4. New to everything

New to everything


  • Hi All - I have my CS degree and have been in the field for some time now, but not doing development. Development has always been my weakest point of CS (try not to laugh), so i thought this would be a good way to incentivise me to continue to learn.

    However as i started the tutorial and read some of the comments, tips and tricks...etc. I realized that I'm woefully in-equip to do some of the basics you lot are already doing.

    As someone who starting with essentially HS level coding experience and hasn't coded in oh 10 years or so, where do you suggest I start to be somewhat successful when I begin? Thank you very much in advance!


  • You might want to start with a few commands to get a basic bot, so you get a basic feeling how javascript works.

    Then you might want to learn more about javascript, blend it in with some things in the screeps api. That should be sufficient to build a basic bot.

    Reading a lot of stuff about javascript may help to get your javascript skills up, there are lots of articles on the internet, that's just a matter of getting the information from good sources like from mozilla/<insert whatever organization that cares about js development> developers zone or congresses, tutorials, workshops, or anything that is aimed for a beginning js developer.

    And don't be afraid to make mistakes, it certainly will happen. With good information and later by having some javascript experience, it will be easy many of those mistakes (though some mistakes will be understandable hard to avoid).

    And the most important part, have fun.


  • My JavaScript isn't great either. I've found that there are a lot of scripts in public Github repositories that offer a good starting point, or at least suggests techniques you may want to implement at a later time. Find some basic scripts and try to get them running in the simulator. Most of them require some adaptation, presumably due to breaking changes in the game over time.


  • This depends how far developed your knowledge is.

    non-screeps related:

    1) get a knowledge of the (programming/javascript) basics: The Mozilla Developer Network is a very comrehensive source for the whole range of programmers from beginners up to pros.
    2) get into Object oriented programming and javascript's prototypal nature
    3) read about the module programming pattern and node.js

    screeps related:

    1) read the introduction to understand how screeps works. ( especially try to graps the tick based architecture ).
    2) Have a look at the example code, THINK ABOUT IT, try to reproduce it, don't proceed to the next step until you got the concept.
    3) make extensive use of the screeps help section and especially the API Reference