3. need help learning the game

need help learning the game


  • Can't seem to get the hang of it. Would help if all of the documentation was in a single document. Current documentation is hard to follow; not easy to understand.


  • Did you play through the tutorial? Is it the game in particular you're having trouble with or JavaScript/programming in general? If it's the later the CodeAcadamy JavaScript tutorial recommended by the game's tutorial might be a good place to start. 

    API documentation is intended for reference rather than step by step learning so I can see why it'd seem a bit obtuse if you weren't used to reading them, but you'll appreciate the organization later.


  • Tried the first two parts of the tutorial, but explanations were lacking or nonexistent. Couldn't make any connections.


  •  @greycheek. I don't agree with you. Tutorial straight forward and even lucking of explanation. If you not getting tutorial better read basics of JS and OOP.


  • It should be pointed out that Screeps teaches you how Screeps works... _not_ how to code. This game will not be fun for you if this is your first programming experience... unless you have an unusual amount of diligence and interest on learning on your own. There is no handholding for how to code.

    Is the tutorial good at explaining the game, and how the coding fromework is set up? Yes. Is it good at helping you learn to write your own software? Not really.


  • I disagree. This sort of thing is right up my alley. I am an experienced programmer, though with little or no Javascript experience. Unless I'm missing something, the tutorial tells the player/coder what to do, but not how or why the individual statement/commands work.


  • Yes its showing you example what you can do with it. "how or why the individual statement/commands work." For that you have documentation like everywhere...


  • I think the documentation is actually quite good. Its pretty much straight forward OOP: You have a bunch of objects represented on a map, which can be interacted with via properties and methods. And those properties and methods are described in the API reference.

    If you are an experienced programmer you should know that this is how most API references work.

    I have been playing this game for 3 days straight now and I have gotten freaking n o w h e r e. I have written thousands of lines of code which were almost completely obsolete as soon as i entered the next "stage" of the game and everything went to sh*t within minutes. But thats how it is... and isn't it a w e s o m e?? 😉

    (BTW I am a CS graduate with multiple yrs of xp... so that is not the issue.) 


  • The tone of this thread so far is that there must be something wrong with me if I am having a hard time learning with this tutorial. I don't care whether the tutorial is considered a good one or not, I'm only interested in learning, and not interested in critiques either of myself or the instructions. Does anyone have a suggestion for a way to get through this? Again, although I am new to Javascript, I am not new to coding.


  • I haven't got around to watching them yet, but thPion has started a series of video tutorials over on youtube that might be of use.


  • "I don't care whether the tutorial is considered a good one or not, I'm only interested in learning, and not interested in critiques either of myself or the instructions."

    That is the tone, because that's your initial post. You didn't ask for assistance learning, you criticized the documentation. That naturally led to those of us who did fine with the documentation confused as to whether you had seen the same documentation we had or whether you were new to programming in general.

    If you are looking for alternate modes of assistance to the documentation and tutorial I highly recommend the Slack channel for Screeps, linked at the top of the discussion board pages. It's active at all times of day, and you can certainly find help there. There are also several different GitHub projects with the code of various players available for perusal; if you learn better by reading others' code that may work well for you.


  • So far so good, the YouTube videos are helping. Thanks.


  • I get that the game is a bit daunting to get started in. Here are some suggestions of different places you might use to help learn what you want about javascript to be a more effective player here.

    The in game documentation on their website is actually quite good, but only for relevant in game functions, not for javascript in general. I use it frequently myself, and consider it an invaluable tool for looking up any in game functionality.

    For javascript I personally use W3 schools ( http://www.w3schools.com/Js/ ). They are good at keeping it very simple, while at the same time making certain to provide you all the information you might need to actually write code.

    Alternatively the MSDN network ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript ) has a very professional and comprehensive javascript reference and tutorial. I personally prefer W3 schools, but have looked around a bit here as well and find it to be a very good javascript reference.

    Also there is a youtube series by th_pion ( https://www.youtube.com/user/thPionGaming ) which does a very good job of guiding you through the essentials you need to play effectively with good working code examples he puts together and debugs right there in the videos. For me, by the time I found these videos they were a bit too basic for my needs, although they were interesting to watch. I would certainly recommend them as a good place to get started if you are feeling lost.

    And I am sure there are other good references out there that I am just not thinking of currently. It really is just up to you to decide for yourself which resources are the most helpful to you.


  • hello, i,m new to this game and have actually no experience with coding. My question goes to the experienced coder and newbys who learned codeing by this game.

    I went through the tutorial and i am able to play this game quit good only by the tutorials. I bought some books " how to code in Javascript" . This are generally books about coding in JavaScript. I noticed for my self that i can Imaging what codes and words do in the game with the creeps but i haven't the absolutly clue what it does. So i still looking into the tutorials to handle the game.

    Do you think i should keep learning and study the documentation of the game and do coding JavaScript generally to by a good coder in Javascript?

    Or is it enough when i just study the books?

    PS: Sorry for bad English . I live in Germany and my friends speaks only Russian and German. Wenn es ein Deutscher liest wäre cool wenn er mir ein PM schicken würde. Würde mich gerne mit einem erfahrenen Coder unterhalten


  • I'm not sure if this game will teach you to be good JavaScript programmer, but for me it for sure thought me how to optimize my code (regardless of programming language).


  • I think people are finding it hard to help you because you aren't asking any specific questions.

    What is it you are struggling to do?

    Is it that you dont know what to do first? or are you having a problem with overall strategy or something specific in the API.

    Slack is probably a better place to ask these questions than here, there are normally lots of people who are more than happy to help out.

    1 Reply

  • @stevetrov i am not really struggling. I play this game and try to figure out lots of thing. Some of my though i could solve by self.

    I just asking gernerally how you guys learn to code or learn a language for programming. I mean what was your strategy to learn coding?

    i do lots of example from other people and books how to do this and that but it dont give you a complete understanding of the language/coding. In my opinion if i keep learning the API and how it should be writen in this game i could code in this game without reading tutorials anymore.