Earlier quoted context omitted.
The actual game site looks slashdotted... well, HN-ed...
I too tried to sign up, unfortunately it has closed down
Well, the SSL cert having expired 135 days ago should have been a hint - which i ignored ofc.
Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
41–50 of 72 posts
Re: Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
#42Really liked playing the beta (or was it alpha?) of this when it came out, but the pricing didn't really make sense for me. Paying per compute time works for businesses looking for flexible cloud solutions, but as an individual this makes playing the game much less fun (because you're constantly paying attention to the cost).
It also implies some sort of pay to win - with more compute you can presumably do search algorithms that act smarter.
the current model is either pay the base-sub, or play in CPU limited mode. the only P2W interactions could be buying subscription tokens and selling them on the market for ingame credits (which you'd then use to buy more resources off the market from other players). You cannot purchase more compute time than the subscription allows
CPU-Wise, if you pay the compute time is tied to your account level, with a hard-cap if you're level 30 (there are still only a few players that have achieved this, it takes many months)
Re: Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
#43A lot of comments here are focusing on the pricing and ignoring the 'sandbox' part of the game's description. There is a leaderboard you can try to climb but it is reset monthly and isn't really shoved in your face. Beyond that you're free to set whatever goals you want and go about them however you wish, with the principles of other strategy games (harvest resources, build things, attack enemies, etc.) to give you i…
They have well supported API to push your code into it (alongs with gulp/ grunt package to do so, I think). So you can work in your favourite environment and just "deploy" the code as normal, or am I missing anything?
that is correct, also a GH integration, so you can have it reload your code as you push updates a github repo.
Re: Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
#44Would it be possible to (now or eventually) play this game with "all" languages? Part of the value of this to me, would be doing it in languages i love, or want to learn, etc. Using a language i dislike, or even are indifferent about, means the gameplay itself has to pull all of my entertainment.. weight, if you will. Thoughts?
You can play this game in languages that transpile to javascript, but sadly the server runs all your code and is only setup to handle JS.
Thankfully tons of stuff transpiles to JS easily, and off the top of my head, I know theres a python starter somewhere, and im sure you could find some for other languages
Re: Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back then, it was capped at $30,and unless you are in the top 10-20 players, you can get by with a lot less. In any case, the pricing model has changed and it is $9/month flat rate, so that concern is obsolete now.
so, its now around the price of netflix? hmmmm, and could easily add up to a AAA game? seems a bit off
Only if you play it for more than 6 months which is a lot longer than I usually play a AAA game.
Re: Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
#46Really liked playing the beta (or was it alpha?) of this when it came out, but the pricing didn't really make sense for me. Paying per compute time works for businesses looking for flexible cloud solutions, but as an individual this makes playing the game much less fun (because you're constantly paying attention to the cost).
Maybe they should open this up as a AI programming platform and sell any algorithms that come out of it.
That's dumb.
Any algorithms that players come up with will almost certainly only be useful for playing the game.
Re: Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
#47How far are we from paying people to play a programming game, while using their code/solutions for solving problems?
That's basically this, right: https://www.starfighters.io/
last email I got from them was 12/12/15 about the launch of stockfighter.io ... which is also dead as is their Discourse :(
Re: Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
it would also make the game cheaper if you figure out less computationally intensive algos to win.
it would also make the game cheaper if you figure out les[s] computationally intensive algos to win. Yes but a player who was an absolute shite programmer could just throw their bank account at the problem. While my O(n) solution maybe eloquent, they can afford O(n^n) so provided our _players_ make the same outcome the algorithmic complexity is irrelevant if you can afford it. The game uses a soft turn based _ticks_…
> Yes but a player who was an absolute shite programmer could just throw their bank account at the problem.
Seems to model reality fairly well.
Re: Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
#49A lot of comments here are focusing on the pricing and ignoring the 'sandbox' part of the game's description. There is a leaderboard you can try to climb but it is reset monthly and isn't really shoved in your face. Beyond that you're free to set whatever goals you want and go about them however you wish, with the principles of other strategy games (harvest resources, build things, attack enemies, etc.) to give you i…
They have well supported API to push your code into it (alongs with gulp/ grunt package to do so, I think). So you can work in your favourite environment and just "deploy" the code as normal, or am I missing anything?
I admittedly haven't explored it in great detail, but when I've asked on their Slack channel a lot of people seem to just use the ingame tools which are "good enough".
Re: Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure that would quickly get them in trouble because of copyright issues...
Unless they explicitly stated any players submit their rights to ownership of the algorithms they write. Even then I feel an open source alternative geared towards research would be better than a for-profit closed source organisation, but they will have their own business needs and ideas they want to stick to.
It says open source on steam and it links to a GitHub repo. Didn't verify, but seemed legit