Going deeper into the Labyrinth, here are the latest ready-to-show features:
High contrast mode:
For players with impaired vision, there’s a new checkbox in the Options screen. Enabling it makes path tiles lighter, the ground and monsters darker, and shots get a dark outline to make them pop out of the background more.
Pause the game:
GemCraft should not be about how fast you can click, but how resourceful and smart you can be building up your defense, and it’s also a (maybe even more) important accessibility feature as high contrast mode.
Click the pause icon and take your time making adjustments, while the time is frozen. Normal and high speed modes are still there of course.
New XP system:
In GC0, there was score, mana, and XP; you got score as well as mana for killing monsters, summoning more of them, and clicking on wave stones to start the waves early; then at the end of the stage, your score was divided by 1000 and it became your experience points, making you level up and become more powerful.
In GCL, score is gone. What you do turns into XP at the end of the stage, shown in the Victory panel, this way:
-Each stage has a base XP value, calculated from the toughness of the stage (monster hit points, number of waves).
-As I mentioned in a former blogpost, you can mix any battle settings, like amounts of monsters, number of waves, higher monster armor, giant monsters only, and more. The more challenging mix you set for yourself, the higher “settings XP multiplier” you get at the end of the battle if you win. (The base XP value gets multiplied.)
-For many actions you can do during a stage, you can collect battle amulets. Examples are: creating a grade 6 or better gem, destroying all monster nests, or starting 50% of waves early. Each of them has an XP multiplier, that adds up, giving a “battle amulets XP multiplier.
-Summoning more monsters is such a popular feature that I decided to give it an XP multiplier of its own. So the more extra monsters you call on yourself, the higher your final XP gets. (In endurance mode (unlimited waves), you get a multiplier for the number of waves beaten instead.)
Starting waves early:
A risky but rewarding option, formerly it gave a score boost; now it gives you a mana bonus, and has its own battle amulets to further boost your stage XP. The earlier you start the next wave, and the higher the wave is, the more mana you get. Just have your gems armed to repel those early guests.
Amulets close-up 3d view:
This little 3d-ish trick was inspired by collectible cards (from Magic the Gathering to storybook sticker cards to collectible basketball/soccer cards), with their special cards having metallic or holographic frames, strips, and other eye candy.
Not the most important feature, but the idea and a working prototype was ready a year ago (for an other game now on hold), so we just had to insert the amulet designs.
If you click on an amulet, it will zoom in and you can rotate it by dragging the mouse left-right. Release it and you’re back in the game.
Confirm retry/retreat:
One of the main annoyances in GC0 was when you took a break in an hour long endurance battle and accidentally clicked on “Return to map” instead of “Done”. Now, both dangerous buttons, that would make you lose your battle progress, need to be clicked twice. If you roll out with the mouse, they fall back to their initial state.
Extra skill points: taken out
For those who didn’t read their way through the past posts, formerly we planned to have a feature in GCL, that you could buy extra skill points to temporarily boost your skills. I have to agree at least party with those players who stated that this would have been like paying for cheating, ruining the challenge and forcing players to pay unreasonable amounts of money in order to enjoy the game to its fullest. Good news, no need to start a flame war about greediness or promoting cheating, this feature is gone, so you’ll get the normal version for free, and the Unleashed version for a one-time, non-recurring fee of a few bucks.
And finally, thanks for all the ideas you constantly send us in mail and here on the blog, I hope you don’t mind if yours won’t make it in GCL, but this game should have been out for a while by now, so it’s not the right time to start stuffing even more features into it.
Writing again when the rest of the features (labyrinth map, battle settings, skills) reach screenshot-readiness.
This game have date to launch?
Wow. This looks very neat. It would be nice to make “arcane guardians” / epic bosses / etc. a lot harder or anger-able.
By the way, is the formula still the same for angering?
P.S. I beat all 228 waves in map 78 🙂
@Einfach Pics or it didn’t happen.
My pics will be marked as spam if I try posting them, but they’re available on the Kongregate Forums. It’s legit. Google search “All 229 waves.” (yes, I know, it’s all 228). Go to the last or second to last page.
All 228 waves
There are pictures. Go Kongregate.com then Forums then “All game forums” then “Gemcraft chapter 0” then look for “All 229 waves” topic, there is also a story of those who have beaten this level. There is more than one person who did that, however einfach didn’t use speedhack, so his success is technically completely legit.
He did, however, use macros. So I wouldn’t call it completely legit.
It was a mouse recorder to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and insanity due to excessive boredom. Otherwise, more than 150,000 mouseclicks / keypresses would be necessary. I had over 72,000 gem combinations. And the macro recorded in real-time, unlike AutoHotKey, or other programs, and I couldn’t get it to create gems for me, only combine a full sheet of grade 6s. I started using it after I had 200,000 tower damage. The only advantage it gave was that it prevented carpal tunnel syndrome, and made things a little less stressful.
The new angering formula currently limits adding new monsters to a wave only for the first 20 gems dropped on the wave, but it’s still waiting for testing, not final.
So this means that you can still increase the number of monsters in a wave, up to 20 angers? and then after that it doesn’t work anymore?
As of now, yes, you can anger each wave 20 times, but maybe I should change it to making hp and armor increasing slightly even more, so that you can decide it it’s worth dropping 25 gems on a wave or not. (Anger modifiers depend on the gem’s grade as well, just like in GC0.)
With the current system, hp and armor both increase exponentially, so it’s really not worth it if angering is not a multinomial equation like in the first. You will cut down scores severely, and the incredibly high scores are what made GC0 immortal.
I agree with Einfach (dunno why it posted me before him.
On the other hand, it could be a skill, or a feature in the Unleased mode. But that would piss off many fans and I’m not sure you would want that.
This game looks Awesome!
I can’t wait till it comes out, though i wish there was a like 1 level demo for it, but hey, it looks awesome all the same XD
Need a sample video or something instead of just screenshots. 🙂
I love how that screenshot shows you the amulet/mana bonus you get as soon as you activate the requirements instead of having to wait for the results screen and see whether you summoned enough or built enough towers etc. Nice instant visual “good work!” cues.
I don’t know exactly what the “Unleashed” version means, but if it locks off the choice to spend hundreds/thousands of points on skills or things you can do after you beat the main game, there might be some hesitation from people. I’ll gladly pay for it personally, but if there’s otherwise no way to unlock Unleashed from playing 500 hours or something, some people might be disappointed.
Hard to believe the site/announcement was back in July. So anyone complaining that the game is taking too long to come out … it’s already been 4.5 months, we can wait another 4 months if needed 😛
Maybe to get unleashed, one could also play for as long as it takes to get 5-10 dollars in ad revenue.
Nice info. You seem to have made substantial progress since last month.
Here’s what you announced 2 month past.
show the victory panel, done
the amulets screen, I’ll count as done
the map of the labyrinth, not done
the battle mode setting selector, explained
and the skill selector. not done
By then the game will be almost complete content-wise, is it? please answer.
It seems you’re finally on the right path.
geez, there are some cool features over there! And the game is no longer totally-exploitable with heaviest mana grind. Having there a “base exp value for each level” confuses me, it’s possible that whatever you do, you won’t get past some high level if you’re getting best exp off each level, but this provides a challenge at squeezing the best out of each challenge in the campaign.
I’d also make it so if you run endurance, you won’t get BIG EXP bonuses by rapidly invoking new waves until getting overrun by banishing monsters, this thing was blocked back in GC0 by not giving score for calling waves early in endurance mode. I think the best thing you can do here is counting only WHOLE destroyed waves as those that give exp multiplier.
Yes, I’d like to see an epic monster (arcane guardian or whatever kind of boss) summonable in the end of a level, with wave number-based power and banishment cost, perhaps unleechable (orange stops working) and even angerable (+1 each anger might do), or whatever abilities there could be, of course it should reflect on EXP multiplier.
I believe that this game will be even more epic that those two GemCrafts already existing, combined 🙂 and I’m already inclined to buy the unleashed version. Perhaps this inclination will result in action as well.
Wish you luck and patience.
It might be possible that angering with the current setup will cause giant waves to become weaker since you will increase both the monster number and health, and with the current system, this % increase is more significant with giant monster waves, which is why they are so great for score. So will there be a mechanism to balance giant monster waves to make them give a greater score.
I think that angering should also affect your base score, but we shall see…
Peter said that base score is hard-set for the given battlefield, so you can’t alter it, but you have a multiplier that raises when you anger, and since all three multipliers are cumulative, you are best raising the one that’s the lowest, but raising any will do good.
Maybe they’ll become weaker, or maybe the multiplier will instead take a larger jump, because the total HP of the giant wave will increase a lot more than other waves, given equal gem to anger.
Yes, we shall see 🙂
The most I could imagine amulets affecting score is by 2-3x, maybe the toughest mode would have 3x monster health and 3x # of monsters with increased armor and … maybe like 20x multiplier if it scales directly with difficulty, and much, much less if it doesn’t. And angering bonus should increase by more and more per anger, as a multinomial equation for angering like in Gemcraft Chapter 0 would be optimal (like angering in GC0 – it was an infinite product, but the way it was set up, with uniform angering, it was a multinomial equation – kind of hard to explain). So I don’t see it very likely we will be getting billions of xp. on levels.
How will mana pooling play into score, because that was the biggest score booster, and without it, our scores are terrible.
nice screenshots!
hope it’ll be released in the end of the Q4 🙂
What will be the difference between the regular and Unleahsed versions?
I’ll write about it in a future blogpost, but in a nutshell: You can get to the final stage and beat the game in the regular version, but only the Unleashed version will give access to all the fun and challenge.
Alright, looking great. I’m excited that you posted something, I * heel clicked * when I saw there was a new post on the blog. Is there any word on a beta yet? I understand if it’s not going to happen but I think it’d be a great way to get the game out and played a little quicker and help your dedicated fans get a taste of the game a little early. Beta’s don’t have to be 100% finished, although I don’t really see how else you could release a beta with GemCraft without finishing it. Looking forward to the next update, and the eminent release.
Read the earlier posts about his thoughts on a beta. It doesn’t sound like there is going to be one as it makes the game too easy to pirate.
However, a 1-level demo could accomplish some of what a beta might. Or maybe I’m just anxious to get a taste for the game.
Ahh! Now I want it even more!!!
These are very simple rules that produce great complexity, an essential idea in every playable game.
I like all the features mentioned, looks like neverending point sfarming is coming soon
Thanks for the great news! Good work, Peter! 🙂
Oooh, seems like it’s getting VERY close now! 😀
Want to play much, and might buy it depending on payment methods. Woo!
By the way… what about the save system? Will you keep the old “paste your code here” save system?
Saving locally is so unstable (saved games disappearing randomly), that I had to make something to keep at least a part of the players from losing their saved games, this was the copy-paste feature.
More and more sites (Armor Games, Kongregate) and systems (Mochicoins, GamerSafe) support server-side storage, and to buy the Unleashed version, the player has to log in to somewhere anyway (but it doesn’t hurt to log in for free play either), saved games will be stored on the server as well as locally (when possible), and seamlessly synchronized when the game loads up. (if you log in, play for a while, then the next day the server’s down, you can still play on if the local storage worked, then, when the server’s up again, the game will sync the save data, keeping the more advanced save (higher xp, stats). You’ll have 3 save slots, in case you want to start over but want to keep your old save as well.
This is the current plan, but it can change from site to site (I hope it won’t).
I wonder if it’s possible to have it save to Google Docs or something like that. “Save to the cloud” 🙂
It’s site-agnostic that way 🙂
How will purchasing the unleashed version work? Will you get a download that works on it’s own, or will you still need to play via Kongregate or Armor games? (I’ve never purchased a flash game before…this will be my first)
CAN’T WAIT
🙂
Technically all these depend on the payment service providers, like Mochi, or major sites with their own payment systems, like Kongregate. As I know, they don’t (and not going to) supoort saving to cloud/Google.
No, there will be no downloadable/offline paid version, because it’s the server (be it Mochi, Kong, or any other) that checks whether you have bought the full version or not.
Lol, “I have to agree at least party with these people…” XD
By the way, what are you going to do after you finish Gemcraft series? I suggest you abandon Flash (too simple), and look at the older games engines.
If modified, and done skillfully, game engines like in Dark Omen and Baldurd’s Gate engines provide a brilliant opportunities for online games.
Online games are getting more and more complicated anyways, so using late 90s game engines will be just fine.
Why abandon Flash? AS3 is a robust object-oriented language that is powerful in its own right. Far from simple.
Also take into account the new (tentatively named) Molehill API due for release early next year, where flash apps will have access to GPUs allowing for high-performance 3D graphics way beyond the current flash 10 API. Plans are already underway to refactor existing Flash 3D engines like Away3D and Alternativa to take advantage of the low-level GPU access the new 3D API will provide.
My whole point is to make a point. I don’t mean to say that flash is bad, but it may be productive to try something new.
You never know until you try.
Despite its lots of annoyances, I like the Flash platform, and now it’s more robust and mature than a few years before, so I don’t think I’ll leave it soon.
90s games (and games of any era) are a great source of inspiration, but there are many other thing to consider to reach a wde audience in today’s market. A game session that lasts for hours (and not because of mana farming) will frighten away many players who only wanted some casual fun, or have only a few minutes to play.
Hello! Csak egyetlen dolgot szeretnék: Legyen legalább olyan nehéz, mint a GC0 Bár a csatamód kombinálással ezt biztos, hogy meg is lehet oldani, ha esetleg könnyebbnek tűnne. Már nagyon várom a skill panelt. Látni szeretném, hogy hány képesség lesz benne és hogy ezeket hányas szintig lehet majd felhúzni. Nekem a 10 szint egy kicsit kevés, de ha csak annyi lesz, nem baj. Köszi az infókat.
Szia! A mód mixeléssel és a hullámok korai hÃvásával/több szörny kérésével bÅ‘ven lehet majd fokozni az izgalmakat 🙂
27 skill lesz, némelyik 10 szintes, de a nagy része 20-30 szintig növelhető, és lesz korlát nélküli is. Bővebben majd angolul egy új blogbejegyzésben!
Could you translate please.
Excerpt:
Mixing modes and calling early waves will ensure evyerone can get the challeng they want.
There will be 27 skills, some will have a level cap at 10, others at 20-30, some not having a level cap at all.
More details in English in a new blogpost.
Ja, egyszer én is jártam úgy, hogy elveszett a több óra hosszán át tartó játékállásom az utolsó pályán, mert egy kicsit föntebb csúszott az egerem, és rákattintottam véletlen az egyik könyvjelzőmre, és persze egyből kezdte azt az oldalt betölteni a játék helyére.
Mennyiszer volt velem is ilyen, mindenféle flash játékkal elÅ‘fordult… még nem próbáltam, de van valami Firefox plugin, ami teljes képernyÅ‘re teszi a játékot.
—
Closing the game accidentally happened to me many times, with many flash games, too.. I haven’t tried it yet, but there’s some Firefox plugin, that puts the running game to fullscreen.
Looks like it is here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9631/
This is great to know! Thanks 🙂
It looks really good! I’m very anxious but I can wait more. Mainly because I’m not in vacation and need time to play GC.
Please also change the programming method, to make sure that the game is no longer hackable and thus make a fair-play game.
basically you cannot make the game completely hack-proof. See, it has to operate its values when they are open, and any memory patcher a hacker will likely use will be able to find a certain value within memory while say stalling the game thread, so the game won’t be able to protect itself. Some checks could be introduced, but IMO it’s not worth to double-check anything within the code protecting from the outside intrusion, because each check also has values against which it checks, which in turn can be modified thus passing that check. And it could go ad infinitum, with the user suffering from each added level of self-check.
Sadly, that’s true. Hacking a flash game a piece of cake for a pro, but many games can be abused by even novice cheaters with CheatEngine. Double-checking and hiding everything just makes it a bit harder to get through, but it won’t stop hackers.
Why is is ALL GRAY ?? Put some colors in this game.
And the 3d-thing? Very nice! 🙂
[i think, the gemcraft itself should be, in some level, 3d-game]
I can’t wait for it.
The game is gray because of it’s setting. That has been described in detail in one of the earlier posts. In a sense, you could say it is intentional.
Question about “supergemming” – Will you still be able to increase the min / max damage by combining lower-grade gems or is that capped as well? I know that firing speed will be capped, but damage should not.
you know endurance mode?(gemcraft0) it is impossible to pass wave 50 w/o cheating, i have seen this, the monsters hp multiplys, eg. 100hp, 10waves later, 1200hp, 10 waves later, 15000hp, 10 waves later, 200000hp and so on
on the contrary, I get past wave 80 (endurance) quite frequently :D…and no cheating whatsoever…
ok, ok, so I abuse the R/O trap.
If you have a good strategy, you can get past wave 100.
If you have a good strategy you can get past wave 130.
Actually, ima about to try again. wish me luck.
I doubt anyone has actually ever beaten wave 130 in that all the creatures from it were defeated without hacking an anger shrine or using a flash beam shrine with a high-grade gem. With Level ID#1 endurance:
Wave 60 – 34,470 x15 – requires ~2200 firepower
Wave 70 – 203,833 x9 – requires ~9000 firepower
Wave 80 – ~861,000 x8 – requires ~32,000 firepower, which is build-able in 10 minutes if you combine grade 6s
Wave 90 – ~2.6 million per monster – requires over 100,000 firepower, which is buildable in 30 minutes.
Wave 100 – 11 million per monster – requires over 500,000 firepower, which takes almost 3 hours of constant super-gemming to build.
Wave 110 – 23 million for a swarm wave – requires about 1.5 mil. fp (8 hours). With this firepower, you could have beaten all 228 waves of the last level (fractalman’s estimate is about half of this number.). This has never been attempted – everyone who has completed the challenge has had at least 1 mil more fp than this.
Wave 120 – 156 million for a runner wave – requires about 8 mil. fp (40 hours). Still doable, people have had fps. about twice this.
Wave 130 – 828 million per monster – requires at least 42 mil. fp. Is it possible? I guess…but it would take an insane amount of time to complete.
Oops, I think I messed up somewhere – that number 42 mil. does not look right … It’s more like 4.2 mil. same comment. Divide all above by 10.
Correction –
Wave 60 – requires 250 firepower.
Wave 70 – requires 900 fp.
Wave 80 – requires 3.2 K fp. Takes just over a minute to build.
Wave 90 – requires 15 K fp – maybe 7 minutes.
Wave 100 – requires 50 K fp – 15-20 minutes
Wave 110 – 23 mil. for swarm wave – requires 350 K fp.
Wave 120 – 156 mil. for a runner wave – requires about 750 K fp to complete. About 4-5 hours.
Wave 130 – 828 mil. per monster – requires about 4-5 mil. fp., depending on the # of monsters. This takes a long… time. If you’re going to build this much fp, at least defeat all 228 waves first.
mouse. recorder.
ya, its kinda cheap to be able to build 20-50k fire power in the ~10 frames to fill your multiple millions manna pool. (oh, and weight on ‘m’ key.)… but the first time I tried the 228 wave thing, the game just started to refuse to recognise my commands, and, well, i lost cause i accidently clicked the ‘back’ button, causing the game to reload… and ya, that sucked… and i refused to do that again. The second attempt, this time with wrist saving mouse recorder, ended when I left the m key pressed down a little too long. (8 million manna pool, and a defeat screen when i came back to it. oops. (400 score multiplier FTW :-() Ill make a third attempt soon. Besides, i want to test out some different opening ideas i have.
If you have speedhack, I figured out how to play gemcraft perfectly. Hah, for my 228 run, I used a mouse recorder, too, but not one like that.
Optimal Gemcraft.
Good luck!
Rewarding early wave starters is exciting and fun, but I have a suggestion to make it even more fun and a little less micromanagement: what if you would get early starter trophy/badge/exp -bonus according to how much time you have hastened the level combined, instead of how many waves you have started? It was frustrating at times, when I wanted to start every wave early(as late as possible), but sometimes forgot to do so.
An automatic wave starter would serve better. (an option to have computer start each new wave 4-9 seconds early.) Your option leaves too much room for easy points (and near-cheating).
a really wise idea, in fact you trade time for bonuses while stressing yourself, and in GC0 you could start a wave a second before it will normally pop on screen, earning an amulet for actually nothing. So if you would start with huge gems, you could even start all the waves right at the start and blast them for huge points (or not, then a shame on you :)), which will be both fun and challenge.
You’re right, the “start x% of waves early” amulets will be taken out, and the actual time saved (or mana gained) by hastening will be awarded instead. Thanks!
I thought that too!!!
BUT, the combined saved time -system would make it a little different, and perhaps a little more strategic system…lets face it, now its kinda vain as there is nothing to think and plan of in releasing waves early, just remember do it, which is like a chore.
What do you mean with easy points? I think its a matter of balancing. If you release waves too early you die, but if you think, that you can afford it, you can try if you survive couple of early waves, and then take it easy for a while after that. I’m thinking its more interesting to make decissions for your self.
It makes sense, but in my experience it doesn’t work very well. There are frequently too many early waves, and you practically discredit the blue gem. The whole point of releasing all the waves early, was to let players test if if they have any weak moment in the whole level.
Also it would give you a lot of easy points at the first wave. While releasing it early shows that you are fast, it makes you hurry to get your gems in order. Not that it’s bad but it takes the fun out of the game.
Personally I don’t know how the waves release award will work, with the stop button added.
Also, could you reply to my reply, not to the general reply.
or you could have it as a multiplier to the monsters you kill. say you kill 5 seconds you wouldve waited, it multiplies the score-gain (although its base-score… so maybe a multplier being modified by this haha) of the monster. if it makes it through to your wizard tower and has to be banished then it looses all bonus-point potential.
Losing all the potential, no matter the circumstances is always bad. Making people work for 20 min. just to see their point fly away… bleh.
I wonder if early calling bonuses are really needed…
If you are calling waves early then its obvious you cant anger them as much as normally. So basically you have to choose between those options.
Maybe its just my playstyle, but i find angering more fun than calling waves early. You are already rewarded by making game harder through angering anyway.
Of course hurrying waves is needed in time siege or in waves with big monsters if you dont want them to stack with normal wave that follows. I dont really see a point in rewarding this.
But thats just my opinion
The game will have special fatures avaliable only at armor games? (like the gem bomb skills in GC0)
I’m sure Peter doesn’t know that yet. Such things are the last ones to be discussed.
Wow 65 posts in a week!
I have an idea about specials. Maybe specials could increase logarithmically, so if it took 5 gem combinations to get to 20% chain hit, it could take 50 for 40%, then 500 to get to 60%, where it would cap. This would add even more depth to the game.
Just how the hell are you going to get 500 combinations unless you play endurance mode?
Not that I’m against the idea, but 500…?
It’s to eliminate the “hard cap” of firing speed and specials – adds another layer of strategy.
i love you guys so much!
Heh, if he was still taking ideas, I would go as far as ask him to attempt to eleminate hard caps entirely. A system that follows, say, special = 1 – ( 1/(1+C*X) ) where C is some constant (or, it doesnt have to be), and X is the quality of the gem. Such a system should work well for purple, yellow, and cyan gems, so that it gets harder and harder to increase the chance to reduce armor/ tripledamage/ stun… it would get closer to 100%, but never actually reach it.
The reason supergemming is… required practicly, is because of those hard caps that prevent the “supposed to be” method of improving gems by improving gemgrade from being the actual most effective method of improving gems. Its like: ya, I can take 2 grade 14’s and make a 15…. or I could combine 256 grade 6’s to that grade 14. both take almost equlivant manna, (the difference in combineing cost is negligible) but the adding grade 6’s to the grade 14 is going to give you much much more DPS than making a grade 15 gem. Now, if hardcaps (refire rate and/or special maxes) were raised for higher grade gems… then things might get intresting.
Ya, start supergemming now? or increase my gems grade by 1 to increase my red component’s hard cap to +7 instead of +6… thats tricky. (actually the correct answer is make 2 weaker gems, but eventually you run out of space for traps/towers.)
woops, ment to reply to Einfach.
I like this idea. However, stunning should be much, much less, maybe you could have a limit as x –> infinity of 15% at most. This could also be applied to Blue.
How about a grade-dependent cap. This would encourage the construction of grade 15+ gems instead of supergemming. It’s not necessarily that supergemming is overpowered – just gem grade increase is underpowered (because it often reduces a gem’s power).
there’s a hard cap on blue’s slow of 75% already, I doubt this will ever change. If you speak about slow length, then yes, this should be capped. But indeed, stun should be capped to 12-15% per shot at its highest, otherwise “epic bosses” will turn into statues, and the only thing that will work for monster will again be safety in numbers. We have already passed that.
About grade-dependant cap – yes indeed, but what kind of cap increase per grade should be optimal and playable? I’d rather give it a linear increase of ~0.6%/grade, starting at say 3% at grade 1, so a grade 15 gem will be able to reach 12% stun, and a grade 20 (hum) gem will hit 15% which also will be a hard cap. Or a bit less. This approach could also solve the balancing troubles of combining specials in a single gem – you can make a pure, strong, HEAVILY hue-dependant gem with a single special (which might also receive bonuses in mastery skill, ~25% to grade cap at its most, and possible a firing speed bonus as well), a double-special, not that strong, not so hue-dependant gem that carries two specials, a desired triple-septuple gem with even lower damage and even lower hue dependancy, or a prismatic that is possible only on several levels, but provides a slight overall damage bonus and it could also be white, that is, entirely eliminated hue dependancy. Basically it’s about the same approach that was back there in GC1 with added prismatic. And about supergemming – I’d say it’ll be best if a supergem will earn less, and I mean WAY less damage/combination if combined with a really small gem, and more if combined with a close grade gem. This will also encourage creating bigger gems to do supergemming.
An example of the above: in GC0 a grade 15 prismatic supergem normally gets +4-10 damage per grade 1 gem fed, and ~20-60 damage per grade 6 gem fed. I want it to be like having this multiplied by (grade*1.5/supergem_grade), so supergemming with a gem of grade 10 will result in the same damage boost, and grade 11 will provide more than normal. So in this example a combination with grade 1 gem should add 0-1 damage (not worth the hassle), with grade 6 gem should add ~15-40 (60% of previous, suggestively acceptable), and grade 14 gem should add 140% of its normal value (and not spoil the base gem specials and firing speed). The combination of a grade 15 gem should add 150% value of added gem and upping grade, which will result in 175% of a fresh gem damage increase. This is also a compromise between having 50% damage lost at grade increase and plain addition.
About the supergemming problems.
It seems that the gem firepower after combination is not the sum of 2 gems, but seems to be averaged.
Example:
gem 1 has 7 – 15 damage
gem 2 has 10 – 22 damage
after combination the damage is approx. 11 – 29 which the results might get worse with higher grade gems.
It would be best if the combination results is a sum of the 2 gems as example above (so it’s 17 – 37 damage)
Note: Maybe another player complaint about this but please rework the formulaes so the result maybe get better
Also please don’t forget about mana pool for XP multiplying as mentioned on early posts.
You have to combine with a gem two grades lower or more to supergem.
With increasing the grade, you are doubling the mana spent, but the gem only increases about 1.5x
If combination simply summed powers of the gems then it would be too powerful. Keep in my mind that by combining gems:
– you save space (and mana), 1 bigger gem needs only 1 tower instead of 2
– you are more efficient against armored monsters. Take monster with 7 armor to your example. 1 gem deals 1-8 dmg, other one deals 3-15 dmg,summed 4-23 , combined they deal 6-24.
– get gem with increased range / speed
in the end you have to combine gems due to lack of space or increasing cost of towers or increasing armor of monsters.
In your example, if damage was simply summed, then it would always be better to keep combining instead of placing new gems
Good point, but instead of having a 50% decrease in effectiveness of the added gems, maybe just 20%.
It’s debatable to how any percent decrease should happen, but I like the 50% decrease more.
You could hack the Gemcraft, and test on effectiveness if you want to find out. I bet Peter tested it a lot of times.
The GemCraft should become one of the Facebook Games. Like Desktop Defender. Desktop defender used to be my favourite online game. Then GemCraft came along 🙂
I discovered Desktop Defender on Facebook as one of the games. Now I am playing this game all the time cause it is interesting competing against friends.
Make GemCraft a Facebook game and I will become one of the most loyal fans again 🙂
Cheers
Will def be buying this when it comes ut.
Every new post title that doesn’t say “GCL Released!” makes me sad for the 5 seconds it takes me to click through and start salivating over the new screen shots and released specs on the new system.
Do I understand correctly that all gem functions will work during pause, meaning a player can pause the game with a ton of saved mana and create and combine gems until he/she runs out of mana, then resume play? That is outstanding, if so.
Can’t wait for the finished product, but I know this is a huge undertaking and I marvel at your skill and organizational talents. Thanks for creating and continuing this franchise, hands down the best flash games I’ve ever played.
You do understand correctly.
Peter, I have a couple questions for you that the Flash Love Letter does not explain.
1). How does the amount you get for your ads increase as you gain popularity?
2). Do site administrators have any ads quotas that you must fulfill?
3). Are online games limited to Flash, or it’s just the program of choice.
3). Did anything change in your opinion since the Flash Letter came out?
4). Just a personal question, what do plan to do after you complete the Gemcraft series, what do you think of my suggestion about 90s game engines earlier?
If you don’t answer me, I will repeat this same post in the next thread.
Re-posting would cause your comment marked spam, but just hope that he will answer it 🙂
I already got a couple comments spammed when I tried posting a link to some Caucasus family towers. It’s that bad, and it’s not like you’re banned or laughed at.
We’ll see.
I see you have reposted it, so, see my reply in the new post. 🙂
Im not sure if using old games engines is good for online games. First of all, they are not platform independent as flash or java applets. They are usually bound to one platform and have to be rewritten to other platforms. Also flash code is faster and easier to write than C or C++ (or even something older), as most of old games are coded in those languages. And those engines were not designed for online games. At best they would be downloadable single player games. Ok, most “online” games are basically this, but its done and handled by the browser
Also, arent those old games engines released under some non-commercial license?
Getting some engine for free may be a profit, but being bound to old and limited technology might not be.
buttons on each skill with “add/remove all available skillpoints to/from this skill” would be neat.
eg a ^ over the +
Ok i change my mind about it coming out.I think it will come out at the Jan-Mar area of 2011.
everyone who plays on armorgames will know what i’m talking about.
my profile name is GreenToast2 if you wank to speek to me privataly.
When conversation gets too technic I run. I suck at math. 😀
Ugh normaly i don’t say things in my everyday life but i took a walk with my 3 brothers at only 6:30pm(it gets realy dark at late fall) when a cop came up to us and said what are you doing.then my oldest brother said were going to a park.the cop replied have you been messing around with old people.teh oldest said no.The cop said that they were looking for 4 hooded teenagers.
Hm… I don’t see your point, or how it relates to Gemcraft.
Is it something that happened in real life, or is it some fiction?
I also think that you left the end out. What happened to the you?
Oh nothing he just told us to go home.Yes it was nonfiction.
any guesses on when the new gemcraft will be up and running?
It depends on Peter’s mood. I would say 2-6 months.
Looks sweet! Can’t wait…
I was hoping it would be a bit sooner, not sure if I can wait that long. I’m going through withdrawal.
the longer it takes him, the better the game will be