@mr_zgot

We are going to test this new Discord server and its custom functionality with a limited number of early adopters during some short period of time, and then launch it for public in a week or so.

Hello everyone! We are happy to announce that we are going to migrate our official chat platform from Slack to Discord!

This is a quite big change for everyone, both community and us, and we want to explain the reasons behind this.

Discord is community oriented. After all these years with Slack we have clearly seen that communities are not their priority. Slack is a business app for teams, and it severely lacks many features like persistent chat history or moderation tools. Discord, in contrast, is designed from scratch for communities. They even have the Partner Program for best communities, and we hope to achieve this level with your support.

Screeps franchise now consists of two games. Arena is under active development right now, and this will be the second game in our franchise. However, we still want to have one community of Screeps players that includes both games. A new player should become a part of this community whatever game they play, and interact with players from the other game. And dedicating just one channel for Arena is not very fair, we love this game very much and want to give more living space to it. Discord has many features to create a complex and powerful structure and navigate users to correct places that would allow to cover both games and not split the community into two parts.

Discord has in-game integration features. With the Rich Presence API it is possible to show your in-game status in Discord. It could show what game you are playing and what part of the game is active right now (for example, which arena). It also allows to create interactive features such as share, invite, or observe games. With Arena all these features will be in high demand and seem perfectly logical, and Slack does not support any of it.

UPD The permanent invitation link to the Discord server: https://discord.gg/RjSS5fQuFx

Welcome!

Closed Alpha has started!

https://screeps.com/forum/topic/3173/arena-closed-alpha-has-started

We have just launched the Closed Alpha stage of the Screeps Arena project! All Closed Alpha owners should be able to download the game and start playing immediately. There is a private discussion forum on Steam aimed especially at the game owners where you can participate. If you are an owner, start with reading this post:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1137320/discussions/2/3132793555949735254/

If you are not, you can join our Closed Alpha by using Access Keys. Welcome!

We're almost done with the playable alpha of Screeps Arena. More news soon!

As much as that saddens me, I must admit we have failed our timeframe Q1 2021 for alpha. Sorry folks. But we are working really hard on this. We have been doing good progress on every aspect of the development: UI/UX design, frontend, backend, and game engine. We are doing our best to show you the first playable prototype as soon as it's ready.

Here is just a video of a real battle on a very simple arena 13 vs 13 creeps. The blue player wins in 467 ticks. This game has been processed in 13.2 seconds, it gives us 35 ticks per second here.

Season #2 spawning starts on February 15. The season start is March 1. Get prepared!

We will announce detailed rules and release the documentation on February 15.

@w4rl0ck No ETA yet. We are doing our best!

@w4rl0ck You can do non-rating games, but you cannot choose opponents unless it's your friend that accepts an invitation.

@tehfiend No, I don't think so. We would like to have real gaming experience instead of test-driven development and hardcoding against specific conditions and opponents. You will be able to repeat the previous game, but only once.