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Screeps – the world's first MMO sandbox strategy game for programmers
- jumasheff 12y agoAny plans to make this game Clash-of-Clanish? Groups vs Grpups, group Git etc.
- corv 12y agoI can't wait to try this!
- Slix 12y agoLooks really interesting. Will this be instant access, or will there be some sort of invite phase?
- artchiv 12y agoYes, Early Preview stage. Get back on November 20, there will be more info then.
- dmak 12y agoAnd history was changed forever, this was the beginning of a new era where wars between countries were fought over Screeps.
- curiousHacker 12y agoProxy wars..
- mproud 12y agoYou can tell it’s a strategy game created by [only] programmers — the graphics look like absolute ass.
- artchiv 12y agoSure it is. Graphics in chess are not that good also.
- curiousHacker 12y agoI think paid add-ons, visualizations, could be a thing.
- eidyia 12y agodude I ran a decryption algorithm in some of your comments in the page and the result is "moneymoneymoneymoney", you remind me of donald duck's eyes when they turned into dollar signs. it seems you chose the wrong username you should replace curious with greedy or something p.s. to the devs, cant wait to try this!
- hunnypot 12y agoAnd there you go again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbbuaIA3Ds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbbuaIA3Ds
- cooper12 12y agoJust because it doesn't look like what you'd expect a game to look like, doesn't mean it's bad. It has clearly defined shapes, a consistent design, and flat colors (as opposed to ugly textures IMO). I think it looks wonderful. Easy on the eyes and fits in with the theme of a game that uses a terminal as it's main interface.
- bennetthi 12y agoReally cool idea.
- WildUtah 12y agoI miss Ants from ants.aichallenge.org. That was a game.
- jrometty 12y agoI support this wholeheartedly. I have wanted to mix my love for starcraft/AOEII with coding, and no games have done it to my satisfaction. Here are some other ones that didn't quite hook me. http://www.javascriptbattle.com http://www.javascriptbattle.com http://codecombat.com http://codecombat.com http://fightcodegame.com http://fightcodegame.com
- thaumaturgy 12y agoNice choice of music for the video. :-) This looks great. Will there be a pre-launch documentation release? If I were going to mess around with it, it'd be nice to be able to think about it for a day or two.
- jmckib 12y agoAwesome, this looks like it might be more fun than codecombat, which didn't hold my interest for long. I hope coffeescript gets added in eventually.
- joshu 12y agoSomething I have wanted for quite a while.
- jamesaguilar 12y agoIt will be interesting to see how it works. The biggest issue I can foresee is that a program doesn't have a limit on how much it can manage, given the computation time. If one AI is even a little better than the next best, it could quickly dominate the entire field without some limitations on growth. Something like warcraft 3's upkeep system would be good for ensuring that the game doesn't become boring even if one player is clearly better than the rest.
- artchiv 12y agoEvery player will have CPU limit on how much time his script can use in milliseconds. So that's the challenge to make the AI strong and not exceed the resources.
- curiousHacker 12y agoEww. Can we pay cash or btc to buy CPU time upgrades?
- moab 12y agoWhat? I hope you're being ironic, because if you're not you seriously don't understand the point of bot-based strategy games: https://www.battlecode.org/info/ https://www.battlecode.org/info/ Having one person being able to pay for more cycles is the textbook definition of unfair : it restricts the non-paying player to a subset of optimized searches, while the paying player can ultimately get an edge because of his additional compute.
- curiousHacker 12y agoYes, I am aware of those ideas.
- pjc50 12y agoPay-to-win usually destroys a game fairly quickly.
- nicklovescode 12y agoWould love additional info on gameplay. Is it RTS style where you see all your creeps and start coding on the spot? Or is it you write a more general algorithm and see how everything goes?
- artchiv 12y agoThink of it as Starcraft with code editor panel in the bottom. Your script controls everything, but you can still click at your creeps to see their info and memory.
- curiousHacker 12y agoThis would be an amazing way to indulge my programming fascination while also honoring my financial commitment to stick with efforts that could make a direct $MM impact on P&L. Wait, I can program and do that? Where do I sign up? Hi, devs! Feature request: that you can play the game without having to enter code; that you can actually point and drag and click. I hope that "You can master basics without knowing JavaScript" means that there is a traditional RTS style mousey interface
- artchiv 12y agoIt doesn't make much sense, you really will not be able to control all those hundreds of creeps on your own 24/7 :)
- curiousHacker 12y agoI think that I would want to develop an intuition. I also definitely want to be able to check in on my mobile phone somehow.
- PhasmaFelis 12y agoIt doesn't have to be all one or the other. It would be neat to be able to guide individuals or small groups while allowing the bulk of your forces to do their own thing.
- artchiv 12y agoWell, it is possible. You can place flags at the game field and program your creeps to move to them by a simple command.
- christiangenco 12y agoAhh yes! I've been waiting for something like this since getting hooked on Starcraft and wishing I could dip into the worker's AI so it would run away if getting attacked - would save so much brain CPU and make the game much more high level (as it stands, Starcraft is really just a game about being able to split your attention on a series of rote tasks while still keeping your reaction time higher than the other player). I'm tremendously excited for this. Also: if you don't launch with coffeescipt, I'll be adding a browser plugin to enable it.
- dividuum 12y agoThere is https://github.com/bwapi/bwapi https://github.com/bwapi/bwapi, an API for brood war. Not sure what the current state is. But it seems possible to use it while still controlling the game yourself.
- im3w1l 12y agoSpring RTS allows coding unit AI's in Lua, and toggling them during gameplay.
- curiousHacker 12y agoartchiv: I would paypal you $20 to have early access to the API docs.
- msherry 12y agoThat's the second time in this discussion that you've proposed paying money for an advantage over others in this not-even-released game. May I ask why you're so eager to win at this particular game?
- curiousHacker 12y agoThat's the most personal question you could possibly ask me. And there's your answer: business.
- msherry 12y agoI suspect that you might be taking this (again, not-even-released) game a bit too seriously :)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- curiousHacker 12y agoScreeps is a lifestyle
- rplnt 12y agoSo selling game scripts so others can advance faster? Or perhaps getting ready to harvest resources to sell them later? Or something completely different?
- cooper12 12y agoWhy? Why not just let this be an educational and fun game? Why ruin the spirit of it by turning it into an opportunity for something to exploit (yes, I know, that word has very negative connotations) for profit?
- PhasmaFelis 12y agoBest use of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" I've heard in ages. I imagine the later scenes would be exciting to an actual player who understands what's happening and is invested in it; the music adds some of that excitement that's not conveyed by the sterile and hard-to-read graphics.
- Houshalter 12y agoThe problem with games like this is that players can share code. Decent scripts will be available for everything which takes some of the fun out of the game and makes it less fair to people who do it by themselves.
- abcd_f 12y agoJust like on TopCoder :)
- artchiv 12y agoThis is where Screeps will be different. You will need to think hard how to adapt someone other's script for your landscape, game environment, creeps setup, etc.
- cortesoft 12y agoNah, sharing code will be awesome. Does sharing code in real life ruin the fun of programming? No, everyone uses code written by other people. It is taking that code, combining it in interesting ways, and adding your own bit of code on top of it that creates really amazing programs (or armies, in this case)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- netcan 12y agoI imagine that depends on how the gameplay works. If there is a "right" answer to the strategy question, then it's a programming challenge and your code sharing objection seems about right. OTOH if the coding itself is pretty lightweight and the strategy itself is what matters, code sharing might not be a problem. It would also be good for code learners. I think one of the challenges in learning to code today is the difficulty of fining projects where you can get dozens or hundreds of hours using fairly basic programming.
- mike_hearn 12y agoWell, maybe - people are gonna want to win, right? I don't see how this is much different to any game where players can share strategies and tips.
- bpierre 12y agoIt reminds me a lot of a project I am working on, modul.io [1]. - Everything is programmable, including the UI and the appearance of your modul - A modul can send and receive messages with the moduls around it - You start with a predefined and ready to use modul - Offline support: your modul continues to live on the server when you are not connected There is no game mechanics at all though, our goal is to create everything using moduls (games, entities composed of multiple moduls, tools…). Planned features: - A REST API to do everything remotely - Code sharing using library packs I can't wait to see how Screeps work! [1] https://github.com/lisezmoi/modul.io https://github.com/lisezmoi/modul.io
- louisrochal 12y agoReally good idea. However, the "Your success depends on your intelligence rather than your wasted time" bothers me. That is how the average strategy game works.
- seren 12y agoIt is to emphasis the contrast with an MMO, where most of the time, your progress is directly linked to the time spent playing, often doing the same repetitive tasks ad nauseam.
- louisrochal 12y agoIf that's it, they are mistaking "MMO" with "RPG", but I see the point. Maybe because to improve, you don't have to train by launching an other game that will last 30 minutes.
- artchiv 12y agoEvery MMO, regardless RPG or not, will require you to invest time to repeat some actions and pay attention to it as much often as you can. See Travian for example. Screeps will not, if you manage to write decent scripts.
- louisrochal 12y agoYep I totally agree with that. The "wasted" word is still an error in my opinion. Can't wait to try it though !
- barrystaes 12y agoI hope i can play this from my Note3! I have recently actually been looking for strategy games that have a programming element in them..
- jostylr 12y agoI hope this allows children to play as well. For example, javascript battle does not, as far as I can tell, because it requires a GitHub account which requires being 13. Please correct me if I am wrong.
- Paul_S 12y agoI'm sure you realise that you can lie about your kids' age on the Internet. I could understand if what you're after is a way to block chat or something like that but ticking a box is not a barrier to entry.
- jostylr 12y agoIt is a little different if you are going to advertise this to students in a school who can only take advantage of it by breaking the law.
- joaorj 12y agoI hope there will be a way to run it locally at a smaller scale. That way one could try to apply some machine learning to this game. That would really hook me!
- shna 12y agoI hope it is more than what is shown on demo video. Controlling agents in the game with JS commands is one thing, programming them in more detail is something else.
- artchiv 12y agoWhat do you mean by "more detail"?
- coderjames 12y agoI've been wanting to learn JavaScript (and CoffeeScript), but didn't have any tasks with which to practice. This should be awesome for that. Looking forward to it!
- hngiszmo 12y agoI love that you are working on this and hope for great success. I have doubts though. I worked on http://www.globulation2.org http://www.globulation2.org which also has some higher level of command interaction. "No micro management" is one of its core ideas. While I love it, I guess people just don't get hooked that much to it than to those other games that mainly live from your click rate or your repeated attention. I also worked for 2.5a at Travian and know a thing or two about successful game design and how travian deals with scripting and why. From that I can just say that Screeps will not be massive in the sense of user adoption. I would be surprised to see more than 20 people being online concurrently at any time beyond the first days of the game.
- artchiv 12y agoThe good thing about Screeps is that online users counter means nothing here. You could build a large empire with a complex network of roads, sourcing, mining, manufacturing, border defense which would live on its own, while you would occasionally drop in from time to time just to check the situation and polish your scripts, if needed.
- hngiszmo 12y agoWell, a game that only occasionally gets your attention is kind of less fun than one that gets your every day every hour attention, all other aspects aside. If you do this for profit, you will not run a game that gets the user's attention only once a year no matter how much joy this user draws from knowing that he will get a mail if his tribe needs him.
- AnonJ 12y agoI guess you're misunderstanding the intention of the developers. If they are truly just wanting to make a huge profit out of a brainless game pattern then they won't go with this design. Those "repetitive attention" games inevitably make you feel empty and waste your time in the end, and shouldn't be any self-respecting programmer's dedication. That's why there should be alternatives.
- metabrew 12y agowould love to know how you sandbox and isolate the user-uploaded JS that runs serverside. how do you manage to do that safely? how protected is it against malicious js?
- artchiv 12y agoEvery user script is run in isolated nodejs forked process with disabled global vars and with a limit for CPU time and memory used.
- seanp2k2 12y agoRelated, but with spaceships and written entirely in Postgres: https://schemaverse.com https://schemaverse.com
- bengali3 12y agoare scalar functions able to update data in tables in Postgres? "SELECT CONVERT_RESOURCE('MONEY',balance) as Converted FROM my_player" seems to have actually updated the value in the table.
- lachgr 12y agoThis looks awesome. Being able to program your own civilization without doing all the time-consuming micro-management is a wonderful idea. Almost every multiplayer game in this genre just costs a lot of time (for most games you have to log on every day or so because then certain actions are completed), and I always wanted to be it more strategical while not sacrifiying the possibilites that each "creature" has. Some people point out that code sharing might be a problem, but I don't think it is. People have to adapt the code to their own environment and as the creator of this game pointed out [1] AI's will have to be efficient to not exceed resources. That will also limit the possibilities of just pasting some nice scripts. I hope this game will be as awesome as it looks like and I'm excited to try it out! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600284
- mayreck 12y agoOMG!
- ultimape 12y agoHere's a really old post on hackernews about this kind of concept: "Ask HN: Would you play a distributed, programmable MMO?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1538171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1538171 Nice to see something like this begin to take shape.