Posts made by Smokeman

Oh. And as long as I'm here. I like the range of images. Sure, I toss the goofy "stock line art" into the recycle bin, but what else is it for? The way I see it, Screeps is a "generic image game" with round and square shapes instead of styled, rendered images. It's very "indie" in that respect and i like that style. As such, there are no real "Screepsy" images TO put in there.

But a range of images like you are putting in will produce ones that appeal to people. For example, I really like the circular "Babylon ocean clock face" looking graffiti I have in that room. No way it's "Screepsy" at all, but it lends an artistic flair to the room. At least, in my opinion. And I'm the one that has to look at it.

So that part is fine.

An issue I'm having is that I really dislike the "Lighting effects" in the room, so I have them disabled and the "animated swamps" (Which look like toxic waste) turned off. I have no idea if I'm the lone weirdo for doing that, but it is what it is.

Anyway, the issue is this makes the wall and floor textures WAY too light! I keep looking for the rare feature to be able to set that, but all I seem to get is "Stroke brightness" which does very little.

If you could push the brightness control for W and F decorations to a lower rarity, that would make a LOT more of the textures usable.

Added images: Here is what a typical texture looks like in one of my room:

But THIS is what it looks like in the preview:

It looks much darker because the preview defaults to the "normal" lighting. This gives a false sense of the actual appearance of the image on an actual room if you're not using the "normal" setting.

RE: EU Lootbox legality.

I think the pat answer here is "Let the store handle it" as in be ready to remove pixels from the store in contested countries, like Belgium and the Netherlands.

The other issue is circuitous RMT paths, like Steam Dollars and Credits. Since those cannot be limited by region (Well, possibly with the Steam Dollars...) the fallback position is remove pixels as trade able through those currencies. Pixels on Steam are problematic anyway, and removing Pixels from the in game market also works fine.

By any measure, allowing direct account to account trades should always be a no go zone.

This leaves selling CPU Unlocks and the Season access tokens directly for Credits. I think you'll need to add that to stop inflation. However, use a modification of Blizzard's system... two token types for CPU unlocks, one sold in the cash shop that can be transferred or used as a CPU unlock, and one sold for Credits, that can ONLY be used as a CPU unlock.

Gadjung: Pixels for Credits is not a sink. Those credits stay in the player realm. To be a sink, the Credits must be destroyed when the transaction takes place.

The body parts aren't "shot off" they're just damaged into an unusable condition. You still have to drag the damaged parts around.

This is evidenced by the fact that you can just fix them into full recovery. If they were literally gone, they would still be gone.

But I expect the real reason is to just prevent you from slapping a M as the last part for a perpetual, max speed "Get out of Dodge" mode after the rest is too damaged to be used. Instead, that creep, even if any of the final part is partially intact, will only be able to slowly drag itself to freedom. Or perish in the attempt.

@nobodysnightmare That's the time until your CPU fullUnlock RETURNS after it lapses. It's undefined if you either have time, or are subbed.

Ok. I got my free 2000 pixels. I noted my 2 sub tokens are gone, replaced with 120 mini-tokens. There are 2 new methods in Game, "Game.cpu.unlock()" and "Game.cpu.generatePixel()."

Ok, that's self explanatory. As a grandfathered in Steam sub user, I still have an active sub... it will auto-renew on 8-2-2020 if I do nothing. Ok. Fine. My plan was to use one of my tokens before then, extending it to 10-2, then again before that ran out.

All very fine and good. Here's my problem:

I can't tell what my sub status is from the API. Ok... This isn't the worst thing, I could just automatically pop a mini-token once every 24 hours, incrementally extending it even though the cut off is still over a month away, or I could start doing that at a point closer to the date.

But I have no apparent way to determine what the remaining time is. I can't send myself a message reminding myself to get more time, or that I'm going to run out tomorrow. I don't want to just dump the mini-tokens in, I want to "Ride the buffer" of whatever duration I set, like (If time left < 1 month... pop token.)

@artch

"New account registration is disabled on the Public Test Realm server."

It's going to be difficult to do that. And even then, I would technically have 2 accounts.

How do I get onto the PTR to try it? It says "New accounts are blocked" but that couldn't be literal. I clicked the activate button it said to click, and entered credentials through steam... but was told my account is not synced with PTR.

Deft:

There IS a way to get the exact decoration you want. You wait for it to be available on the steam market and buy it. Obviously, you can't do that on the PTR.

If this was a thing you actually needed to play the game, I would be aghast at this. But for a potentially rare vanity plate? This is fine and workable.

This mechanic pipes cash flow into Screeps by creating a in-game pipe of (for example.) "farm pixels with CPU" => "Sell rares on Steam" => "Buy CPU tokens on Steam" => "Sell token for credits in game."

What it doesn't address is the hyperinflation the injection of credits through other sources with no sink is causing. At some point, they will need to sell the same resources directly for credits in game, destroying the credits in the process.

That would work like this: "Have lots of extra Credits" => "Buy CPU tokens with credits at current rate." OR "Pixelate decorations with Credits at a calculated rate based on the current CPU token price." Obviously, you would never be able to buy a specific decoration that way, that's reserved for the steam market.

This, of course, dilutes the CPU token sales on the official store, which is why it is important to have a really good handle on the exact flow of CPU tokens. "Extra" tokens injected into the Steam market dilutes the price everywhere. It's like a leak in a supply chain.

All right, so you get a random decoration constrained by type and theme (color). Then, you can be activate and deactivate it at will, either way it stays in your account.

You can't trade these on the in-game market. And that's good, in that it would completely pollute the RESOURCE_CONSTANT name space.

But they can be transferred to the steam market, which allows trafficking in rare decorations or gambling on creating decorations that would have value to collectors.

And... for people like me, that really don't have much interest in decorating their room, but take pride in not senselessly using up their 'bucket' "Just because it's there." There is a bucket to pixel conversion as a way to engage in that market as well.

All in all, Nice! I think you've nailed all the bases here.

The default for the timer is 24 hours. I've seen it in the documentation? But I can't find it at the moment.

you can respawn into a different room without that penalty, though.

I just have a creep strap the building up with C4, then film it as it slow-mo walks away pushing the button on the detonator, Micheal Bay style.

It's too much work to dismantle your own buildings. That's more of an attack move to destroy enemy ramparts and constructed walls.

Deft, I expect that there is literally only one of them, with one storage. Just with 2 or 3 .pos objects that you can interact from. Since a creep can issue only one intent, it's safe from 'accidentally' accessing both pos points, and the contents can only be withdrawn the next tick.

Oh! Oh! Or there are 2 or 3, but they simply share the same store object. Yeah, that's better. The others are just dummies for the UI. and pos point.

Doh! I didn't even notice it didn't have a title. Why would I even be able to make a topic without a title?

As to the interface's usefulness... it serves as a useful way to test certain levels of combat code, a purpose that would be better served with creating squads all at once.

As to it's potential exploits... it already won't let you add the invaders when there are other hostiles in the room. That seems sufficient.

"Create Invader" with API call.

There's an invader test system in the client. It tells the server to create a fake invader (You can just poof it be selecting it, and it drops no loot, etc.) It's just for testing.

But creating a SQUAD of them is a pain in the butt. So if you want to test something well above the scale of a couple invaders, it's difficult.

Add an API call for it. You can issue it several times if need be, in case it needs to be only one new one per tick or something... simply by looping once through your routine per tick. At the same time, you can be programatically keeping your towers from doing anything until it's done for maximum effect.

Better yet, use the same code the server uses to gen up a squad, just tell it the parameters. They'll still be test dummies, of course, subject to the same rules as the ones the UI makes.

Actually, you need to adjust the cost of the plains and swamps. They're the problem. They default to 1 and 5, which leaves no room for the roads to be.

WHY are the defaults for plains and swamps set at 1 and 5? Where are the roads going to be?

{ignoreCreeps:true,plainCost:2,swampCost:10,range:range} is what I am using for the default options (unless the creep puts in it's own special stuff, all it needs supply is the range.)

Well. On one hand, I would like to see a filter to only save level 8 RCL spawns as they're destroyed, to prevent people from just seal clubbing to get on the top list...

But on the other hand, I wouldn't want to infringe on the influx of people joining the seal clubber clubbing club.

So... I like it the way it is.

Try it on one of your rooms. I don't think it works on other people's rooms.

One weird snafu I ran into:

UH is backwards. All of the rest of the [U,L,Z,K] [O,H] combinations are in that order, the [O,H] mineral always goes in the second lab.

I also had G backwards, but that's a 50/50 shot... there is no way to determine which was "supposed" to be first or second, UL or ZK. In hindsight, sure... because that's the order they're just "usually in."

At issue appears the way the lab reactions are defined. When working out my lab system, I had to redefine the data structures as they were just not useful for the purpose of building compounds, I needed them to be in a 3 deep array, like "['KO'],['K'],['O']" where index 0 of the array is what I'm making.

So my database looks like: ... ['UH','H','U'],['UO','U','O'], ... etc. Only the UH one is backwards like that.

Oh, I did not touch this in PTR, so I'm coming in cold in trying to implement it into my lab production system.

That was easy! It's literally exactly like the "runReaction" method, but backwards. All I had to do set a "shatter" state instead of a "production" state and change the rules (production on not enough, shatter on too much) and reverse the material flow.

Naturally, I use the "ring of labs" layout, with the output labs in a ring around the 2 input labs, so I can run gang production/shatter. Reversing the reaction uses the exact same layout, but with the input / output reversed.

Nicely done, Goggles.