play it, i hope it appears on armor games too.
now from what i understand GC C1 was the first game, then GC C0 has been made, i wish if posible that C1 be updated to the same graphics and style as the new chapter zero.
ty
hey! Peter
Just too long, please report us your progress.
Dying for your reply ~~~~~~~
hey i played gemcraft chapter zero the last few days and pawned it i got to level 90 and finished nearly every extra level. The game just started to get repetitive and when i won i saw there was a chapter 1, which i realised id already played and was quite shite, chapter zero is alot more entertaining and got me addicted now i want to play the sequel chapter 2 which was promised after my three days of hardcore jamming and its nowea to be heard of, release date was supposedly last year, serious downbuz.. so yea im taking it theres alot of stuffing around for your fans to put up with but i admit im one of them just gutted i cant play any others yet .. you guys should hurry up and bring 1 or 2 more gemcraft games out, 1000s of people would get addicted to the series and then make multiple more updated ones with more/better ideas after that and start making money off it, this could be your job so its worth your time, best flash td, in face best flash game ive played beats all the other pethetic boring ones around the net, the next best was probably desktop td 2 which was addictive but quite ridiculous. Anybody that doesnt like the game just arent strategy minded and probably cant get their thick heads around the game. for you strategy players download missionrisk 3.1 come play on the net easy to download small file, and quite a big online community just need it a bit bigger lol so whens this labyrinth coming out im looking so forward to another few days jamming this phat td YEYE you should put more info about chsing shadows considering when people finish your famous chapter zero it gets them excited about chasing shadows, i spent hours looking for it. =( in labyrinth you should make it when youve finished everything in a level eg heroic arcane swarm that you get something either a couple of skill points or maybe a secret level for each one to earn some nice xp or an amulet. Your new ideas sound awesome they were something what i was thinking of as i was cruising through the game, ive always been a td fan since warcraft 3 tds online, my comp broke down and i gotta lappy so just been jamming flash tds, can anybody tell me any strategy or puzzle games i might like? I dont understand how people got lvl 16 gems thats over the top would have been weeks of repetitive playing one guy reckons he bought 2048 lvl 6 gems or smin to get a lvl 17 lmao thats to time consuming, should also be able to buy up to grade 8-10 gems, and maybe add one or 2 gems although youve already thought of the basic attributes they can have.. hmm good ideas you got anyway bring this soob out im fiending
I made a grade 18 gem, and lots of grade 15-16 gems, on the final level during my first attempt to beat all 228 waves. But then I realized that supergemming 10 level 15 prismatic gems was much faster damage, in terms of damage/click.
…you’re only level 90 and talking about insta-buying grade 8-10 gems? *blinks*
…nevermind. but you are right about one thing, having orange and red makes things too easy; even trivial once the r/o supertrap is mastered. Unless you anger to the cpu on a short track like I so often do. (angering to the cpu=angering as if it were the final level)
Seriously what is wrong with you people?! Most of the last 6-7 posts are just plain rude and very disrespectful. This man is creating a game that all of you will most likely play for free, he took the time to post screen shots & descriptions & to reply to some of the earlier posts which he did not have to do. Everyone that comes to this page obviously loves the GemCraft games and all are anxious to play the next but what do you expect to come from being rude & disrespectful to its creator? If I was him I wouldn’t be in any hurry to make the game available to people that talked to me in that way. Peter doesn’t owe any of us anything – he is doing his best & it will be ready when its ready – all the rude comments in the world won’t make it go any faster. He wants to make this one better than the lasts ones with no bugs and I guarantee all of you that have posted rude comments would be the 1st ones to come back and complain that the new games wasn’t good enough if Peter rushed to get it out. So sit back like the rest of us, give him time to get it done right and send him positive comments to encourage him, not tick him off. Thanks.
GemCraft 1 war schon relativ gut.
GemCraft 0 war absolute Spitze. Das beste Flash-TD im Netz.
Wenn jetzt noch die Klasse von GC0 übertroffen wird. Liegt der Maßstab so hoch, dass er Jahrelang nicht mehr erreicht werden kann 😛
Lass dir Zeit. Rom wurde auch nicht an einem Tag gebaut !
Grüße aus Deutschland 😛
(I´m not very good in writing english. Reading is no problem, so I can understand any answers. :D)
Translation of Marcus´ post:
GemCraft 1 was pretty good.
Gemcraft 0 was fantastic, the best Flash-TD on the net.
If it´s better than GC0, than nobody is going to reach it for years…
Take time. Rom wasn´t built on one day!
Greetings from germany!
Hope I could help!
Please hurry!!! *gg*
What’s GemCraft? Is it a type of video game? is it like pac-man? pac man rocks!
It´s the best flash TD game series ever developed! you can play it on armorgames
Thanks Ang, Marcus, and everyone who still wait with patience and not spam us with hate comments! I really appreaciate all your reassuring words! 🙂
Brilliant game, extremely addictive. As a Flash Dev I’d be interested in the processes you employ in developing the code for your games. Any chance you’ll do a post-mortem on Gem Craft 1 or 0? I’d love to have some insight on how you go about translating your game concepts into code.
It would be a nice addition to the blog… maybe when I have more time. 🙂
peter, hurry up with this game or else i will hate yall forever
jk, im a fan of the game, and i can wait, take all the time you need on it, the more time you spend on a game, the better it is
Any chance we’ll be able to post pictures in this blog? Because, if I try to pin some interesting web-page, it get’s caught inside the spam filter (and pictures look better anyway)
Sorry, but for now I’d rather say no. I’m sure the blog could be more interesting with links and pictures, but it would surely be harder to maintain, filter all the spam-tasting site advertisements, and unappropriate images (which can only be filtered manually).
In the picture which shows the battle amulets one of the was build 2 shrines. Unless I’m confused that’s something new and I was wondering about it?
I’m also hoping for more info on the amplifiers. It looks like in the picture you use a grade 7 gem in the amplifier. the bonuses to the nearby gem seem rather strong in terms of damage but weak in everything else. I figure your still balancing it but I would still like more information on it.
I played both games and am anxiously awaiting the new game. Any thoughts on when it will be ready? I completed the Gem of the Eternity on level 77. I am going through withdrawal. I am forcing my husband to scour the internet daily for clues as to when your game will ready. He completed the Gem of Eternity at level 70.
I can’t wait GemCraft 2, 3…
But we can build Spells Shrine ?
YES or NO
In GCL, you’ll be able to build two types of shrines, both doing massive damage and differing in their area of effect. Most of the shrine types from GC0 are gone.
What will be included in GC2 and GC3 is still a mystery.
(GCL is not GC2 or GC3, those will be released much later.)