In Gem TD, the towers you get are completely random. Start by building 5 random gems near the track and picking a gem to keep for the round.
Instructions
Combining Gems
If you build two of the same gems in one round, you can combine them to get a gem one quality level higher than the component gems. If you manage to build four of the same gems, you can combine them to get a gem two quality levels higher.
The quality levels are: Chipped -> Flawed -> Normal -> Flawless -> Perfect -> Great
Gem Chances
At the beginning of the game, every gem you build will be a Chipped gem. By spending an increasing amount of minerals, you can increase this chance at your builder. Eventually you will even be able to build Perfect gems during the build phase!
Mazing
Mazing is highly advised to do well in this game. Start by building a spiral of gems around one of the waypoints, and replacing the mazing rocks close to the center to get more powerful gems near the center of the maze. Over time you can come up with your own methods of creating an effective maze. The key is to maximize the amount of time your high-level combination gems spend attacking the enemies.
Special Combinations
Every basic gem can be combined with two or three other specific gems to create a powerful combination gem. When you build all the parts of a combination, whether by chance during the build phase, or by saving each part one at a time during seperate waves, they will show a special animation and you can initiate the combine using any of the parts. The final gem will appear in place of the gem that used the "Special Combine" ability.
Game Modes
Gem TD has three game modes currently:
Classic Mode, where all players encounter each wave at the same time, and there are boss levels after waves 15, 30, and 50
Race Mode, where each player's spawns are independent, and it is a race to finish wave 50 in the shortest amount of time. There are no boss levels in Race Mode.
Survival Mode, where all gems do half damage. The challenge is to survive the longest!
Polish / Features
-48 Basic Gems, 8 types of gems each with different abilities (6 quality levels each)
-32 Combination Gems, each with its own model and abilities
-50 Waves of enemies each with its own separate model
-All custom missile arts and sounds
-5(!) different leaderboards to look at while your maze does its business
(lives and waves, player stats, combos & paths, tower damage, tower kills)
-Fully stocked tips menu/combo listing
Special Thanks
-Dustin for helping test and picking out some awesome models for the special towers
-JademusSreg for helping me test at all hours of the night even though he claims to hate all TDs (hes even making one too! Who would have known?)
This map is currently published on NA under the Tower Defense category
Loved GemTD in WC3, one of my favourite custom maps and have been waiting for it to make an SC2 appearance! My goal has been to defeat the Extreme damage test, which i have done and found it a fun challenge! It looks a little dead here so i just came to give some feedback. Not the most neat format, sorry.
Great update to the terrain and also a speedy fix on that annoying 'make-a-great-gem-and-your-waves-stop-spawning' bug. Also killing the Thor with my Red Facet and other air towers was very fun while it lasted but was too imbalanced.
No idea whether it is intended or not but it appears as though there is a slow speed stacking effect from the Yellow Sapphire/Silver and Uranium.
Been getting Lucky China Jade by about level 18 or 19 (very easy) in my build and the 1% chance mineral return pays massive dividends throughout the whole game. Borderline required/imbalanced. You can dump so much money into maxed lucky chance and still afford all upgrades on towers towards the end. I think i did lucky chance every level from 31-48. Also, when you have the Jade even before level 30, it hits the Thor A LOT and gives quite a few minerals. I dont think you should get a return from the Thor. It is strangely not OP to just stack the Lucky China Jade (3-4) though because if you do, you do almost no damage to the final damage test because you wasted so many rounds of gems on this tower.
I tried the game with and without increasing the gem chance. Increasing the gem chance was better every time. I like that you cannot be carried by massing beginning/starter tower combines and you need the late game combines to beat the game.
Not sure about the addition of the zones. Great that it can be turned on or off but unsure whether turning it on gives you any advantage or an increase in difficulty. Simply designed to give people an option to not build the same generic optimised maze every time?
Took a few tries to understand the best way to battle this map which i liked. The difficulties seem very spot-on. Easy is... easy. Hard requires a good maze and extreme requires a good maze, good towers and a little luck. The problem was once you understand the basics; maze to cut every second waypoint, spend all minerals on gem chance, dont upgrade towers until very late and keeping correct gems it feels like there is only one way to win. Maybe this is what the zones feature is for. For instance, every AoE tower is useless. A good maze negates any need for AoE towers to be required and they are useless on the Rerun and final Damage Tests so why get them? Even with the worst of gems on any ground level monsters dont even make it halfway through the maze. Air is the only level you can actually leak on and having a spash slow and high dps single target tower (facet) does the job. Leaking 10 air at 5% vs Leaking 3 air at 100%. Ground is way too easy and makes you want to fall asleep while you kill it. Air feels VERY balanced. If i miss a tower, an upgrade or a little bad luck you leak 3-4 monters on air. I suggest possibly adding more monsters per wave on Extreme settings or even just increasing numbers per level to give AoE towers some need. Another suggestion is to have ground units gain movement speed at higher levels to speed the game up since as discussed, ground is not really a challenge.
Making Extreme only have 1 life as in the original could be very fun. I have defeated Extreme lvl 50 with maximum lives in current version but it severely hampers your ability to kill the Damage Test because the key to doing that was actually setting yourself up to leak at the expense of getting faster gem chance. This was a fun balance to play with.
The main key with tower optimisation was the combination of the Black Opal (+40% dmg bonus) and the the Perfect or Great Opal (+35-50% haste). The difference between having them and not having them is very large and if you combine them with multiple crit multiplier towers such as Pink Diamond/Gold then the damage is absolutely insane. Do these buffs apply to the Ability/AoE towers?
Finally, the damage test is a fun goal to try and beat and is a good challenge although now that i've done it, it would be fun to have a real damage test. Virtually unkillable and be able to set high scores without limit. This would only be for Extreme with Easy-Hard capped at 2.5M. I will leave a screenshot of the kill. He died with still another 3 runs to go through the middle which would probably be another 1.5-2M damage. Increasing the cap to 5M could be a massive challenge even :)
Are u the creator of the WC3 Gem?
Imo its the best TD ever! Dota and Gem TD are the last reasons to play WC3 for me. The new help with the recipes is epic! Exact whats the map needed all the long time! I love it! Played it 4-5 times now. (barely over1.000.000Dmg on hard :D )
Thank you so much!
ok, now feedback:
bug:
-When u have a gem what u need to combine in the 5 u can choose from, it shows me it yellow as if i would have it builded anywhere. So sometimes u think u have 1 allready and pick the next 1 to it, but then u realize u just had it to choose. This faked me now several times!
-the rangecircle for the towerrange didnt show the exact range for many towers.
my wish:
-pls add a little texttag over the 5 gems to choose wich says how often u have this gem allready. This would make it easier to choose faster, just by pick the 1 you dont have allready.
-pls add more features to make combining easier. Maybe an color in the window top left for gems that mean: "this gem can be combined by downgrade"
or maybe another dialog with an overview of all ur gems and possible combinations.
-and pls add an countdown for the last seconds before u get a random gem. any audio peeping the last 5 seconds
i hate it when i cant decide between a perfekt aqua and a perfekt topaz, waited to long and then randomed the flawed ruby ^^
-I wish u work on the slates right now :)
-pls dont forgett us ppl on EU to get always a fresh updated map! I can offer u my mapspace if u need someone to publish it.
question:
-Do the burning damage stack? When u have 2 gem with dmg per second in aoe close together? The firerubys or a 238 near to a 235. I checked the the buffs in UI multiple Times now but i never saw a 238 Damagebuff when the Unit allready has a 235 on it as example.
-How much percent gives the extra chance for perfect?
at least: another big thank you for the map! Its just unbelievable how gameplay feels the same way like the WC3 Gem! Just 10 times better!
more feedback sure soon!
hello super fan of your SC2 gem tower map however I do have one little problem
I play on the NA Server and I noticed some of the new changes some I really like and one I don't.
The one I don't like is the New addition of the red line from the final point the waves have to go to.
The aim of the game is to make a maze and defeat the waves however were not able to complete the mazes now with the final check point in other words you have now made that point useless, if the line isn't removed you may as well remove that point all together.
Just my suggestion I love this game but I think the red line ruins the possibilities to kill the final boss on say extreme or even hard.
@arieswind: Go
hello super fan of your SC2 gem tower map however I do have one little problem
I play on the NA Server and I noticed some of the new changes some I really like and one I don't.
The one I don't like is the New addition of the red line from the final point the waves have to go to.
The aim of the game is to make a maze and defeat the waves however were not able to complete the mazes now with the final check point in other words you have now made that point useless, if the line isn't removed you may as well remove that point all together.
Just my suggestion I love this game but I think the red line ruins the possibilities to kill the final boss on say extreme or even hard.
congratulations on making it first page, even first map overall for NA looked like it had 20,000 hours on it yesterday, think your the first person in the sc2maspter community 2 get their map first in popularity :)
1. Add slates, this was one of my favorite parts of the wc3 version.
2. The latest version has unbuildable terrain from the last waypoint before the finish line, I think this takes away from many mazing options and I did not like that change.
3. Jade kinds sucks right now, I feel like to justify the cost this needs a bit of a buff.
That is it for now, Great work on the map, the popularity of it on Bnet says it all.
If you guys want any kind of timely response, post on the new map site: http://gemtd.net/ I only checked this thread on a whim... The last time i read this was like a week ago.
Hi. I have a question: do we get more xp if we are playing on a higher difficult? Or do we get the same xp one very difficutl (easy = hard)?
PS: Nice map ;) Im happy to see some old wc3 maps in sc2, they are always good. The sc2 maps are far away from the wc3 maps, but this is the right step. One day... one day sc2 maps will be good as wc3 maps.
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Gem Tower Defense
In Gem TD, the towers you get are completely random. Start by building 5 random gems near the track and picking a gem to keep for the round.
Instructions
Combining Gems
If you build two of the same gems in one round, you can combine them to get a gem one quality level higher than the component gems. If you manage to build four of the same gems, you can combine them to get a gem two quality levels higher.
The quality levels are: Chipped -> Flawed -> Normal -> Flawless -> Perfect -> Great
Gem Chances
At the beginning of the game, every gem you build will be a Chipped gem. By spending an increasing amount of minerals, you can increase this chance at your builder. Eventually you will even be able to build Perfect gems during the build phase!
Mazing
Mazing is highly advised to do well in this game. Start by building a spiral of gems around one of the waypoints, and replacing the mazing rocks close to the center to get more powerful gems near the center of the maze. Over time you can come up with your own methods of creating an effective maze. The key is to maximize the amount of time your high-level combination gems spend attacking the enemies.
Special Combinations
Every basic gem can be combined with two or three other specific gems to create a powerful combination gem. When you build all the parts of a combination, whether by chance during the build phase, or by saving each part one at a time during seperate waves, they will show a special animation and you can initiate the combine using any of the parts. The final gem will appear in place of the gem that used the "Special Combine" ability.
Game Modes
Gem TD has three game modes currently:
Classic Mode, where all players encounter each wave at the same time, and there are boss levels after waves 15, 30, and 50
Race Mode, where each player's spawns are independent, and it is a race to finish wave 50 in the shortest amount of time. There are no boss levels in Race Mode.
Survival Mode, where all gems do half damage. The challenge is to survive the longest!
Polish / Features
-48 Basic Gems, 8 types of gems each with different abilities (6 quality levels each)
-32 Combination Gems, each with its own model and abilities
-50 Waves of enemies each with its own separate model
-All custom missile arts and sounds
-5(!) different leaderboards to look at while your maze does its business
(lives and waves, player stats, combos & paths, tower damage, tower kills)
-Fully stocked tips menu/combo listing
Special Thanks
-Dustin for helping test and picking out some awesome models for the special towers
-JademusSreg for helping me test at all hours of the night even though he claims to hate all TDs (hes even making one too! Who would have known?)
This map is currently published on NA under the Tower Defense category
@arieswind: Go
This map is a gem in the making. (No pun intended!)
(Nunu)
@Enexy: Go
Don't even try and tell me that wasn't intentional
@arieswind: Go
Sounds cool, but I think you have your gem levels off:
Chipped -> Flawed -> Normal -> Flawless -> Perfect -> Great
Should be:
Chipped -> Flawed -> Normal -> Great -> Flawless -> Perfect
@SkrowFunk: Go
Pretty sure I know how my own map goes, :)
Loved GemTD in WC3, one of my favourite custom maps and have been waiting for it to make an SC2 appearance! My goal has been to defeat the Extreme damage test, which i have done and found it a fun challenge! It looks a little dead here so i just came to give some feedback. Not the most neat format, sorry.
Great update to the terrain and also a speedy fix on that annoying 'make-a-great-gem-and-your-waves-stop-spawning' bug. Also killing the Thor with my Red Facet and other air towers was very fun while it lasted but was too imbalanced.
No idea whether it is intended or not but it appears as though there is a slow speed stacking effect from the Yellow Sapphire/Silver and Uranium.
Been getting Lucky China Jade by about level 18 or 19 (very easy) in my build and the 1% chance mineral return pays massive dividends throughout the whole game. Borderline required/imbalanced. You can dump so much money into maxed lucky chance and still afford all upgrades on towers towards the end. I think i did lucky chance every level from 31-48. Also, when you have the Jade even before level 30, it hits the Thor A LOT and gives quite a few minerals. I dont think you should get a return from the Thor. It is strangely not OP to just stack the Lucky China Jade (3-4) though because if you do, you do almost no damage to the final damage test because you wasted so many rounds of gems on this tower.
I tried the game with and without increasing the gem chance. Increasing the gem chance was better every time. I like that you cannot be carried by massing beginning/starter tower combines and you need the late game combines to beat the game.
Not sure about the addition of the zones. Great that it can be turned on or off but unsure whether turning it on gives you any advantage or an increase in difficulty. Simply designed to give people an option to not build the same generic optimised maze every time?
Took a few tries to understand the best way to battle this map which i liked. The difficulties seem very spot-on. Easy is... easy. Hard requires a good maze and extreme requires a good maze, good towers and a little luck. The problem was once you understand the basics; maze to cut every second waypoint, spend all minerals on gem chance, dont upgrade towers until very late and keeping correct gems it feels like there is only one way to win. Maybe this is what the zones feature is for. For instance, every AoE tower is useless. A good maze negates any need for AoE towers to be required and they are useless on the Rerun and final Damage Tests so why get them? Even with the worst of gems on any ground level monsters dont even make it halfway through the maze. Air is the only level you can actually leak on and having a spash slow and high dps single target tower (facet) does the job. Leaking 10 air at 5% vs Leaking 3 air at 100%. Ground is way too easy and makes you want to fall asleep while you kill it. Air feels VERY balanced. If i miss a tower, an upgrade or a little bad luck you leak 3-4 monters on air. I suggest possibly adding more monsters per wave on Extreme settings or even just increasing numbers per level to give AoE towers some need. Another suggestion is to have ground units gain movement speed at higher levels to speed the game up since as discussed, ground is not really a challenge.
Making Extreme only have 1 life as in the original could be very fun. I have defeated Extreme lvl 50 with maximum lives in current version but it severely hampers your ability to kill the Damage Test because the key to doing that was actually setting yourself up to leak at the expense of getting faster gem chance. This was a fun balance to play with.
The main key with tower optimisation was the combination of the Black Opal (+40% dmg bonus) and the the Perfect or Great Opal (+35-50% haste). The difference between having them and not having them is very large and if you combine them with multiple crit multiplier towers such as Pink Diamond/Gold then the damage is absolutely insane. Do these buffs apply to the Ability/AoE towers?
Finally, the damage test is a fun goal to try and beat and is a good challenge although now that i've done it, it would be fun to have a real damage test. Virtually unkillable and be able to set high scores without limit. This would only be for Extreme with Easy-Hard capped at 2.5M. I will leave a screenshot of the kill. He died with still another 3 runs to go through the middle which would probably be another 1.5-2M damage. Increasing the cap to 5M could be a massive challenge even :)
http://i51.tinypic.com/1zbqhwi.jpg
The time is so large because i went afk between waves (zzz ground levels)
Are u the creator of the WC3 Gem? Imo its the best TD ever! Dota and Gem TD are the last reasons to play WC3 for me. The new help with the recipes is epic! Exact whats the map needed all the long time! I love it! Played it 4-5 times now. (barely over1.000.000Dmg on hard :D ) Thank you so much!
ok, now feedback:
bug:
-When u have a gem what u need to combine in the 5 u can choose from, it shows me it yellow as if i would have it builded anywhere. So sometimes u think u have 1 allready and pick the next 1 to it, but then u realize u just had it to choose. This faked me now several times!
-the rangecircle for the towerrange didnt show the exact range for many towers.
my wish:
-pls add a little texttag over the 5 gems to choose wich says how often u have this gem allready. This would make it easier to choose faster, just by pick the 1 you dont have allready.
-pls add more features to make combining easier. Maybe an color in the window top left for gems that mean: "this gem can be combined by downgrade" or maybe another dialog with an overview of all ur gems and possible combinations.
-and pls add an countdown for the last seconds before u get a random gem. any audio peeping the last 5 seconds i hate it when i cant decide between a perfekt aqua and a perfekt topaz, waited to long and then randomed the flawed ruby ^^
-I wish u work on the slates right now :)
-pls dont forgett us ppl on EU to get always a fresh updated map! I can offer u my mapspace if u need someone to publish it.
question:
-Do the burning damage stack? When u have 2 gem with dmg per second in aoe close together? The firerubys or a 238 near to a 235. I checked the the buffs in UI multiple Times now but i never saw a 238 Damagebuff when the Unit allready has a 235 on it as example.
-How much percent gives the extra chance for perfect?
I pleased the community to make this map long time ago! check this thread :D : http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/player-zone/map-suggestions-requests/23992-gem-td-and-hubies-temple/
at least: another big thank you for the map! Its just unbelievable how gameplay feels the same way like the WC3 Gem! Just 10 times better! more feedback sure soon!
Yes it stacks, on the enemy, you'll see 2 fire aura debuffs.
hello super fan of your SC2 gem tower map however I do have one little problem
I play on the NA Server and I noticed some of the new changes some I really like and one I don't.
The one I don't like is the New addition of the red line from the final point the waves have to go to.
The aim of the game is to make a maze and defeat the waves however were not able to complete the mazes now with the final check point in other words you have now made that point useless, if the line isn't removed you may as well remove that point all together.
Just my suggestion I love this game but I think the red line ruins the possibilities to kill the final boss on say extreme or even hard.
Thank you for taking the time to read this
@arieswind: Go hello super fan of your SC2 gem tower map however I do have one little problem
I play on the NA Server and I noticed some of the new changes some I really like and one I don't.
The one I don't like is the New addition of the red line from the final point the waves have to go to.
The aim of the game is to make a maze and defeat the waves however were not able to complete the mazes now with the final check point in other words you have now made that point useless, if the line isn't removed you may as well remove that point all together.
Just my suggestion I love this game but I think the red line ruins the possibilities to kill the final boss on say extreme or even hard.
Thank you for taking the time to read this
congratulations on making it first page, even first map overall for NA looked like it had 20,000 hours on it yesterday, think your the first person in the sc2maspter community 2 get their map first in popularity :)
@arieswind: Go
The common definition of perfect is something that could not possibly get better...
@PirateArcade | I make games | Ask me things on Discord
@greythepirate: Go
Well, blizzard has radiant after perfect in diablo 3. Basically meaning that it's beyond perfect.
@yukaboy: Go
Radiant's a much better word than "great"
@PirateArcade | I make games | Ask me things on Discord
Perfect means without fault. It has nothing to do with "better". I could have a perfect diamond but arguably a bigger perfect diamond would be better.
I have a couple suggestions and comments.
1. Add slates, this was one of my favorite parts of the wc3 version. 2. The latest version has unbuildable terrain from the last waypoint before the finish line, I think this takes away from many mazing options and I did not like that change. 3. Jade kinds sucks right now, I feel like to justify the cost this needs a bit of a buff.
That is it for now, Great work on the map, the popularity of it on Bnet says it all.
If you guys want any kind of timely response, post on the new map site: http://gemtd.net/ I only checked this thread on a whim... The last time i read this was like a week ago.
Can i reset my stats?
Its a nice game. Good job!
I dont like that you can build against the wall though. Makes some certain building patters seem superior to any other.
Hi. I have a question: do we get more xp if we are playing on a higher difficult? Or do we get the same xp one very difficutl (easy = hard)?
PS: Nice map ;) Im happy to see some old wc3 maps in sc2, they are always good. The sc2 maps are far away from the wc3 maps, but this is the right step. One day... one day sc2 maps will be good as wc3 maps.