Screeps Arena Preorder

artch

Will anything be open source like the private server for the mmo experience?

We will release tools to create your own arenas at some point. But a full-scale solution like "private arena server" is not planned.

How about third party clients?

It's unrealistic to expect real "clients", although some external utilities may appear and we welcome such activity.

Can we see replays of other players?

Yes, if they shared them with you.

will it be replay only, or can one connect to see "live" matches?

There will be a spectator mode, but technically you are watching a replay that is being generated ahead of time.

Will our steam identity / profile be hidden?

Yes, optionally.

Tigga

@artch said in Screeps Arena Preorder:

Base mechanics will be the same

Although there will be classic base building and resource management in many arenas

That's cool. I was a bit concerned that with two examples of <1000 ticks games (one in text, one in screenshot) bases wouldn't really have time to exist. Maybe these examples were shorter than expected. I imagine a lot of base building type stuff is compressed - eg. if you make everything 100x cheaper in "regular" screeps then 1000 ticks to build a base doesn't sound nearly so short.

artch

@tigga Some matches may be over in 100 ticks if you're lucky, some will last tens of thousands of ticks. It all depends on the arena and the tactics.

EternalDeiwos

@artch

Will anything be open source like the private server for the mmo experience?

We will release tools to create your own arenas at some point. But a full-scale solution like "private arena server" is not planned.

I would love to see private servers like there are for the persistent game; but most importantly will there be a way to run private tournaments?

I teach programming to students in a few different countries and I would love to see them competing against eachother (in a closed system).

I used to participate in similar tournaments (competetive TRON light-bikes bots) while I was a student and had so much fun.

thmsn

@artch What about code upload / push

I am fairly fond of using Visual Studio Code and rollup/webpack/grunt to push code to the official screeps server. Can we expect to be able to use an external IDE together with something that can push code to the arena challenge?

Smokeman

Wow. Ok. This is a great concept. You've clearly done your homework, here.

Sign me up!

But I noted that in one of the posts, the game is flagged as "Windows Only", but you indicated there would be a "Mac OS" version. I've never been a Mac fan, and dropped Windows completely when support for Windows 7 was stopped in January. I've used nothing but Ubuntu Linux since then. Will Linux be in there too?

RayderBlitz

@artch said in Screeps Arena Preorder:

Can we see replays of other players?

Yes, if they shared them with you.

Why only if shared? I believe it would be in - or at least not against - the spirit of the game to be able to look up others' fights and learn from them as well.

artch

@eternaldeiwos said in Screeps Arena Preorder:

will there be a way to run private tournaments?

Yes, this is something that will become possible when we release tools to create your own arenas. Not at the initial release though.

artch

@thmsn

What about code upload / push I am fairly fond of using Visual Studio Code and rollup/webpack/grunt to push code to the official screeps server. Can we expect to be able to use an external IDE together with something that can push code to the arena challenge?

Steam client will support local file system. Can't tell about push code API yet.

artch

@smokeman

I've used nothing but Ubuntu Linux since then. Will Linux be in there too?

Yes, Linux too. It will be fully cross-platform and based on Electron.

artch

@rayderblitz said in Screeps Arena Preorder:

Why only if shared? I believe it would be in - or at least not against - the spirit of the game to be able to look up others' fights and learn from them as well.

Fair point, probably we can add an option "Make replay public".

Conmiro

It would be so cool if they had a 2v2 mode where you and your teammate script their own creeps but can work together to build defenses and attack the enemies.

Jacudibu

Oh boy, I'm really looking forward to this!

See you in the Closed Alpha.

RayderBlitz

@artch said in Screeps Arena Preorder:

@rayderblitz said in Screeps Arena Preorder:

Why only if shared? I believe it would be in - or at least not against - the spirit of the game to be able to look up others' fights and learn from them as well.

Fair point, probably we can add an option "Make replay public".

Sounds good. Though I think it would be best to have them public by default and let people opt out of sharing their replays instead. I expect that most people wont care about their own replays being public, but will like others' being public and the few who care about their own not being public will look for the relevant options anyway.

The implementation specifics aside, I dont even think giving an option to hide replays is really going to add any value to the game. It is supposed to be a ranked game and the competitive scene (or any game with competitive aspects or potential, really) works better with publically accessible data as far as I've observed in various different settings (MOBAs, games like Rocket League, etc.).

hackgpp

This post is deleted!

JBYoshi

The alpha isn't currently available (the top post says "our current ETA for Closed Alpha is Q1 2021"), but you can preorder it from https://screeps.com/a/#!/arena if you want it at a discount.

Helam

@artch sounds great! I have some questions and feedback:

Is the matching system inspired by Gladiabots? Have you played that game? It has a similar system where you play against different versions of AI of other players. I believe they call it a “ghost” of another player. Each ghost has it’s own Elo rating. It seems to work well in that game and I think it will work well here too.

I would like to suggest another feature for Arena that is also in Gladiabots. It is a single-player campaign but the opponents in the campaign would be “ghosts” or “versions” of actual player code that was used in multiplayer (anonymously). (See https://wiki.gladiabots.com/index.php?title=Campaign For some small explanation). The code used in the campaign changes every season so it has replay-ability and adapts to strategies of the players over time.

This was very fun in Gladiabots and I believe it would have a big benefit for Screeps Arena because of this:

I know many people who have tried to play Screeps but want to be perfect or “ready” before they face other players. They spend too much time trying to prepare and sometimes quit before they ever even spawn into the public server.

If there was a campaign similar to Gladiabots where you can face real challenges and progress in difficulty I think it would help retain more players with different play styles and different development styles.

Just an idea, I thought it was brilliant when I learned how Gladiabots is doing this.

artch

@helam I never played Gladiabots (I don't like visual coding). I came up with this idea absolutely on my own during prototyping the game design. However, it seems obvious enough for coding games that I'm not surprised that other people are doing that. It will be interesting to see how it's going to play in the Screeps setting with real coding.

Frop

So excited for this!! I preordered closed alpha. I have played the regular screeps for maybe 160 hours (I know not long). But I want that faster response of attack / defend.

When I was in highschool, taking computer science (we learned Java), we use to play a game towards the end of the semester (not in Java) called robowar (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboWar). The entire class would program their bots and we’d all go at it. In that game there was limitations such as health / computing speed/attack and such for each tournament. You’d basically get points to choose from and so many points made different class robots. Could use energy for attack / shields. Had to predict shots or sense them coming and react which may consume all your energy to move. And then the teacher would give the Friday winner and next week we’d fight again watching it run on the projector.

Screeps is fun. Gets me back into programming. I may use something for google sheets in the real world but that about it. Been taking a class (on JavaScript) getting myself ready. :)) no open source code for me. It’s not winning if you didn’t make it imo.

artch

Take a look at how the game API will look in Arena:

import {Game, Spawn, MOVE} from '/game';
import {work} from './roles/work';

const myCreeps = [];
let mySpawn;

export function loop() {

    if(!mySpawn) {
        mySpawn = Game.getObjectsByPrototype(Spawn).find(i => !!i.my);
    }

    if(Game.time === 1) {
        let creep = mySpawn.createCreep([MOVE]);
        creep.role = 'worker';
        myCreeps.push(creep);
    }

    myCreeps.forEach(creep => {
        if(creep.role === 'worker') {
            work(creep);
        }
    });
}

Fully implemented ES6 modules with native folders support, guaranteed global during the entire match, globally persistent game objects, no Game.creeps or creep names since you can organize your own global data structures with them, no Memory since you can simply set properties on real live object instances. It will be fun!