So, last time I told I would talk in detail about those other features I only mentioned, but, starting last weekend, I also made some fundamental design changes.
First, those features from last week:
Gem Anvil:
To further ease the wrist pain, you can clone any of your gems. Drag it over the Anvil (the middle section of the gem creation/types panel), and release it. If you have enough mana, an exact copy will appear in your inventory. It costs the same mana amount as if you crafted a new gem manually, there is no penalty for using this shortcut.
If you’re short on mana and that very last giant monster will reach your orb inevitably, you can smash any of your gems to the the Anvil (drop a gem bomb on it), and you’ll get back 70% (or more, depending on a skill level) of the original mana cost. Rapid gem bombing works too, you can wipe your inventory out quickly to get some emergency mana. (You don’t even have to do it quickly, just freeze the time and sit back.)
Time freezing:
Just 3 minor things to mention here:
In the Options screen, you can select to automatically freeze the time when a stage starts, so you can prepare your defenses without losing any time. It’s unchecked by default, because players new to the game might get confused by the game never starting.
The vfxes are not frozen when the time is, partly because all the glows and sparks would make the scene too chaotic, and partly because it gives a nice “bullet time” effect. ๐
And third, originally I set the shortcut key to cycle through frozen, normal and triple speed, but that was a bad idea, not it switches between frozen and normal. (If you are in trouble and want to freeze time fast, pressing the key shouldn’t switch to triple speed and make things even worse.)
Unleashed vs Free edition:
Many of you asked what the difference will be, so here is a short comparison:
In the free version, you can access all the stages (and thus finish the game), but there are many limitations on the content.
-There is a player level cap (haven’t decided yet how high it should be, playtesting will tell).
-The bottom line in the skills panel is locked (the more fun, nasty and powerful skills).
-The two bottom lines in the settings panel (the toughest settings) are locked.
-The challenge amulets are locked.
What are challenge amulets, by the way:
-They have a high requirement to meet
-They are tied to a particular stage
-They remember your best try, even if you have already acquired them.
An example: “Kill 100.000 monsters on field L8 in one battle”.
The purpose of these amulets is to provide you a new way to challenge the other players.
Shrines:
You can build shrines in GCL, and they don’t have a use limit, although they take a long time to recharge. There are two types, that differ mainly in their range. The Charged bolts shrine has a range of 4.9 units (1 unit = 1 piece of path stone), while the Lightning shrine strikes in a 3 units wide row and column, in four directions.
First they take away a ratio of the actual (not total) hit points of _all_ monsters in their area of effect. Then they hit a number of monsters (depending on gem grade) as if the gem hit them, but with increased damage. Special effects also apply.
Amplifiers:
A gem placed in an amplifier doesn’t shoot, but boosts the surrounding gems. A part of the gem’s damage, as well as its specials are added to the adjacent gems’ attributes (if they have an active special of the same type).
How much the gem gives to its neighbours, depends on how many there are (if there’s only one tower or trap next to the amplifier, it gets 30% of the gem’s damage, range, firing speed, and its specials. If there are 8 neighbours, all get 9%. (This can further be boosted with the Magnify skill.) How to get the best results, depends on the situation, but is mainly up to you to experiment.
What amplifiers are good for:
-bringing down heavily armored monsters, boosting your powergem with other gems to give it more damage.
-giving your powergem just a bit more range to cover a long path and become much more powerful effectively.
-if you face a huge horde of swarm monsters, placing 6-8 towers around an amp, placing weak gems in them, and boost them with a powerful gem, can give you lots of adequately powerful shots, that are much better than a single powerful gem, and can make all the difference.
-you don’t have to combine your gems, so your defense can be much more flexible.
Ok, so these are the things from last week, but why did this blogpost take so long if these were already implemented before?
First, the design issues I wanted to address:
-Ok, that now you could pick what kind of gem you want to create, but each stage has it’s different types, and what if you wanted poison or shocking? Pumping up your gem type skill and transmuting your low grade gem is all you had.
-Some skills were sloppy. Two different skills to increase minimum and maximum damage, and raising initial and initial maximum mana (mana pool size)? What if I push my minimum damage above the maximum? Or if I go above my mana pool size with my initial mana? Then my skill points get wasted?
-How about epic bosses as a battle setting? (Many of you asked for it and you were right.)
-Special caps are so annoying? What’s the use of amplifying a chocking gem if I can’t go above 70% chance anyway?
-Splash damage is just too powerful. Hitting just any amount of monsters in the splash range makes all the other gem types no match for it.
-What’s the thing with juggling? If I demolish a wall and build one at the other end of a long path, I can have the brutally tough last monsters march up and down endlessly while I can shoot them as I please. It takes all the challenge away.
And the tough decisions I made and implemented (started working on them last Saturday, they are all done and working by now):
Unlockable gem types:
All stages start with two available gem types, but you can unlock any of the 8 types with mana. First unlock costs 1.000, then 4.000 etc, the last one costs 36.000 (in case you want all 8 gem types at your disposal). The “lower cost of increasing mana pool size” now lowers the unlock cost as well.
Free low grade gems for gem type masteries, as well as the transmute feature, are taken out.
Shadow clash:
At last! You can face shadows, formerly only known from the title “GemCraft 2: Chasing Shadows”. This is not the news, it was planned already, but now that the “all gem types granted” setting is made obsolete by gem type unlocking, the setting at the bottom right of the settings panel lets you mix the second most powerful archenemies of the GC universe into your battles! The guardians from GC0 are no match for these guys…
Changes in the skill system:
Min-max damage is merged to increase both in one skill, same for initial mana and mana pool size.
This gave more room for more fun skills.
There’s a skill again for gem bombs, which increases the number of monsters you can summon with a gem bomb, with the same hit points and armor level penalty. It also increases the refund rate for the Anvil.
Shrine builder is merged to the generic Builder skill, making all building types cheaper.
New skill: Demolition (more info below).
Deadly traps skill: initially you have -80% to damage and +80% to specials. With this skill you can move up to -50%, +110%.
Demolition:
You can demolish your own buildings 3 times per battle, by dropping a gem bomb on your wall, (empty) tower, amp or trap. (Shrines are so expensive that you can’t demolish them, to avoid the huge accidental loss). With the demolition skill, you can increase it to 13 times, so you can have juggling as part of your strategy.
Gem types rewritten from scratch:
This was the most drastic and probably the most disputable change. First, the bad news for splash damage fans: Due to the unfair advantage splash had against densely crowded summoned monsters, it was removed, and instead red gems have the “bloodbound” special, which means, a ratio of the kills the gem has, is added to the damage. Combining gems won’t reset the kill count, but add them up.
All skill cap has been removed, but to do that, I had to modify the nature of some of the gem types.
Poison: stayed the same, get a bit stronger.
Mana gain: the same, got a bit weaker.
Bouncing shot (now officially: “Chain hit”): the chance of hitting more nearby targets can go above 100%. In that case, the gem has 100% chance to hit 2 targets, and x% chance to hit a third one. Having no cap, at very high grades, it can get so strong that every hit bounces onward to 4-5 targets, so this can be seen as the new splash damage.
Critical hit (“Multiple damage”): same as above, having 345% chance means you have 100% chance to deal 4x the damage of the gem, and 45% to hit 5x as hard.
Shocking: How can it go above 100%? If a monster is shocked, it gets some immunity against being shocked again. The more shock, the more immunity, and after a while, even 250% chance to shock has an effective chance of 10% against a 240% immunity. This means, most monsters can be shocked multiple times with ease, and it will save some time against tougher ones, but won’t make them a frozen statue.
Slowing: it can make monsters, say, 500% slower, but that doesn’t mean they will go backwards with 4x speed, but that they’ll have to spend 5x the time to move any given distance. So their actual speed will never reach 0%, but it can still hold them back seriously. (The formula is 100/(100+x)% instead of 100-x%.)
Splash -> Bloodbound, as described above. Works the best when you have lots of monsters to boost the gem’s damage (like lots of swarms).
Armor piercing (now “Armor tearing”): instead of a chance, each hit consumes a small part of the armor of the monster. This special ignores the armor level (you don’t have to deal any actual damage to damage the armor), so pull up a dozen of purple gems with the giants come!
About the release date:
The game is now very near to be completed, but that doesn’t mean it’s only a few days left, and that’s what we have before the holiday season arrives, so simply put, it won’t be released in December. Additional sound editing, additional art, playtesting (plus balancing the game mechanics and fixing any errors), promotion/meta materials, business negotiations, serverside connection/loading-saving to/from server, and tutorial panels are yet to go.
I’ll write as soon as there’s any major advancement, but there’ll be at least one more post this year.
Lol, but I won’t pay for the Unleashed version. Sorry.
Looking good guys. Keep it up. Can’t wait to play this one, its looking much better than the previous two. Even they were exceptional in their own right. How much will Unleashed cost? Are we looking at fiver or tenner sort of ballpark?
I think it will be US$ 4.99 for the first weeks, instead of the “regular” price of 9.99, so all the players who were waiting for the game can get the full version at the lower price.
I think that is a very fair pricing scheme. ๐
I hope that you sell a lot of them.
Just a little feedback in case you are curious: I would def. pay $5 the day I find out it is released. $10 is a bit steep for my blood.
What are the payment options? It would be good if you used one of those things where you can complete offers to earn money to pay for unleashed. As long as you still get your fair share from it.
The availability of payment options will vary from site to site or system to system (some sites have their own system, others host games with a “global” system, like MochiCoins). I guess Mochi has offers, so if there will be a Mochi version (it will depend on business negotiations), there will be offers.
Looks great, and i would really love to play the unleashed version. I live in Norway, so how should I pay for the Unleashed version?
I’m almost sure that PayPal, as well as all the major credit/debit cards will be accepted on most sites we can get the game onto.
PayPal itself accepts cards too, so a mere PayPal support will be enough.
You don’t need to have a credit card (a card with a credit balance given by your bank), I have a very basic card from my bank and buy stuff online regularly.
While it is moderately easy to use PayPal, many of us have ethical and logistical reasons for not wanting to do so. Please try to make sure there are other options for paying, I will not buy anything with PayPal no matter how appealing it might be, I’m sure I’m not alone.
I understand your concerns, in fact your private data is not safe anywhere these days. I think Mochi has their own payment system with other options than PayPal, but in the end nor the major card companies, nor cellphone companies are safe, nothing is. We can’t build a payment handling system on our own for many obvious reasons, but even if we did, it wouldn’t be safe at all no matter what.
My personal experience with PayPal is ok so far, which I can’t tell for example about Apple’s iTunes, they charged my bank card multiple times without me buying anything from them. But I also read horror stories about PayPal too, so I see your point.
I hope that on some of sites hosting GCL, there will be a payment method suitable for you.
It looks like without Unleashed the game is very limited. I can accept lack of challenges, but when player’s level gets limited and, what is worse, a third part of skills is wiped out, it may be not very enterating to play this game. But I undersatnd you need to earn something in reward.
New system for specials sounds really, really great, but I’ll miss red nukes badly. Now it’s all about mana chains :]
Even with those limits GCL is still huge game.
Comparing to GC0:
– you still get more levels
– you still have some level customization options
– you only get a few skills less than GC0. “A few” because some GC0 skills are merged into one skill in GCL, so they arent really “lost”
– you still get all the gem changes, amplifiers and shrines
– in GC0 your level was effectively limited as well, by the skill caps. Now its all up to how big the limit in GCL will be, but i would still expect that after beating 100 levels you would not reach the cap.
To sum up, even limited version of GCL seems much bigger / complex than GC0
agreed.
And if you want more than the free version provides, realistically even 9.99 is not much. Just go without a Starbucks latte for 2 days and you can pay for it easy. (or other similar things)
So will there be a beta sign up for play testing? If so, put me down. ๐
I believe that Peter said before that there would not be a beta test as it makes the game too easy to pirate.
Peter, I don’t understand anything about the game market, but, isn’t there any game developer interested about a videogame GemCraft?
I agree that your work must be paid, you are lke anyone of us and have your accounts to pay. But I also agree that the ‘normal’ version is too limited.
I can test the game! ๐
I consider the normal version a perfect compromise. It will (should) give him the max amount of money, while giving a ton of enjoyment to other players.
If there was any such developer then i would expect them to make their own version of gemcraft instead of making deals with Peter
Oh, only a last thing: what are these two skills above the “Start the Battle” button? Curious.
Why so curious? You won’t have them anyway in the free version. ๐
They are “Wild starter gem” and “Ritual” (giving you more initial mana after all the battle amulets you have collected).
Sounds tempting, more initial power => more angering, faster development :]
I suppose wild starter gem is similiar to GC1 random gems given at the beginning of battle?
Yes, something like that, except that the higher the skill level, the better the gem will be. And if you don’t like it, just throw it on the anvil for more initial mana! ๐
I definitely like that.
Does this replace the getting low level gems free from the individual skills?
Just curiosity.
wow, so many things different.
ALmost impossible to comment on how things are without fiddling with them first!
good job with the slow/shock gems. will certainly make things intresting!
yellow and lime are certainly the damage dealers now. THough, i am not totally quite sure how the work. (understand the concepts easy, but cant plug in numbers into calculator yet)
Though, I think the new red will still be important… once again, i dont think i have enough info to plug things into a calculator… but… the possibility of supergemming without having to supergem… YES. (depending of course on the mechanism… if it is damage = base+(#kills*displayed%)… then it might not be so worth it, but if it is damage = base*(constant*numberofkills*displayed%)… that might be too worth it….
and of course, everything depends on how gems combine now and such. wont be out by christmas = sad face.
media, promotional materials… a gemcraft tee-shirt would be awesome!
The new “being able to hurt shadows” will certainly be intresting… i mean, its liek…. “I just beat 228 waves, have stupid quantities of stupidly powerfull gems, and some stupid shadow thing can eat me just like that?? I mean, it cant seriously cost over 9 thosan… 9 MILLION mana to banish… right?!?”
All the parameters will be adjusted and readjusted many times during testing, so it’s really too early to tell which gem type will be the favorite (ideally they should all be useful, each one in a different situation, like in trap or tower, or against different kinds of monsters).
T-shirt: Yes, that would be great! ๐ we’ll get back to it when the game’s out.
Hmm…
Also, certain gems might be more or less useful when used in conjunction with other gems.
This might be a silly question, but with the Unleashed version, would I just be getting a download, or will I actually be receiving a disk with it?
Neither. It will still be an online game – think of it like a game tied to a website (like, there are many websites that are actually games).
This is very frustrating. I fully intend to pay the 5/10 dollars to be able to play the full version, but as someone else stated below, I don’t want to pay for something and then have the site crash on me.
But on the other hand, I fully understand the need to avoid your full version being pirated and losing that potential income.
This is the same reason that I don’t purchase DLC for my xbox 360 games when it is also available on a disk. I want the ability to have it always, not be dependent on one particular game site to always be running or even continue to exist. I’ve had access to my DLC vanish on me before on my 360, as I thought I could just re-download it later, but it had been removed from the marketplace. How do we know that something similar won’t happen in this case? For example, I pay, and I rely on the gamesite to maintain a database to verify that I paid. What happens if that gamesite randomly gets shut down, or hacked, or whatever? Then my access to the full version, as well as my money goes poof.
Is there any way that the Unleashed GCL might become available on a disk in the future? Possibly with GC1 and GC0, in a collection or something? I would be very interested in something like that.
As for GC1 and 0, you can download them and write them to a disk.
About the serverside authentication, even if we wanted to ake it downloadable, there will be other parties (Armor Games, Mochi, Kongregate etc) involved, who get our game to their huge audience, and want something in return.
The game will be hacked in a matter of minutes after its release anyway, so everyone can get a full downloadable copy for free, so it’s all about honor (and online high score lists, but those will be hacked too).
So free players won’t get an endurance or giant only mode?
That combined with only a third of the skills and a level cap means that it looks like i’ll get bored of this pretty quickly.
Two third of the skills will be available for free.
But you can always buy the full version to get the remaining third as well, and your progress won’t be lost, you can unlock the bonus features and play on.
While i fully agree that you should make money on this game, it just seems like we will be paying for things that we got for free last time. Unleashed should be about giving more to paying players, not giving less to non-paying ones.
There’s more content free in GCL than in G0.
If Peter doesn’t get his money, you won’t get G2
It won’t look that way to people when they first play the game. They’ll just see a load of locked skills and modes. Hell, people on kongregate were angry enough about just 3 skills not being available to them, and all they had to do was load up a different website. With all the “fun” skills locked, people will not like the game. It doesn’t matter that it only costs “3 beers”, or “1.5 cups of coffee”, people are used to paying for things like that. People aren’t accustommed to paying for flash games.
Also, there must be some other way to make money off of this. I’d be happy to only be able to play this on one website that is overloaded with adverts if it meant the full game was available.
How do you know you will be getting less when you haven’t even played the game yet?
From the screenshots, and what he’s said, we can see that there will be no endurance mode, banishment skill, and one of the gem bombing skills in the free mode.
I’m sorry, but there is nothing saying that Peter has to give away anything. He’s already given us two great games, and is giving away a large portion of a third.
I can’t be sure of all of the hours he’s put into the development of this game, but I am sure he will not be breaking the bank on the returns. $5 for some extra content is a small price to pay. That’s what, 1.5 cups of coffee at $tarbuck$?
@DrPlaster
Again, for a hundredth (and last) time:
1, We aren’t liable with anything for players who play our games for free.
2, If you think placing ads in and around a game brings any money, think again. Ads placed around games make money for the websites’ owners, not us. And ads inside games, sometimes they pay 0.01 usd per 1000 view! And other times not even that much. GC1 and GC0 together was played more than 80 million times, and we don’t have 800.000 usd, we earned much, much less.
3, We not give “less” to not paying players. Everyone got GC1 and GC0 for free. GCL is not just an addon, but a brand new chapter.
4, Before you (or anyone) compain, sit down, spend 8-9 months making a game (and years before that learning hthe whole stuff), and then look at your income chart, you will be very disappointed. Then we can talk about how you think we should monetize our game.
5, I know many Kong players will rate the game 0/5 because they don’t get the full game for free. They also give 0/5 if the game is too easy, too hard, doesn’t have music, or doesn’t have badges at once. The same players that wanted to “fire me” for releaseing the game late or “wanted my head on a plate”. I can’t do anything against it so the best I can do is trying not to care, and not to read comments on Kong.
2, Err… 80 million views * 0.01 cpm would be 800$, fortunately we earned more than that. Nevertheless, the 0.01 cpm phenomenon is real.
Yes, players on Kong will complain, but if I were you, I’d wait to actually see that happen. GC and GC0 have been rated amongst the very best games on the site, which IMO isn’t really enough. Also keep in mind that you are not releasing it in summer, when the most idiotic people ever go and flood Kongregate. GCL will probably net you a 4+ rating from the looks of it, and those haters… well just ignore them.
some of you people are amusing. you’ll spend $100 a month on a data enabled cell phone (my guess is your parents pay for it) so you can facebook your friends from your couch, but the thought of ponying up a one-time fee of $10 for a game someone put 8 months of 40+ hour weeks of their life into somehow offends you? If you all are so supportive of Peter working for free, there’s plenty around my house that needs to be done.
I think Semper Fi hit it on the head. Way to go!
Playing it for free means you get a whole lot (all the different maps, a lot of skills, some battle settings) without actually giving ANYTHING. And for a measly 5 bucks (which is less than 3 beers where I live), you’ll unlock the full potential. I’m just saying that you should be grateful for the choice Peter gives you.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of other flash games out there that i can get a lot more out of without paying anything. Which is kind of the point of flash games.
well maybe it is one of the things that you think about flash games. But if you were a dev, I bet you would want to be able to eat.
You can always go play the other games if you like. You don’t have to pay for Gemcraft, it will just make it a more interesting game.
@DrPlaster – I’ve yet to see a flash game of this type that offers anywhere near the challenge and content as the GC games have…and most times, I stick to Kongregate where I miss out on some of the content. If you’ve found others, that’s great, grand, and wonderful–go play them instead, if this is such an issue to you. Coming here and griping isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.
Transfering to my country’s currency, I can buy five beers with the money. The point is that I’m not used to pay for online games, mainly because I don’t play online games neither videogame (preparing for college). The only games that I spend my time playing are GemCraft and Tribal Wars, and this last one has a SMS paying option. That’s why I’ve unlocked Premium functions.
I really agree that Peter and his wife must eat and have their money. But I’m very sorry to be very very far away from the Unleashed features. Anyway, the new gem system seems great, without speaking of the amplifiers. That seems enough to me.
Really wish people ‘buy’ the Unleashed version, Peter deserves it a lot.
Shadows arleady, eh?
I look forward to taking them on :D.
Testing? Sign me up! ๐
Looks excellent. Great job with gem specials – I like the no-more-hard-cap aspect to it.
The only thing I sort-of-disliked was the level cap for non-Unleashed.
Will there be an alternative way to get the Unleashed version (like in Bloons Tower Defense 4, Mochigames allowed one to earn Mochi-coins by doing advertising stuff, so the developer still received money, allowing people to unlock certain features without actually paying money). This is very enticing for people and being able to set up something similar to this would probably increase your revenue from the game, and allow people to acquire the game who don’t have Paypal accounts for whatever reason.
Wondering what Shadows will be like – will there be different varieties, like a runner shadow with less health but tons of speed, or maybe a shadow that spawns other creatures on the path behind it. If you haven’t included something like this, then it would be a great addition to Gemcraft 2 – Chasing Shadows.
So, what will mana pooling do, anyway?
If the game gets to the MochiCoins system as well, you’ll be able to get coins in whaterver way Mochi allows it, they are constantly working on bringing in new payment options, like taking surveys or sending sms (although I’d avoid sms and use PayPal, it’s available in most countries and you’ll have to pay much less, mobhile companies take a great toll for sms’s sent).
Well, I haven’t tested the level cap out yet, maybe it doesn’t have to be there, locking skills and settings will make a natural level cap anyway, so maybe there will be no hard-coded cap in the free version, that doesn’t change anything (people who won’t pay a cent wouldn’t chenge their mind no matter what).
Shadows: they won’t just follow the path blindly to get to your orb, they’ll have some tricks as well.
Mana pool: I could call it mana storage as well, it’s that blue bar on the top on the screen. The mana pool size is the max mana you can have. “Mana pooling” might mean extending your mana pool (there’s a spell doing just that), and there’s a skill that makes extending cheaper. The novelty is, this skill will also make unlocking gem types cheaper.
what about the pool multiplier?
I believe(hope) that you kept the one enhancing mana income (right?), but you don’t sound very… promising… about the effect on the final XP.
This is probably not crucial, but: is it possible to, say, keep track on how was your “pool spell” level increasing during the battle ((I mean, that somehow *was* the job of score, right? all the newcoming score has been modified by whatever pool multiplier you currently had, then added to the total)), and then turning that into some XP bonus (or multiplier) in the aftermath?
(or is this technically too hard?)
I’m only a casual gamer, but IMHO it was the mana *and* score booster that gave mana pooling far greater worth than expanding the pool size alone (or size combined with only the mana boost – especially in GC1).
So it would (still) be a pity to lose that.
So basically, the mana pool doesn’t do anything after a certain point. For score, I am beginning to question GCL.
Supergemming is nerfed, but the better start from extra focus cancels this.
Extra-grade gems, but the multinomial equation from angering seems significantly modified.
Mana pooling now is fixed, but it doesn’t do as much. The pause button, I guess, is a nice addition.
With all the good additions (pause button, extra-grade gem creation, extra focus to start without a limit, Shrine placement), there seems to be modifications that will offset their ability to be used to effectively create billions of points. But time will tell. What I like most is the Deadly traps skill. Traps will be even better than they were in GC0, which I really enjoy.
Even though I have a prediction, I haven’t seen the game yet, whereas you have – so I can’t make a judgment yet as to how we will create score easily.
How do the new yellow and lime act in traps? I assume the others are preety straight foward, but will they remain %extra hit and %range and speed?
not quite sure how >100% extra hit would work in a trap… perhaps, the same way yellows work? (345% = hits monster 4 times with 45% of 5th hit? or maybe like the old red… 345% = hits 4 monsters with 45% chance of hitting a 5th monster?)
*goes into wizard tower and comtemplates gem in trap with +1000% refire rate, +1000% chain hit, and 100 mana per hit… surrounded by 6 amplify towers… each filled with stupidly high grades of red gems… or maybe, the red gem has to be in the trap… surrounded by LOY… herm… i wonder how prismatics in amplifiers would work…*
*wonders if amplify bonuses effect gems in traps before the traps modifiy the gems? or after? (aka, is it (gembase+amplify)*trapbonus or (gembase*trapbonus)+amplify…*
*wonders if every hit of a shock gem increases shock immunity… because if it does, then there is the possiblity that a gem that fires faster will actually keep a monster held in place for a shorter period of time because it will have increased the shock immunity faster. (simple solution would be allowing shock to stack additively, such that if a monster was hit 10 times, it would be stunned for 10*stunlengths (assuming every hit stunned))*
*attempts to hit 3x speed button on life*
Does the amplifire multiply the supergem’s abilities or just add to its stats.
No – not Red Gems, Yellow Gems!
Do Yellow Gems increase the firing speed in traps like in GC0?
well, its like… lets just say… a red gem kills 100 monsters and has double the damage because of it… if that red gem kills another 100 monsters… does it now have 3x the damage? or is the damaged doubled again? (analogy… simple intrest vs compounding intrest)…
cause if the damage compounds… lets just say i am lazy when it comes to supergemming… even if i have a mouse recorder to do most of it for me.
btw… gem clone button FTW…
(problem is… the way we play, most of our gems wont be cloneable because they cost many times our max mana… maybe that initial max mana skill will be usefull… depending on how the mana pool spell works now…)
I r gud at spellzoring >_<
*wonders if putting a blue/purp gem in an amplifier next to a yellow/lime gem gives yellow/lime at 80% and blue/purp at 30%*80%…*
About the mana pool skill – I don’t think it correlates to score anymore, but it still affects mana, and Peter said he’d fix it in his comments on previous posts, and he suggested he fixed it in this one.
The gem clone button is especially useful for cloning mana gems – it’s too bad that the mana gem is slightly nerfed.
With the way specials will be – here’s my prediction on the best damage gem – Supergemmed Triple LYR. This gem is the best gem you will ever see – so devastating that it will be nerfed in Chapter 2 – Chasing Shadows like the mana gem of today.
SHHH! dont say such things! you tell him it is OP now, he’ll nerf it before we get to play with them!!1
(problem with a beta test if there is one: your kinda obligated to report about what seems over powered, hence, when the game comes out, they wont be over powered. :-/ )
Traps: lime hits multiple monsters in range with one hit, yellow deals multiple damage (although the damage in trap is reduced).
Traps+amplifiers: Amplifying occurs first, then the trap modifiers.
Shock immunity only raises if the mosnter was really shocked. Shocking duration doesn’t stack, but a shocked monster, when successfully hit again with shock, doesn’t gain more immunity.
I will gladly pay for the new game – it’s a little disheartening to see the entitlement generation piss and moan about having to actually *gasp* pay for something. If my $5-10 means there will be more GemCraft games in the future, sign me up! Really getting excited with all the screencaps and look forward to the day when you guys release the new game. ๐
Thanks! ๐
hum nice news except the pay to be link to one website ?
i will pay the buck for sure..
up for testing too
That’s for technical reasons – websites handle their database of users securely, Kongregate doesn’t have access to Armor Games’ database and vice versa. They also have and protect thier own userbase, so none of them would agree to be merged under a common login system (like Facebook).
Thanks to you too. ๐
I don’t think there will be a beta test before release, instead, the first weeks after release will be the “de facto beta” period.
Love the max Gem special thing being removed. And it sounds like a good balance between free and pay stuff.
Dude, seriously, I get it you can’t make a forum, but you should have broke the info up.
Thanks for the info.
1). Will the bonuses like ones from total kills get transferred when using Gem Anvil?
2). Will it be possible to choose the first monster with your gems to attack?
3). Having all the challenge amulets for each stage will make it very easy to earn exp. Why don’t you divide the game into belts, or regions for challenges.
4). Will the game cost different to unlock gems in different stages?
5). New players might, and will get confused with 500% abilities. Try to make it more user friendly, like divide instead of percents.
6). I think the game looks too metallic. Change the color a little if you can please.
7). I’ve always wondered what the letters around the shrines meant, when you drop the gem in them.
I would prefer that you answer me in a new update, if the answer takes more than half the page.
8). Whats the formula for figuring out the how many % your gems are going to get (*5)
3) it sounded to me like the challenge amulets are only for specific stages. It didn’t sound like every stage would have a challenge amulet. So I don’t think your thought applies as much, but I could definitely be wrong about this.
4) doesn’t make sense to me.
5) I think the percentage thing could be explained in tutorials for the new users so that it makes sense to all of us.
0, Ok, when the game’s out, I will look into phpbb and try to pull up a forum.
1, No, the cloned gems, while having all the other paramters copied, will have zero kill counts.
2, if you mean “the monster nearest to the orb”, then, as of now, no. Right now you can switch between least hp, most hp, fastest, random, and structures. I thought it would be too cpu-eating to evaluate monster distances along the path for every shot, but if there will be a high need for this feature, I’ll figure soemthing out.
3, It’s not like that – there will be only 20 challenge amulets, linked to 20 selected stages (those ideal for long battles), each one with brutal requireements, really only for hardcore players.
4, No, unlocking gem types will cost the same. The two initial types you’ll have will differ in each stage.
5, Chances won’t go above 100% until at least mid-game (level 50? 60?), by then, new players will get familiar with most of the game.
6, I don’t exactly get what you mean, but there will still be at least one more major design runthrough, so many things will change.
7, Nothing, just ornaments. The actual glyphs are from the mysterious Voynich manuscript, a script with an unidentified writing system and unknown meaning (if it has any meaning at all). I first met it in the game Broken Sword 3, and I knew at once I wanted to see it again in an own game, it just looks so creepy (at least for me). More info in Wikipedia.
8, You mean the combining formula? That’s a secret. ๐
I apologize if this has been answered in a previous update: will there be a “higher trap specials” skill?
This was answered in this update. The answer is yes, if you buy Unleashed.
Yes, this is mentioned directly in the post. It describes how gems get a damage penalty but a specials bonus. The skill increases the special bonus and decreases the damage penalty.
Oh, I misunderstood and thought it just decreased the damage penalty
Looks astounding, I am so completely stoked! Since there’s still time before this comes out I’m going to make sure to have 5$$ in my paypal at all times till then!!
Honestly guys, a little much on not wanting to pay. I agree it’s weird to pay for flash games, that’s great and all but… It’s still a full-fledged game, there are so many aspects to it and it takes so long to complete (enjoyable time spent)…
Seriously? Considering you’re here looking at the blog I’m pretty sure all the GemCraft you’ve played/will play is worth $5 american to you. You wanna know what $5 is to me? Around 20 different gem stones that I could study, I’m a gemmologist in training so that’s handy. $5 is something to everyone, like to me it’s investing in one of my favourite games of all time.
No one says $5 is too much, but some people don’t have Paypal accounts or are not able to.
but I think you would have access to a debit/credit card in almost every situation. You practically need them for a lot of things now. I think Peter will work to make the most out of the options that are available.
Then he should seriously consider my advertising suggestion (an above comment).
I really don’t care for advertisement. My focus is on the game, not on the ads.
Well, what can i say. When you can make a pirate party voter even think “I might pay for this”, you know that you are making good games.
The cost of 5 usd seems fine to me even if i’m unsure if i will buy the game or not. 5 usd, that is cheaper than two bags (300g) of crisps where i live.
Looking forward to the game release.
Thanks! I wish we had a pirate party here in Hungary as well, they’d have my vote. Personally I think selling music cds and movie dvds for 20-30 usd, and holding movies back from cinemas in Europe is not only unfair, but technically obsolete, and no wonder if people download a movie if they can’t even get it for money in their country. I also feel disgust for selling movies again and again, and asking even 30-40 usd for a “collector’s edition” with “30 seconds of previously unseen footage”, or when Crysis crashes on my pc (not because it doesn’t meet the requirements), but a major digital distribution company doesn’t give my money back because I’m not a US citizen. If that’s what the pirate party fights against, you have my (at least hypothetical) vote.
Well said!
However some (or most, as our opponents claims) probably just votes on the pirates so that they can fileshare for free.
I’m not the filesharing type, more of the freedom of speech type.
Nice to have the skill cap removed, and the new red gem is interesting too. What about other gem colours? White would be great, or perhaps black or brown? With some simple skills, like bonus to damage or firing speed? Just some ideas.
Oh, and what about the color of the gem vs the color of the monster, will the opposite color do more damage like previous games?
Are you insulting my country’s devalued currency? How dare you! ๐
Two questions
1) what are the yellow things near the spawn point for monsters in the screen shot about purchasing a new gem type?
2) The firing speed is now listed differently. Is this just a decimal point move?
ya… is that now… shots per what exactly? it aint shots per second, and it aint shots per min… shots per 100 frames? shots per… 10 seconds? 6 seconds?
It ain’t ten seconds – that’s too low – probably 3-4 secs. seems to make the most sense (that would be like a 48-64 firing speed for that grade 2 gem)
woah… i just had a stupid idea.
Beat all 228 waves… WITH NO POINTS IN ANY SKILLS!
think it is possible? I mean… most of your mana drain is into increasing manapool… which, wouldnt change really… you wouldnt have your starter gems, or inital mana, and much pricier buildings… which means starting off would be MUCH harder, and building crazy levels of firepower would take significantly more mana due to much lower gem damage and higher gem costs…
darn it… i just spent the last three days beating all 228 waves… i dont have TIME to do it again… but dammit… maybe i can just see if i can start up a proper mana farm…
erk, nvm… that is… hard.
so… erm… new idea.. beat all 228 waves with only 100 skill points… yaa….
About that … um, well, I have scored over 1 billion with only 105 points spent, and over 30 billion without really trying with 205 points spent, but these were on level 1 endurance. What you will need is – 3 mil. fp., because the stopping strategy is poor.
Here’s my suggestion – set up a Kongregate account and write this up to the forums there. Anyway, I’m interested in seeing pictures of your latest run. So, you beat all the waves? Did you use the R/C stopping strategy? What was your firepower?
maybe that the firing speed shown means shots fired in a minutes?
Range and firing speed were rewritten (previously there were blurry modifiers with a complicated formula behind them, and it bugged me).
Now, range means the acual range in units (one stone tile is one unit wide, 33 pixels btw).
Firing speed is a bit more complex: Towers and traps have a charge and a maxCharge. MaxCharge is 100. If charge reaches maxCharge, the tower or trap can fire. The number you see in the info panel is how much the charge value increases per frame (GCL is set to run in 30 fps, but that can be lower when running in a website full of ads).
Hi Peter,
I just want to say that i played arround 80% of the flash games we can find on the major hosting site (armorgame,kongregate,newground etc…). A lot of them are copy from others and have no soul at all. I can’t say that about GC series. I really liked them and it’s easy to see that it is well done with a good balance. I don’t event feel the need to cheat/hack because it is challenging and doable enought to keep myself work hard on some level. GC:0 took me 2 weeks to go through, playing about 1-2 hours a night and a lil more the weekend. I can’t remember an other flash game that keep me busy like that. So, 5$/10$ to get a game that will give me good time for a month, its really not an issue. I usually download a pirated version of the game i want to play because i really dont think that paying over 50$usd for a game is worth it this days. Why ?, because how much of that money really go to the right people ? From what i read, not that much because of a lots of things. But knowing that the 5$/10$ will go directly to the right guy is perfect for me. I think this is the way other dev should think of.
On that, all i want to say is a big thanks to you and can’t wait to spend my sparetime playing that game.
Thanks! I can promise that we won’t spend our income on private jets and fancy office buildings with marble pillars. ๐
hehehehehe, i just hope the wheel wont stop because i really enjoy your projects.
Theory of immunity… interesting.
So if poison then the poison damage decreased and/or has shorter duration?
I’m pretty sure the immunity thing is just for Shock.
Yes, it’s only for shock, poison is weak enough (more suitable for early game) not to have immunity degrading it furhter.
Your updates to the gem damage types and the skills sounds awesome ๐ You can tell that you’ve put lot’s of thought into balance.
I can’t wait. I’m not complaining that it’s not out yet, I’m complaining that I’m not playing it yet ๐
And yeah, if you need anyone to help playtest, I’ll be happy to help. ๐
I’ll even pay for the Unleashed version now ๐
You should change the name to GemCrack ๐
I use too many smilies. ;P
Maybe there should be a warning sign when the game starts, not that it would help, but at least we’d do our part not to take responsibility for being addicted. ๐
Btw, it’s maybe the hardest moral dilemma of game design. You have to make a game “good”, and that means addictive, if you want to earn money from it, but then are you any better than tobacco companies? I try to belive yes, for example I’m a hardcore gamer, but I could come down from all the games I tried so far (sometimes it was hard). I don’t dare to try WoW tough.
NO!! There is no “moral” issue with gaming. There is a major difference between people who smoke and people who play games.
People who smoke often WANT to quit, but they can’t because of withdrawal symptoms. The vast majority of gamers like games and don’t want to quit because the games bring Joy to their lives.
There are no health risks associated with casual gaming like there are with smoking.
Gaming is not physically addictive – only mentally addictive. You could just as easily argue that you are more addicted to sleeping, eating, etc. because those produce physical withdrawal symptoms, unlike gaming.
hmm, these news are even better than I expected… I don’t yet like slowing change, but I have seen the same system in IIRC Protector 4, it worked quite nicely there. Shadows – YUM! ๐ Let’s do them! Purple gems and no skill cap – is it possible to make a purple that strips 100% armor with a single shot? I believe it should never happen, still if it will, this might be a feature. Unlockable gems – I expect that the very first gem to be unlocked will be orange. Chain hits are now determined – interesting, now that a chain hit gem does damage with less dispersion, it will be wise to employ it. Chaining triple, huh? ๐ Limited juggling – a fairly split decision IMHO, I was never a juggling fan, so this suits me, since you can no longer completely rely on this system.
The Unleashed, however, gives me harm so far – one level of locked skills, locked endurance, locked shadows and something more – isn’t it too much? Still, it’s quite probable that I will pay for it. (I’d like to know if you’ll be reachable by direct bank transfers from here. If yes, then very good, otherwise I’ll have to recover my WMZ stash, there was some cash last time.)
Thanks for keeping us tuned. But I wonder where did the 01.12 post go?
When GC2 comes out, will there also be a version with extra features what requires payment ?
Probably, I guess.
well it actualy depends.If peter gets a profit from this one yes.of not no
Yes, everything depends on how this game performs financially.
Armor Skill locked in GCL free = Hatemails and not many players (Iยดm not gonna play it then…)
maybe he will be nice and unlock armor skill if you play on armor games or something… heh.
I think you should look at the game when it comes out. If you like it, then pay for it.
I for one realized that one of the reasons that I don’t like paying for other games is that for the cost you don’t get very much. Take a look at Bloons TD 4. You don’t get very much when you buy the unlocked version. Here it will greatly change the way that you play the game.
I will never pay for a flash game. There is no problem in having Ads around, but paying…
why will you never pay for one?
because I Like flashgames because they are free. And after all, I do not like for paying for datas on a server that might crash and Iยดve got nothing…
รn is megรฉrtem, hogy pรฉnzt kรฉrsz a munkรกdรฉrt, sลt mรฉg azt is, hogy miรฉrt ilyen sok az ingyenes verziรณ korlรกtja. De mรฉgis hogy mลฑkรถdik majd a korlรกtlan verziรณ megvรกsรกrlรกsa, รฉs mennyibe fog kerรผlni?
Ahogy mรกr รญrtam korรกbban, 5-10 dollรกr lesz (valรณszรญnลฑleg az elsล hetekben 5, kรฉsลbb 10, รญgy akik igazรกn vรกrtรกk a jรกtรฉkot, megkaphatjรกk a teljes vรกltozatot a bevezetล รกron), รฉs valรณszรญnลฑleg tรถbbek kรถzรถtt PayPal-en keresztรผl (รฉs รญgy beรกrmelyik nagyobb bankkรกrtyรกval (Visa, MasterCard stb) lehet majd fizetni.
Vannak mรกr konkrรฉt lรฉtezล pรฉldรกk erre flash jรกtรฉkoknรกl, nรฉzd meg a Robokillt a rocksolidarcade.com-on, vagy a Bloons Tower Defense-t a ninjakiwi.com-on.
—
As I wrote before, it will cost 5-10 usd (most probably it will be 5 usd for the first few weeks, so that those players who have really waited for the game can get the full version at the lower price), and you can pay -amongst other options probably- via PayPal (and thus all major back cards, like Visa or MasterCard).
There are already running examples of this, look at Robokill at rocksolidarcade.com or Bloons Tower Defense at ninjakiwi.com .
This game looks amazing! Peter has put a great amount of work into it and I’m excited to play! The first two games were very addictive and fun and well balanced. I’m expecting similar quality from everything I read here.
For those that are against payment, suck it up. You can always get a gift card from wal-mart and use it as a debit card. I’m a developer and recognize the hours he has put in. He is still offering a full game that is more comprehensive than 90% of flash games out there for NOTHING. In addition, he’s hoping you’ll like it enough to feed his family and get a few extra treats.
Great work, Peter! I can’t wait to see the final product!
ooo good idea with the wal-mart thing.
Thanks! I didn’t know how advanced banking is over there, I haven’t met a pre-paid debit card yet here. But it gets better, I think in a few years everyone will be able to pay with their cellphones everywhere.
Our banking is one of the more advanced (here in America). Unfortunately it’s because of a practice called predatory lending that I won’t get into. However, I imagine our area is going to be your biggest market, and we have all kinds of prepaid debit or credit options (including ones you can charge with your phone in some areas).
I think 5-10 USD is completely fair, btw. I hope it does well. I would actually pay that for the first two games (assuming I knew what I was buying) and this one looks the best by far ๐
Seriously. Thanks, Keridan.
I don’t know why so many people are bitching about “It’s a flash game, and they were meant to be free, so I’m not paying for it!”
Fine – that’s your choice. Don’t complain that you don’t get all the skills and content then. Consider our game a “Flash Plus” game…But you don’t play Flash Plus games. ;P
The platform does not dictate the price – the content/game itself should. I’ve spent more time on Gemcraft games than many games that I’ve paid $50 for. Peter put in his time, it’s his creation, he can do whatever the hell we wants with it. If you don’t want to pay for it, that’s fine, don’t – but you can’t complain, either. All you can do is play your Flash game, while all us happy folk that paid the horrible, eye-gouging, bank-breaking price of 5 bucks have big smiles as we play our Flash Plus game ๐
Do you never buy DVDs, because you can watch TV for free?
Seriously, all you whiners…Please, stop complaining.
It looks great and looks like a lot of fun to play.
Especially the new dark-blue gems seem much better balanced now…
About the Unleashed version:
Well, 5 bucks isn’t too much so I am really going to think about it. Actually, there are places where you can buy barely ONE beer for 5 bucks here!
If we buy the unleashed version would it be possible to get the flash file to play without an internet connection?
well, once you got the game loaded, you dont need internets… at least with GC0… no idea if that will carry on here… an offline way to play would be awesome, but as i think i said earlier, would be pirate food.
Then again, learn from every other game out there… it will be pirated eventually… so why punish paying customers with DRM and hoops to jump through. :-/
Maybe he could be nice, and after the game has been pirated, hence, no further damage could be done by giving an offline version to his paying customers, he could set up some sort of offline capability for those that brought the game. :-/
I agree that playing rude with paying customers is not good, but I’m pretty sure that systems like MochiCoins will require you to log in if you want to access your server-stored saved games, and to check if you’ve got the full version or not, so I technically can’t do anything against that.
Is there a chance that the immunity can go down over time? it seems rather stupid that the same thing gets slowed down (assuming massive enemy, relatively fast gem shooting) 5 times in the first few seconds, then after that, its immune forever.
seems that for really long paths (ex: last level in GC0) you should be able to shock/slow something more than 5 (at an extreme high powered gem, i assume).
This would also make it a good idea to order gems by strength from weakest to strongest (IMHO, that should not matter)
Suggestion: make the % that fails to overcome the immunity reduce the immunity by some fraction.
I dont think the system is as simple as you think i is.
You are not going to be able to use red/cyan (well, now lime/cyan) gems to hold x monsters in place forever… but assuming gc0 stats (which is completely wrong) and a 10% increae in immunity to stun, and a trap stun length of 3 seconds… if you have a stun chance of 250% you will hold the moster in place for 72-75 seconds or so. If holding a monster in place for 75 seconds right in front of your wizard tower.. err… orb thingy… while your other gems hit on it doesnt kill it, your in trouble.
This makes both blue gems and cyan gems viable, blue gems will only slow down monsters, but they can do it forever. Cyan gems will halt monsters, but only for so long.
in theory at least. in truth, only peter really knows how the gems work atm, so who knows.
DO gems lose immunity when they are banished? No idea, if they did, then at least they would not get back to your tower faster than before… also path length will be a factor, short path lengths, cyan will prolly slow down gems the most, even if for only the first pass, but blue gems would prolly slow down monsters more on longer paths.
thats prolly the way he wants it, some gems will be better in certain sitiatuions, but all gems will have some sort of purpose.
If you have a lime gem that bounces 3 times on average, and a yellow gem that deals exactly 3x damage, (assuming they both require equal ammounts of mana) well, the yellow gem might be overwelmed by swarm waves, and the lime gem will have problems with armored/giant monsters since it effectively hits against the armor 3 times.
It also depends on the level, early in the level that +100 poison damage gem will hault waves by itself… later in the level it wont be nearly as effective.
Red gems will be nicee if you can survive with effectively a reduced damage capacity from say, bounce or multiple damage, but hopefully if this gem survives throughout the round it will become very effective. (or, maybe, take your gem that has been around since wave one, and combin it with a red gem later on to increase its output maybe?)
already talked about blue/cyan… orange and purp are preety obvious. ya. Hopefully all gem types will be viable.
Stop adding new features and release the game already!
He is working on it. As you note in the post, the feature set is complete. It is in final writing stages now.
WOULD GLADLY PAY FOR ANOTHER GEMCRAFT.
There was a guy who created a game, dungeon defender at greyhoundgames. He didnt make enough money selling his game online, so he makes games for the iphone instead of the pc :(.
Support Peter! Keep him around!
Good point. By buying Unleashed, you are not only getting a great game and undoubtedly an amazing experience – you are allowing Peter to create more games.
I just curious about the beacons in the ScreenShot of gem unlock.
What are those beacons?
the upper one removes any negative effects from monsters, the bottom one gives them a permanent speed boost.
I hope in the second chapter in GemCraft dosen’t end the series.
If thins go well, there will be a chapter 2, 3, and 4 (the final one), and possibly other lost chapters, but everything is subject to change, the future chapters only have their storyline draft and core game mechanics sketched on paper. At least 9 months (but I’d say more) will pass between two releases, and things change so wildly in the online world, that anything cap happen.
One thing that hasn’t been addressed is the shrines. Are the Flash Beam Shrine and Charged Bolts shrine with the same mechanics? I am not sure about the mechanics of the Flash Beam Shrine, but I know the Charged Bolts shrine is:
(5x + 12) * (3 * min damage to 3 * max damage) + (5x-30 if x > 6) number of blasts, which act as gem bombs.
Number Damage
X is the grade of the gem.
And I know the Charged Bolts Shrine has been changed, but what about the Flash Beam shrine?
The two shrines work very similarly now, the main difference is in their area of effect.
OK – the Flash beam Shrines are messed up in GC0. I dropped a grade 14 gem on one, and it said it would drain ~13.5 % of the max health of the creatures. It drained over 96% of their health.
hi peter, i have played gemcraft chapter 0 to uncover some problems that we may face, i found a problem, when you have 2 towers (or more) with gems, they shoot, sometimes they shoot at the same time, so 1 shot kills a monster and the other shot just dissapears, the solution is for the lost shot to hit the next monster…if you get what i mean
That shot-redirection thing actually did happen in GC1, but it was removed in GC0. You see a similar thing for when the monster enters the wizard tower.
This problem will be more or less solved in GCL, now, when a tower fires, it precalculates the damage, and marks the monster as “lethal shot is on its way”, so that other towers won’t fire at it. If, for any reason (healing beacon, banishment), the killing doesn’t happen, th mark gets removed after about 1 sec. Testing showed something is still not ok with it, but it’s much better than before. (previously, one tower usually fired two shots at the same monster when the first one would be enough, actually halving the tower’s performance, now it’s fixed.)
Is the thing fixed that if a monster enters your wizard tower with shots on it the shots are going into nowwhere?
Not yet, but I’ll spend some time trying fixing it.
Along similar lines, will people have the option to set the tower to attack first, last, strongest, weakest etc enemies? sorry if this was covered already.
Yes.
AFAIK, there will be least hp, most hp, fastest and building (or so Peter wrote in some blogposts), but I think he mentioned something about being too hard to evaluate distance across the open area (so he left that out).
First/last along a single-tile-wide path section (only), however… well, I guess it could come in handy, but the game probably won’t “lack it so badly” to be a must-have.
I’ve seen first/last option in Bloons TD(-ish) games, though I mostly used it only to either have a tower fire in a (usually) specific direction (thus, artificially “scattering/distributing” the damage along the path), or for killing the “this one is getting too close” bloons.
For such case, I’m sure Peter could derive “substitutes” for both scatter and “next to reach base” from what he’s built already (like (pre)calculating time until a monster reaches your base), but again, it probably won’t be a must-have.
Maybe in GC2? Well, we’ll see.
It would be useful to target the “fastest” creatures first, as they are the ones most likely to have the massive banishment costs.
Right now the priority optionas are:
-most hit points
-least hit points
-fastest enemy
-random (good for showering monsters with poision/slow/shock)
-structures (if doesn’t find structures, will default to most hit points)
Shift-click on gem cycles through the options.
There might be new ones later, but too much options would make it annoying to cycle through.
Hi,
Great job on the game and I will certainly pay the fee ^^
Good job on not releasing it this month too with the new bubble tanks and Protector comming out in a couple of days, they’re a big competition on websites like Kong and Armor Games.
Thanks!
I was desperately hoping to release the game in December, but it’s not a secret by now that it’s impossible. But I guess you’re right, it wouldn’t do any good.
better to make it right to the end delay will be forgive when the game will be up !
keep the good job think about the xmas and new year too don t forget family ! and after all that think to us !
Well if you want me to pay for it then put it on a CD…and somehow get it avaible internationally!
The internet is available internationally. ๐
I don’t want you to pay (or play GC at all, for that matter).
If you want something on CD, then go to your local store, buy a blank CD and write what you want on it.
$10 for a game with as much potential entertainment value as any big retail title? Sure, I’m getting it.
Id take this over plants vs zombies. >_<
That’s a stupid game. It’s all linear – the different lines of monsters don’t seem to interact with each other like a real tower defense game should.
More than reasonable price. That works out to less than a couple cents per hour that I’m going to be playing this game
I would have gladly paid that for Chapter 0 too
Sign me up!
Any way I can beta test the map? o.O
ใฉใใC0ใใ้ใใใ ใ๏ผ
I notice there is a mechanism for Hue cycling – the Hue steadily increases throughout the game. What are the game mechanics for this?
What I mean is – does this relate to HP curve? Like, on Beyond Corruption, this is a common effect. The one with the most relaxed HP curve also seems to have the most relaxed Hue increase (Level 1).
Pardon my ignorance, but two things:
1) what impact does hue have?
2) what is HP?
Thanks
HP is actually the monster’s “health” (or hit points), which you have to reduce to 0 in order to kill a monster.
So if a monster has, say, 100 HP, it means you’ll have to deal 100 damage to it (damage is dealt by gems, btw) before it dies.
As for hue, experts could tell you better, but it means the monster’s/gem’s color, and the greater the color difference between them, the greater the gem’s damage to that monster (something like that). But it’s only observable with much higher damage/HP than 100-ish.
Again, experts could tell you better.
So how does Hue increase make something harder (assuming that the monster’s hue has no upper bound, and gems do), that should make more damage be done per hit…
If the monster’s hue bounds and the gems hue bounds are fixed, then there is no real difference due to the increase in hue, other than the player would want more red gems (i guess?)…
Feeling im missing something
hue is a way of defining color:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue
My guess is that if gem’s and monster’s colors are opposite (thats when hue difference is 180) damage is maximum.
I forgot to mention, hue is actually circular, so it goes from 0 to 360 (which equals 0 again, color-wise), where 0-ish hue is “red” and 180-ish is somewhat “cyan”.
The point would be, that e.g. a “cyan” gem damages a “red” monster better than a “red” gem, because of greater hue difference.
I don’t really know how “better” the damage is, however (though I *think* I read it on forums that similar hue makes it deal “min” damage, and opposite hue deals “max” damage… I’m not sure).
Anyway, sorry for the missing data.
As far as the “HP curve” that I refer to – all the levels in Gemcraft have a geometric curve, so they increase by a small % every wave.
Monster hue vs damage:
In GC0, it was really in a way that mosnters getting hit by a shot with similar color (low hue difference) got less damage, while a monster with a very different hue got more. (180 degrees difference (complementary colors) made the most damage.) But, this feature was ignored by most players and is unfair toweards colorblind players (multiple component gems can have just any hue, which is not realted to their specials), so it was removed in GCL.
Monster hue transition:
GC0 had multiple coloring methods, like totally random, or picking from a few hues, or transiting from one hue to another.
GCL, as of now, has only one method, which was inspired by how the aliens are colored in the tower defense game “Defense Grid: the Awakening”. Monsters in early waves have a greenish color, which goeas towards yellow, then red in the end.
How am I going to be able to pay for it and how will the game be avaible for me? A 16-digit key or something?
You will just log into a website and then be able to play the game in the unleashed version.
Will we be able to play should we lose our internet connection?
If not, it would seem that a small connection break could be REALLY annoying…
No i don’t think you will be able to play if you loose the connection.
Ima preety sure that if you load up the game and log in, and then leave internets, youll be ok.
It wont save on the server, obviously, but it will save on your system assuming you allow flash to do that.
If you log in and load the game, then you should be fine. If you lose your internet connection, no problem, the game will try to save your progress locally, and sync it with the server the next time it’s available.
I was one of ur greatest fans. But today I reed, that it will cost to have all features. Sorry, but thats poor.. We are no on the IPhone here.
well, thats fine i guess.
You dont want to give anything for the game, Peter doesnt want to give you all the features. Quite fair, right?
Seems you werent one of the “greatest fans” after all, if you dont even consider paying anything for the game.
I think fans try to support this way or another. Peter gave you great game, you gave nothing except complaint ^^
Everyone deserves payment for the job done, that is, with the exception of flash game developers? ๐
To make it even funnier – I guess it would be fine for you if Peter simply removed all those extra, paid features then it would be fine?
After all you would have game that is more advanced than GC0 with no features that you have to paid for.
But adding those few things, like removed level cap or few extra skill and more ccustomization options for the people who are willing to pay them, suddenly breaks the game? ๐
I agree with Procne.
Why do you all think of it as a “GCL minus (put stuff here)”? For me, the only *really* missing thing might be an endurance (not that I use it much), but hey, GC1 didn’t have one and it was still a great game in it’s own right (still is).
So instead of contemplating what it “lacks”, think of it as a “GC1 + angering + traps + amps + open areas + gem anvil + many more levels + some great design improvements”, and you’ll get a game that “is great” even better (edit: I know the syntax is wrong).
But if you really *need* that endurance to prove yourself that you can last for n+1 waves (provided you *can* last for n waves first), then I guess you’ve also successfully proven, that Peter *deserves* those five bucks (for creating a great game that makes you keep coming back for more).
Seriously, if nothing else, it’s a quality reward.
can you use all kind of credit cards?
i think im going to buy the game, as i hate caps (like, level cap)
in the full version its possible to play for weeks, and still have something funny to do (like, beat the hardest level with the hardest settings)
Yes, it does sound like they are going to make as many options available as possible.
On a second thought, there will be no player level cap in the free version, because the locked settings and skills will set a natural cap anyway. You can go as far as you can with the free skills and settings.
For the first few weeks, the game will be exclusively available on Armor Games, and we’ll use PayPal, with which you can use all major credit/debit cards. (you don’t even need a card if you’re in the US, you can buy a MoneyPak card in Wal-Mart and other retail stores).
Later the game will move to Kongregate, Mochi and others as well, so you’ll be able to pay with sms (I even read it on PayPal’s site that they’ll have (or already have) an sms option).
Here is a suggestion:
Put Gemcraft on Facebook and allow people to pay for it with credits. Or maybe you could bring back the idea of extra things for credits or money or something. I know that it doesn’t sound the greatest for scores, but it could end up making you a bit of money. ๐ And if that is something you need, you could always modify the game slightly and put it on there.
For instance, take a look at how the zuma blitz thing works on there now. It is just a thought.
If charging for extra things (like the skill points idea) could help you make better games in the future, then please do so.
Facebook’s really can’t be ignored anymore, they have more pageviews than Google… for the first few weeks the game will be on Armor Games only, but I’ll look into this opportunity.
making gemcarft avalible as a facebook game, and have all those stupidly annoying “you friend “bob” leveled up in gemcraft” announcements seems like a great way to advertise the game around. Maybe not every level up. maybe… like lv 50, 100, 250, and all the challenge amulets.
That said, I have no idea how games on facebook work.
What if it did that message, and someone gained like 2000 levels in a single game (People have leveled 10,000 times before or more). Would it do that message … 2000 times??
haha… exactly XD
which is why i suggested a message gets sent out only at lv 50, 100, and 250…
At the end of my 228 round, I can just imagine the 40-2000 notices of leveling up in gemcraft that would be sent to my friends.
Yes, spamming friends for reaching levels 10,30,50,100,150 etc could work.