Let’s start the last month of the year with the screenshots I promised long ago.
Map (stage selector):
The Labyrinth has a 13×13 grid, each field is a stage you can beat the monsters in, so we have 169 stages total here. All the stages (except hidden ones) are connected with each other by paths. The path that appears on the left side of one stage will appear on the right in the neighboring stage.
When the whole game starts, you can see only the stage where you enter the labyrinth (field G13).
The XP bar on the left shows you how much more xp you need to level up.
Battle settings:
When you click on a field, the settings panel appears. When you enter a field for the first time, you can only play with the basic settings, but as you get more XP on the stage, and as you level up, more options open for you. You can mix a really deadly battle mode for a high XP multiplier, but with also a high risk of not making it, or you can go more casual and spray death on an army of swarm monsters, it’s up to you.
You can see the layout of the field, and rolling over it shows its info panel, so you don’t have to go back to the map to see if you picked the right stage.
Skills:
While in GC0 you could access your skills from the map, now you can quickly check them each time before you start a stage, and make sure you don’t have unspent skill points.
The Skills panel is lower than the Settings, so you can see what difficulty you set for yourself before, and can still have a peek at the stage map and info.
there are 27 skills, they require higher level going from left to right. Some skills were taken out (gem bomb skills are taken out), but there are many new ones instead.
No more plus-minus buttons that makes your hand ache if you want to regroup your skill points, instead you can click and drag a skill to quickly set the level you want. Mouse wheel works too.
Not all skills have a level cap (if you see a level sign “3” instead of “3/20”, that’s a skill with no cap), and the general cap of level 10 is also no more, all skills have their own limits (or no limit), so this time you won’t be left with skill points you can’t spend.
Next stop: more on amplifiers, shrines, the Gem Anvil (cloning/refunding gems), and some minor time freezing related stuff. All these things are already implemented, just didn’t want to share all the info in one blogpost 🙂 so please visit again next week!
The development went well for the last weeks, for the first time I can see the light at the end of the labyrinth. Still no release date, but it’s really getting close, so no, you won’t have to wait for another 6 months. 🙂
omg! its awesome!
Great job finish line !
This is excellent news, I can hardly wait!
I saw in your previous entry that you were rethinking the way saved games would be made. If I can add to this…
I really liked the copy/paste method. I kept a .txt document here in case the server would not keep the data correctly and I could always get back to my game no matter what by copying/pasting the .txt file.
The other method of storing your saved games only on the server has its drawbacks for me. I recently changed my Privacy settings in Flash on the Adobe website and now I cannot save on servers the game levels (I am replaying the first instalment of GC, chapter 1). I have cleared caches and tried to rebuild them, went back to put the settings back as they were and it doesn’t change anything. So if you do go for the saved games data only being stored on the servers, I am a bit worried. 😀
But still, I am very much looking forward to this next chapter. Keep up the awesome work. 🙂
I think you are having trouble distinguishing the difference between having your savedata locally stored, or having it save on a server.
What all previous GC-games (and most flash games) do, in addition to the copy/paste-method, is that they save their files locally, as opposed to saving data on a server. You can go and find the savefiles on your computer, if you would know where to find them. This savefile is bound to a certain site, but it is not stored on there. An ArmorGames savefile will, as you may have noticed, not work on a Kongregate savefile. That’s why you usually return to the same site everytime.
Saving data on a server, as I imagine, would use some login accounts, which can be bound to your ArmorGames/Kongregate accounts. This type of datapreserving is most commonly used in browserbased MMO’s, or other kinds of multiplayer games, where you can progress. Platform Racing for example. By using your account info, it will read from a database what your stats are, which will then be loaded into your character. On the surface, you won’t really notice that much of a difference, but the most important advantage of this is that all savefiles are save from computer cleaning programs, which sometimes delete your cache and your progress in all your flashgames. A drawback is ofcourse, you can’t play offline.
To combine the two ways of saving would mean less frustrated people who just lost their lvl 58 character because somebody thought their browser was slow and they had to clean it up. It would also mean that you can still play offline, as data on the server will synchronize with your local data (possible only if your localdata is higher than your serverdata). Thus this method takes both advantages, while effectively disabling the disadvantages.
I think I have named the most important pros and cons here, but if you think I have overlooked something HUGE, or maybe just something else, please do not refrain to tell me.
Well something happened when I changed the Privacy settings on the Adobe Flash setup web site but I’m not savvy enough to be terribly specific, unfortunately.
I will add that I was not a member nor did I log in Armor Games before or after this change.
I even boosted the local saved game space on my HD but I cannot play the very recent games anymore, I get a blank area and as I said I cannot save a GC chapter 1 game after selecting a slot to save it to (as a means of comparison, I have not tried GC chapter 0, though).
Anyway, I loved the GC games so much, if there is a paid extended version, I will buy it, that’s for sure. As long as I can save my games without any problems, that’s all I ask for. 😀
Well what this seems to me is a case of corrupted data. Cleaning (deleting) all data on GC1 should let the game intialize a new savefile, which is not corrupted. Instead of deleting it, you might want to change the .sol-file into a .sol.old-file… This will render it “deleted”, however it’s still there, and you can recall the data when you decide you need it.
Also, for locally saved games, it usually doesn’t matter whether you log in or not, unless the flash game actively reads your account information.
A very big thank you! I tried it and it now works! 😀
Nice! You’re doing awesome!
Here’s some questions and suggestions.
1). It would be nice to have zoom on the map.
2). Do you things that the things like the wave increases could go further than 16 before unlimited?
3). I’ve just got a new idea, maybe you could reward those who will play Gemcraft Unleased in Gemcraft 2.
1, Maybe in GC2.
2, Maybe I’ll increate the steps, to, say, 20 or 25.
3, It would be difficult to do so, because the game will run on many different systems and sites, so account info and saved games will be spread on many servers, and we don’t have access to them on that level (e.g. one game looking at an other game’s server-stored data) anyway. Maybe with some coupon codes, but those will spread on forums, so the point of rewarding who bought the previous game will be lost.
2, Instead of proposing defined numbers, maybe you could propose multipliers ?
[1×] [2]
[2×] [5]
[4×] [10]
[5×] [25]
so we can add 2 up to 125 waves.
Or 2^[n]
…something like that.
Celine, impatient, like the others, to finally play 🙂
This piece of the game still can be modified freely, so any suggestions are welcome (thanks btw!) 🙂
Multipliers might be a problem on later stages that have 40-50 waves as default. Doubling 50 waves, with the hit points increasing rapidly, can make it impossible to beat.
There are guys who beaten all 228 waves on last level, while last monsters have few billions of health. As long as the game doesn’t crash, let them play indefinitely }:]
I love the idea of multipliers. I have wanted to make a shot at some of the later levels.
Maybe what you could do is make one level that could be made really long where the hit points don’t start to increase like crazy. 🙂
I do think having the ability to get levels into the 80 waves or so area would be great. I have a lot of fun playing longer levels. Maybe I just like high scores. 🙂
I still do wish a little bit for an option to throw arcane guardians in every wave. 🙂
I’m one of the people who beat the 228, and I can tell you the hitpoint curve (the rate at which the waves gain hitpoints as their wave number climbs) is waaay lower for the 228 than it is for endurance or standard play modes. In other words, monsters that come in the 200s on the 228 mode might be the same as monsters that come in the 90s or 110s on regular or endurance, and it literally took hours of gem combining to create gems to kill the 228 monsters. This isn’t something anyone would really want to do for EVERY stage – if there are a bunch of stages, and it takes literally DAYS of play time to beat them on the hardest difficulty settings, those settings simply will not be used except by a handful of people.
Better is to have realistic difficulty modifiers for the bulk of the maps, and then have a few maps and modes that the hardcore players can choose as their own. This way everyone is happy.
To be clear, I hope there is some repeat of the 228 in GCL, but I certainly don’t want it for EVERY map.
As for picking the difficulty modifier for extra waves, just let the player put a number in, Peter. If they put in 1, they get 5 extra waves. If they put in 10, they get 50. It’s up to them to beat it. =p
Maybe use little arrows to allow them to increase the number, if you dont’ want to use an actual text input.
@Warmonger – To beat All 228 waves on the last level, it is very useful to have a lot of freezing gems to hold the monsters down – you can basically hold about 300 monsters indefinitely OR you can slow the entire field 75% with RB gems at the beginning (it says 96% but the number is wrong). The post mentioned something about slowing / time-related stuff, so I’m guessing this is nerfed, but I could be wrong (and yes, I beat all the waves). However, what is amazing is that people have built their firepower >10 million tower damage. This is enough to handle waves with over 30 billion health (with proper hueing, alignment, etc.) and you could handle a boss wave with a total of 150 billion health easily – this is 4x the monster health of the last wave of 228.
Inthrees brings up a good point – the hp curve is exponential, but why not have the multiplier be a linear or quadratic [my preference] f(x), so for every extra wave (x), with maybe the hp curve double every n rounds, you can have (1+x/n)^2. A text input may be problematic, though, because what if someone says they want -50 more waves – how about a similar system to the skills?
Really, there are only a handful of players (well, at least forum-posting players) who have actually built gems that are able to beat monsters with billions of hp.
For the numbers I think I would do this:
Number of monsters
1/2
+40%
+100%
+200%
+400%
+800%
or maybe more. That would be my favorite part and the part I look forward to the most.
also for adding waves I would increase the final amounts to be more
maybe +16 or +24 (maybe even another one) +32
Thanks
To Warmonger: This game is supposed to be available to masses. If you cut off a everyone except 228 wavers, it will not be good for your game. Optional, or not, it will still piss people off.
Peter, could you add a modify reply in this forum? I really don’t enjoy making a lot of posts right next to each other..
This game is great as it offers almost unlimited possibilities. I don’t force anyone to play 228 waves, actually I completed the game long time before I learned it’s avaliable. If you don’t want to add 50 waves to the level, (which would be possible only in a very late game) simply don’t do it.
I thought you were refering to the fact that there were three Peters on this blog – and thought I’d join in! Never mind…
I’ll stil to plain ol’ peter.. :
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?
1, More popular games get more views, and so more revenue from the ads inside them, or more exactly, game on the front page of Armor Games, NewGroudns, Kongregate and other major sites get something, all the other games get almost nothing. Once a game get knocked out of the forntpage, noone finds it. Ad revenues are very low anyway, they are the morsels fallen down from the table of the “premium” games’ budget. A major “premium” (for money) game (like WoW) has an allegedly huge income, a part of that income goes to ads. Ad service providers take their toll, and the ad gets served on thousands of flash games, sites, etc. The ad service provider (ad distributor) pays after a successful purchase initiated by the ad, or a click on the ad, or 1000 views of the ad – the payment model can change from ad to ad. Ad revenue payout amounts are a bit higher than zero, you would be very disappointed to see how much money a free game with millions of gameplays brings to its authors. That’s why we’re going to have the “Unleashed” version for that few bucks.
2, No. Sites work by the “long tail” business model. They have thousands of games in their collection, some are popular, others (on the “tail” or the graph) hardly have anyone playing them, so their authors don’t see a cent. But this tail is long (many low gameplay games), so the site as a whole has a great number of pageviews. So there’s no quota, worst case is, your game further extends the long tail. Most sites have an automatic submission system, they check out what you upload, and if it hits a level and doesn’t include unsuitable content, your game is good to go.
3, Flash is the most widely used platform for “rich content” (games, presentations, video, animated fancy menu) on the net. Games can be written in Java or in plain html, but if I had to start over and pick one platform, it would be Flash again.
4, There are many ideas to be turned into games here, and GCL is not only a game but the great experiment of the whole framework (settings, skills, leveling system, badges, etc). If it works well, it can be wrapped around gems of many kinds, from platformer to car racing, from strategy to space shooter. When GCL is out, I will have a look at Android and what can be done in Flash (thus not on iPhone) on mobile devices, but if GCL performs well, I think I’ll further advance the framework and make games of many different kinds using it.
As a thought, if money is a concern, you might make the unleashed version like $10. Here in the states at least, I think you would find a lot of people willing to pay. (It is by far the best TD on the market)
That would also help increase your income a bit.
Thanks Peter
Inspired from the AltShift from ArmorGames, looks like its best to make the Unleashed version downloadable, so can be played offline with best performance…
I don’t think so, because each click you need to make, you lose a couple of potential users. Downloading the version requires a bunch of clicks. When I see something downloadable&just playable I never (99%) choose the downloadable version.
Hey Game-maker Peter,
I completely agree with R. Keller here – I know you don’t wish to appear greedy but damn it man, the game is pure quality! I’d honestly pay whatever you set to charge, but $10 (for me £10) is certainly not too much, in fact, for all the time you’ve put in it still seems rather little.
Anyway, don’t be anxious about over-charging. I’d pay full-price for this game, no problem, as I have consoles etc. and aside from maybe The Last Guardian, I’m not even thinking of playing any other game that GC:L. I know I’m not the only one.
Thanks! 🙂
We need to be very careful with pricing, players of Flash games are used to get everything for free, and even on the downloadable games’ market, there’s a desperate price race (and still an almost 100% piracy rate). On the other hand, there are many ridiculously overpriced games out there – I think of retail games with the usual 3d eye candy and no fun at all, for even 50-60 usd. My hope is that a large enough part of GCL players will find paying for the Unleashed edition a fair and reasonable offer.
This wasn’t me, but I agree with it. Who is using my name, and why?
I thought you were refering to the fact that there were three Peters on this blog – and thought I’d join in! Never mind…
I’ll stil to plain ol’ peter.. 🙂
The map is awesome. It really puts “Labyrinth” to good use as the name of the game. It’s always fun to look back on any other game to see how much ground you covered and seeing that map with the levels literally being connected to each other will be so much fun.
Unlimited skill caps and caps higher than 10 looks like so much fun. Way more stuff to decide on and I expect there to be tons of strategies just from picking what skills to focus on. I keep saying I’ll get 100 hours from this game but there probably won’t be a need to make Gemcraft “2” if Labyrinth is really this great. Although I am really curious as to what is planned for the fourth Gemcraft if Labyrinth is really looking promising.
I understand that you cannot set a release date, but it would be good to know roughly when we can be expecting this to be released.This Month? By the end of January? Longer?
By all means take your time perfecting this awesome game though.
Consider it 2-4 months. I’m usually very accurate, although I changed my prediction when I read this post from 2-6 months (a nice improvement, won’t you say?).
Instead of giving a release date, here are my reasons not to give one:
1, I read about an interesting experiment the other day: some researchers found that people who give promises are less likely to follow up and fullfil them.
2, I perform much worse under stress, with the fury of players hovering over my head for delaying release.
3, I’m really bad at estimating. Really. (point 4 tells why.)
4, I struggled with a simple task for 2 hours instead of 5 minutes a few days ago, and it turned out I misunderstood the Array.splice() command. It can happen again any time, prolonging development. Fortunately there were other tasks taking much less time than I thought. How could I tell then how long it will take?
5, at the end of December and the beginning of January, many offices send their employees to holiday. Will this have an impact on release date? I’m not sure. If I’ll have to discuss business and technical terms (how to connect the game to their server) with a site where everyone’s out of office for weeks, it will.
6, I can decide to free my calendar and focus on work only, but life can tell otherwise, I can get a flu, or simply have to spend all the day with everyday things I don’t want to do.
well explained !
i am sure you want this game make life as soon as possible !
so stay with no stress. think about enjoy stuff !
and bring it live for us joy! we waited long time we can wait more !
cheer !
I knew everything except for point 2. That’s why I have put a release date myself (it’s really broad if you noticed), to direct some pressure off you, and on me. I’m sorry if I troubled you.
Ok. I am now officially excited. That looks amazing. I love a lot of the options that you have for the game. The only one that I thought was missing are our old friends, the arcane guardians and the bosses. Blizz Entertainment, the makers of WOW had an interesting point in a recent interview where they talked about how something that is too easy quickly looses its replay value. I love the idea of having some crazy tough levels. And it looks like this will definitely be an option in GCL.
Also, for those of you asking for a release time, it is becoming more and more evident that most of the game in finished. If that last major feature set goes live next week, then my guess is the next couple of months. Maybe even the end of the year. It has come a long way since the beginning and my guess is that most of the major coding is done. All of the promises he made earlier are now in play or fulfilled and I think we will see the release of the game shortly.
But of course there will be epic stages with bosses 🙂 I just haven’t talked about that yet. No guardinas (they were there in GC0 for story reasons, keeping the player from releasing the Forgotten).
GCL takes place at about the same time as the old chapter 1, so the Forgotten is already out there.
Will they be anger-able???
I see that putting boss enemies to the mixing bowl, and not only keeping them for epic stages, would definitely add fun to the game… I’ll think about it more shortly.
That is just about the sweetest thing I have heard yet. You are awesome. 🙂
I am definitely buying the game. And I will tell other people to as well.
now just the wait until it comes out. I can’t wait to help test it, even if at first it is a little buggy and needs some fixes.
Awesomeness!!!!!!!!!!
Oh yeah… i better remember to warn my friends i wont be seeing them for another couple of months………………………………… it’s coming!!!
IMO it will be tough to balance amplifiers – if you have no skills in the amplifier bonus, it will be not-worth-it, but if you have a ton, you it will be too powerful.
I was kinda hoping for a specials bonus for triple gem mastery!
Looks amazing – I am very excited for the game!
Looks fantastic, I can’t wait to try it out!
Awesome, I can be playing this by the end of a day less than forever from now.
Sarcasm aside, interesting map design, loving the battle settings options, and am thankful for the new skills setup.
<((-((Always waiting((-((0
Bob's good friend
well, gemcraft 0 has 28 skills. this has 27, but only 21 are shown there.
quite a few are the same… (though they may have different values) the 8 gem atribuites, the 4 gem bonuses (range, speed, damages), armor, at least 3 cheap spell skills,(towers,pool,gems), deployment speed, the two initial mana spells, replenish… duel gems, trigems.
then we got amplify, and 2 “other tower” skills (i assume amplify towers)… one seems to be a ‘cheaper’ skill, the other doesnt quit make sence, maybe faster build speed for amplify towers…? thats 25 skills.
herm.
I find it hard to belive that pure and prismatic gem mastery went away… but that seems the case…
MUST KNOW WHAT OTHER SKILLS ARE.
gahh, click on screen shot to view all 27. still, count is 22 repeats, 5 new. (3 of which have to do with amplify towers)
comments need edit button.
Yes, pure and prismatic are out, in favor of dual, and most importanty, triple gems (triple gems will have better bonuses than duals, to encourage experimenting with new gem combinations, partly to keep game rules fresh, and partly because triples give more options). Prismatic gems, once the player levels the masteries up (or unlocks the “all gem types granted” setting, see the settings screenshot), are too easy to make with nothing to lose, thus free bonuses.
Sorry for the cropped thumbnails, the WordPress (blog) engine thinks thumbnails should be square shaped.
The Prismatic specials bonus was not accurate in GC0. It said that the top level had 80% special power, which should be higher than 38.5 for Red, but if you aligned it so that Red was first, it was only 28.5 or so splash. Same for all the colors – none of them could reach the 80% specials.
I like the idea of a specials bonus incorporated with mastery – is this taken out / fixed / still in there?
Oh, and I forgot to mention, what about mana pooling?
Your pulling out the skill for pure gems? May I ask why?
I understand the one for prismatic, although I loved prismatic supergems. You could make them with speeds of over 1000 in GC0. They were the best gems. 🙂
I removed the pure gem mastery for the sake of experimenting with new game rules and to encourage combining the gems. Dual gems were so much better in GC0 than pure gems, that I thought they were lost their appeal since GC1 already. Let’s see how the new rules work (many things will be changed anyway, so missing pure gem bonuses might be the least to worry about), and if the game lacks it badly, it can get back in GC2.
that would be great and is a wise way to look at it. 🙂
“Banished monsters heal” – wow, I really like this setting!
I expect that the map will be blurred in the release, so far this looks ugly. Also there could be some small pictures hiding the levels that are yet to be explored, which give only the directions where do the roads lead, and at the selection step (you click on a piece of map) you see a roughly/normally detailed map of that level, and you can choose the rest of settings needed to play it.
Also it looks like one has to severely replay levels to unlock higher modes on each level, this is a promise for heavy game time investment required to fully unlock the game. And now I see what will there be in “unleashed” mode – you just can remove XP-on-this-level restrictions from different game modes.
I also like this approach to skills – no hard cap for all skills at once, but you can manage each skill’s top level and each skill’s effect separately, providing a better balance tuning as the beta testing reports will flow. (Alpha-testing will also provide something good :))
And the thing I like the most is the certain notice of the game be UNLEASHED soon!
peter, you could add skins to it, to change the look, skins could be unlockable, or bought with real money…..changing the games looks with the skins would be awesome, or, and unlockable gem type you know what i mean
Sorry, but I have to keep both the file size low (websites have various file size limits ranging from 10 to 15 MB generally), and the development time short, so extra skins will surely be left out now.
you could make it save 2 savegames?
like “gemtd2-1” and “gemtd2-2”
if they are both 10MB, its 20Mb in total 😀
the limit of 15 Mbytes is for an SWF file (basically the game code itself), and these cannot be split into several. Or maybe they can be split, but there will be HUGE problems in making them run along.
make this game downloadable? and then add the features
I’m 21, will I ever make it to the end?
Yes
Really nice! But, what the traps? Have you kept them and their respective skills?
Trap and tower building cost is merged into one skill. Traps are still there in the game. Trap gem specials skill is out, but you can boost your trap gems from amplifiers next to them.
I mean, with gems placed in amplifiers. Everything is still gem powered.
Oh thanks =)
Everything looks nice so far.
There are many questions about what and where but I will be patient and wait.
One thing – maybe add some kind of glow or color change to those levels where you have more xp than that level’s “color-changing-mastery” (dunno how to explain this) value. A sign that you have mastered this level. Maybe the same amount that is required for the “unlimited” mode as this is the highest mastery of that level to achieve.
The other thing – won’t you still keep the copy-paste code? I just liked when you could e-mail that code to yourself and play on a different pc, on a different gameserver.
The third one – those +/- buttons at the skill selection screen doesn’t quite fit with the GC theme. Just saying.
And the last one – will there be such a thing like themes for the levels? I really liked that in GC0 (although the winter one was kinda nasty).
Keep up the good work!
Martin.
3). I find it well fit with Gemcraft.
4). The seasons were removed to keep the file size low.
First 2, dunno.
I have a question about Resonance and Turbulence skills, since they both appear to stay in GCL. In GC0 i found it strange that turbulence had higher percentage than resonance. If we take example gem that deals 100 to 200 damage and first tier of both skills then we see that resonance increases minimum damage by 5 and turbulence increases maximum damage by 12, Giving average increase of 2.5 and 6 respectively. Because of this turbulence seems to be much stronger skill.
Will it be this way in GCL as well? Or will they be somehow normalized / balanced?
Procne is right – the % increase should be the same for min. and max. damage if it weren’t for overkill (which is rewarded in this game, anyway).
It is meant so that players’ won’t increase lower damage range to rise it over top cap. Luckily turbulence is more rewarding, so the risk of such event is gone. Even with unlimited cap for these two.
well, with the current state of those skills resonance is simply not worth it if only you can choose turbulence. I dont think going over the cap is a problem here, it shouldnt be hard to simply forbid minimum damage to go above maximum. For that you would need like 80-100% resonance anyway I think.
Even with same percentage increase turbulence is still more powerful. I understand that skills shouldnt be equally good, but on the other hand it would be nice if they were close, or at least situational to promote choices. Otherwise they become nobrainers
It is impossible for the lower cap to go above the higher cap, if they are rewarded evenly percentage-wise. And even with an equal % increase for the two, turbulence is still more rewarding because the max damage is increased more than the min. damage.
Procne is absolutely right.
The min damage skill had lower bonuses to avoid the min damage reach the max value, this was the (btw faulty) idea in GC0 indeed.
The best way would be to merge the two skills and boost damage generally, but I think I’ll leave it for now, and make this change in GC2.
What I did to make it more balanced, is that the min damage (Resonance) skill is cheaper to level up and has a lower level cap.
(Each skill has its own “skill points cost for first skill level” and “cost increment” values now, to make it more flexible and so easier to balance.)
Great news to see you’re getting that much closer, I can tell that all of us are excited about release. I know I’ve been salivating ever since I heard you were making another GemCraft, I just can’t wait to get my hands on it. Excited for your next post, hope this week goes as well as the last.
Yes, by the way, do you mind adding Arcane Guardian with an amplifiable power into battle settings? It can grow from the mana spent on monster summoning, or manapooling, or there might become more of them, and they could also grow in initial banishment cost, etc. Of course any arcane guardian should be immue to shock, since he’s a single monster, and if you happen to have abilities to shock him for ever, he’s just a meatbox. Also he might be immune to mana leech, to make him more challenging to call upon.
And, are there any ‘boss’ levels within the game that contain arcane guardians or alike creatures?
He pretty much answered this above. It sounds like there will not be arcane guardians. I would hope for a kind of supermonster to lead each wave with like 10x the amount of hit points/score/mana cost or maybe even a little bit more. So there is one thing that is tough to kill as an option for each wave. 🙂
That is probably not realistic at this point in development though.
Thanks for notification of his answer 🙂 though there was none at the time I posted. And I also believe that having a super-monster in a level will indeed be both fun and challenge.
There are now a few new comments above that indicate he is considering putting something back in. 🙂
By now it’s almost certain, that thre will be an option in the settings paletter to enable one or more boss enemies. There were many changes over the weekend, more in a post soon.
I find this forum alive at last!
All(a lot of) the other posts before were filed by desperate people who waited for gemcraft. Now I see a lot of living discussion, some new faces, and a lot of topics. Cheers!!!
Here’s the bad part. Right now it’s king of hard to navigate here with so many posts. Peter, do you have any ideas as to solutions of this problem.
Yes – if possible, it would be nice to add both a “View Last Post” and “Edit Post” feature on here. I find myself often wanting to say something that I forgot to put in my post, and this happens with many people who post here, I bet.
Well, these are just comments on blog posts. This is not a forum per se. That you would find on a larger website. 🙂
I’m glad to see the blog coming alive too, but navigating through the comments is really a problem. Making a forum would be a solution, although I was thinkig of it many times and I’m still not sure if it would be necessary. Anyway, I have to focus on finishing the game first.
This site is more active than the Gemcraft forum on Kongregate. A forum would also allow players to post their own screen shots and comment on specific aspects of the game. It would make the site more user-friendly, and anyway, you had 65 posts within a week last time – now this week you have 120 or so in a week. Could you have over 200 within a week in your next post?
you could do something like phpbb. It is a self contained file and really easy to set up. You can get it going in a matter of minutes on a web server and that can handle everything you need it to. If you haven’t heard of it, something like this is definitely worth checking out.
If I might make a suggestion, since you are selling the ultimate edition, why not make it available to people who play the game for free as well? But more of an endgame type of deal, after you’ve unlocked every stage, every single thing, if you get over a certain ridiculous score, you also get parts of the ultimate (paying edition).
Think of it as grinding AA levels in everquest for example.
That way you get people who want to support a way to do it, but won’t lock out the good feedback from the ocd afflicted perfectionists who actually promote your material to the outside world as rabid fanboys.
Greetz, Bob.
Unfortunately, this encourages hacking.
I think it is wiser to limit things to the ultimate edition. Some people won’t want to pay for it, but I think a lot will.
I think you should fire half the game into the ultimate edition! or cap it like: any skill can’t get past a certain point or certain battl
e options aren’t available – or any in fact – like make it so the player can only play the initial settings for levels, or have the end set of levels locked.
It’s so addictive that anyone who plays for even a short time will want more. I think that if you give too much away people will be content with what they have – make sure it isn’t just content for the hardcore; you need the ultimate to appeal to everyone.
But I’m sure you know all this already..
a). Peter does want to make money, but scoring Ultimate hatred is not one of his plans. I think he found the right balance, and limiting more options won’t make him money anyway.
b). DON’T USE HIS NICKNAME!! THERE’S ONLY ONE PETER HERE!!!
You know it’s easy to distinguish anyway, so don’t even try!
Hey I have a question.
through out playing Chapter zero I have always wondered how my lvl ranked with everyone else on armorgames. Any chance of puting a ranking system for this one if played out of Armorgames? That would be awesome. You know, like a high scores or something? Hope you respond.
*a rabid fan of your series*
Yes, if Armor Games’ site feature list includes this (and I think it does now, they have made many improvements since we released GC0), thre will be a high score list.
Wow, this is really looking great. I’m looking forward to this as much (or more) than most big-name, $50-60 releases. I hope you guys at least put up a donate button or something.
+1
I think he talked about donations already. It sounds like it is difficult because Peter lives in Hungary and there are somewhat difficult laws to navigate there. It doesn’t sound like it is as easy as it is in the States. But we can definitely hope.
Yes, that’s still the case, but you can simply support us by buying the full version. 🙂
Great news!
what if you keep playing for weeks, and the monster hitpoints, or your mana, goes over the maximum value?
the monsters’ HP is already floating-point underneath, so I don’t believe you will ever see a monster with 1.0e+300 HP and beat it. 🙂 Also, if you see a monster with 1.0e20 HP you’re already screwed.
About mana – this could be, but way before it will happen, you’ll encounter 1e20 brutes and decide to blast it off.
I agree with Vesper, it is highly improbable, not to mention the cpu it would probably take. But let’s say you DO get to that point (for example, by cheating). I’m not really familiar with Flash, but in most programming languages, when the numbers get too big, they’ll abort the program by throwing an exception. You can work around that, by saying max mana can’t be that big. Howewver, if there is no code to either avoid or resolve such an occurence, your game of weeks worth will be gone. You’d basically have to reload, destroying unsaved progress.
Banishment costs will rise faster than in GC0, so monsters will eat your orb if you leave them alive, long before their hit points could go above the limit. And in that case, Flash would force them to be it’s hard-coded “positive infinity” value.
Btw, yes, I use floating-point numbers for both hp and mana.
Ah, so the limit can only be reached, not crossed. That is an effective way of problem-solving indeed. Or does the “positive infinity” mean that their health is actually infinite, thus no HP can be distracted when the monsters are hit? Well… Let’s say we’re happy that the limit is kinda hard to reach. Because that would mean a) unkillable monsters, and b) an infinite manapool, which would… give you invincibility, along with an infinite score-multiplier.
funnyruler, would you please divide 1.4e+308 by 1000, and try to imagine this time in seconds. You’ll find out that there will be no possible chance to reach these limits at all.
As I said, let’s be happy that limit is kinda hard (virtually impossible) to reach. I just didn’t know it was THAT impossible.
Can you tell us exactly what is contained in unleashed and what is free?
oh and maybe you could make unspent skill points add to multiplier like 1% per skill point(probably less should be used).
Look at earlier posts. If you want specifics, I suggest you wait.
This is a comment on an earlier one, but I am putting it at the bottom in case it gets discussed more. It will be easier to find this way. two things
_______________
#1
Billions of HP seems a little bit extreme to me as well. After all, as great as Gemcraft is, it is still just a computer game and for something like that you have to spend way too much time with it.
Maybe an option for making the levels harder is to have hp increase until it hits a certain number and then have the banishing cost start to increase. That way it gets more difficult, but not necessarily insane. Eventually maybe it costs several hundred or thousand mana to banish a monster instead of just 40 or 50. That would make it much harder to stay alive.
Another option is to increase the armor rating of monsters.
Then you could also increase their speed.
These thoughts are especially about endurance levels.
________________
#2
Can someone help me with how scoring is going to work on the new game? Will we still get points from killing monsters? It seems to me like a lot of it has to do with the multipliers now, but I am not exactly sure how it is going to work.
Thanks
Ok. I can answer number 2. The answer is no. There is no longer a “score” thing for killing monsters.
And I can Answer some of #1
First, banishing cost has to increase with the monsters attributes, otherwise you would just upgrade your towers and none would get to the finish line.
Speed, Armour Rating, and other things sure have to increase, but still have to be on ‘comfort zone’ for the player (a whole wave should just be gone in 4 second).
Whatever the attributes, health still has to be the most important thing. Billions, or not the core does not change.
And I mean pretty significant increases instead of just the normal progression that you see with the increase in the number of the wave.
To answer #1 – no, billions of HP is now very small, because of gem cloning. It takes me about 2.5 hours to create a gem with 500K max damage with combining just grade 6s – and this is without ultra-fast macros and without speedhack. This is probably 4-5x as fast with higher-grades / grade 12s, and even faster for gem cloning. This makes angering with ultra-high grade gems conceivable, too.
No – for GCL, I’m guessing trillions of hp will be the new billions. 🙂
What is gem cloning?
And I am thinking specifically about endurance waves. One would think that they would actually get to the point where they were unbeatable. That is why i was thinking of armor, banish cost, and speed increases to make it so that you can make the levels challenging without resorting to the idea that they should each take 5 days to complete. I love the difficulty, but I am not going to spend that kind of time.
That is where I meant that hardcore gaming like that is actually crazy.
Haha. I’ve spent longer than 5 days to complete the 228 wave challenge. Really – it’s not that bad. It was pretty fun, and I might do it again some time.
BTW – some crazy gemcrafter on the Kongregate forums just got 1/2 a full field of mana gems by the 9th wave!
Actually, all you need to beat a wave totaling 1 billion health is 400K tower damage – prismatic – in a trap.
I suppose you mean Honza567?
That is exactly what I meant. 5 days is that bad. This is just a computer game, although it is a good one, at the end of the day, it is still a game.
@funnyruler – yes, exactly. He beat my record by a full wave. While this may not seem like much, 1 wave at the start is worth billions of mana at the finish.
(If you get a 20 million mana pool, with the best setup, you will be gaining 4 billion mana per round !!!)
Seriously – 1 billion is not much. I beat a wave totaling 20 billion hp, and realized after the fact that I could have angered a few more times!
And … oops – looked on here, guess no clone gem button :((
Scratch that – just say “Gem anvil!” in this blog post…
I predict that red-orange-lime and red-orange-yellow gems are going to be quite popular, even more so than currently.
the ROY for traps, ROL for towers… (bouncy splash ftw)
And thankfully, with the clone gem button !!! they wont be annoying to create, so, even better.
course, it all depends on those amplify towers. If suddenly a gem that doesnt include an orange component has a damage output that makes up for the lack of mana gain… that would certainly change things.
And of course, with the new score, it will be important to figure out what is worth more, angering waves, or sending weaker waves early… (or, setting a slightly easier difficulty in exchange for being able to anger/send waves faster…)
No!!! ROL for traps are better than ROY, for gaining mana!
Yes! Clone gem button! FTW!
The last part depends on if there is a limit for the mana-stealing part of the gem.
Actually, i would even expect 4 component gems now, to lose the +min/max damage so that monsters survive longer on the mana farm.
But, depending on that whole, 70% chance of extra hit causing additional chance to hit, assuming it is a ‘no’, the difference between rol and roy gems is neglibible…. BUT the roy gems have a longer range. (can even set up roy gems next to the path, and still have decent money gain, and it seems that this situation will happen often cosidering the maps. in GCL)
Then again, you can max our the refiring rate of a ROL gem with less mana than a roy gem, if you play with your lime gems right.
NO WAY! ROL gems beat ROY in all ways except in range and damage. Take firing speed:
ROL – 1139 fps
ROY – ~1050 fps
Take cost to build
ROL – 83,000 mana (you can max at grade 10)
ROY – 325,000 mana (maxes at grade 12 :()
The optimal track for this is probably ROL for the main track with ROY on the side, or maybe a double-trap track of ROLs. However, it is quite possible that the O component is severely nerfed, so this may not be accurate.
I’ve redesigned the whole gem type mechanics over the weekend, so you’ll have to change the strategy a bit, but more aobut this too in the new post soon! (I think Thursday)
Yes! Next Thurs.
I like some aspects the the new game, but, at the same time, I don’t think that ultra-high scores will be possible (at least without buying Unleashed). How will the Unleashed work – this is definitely a topic to discuss in a future blog update.
the only principle that ROL maxes out firespeed faster is that lime component allows earlier ‘supergem’ effect, lime gems have better base firespeed than yellow, but you can do with a grade 9 for both ROL and ROY, if you supergem two grade 8 ROL/ROYs to max firespeed (whatever is it) and combine them with each other. 🙂 This will put you in terms of mana at less point than 83k.
Interesting, Vesper – better tell that to Honza. We need an accurate estimate of how much mana that costs to know the way to play gemcraft perfectly up to wave 18.
Einfach, I can’t give a perfect estimate, since the gem with higher early L component will take less to max out firespeed, but more to max out specials, and I’m not sure how will the unmaxed specials of the two ROLs add up. They will surely add up, I have tried, but they might require upping to a certain degree before combination. I will inform Honza though.
Basically it’s the same flow that was there with two grade 3 RO supergems combining with the result hitting hard cap. This should also serve as a note to Peter when he’ll implement his caps in GCL. 🙂
Forgot to say…Splash only has an effect on the last in a chain, according to fractalman.
Really? I was wondering a lot about that. So you are saying it only happens on the last bounce?
And is there a set number of bounces?
No – it’s a geometric-decay sequence, so 40% chain hit = an average of 0.66 extra hits.
It’s easier to observe the phenomena of red being applied only on the last hit within chapter 1, where splash is overpowered.
I still don’t know how yellow interacts with splash in towers.
Sorry about 3rd response to this – It will always be more worth it to have more monster health if it directly affects score because this is better than angering, which is a polynomial equation, and now, it looks like it will be linear and scaling with the difficulty setting, which makes it even more worth-it.
What do you mean by that?
Also, didnt you mean exponential instead of polynomial?
I think he meant polynomial because angering’s effects only increase so far before starting to go back down. The benefit of extreme angering is much less currently in GC0 then it would be if the equation were exponential.
When angering (currently)
Hp increase-exponential, faster with higher grades.
armor increase-exponential plus the original amount.
numbers-linear.
Score increase-an exotic recursive equation. The increase in score is f(gemgrade, currentscore/monster)/number of times angered+1
In short, only a bit faster than logarithmic in the long run, though only a bit slower than exponential at first.
ah, but could getting the amulets for the score multipliers be worth it, and do you go for that amulet earlier in the stage, or later?
Later, definitely – focus on building mana, and pay attention to amulets after the last wave is sent, considering the rules are similar to GC0.
oh jesus, what a science!
here again, ive some idea, maybe for your next release, or maybe this one
on harder stages: you can make gems incomatible with other gems, so they cant combine some of them – needs to be perfection 😀
the more I see it, more I desire it D:
Hmmmm…..
Almost done, eh..?
Lets say when it’s released, maybe around Christmas?
I just can’t wait about it!
Keep up the good work!!
Hard to say when it’s going to be released, but the chances of Christmas are miser.
Don’t complain, it’s won’t help either you or Peter.
Yay it’s comming soon.I hope it comes out around christmas.
ya, unleashed might make a good christmas present, if there is some sort of registration code or something.
Being able to put on a cd, with a fancy piece of art and wrap it up would be so insanely awesome… but so impossible, because it would be like “here pirates! have fun!”…
ya, all depends on how’unleashed’ works… if it works crappily, well, then it might not be worth buying, even if i want to buy it. :-/
(those digital download platforms might work nice… like Steam, D2D or Impulse. (if it was steam exclusive, id be very pissed) (Impulse is nice in that the lowest royality% is 70%… 85% if through the developers website, dont know what your currently looking at, but 85% sounds nice… expecially if you direct your customers through your (this) website first.)
Well.. I am wondering about something.. Will you still implement the Kong API in the non-Unleashed version? Because implementing badges (which Greg will do, obviously) is an effective way to get the Kongers to play your game more than they would, and more people will fall in love with it.
AFAIK, Greg won’t make badges for versions you have to pay for, so GCL:U (the pay-version) won’t get any… probably.
Who is Greg?
And what is Kong?
I think this might be what some of the amulets are for like those that you get when you beat an epic boss.
Kong is kongregate one of the largest flash game sites.
greg is the person who makes all of kongregates badges.
And home to a Gemcraft forum site. And adding badges could have mixed effects (I don’t know how many times I’ve answered simple questions from people who just want to play a game because it has badges. They’ve asked how to activate a shrine, for example, because they didn’t find it on the first level. This happens with every game that has badges).
Yes, this does happen. If you’ll go to the comments section, you’ll find that I’ve answered those as well (though not as much probably). And also, adding badges to the game (or a challenge) will have it in the Featured Games section on Kong’s frontpage, which (other than just being one of the top (new) games) is very good for attracting unknowing people to this game.
Yes, if we get there, I’d like to have badges for the free version as well (there will be no 2 distinct swf files for the free and paid version btw), but it will depend on Greg. Kongregate has its own Kreds system that supports microtransactions in games (afaik), so I guess they are not against paid games.
Well, no, Kongregate is not against paid games, however none of their badges will need you to pay anything.
another new question:
Do you get exp every time you play a stage? Or did that change as well?
You get exp. similar to Gemcraft0.
First, Peter wanted to make it like you said, but criticism from fans convinced him to do it the right way.
I am not convinced that there is a right way or not. I think, while it would have been problematic for people who wanted to get super high scores by paying for them, it could have made a good deal of money. And I don’t think that it would unbalance the game for other people. There would just be problems with a high scores chart. But do you really play a game like this to get the highest score?
some people do, seriously. IMO, the best highscore chart here will be “maximal exp multiplier from a single map”, since this is pretty much unalterable and doesn’t depend on anything but skill of a player.
Also, IIRC Peter said that he decided to give an option for players to choose the “easier” way, getting all exp from a battle, or “harder” way, like in GC1 and GC0.
I do hope that in the end you dont get exp for repeatedly beating same level and that it will stay the way it was in GC0.
Especially if you take into account skills without limits, this would encourage players to keep “farming” some very “lucrative” level over and over, not to beat score record in it, but to farm skill points to increase more skills
To Robert: Do I have to label ‘opinion’ my every thought?? It’s not hard to understand that it is an opinion, so I don’t understand your worry.
I am actually more interested about exp. than high score. If I play a level, and I do something dumb and die, I get super annoyed when they award me exp for that. It takes the interest away from the game. There are enough modes to get exp without retorting to playing the same stage all over again.
But the High Scores are certainly a good reason to do it, and I agree with other people about it.
You stated your opinion, he stated his. Whats there to get irritated about?
Also, when you talk about what people did / wanted to do, it no longer sounds as an opinion, but a report instead.
It may look like a report before you read it, but it’s elementary to distinguish in this case (I wouldn’t put it on there if it was confusing).
I’m irritated because he clenched the one word I said out of the whole paragraph and wrote a lot of stuff about it. When people snatch one word out of a hundred, I get irritated.
Lets speak no more about it, unless Robert himself decides to answer.
I must admit I do not understand your frustration. I did read your post, I understood it as an opinion. I do not claim to have the answers, but I do think that we can comment and discuss on things.
Now, I did begin my post with commenting on your use of the word right, but the whole thing was actually supposed to be a comment about our earlier topic, which was whether you get exp each time you play. I didn’t feel like that would be unbalanced, which was the possible claim earlier.
There are some levels that I feel like I spend a lot of time with trying to do well (at least on GC0) especially in the later stages. I can think of a certain level in section 3 or 4 with the dark blue and dark green gems that was nearly impossible to beat when it was on arcane because you would get these waves that had a ton of hp. It ultimately got very frustrating when I had played the level so many times and failed it by a monster or two.
So many instead of loosing all of the exp from the battle you could gain a little bit, like 1/5th of what you would have otherwise. That might help things.
Why did you not like it when you got exp when you did not beat a level?
Oh, then I’m sorry. Please make a new paragraph next time.
I’m not okay with the situation you described, because instead of learning to defeat this last monster with my brain, I am forced to advance a level, and defeat him with my exp (unless I write down the specific amount of exp I got that way).
A lot of people get irritated with repeating the same mission all over again, but after playing Dark Omen, (google it, if you never heard about it) I was forced to develop the ultimate patience.
I’m okay when it’s an option, but to this day I haven’t seen a single game that gave an option for that.
“Oh, then I’m sorry. Please make a new paragraph next time.”
To clarify myself, when you change your subject please start a different paragraph. The one paragraph confused me, and I became irritated.
But if you can’t beat a level, do not not just work on other ones and then come back to it with higher exp?
If you know of the level that I am talking about in GC0, it might make a little more sense. It was incredibly difficult and everything I tried led to failure and frustration. I quit playing a lot after that level and on my most recent journey through the game, i just beat it on normal and then didn’t play the other ones. it wasn’t worth it if I was just going to have to try and beat it a million times and not have any reward for it what-so-ever.
Sometimes I do it, but it’s more fun than losing level after level until you get the level you need.
I think I have explained my position, and you have explained yours. As such I suggest we move on.
It will be the same as in GC0. Repeatedly beating the first stage with easy settings won’t give more XP.
If you beat a stage and get 1.000 XP and your previous highest for that stage was 600, your total XP will increase by 400.
Really can’t wait. Very anxious for boosted triple-gems.
soo about the new post.
When will it come.
what ever this is below
No stress – but I’m dying to hear about the new gem mechanics! You said in an above comment the next post would be on Thursday.
same >_<
refreshing this site every hour or so.
I refresh the site every ten minutes – I can’t stay away from it. I keep telling myself to at least wait an hour, but I can’t help it.
I am a Gemcraft Forum addict. 🙁
Two more posts and we will have as many comments as there are maps in the new Gemcraft.
I do not think anything is coming out today. Maybe it will be tomorrow.
I just want to ask one question.
If it says labyrinth, is there a path that leads to a dead end?
No doubt – but perhaps there is something useful at the end of the dead end.
By the way, hope it was a very productive week.
Yes, if you look at the maps that are published as a part of this post, it very well appears that there are directions you can go with the new levels that are dead ends.
Yes, some stages will be dead ends, but that’s not a bad thing, for two reasons:
-Those stages are still valuable for extra XP gain
-As all the stages are connected one with anouther via paths, and monsters arrive on these paths (as well as from monster nests, but those can be destroyed), stages at junctions can be harder to beat because of monsters coming from everywhere, while wiht dead end stage, you can focus your defenses on the path(s) coming from only one side of the screen.
In such a case I have another questions.
Will there be an option to include those other monsters while playing the battle?
Will there be levels which are impossible to beat without defeating the nests?
Will the nest levels be similar to arcane guardians?
I love the concept.
nests will prolly act like the destroyable buildings in gc0
If a nest gets destroyed, all the monsters are automatically “redirected” to a random path entry point, so no monsters will be left out of the battle.
Towers can now fire at monster nests as well as beacons (those helper “discs” that appeared in GC0 as well), so they can be destroyed without gem bombs.
Yes, on some stages, nests are placed in an uncomfortably short distance from the orb, so destroying it will give the player more room.
Monster nests are like the auxillary monster bases from GC0, they are not brutally tough (they are tougher on hard stages though), there are many of them, some stages have none, some have even 8.
Thanks for answering my questions. Unfortunately I have found out that I didn’t ask them right.
1). Will there be an option to include the monsters from other paths while playing the battle, even after no more monters come from them?
2). Will there be levels which are impossible to beat without exploring the other paths?
3). Will the dead ends of paths be similar to arcane guardians?
This comment to comment thing really doesn’t work well, we’ll need that forum…
So, @Bar Ilan,
I guess I didn’t totally get what you think, but I try to answer:
1, It would be an interesting idea to attract monsters from other stages via paths, but no, stages won’t be connected that way.
2, No, because of point 1, there will be no extra monsters leaking from an adjacent stage just because it’s uncharted.
3, No.
I’ll start a new chain of comments.
Sorry I’m being so unclear, so I’ll try to elaborate.
This is your own reply from some tome ago.
“-As all the stages are connected one with anouther via paths, and monsters arrive on these paths (as well as from monster nests, but those can be destroyed), stages at junctions can be harder to beat because of monsters coming from everywhere, while wiht dead end stage, you can focus your defenses on the path(s) coming from only one side of the screen.”
Now I’ll cross-out the stuff off topic.
“All the stages are connected one with another via paths, and monsters arrive on these paths, stages at junctions can be harder to beat because of monsters coming from everywhere, while with dead end stage, you can focus your defenses on the path(s) coming from only one side of the screen.”
In summarize
a). As you say, the monsters arrive from the paths.
b). Stages at junctions can be harder to beat.
c). At dead end stages monsters will come out of one side of the screen.
I thing that I got the wrong impression that after beating the dead end stage, stages with junctions will be easier to beat, because no more monsters will arrive from dead end paths.
Sorry for misunderstanding, but I can contend myself with giving you an interesting idea (if you still can’t understand, email me).
I’m afraid I won’t be able to spend as much time on this blog as before, as reading all the commentaries wastes too much of my time. By the way, will you put the names of guys who were active on forum in your credits list?
The labyrinth aspect is only about exploration, beating one stage doesn’t decrease the amount of monsters on the other. Not all stages have monster nests, so in that case it would mean that there were no incoming monster at all on a stage after its neighbours have been explored.
If you look at our games’ credits screens, you can’t see my name anywhere. That’s because I don’t want people to fan me. We only have a credits screen at all because some of the sound samples are used under a license which requires us to list the usernames of the sounds’ authors.
Thankyou