Screeps: World News

We are happy to introduce a new big feature: Decorations.

This update is going to add a whole new dimension in your in-game activities. You are now able to generate and collect resources that will allow you to decorate your rooms, creeps, structures and other assets, giving them unique look and individuality.



Pixels is a new type of resource that is used to craft decorations. It's an ephemeral resource stored directly in your account, like former Subscription Tokens. You can obtain pixels in three ways:

• 
  Generate 1 pixel using Game.cpu.generatePixel() method. It will consume 5000 CPU from your bucket.
  
  
• 
  Purchase at our official store or Steam Community Market.
  
  
• 
  Buy and sell on the in-game market.
  

With this launch we announce a time-limited promo: you can get 2,000 pixels for free if you simply click on the button above! This promo will last for 30 days.



When you collect at least 500 pixels, you can pixelize (craft) a decoration. Just go to the new Inventory section and click Pixelization. You will receive one decoration for every 500 pixels spent. Which decorations you get is fully random based on their rarity and type. Decoration are split into 5 types:

• Graffiti - you can place this image as a graffiti on walls in your rooms.
• Wall texture - you can place this image as a room-wide wall texture in your rooms.
• Floor texture - you can place this image as a room-wide floor texture in your rooms.
• Creep - you can use this image to decorate your creeps (either all of them or using a name filter).
• Badge - a custom player badge that you can set for your account.

Each decoration is an item that is stored in your account for good. You can't lose it or destroy it. But you can convert any decoration to pixels, obtaining 400 out of 500 pixels back.

Graffiti is the most common decoration type, so you probably will need to pixelize/convert several times before you discover something interesting besides regular graffitis. But even graffiti can be more rare than other graffiti, for example some of them will have lighting animation, or even ability to choose custom color. Such rarity features are described in the decoration description. Here is the full table of rarity features:

Graffiti

• Rarity 1: None.
• Rarity 2: Adjustable brightness and lighting animation.
• Rarity 3: Visible on the world map.
• Rarity 4: Visible on the world map. Adjustable brightness and lighting animation.
• Rarity 5: Choose your own color. Visible on the world map. Adjustable brightness and lighting animation.

Wall/floor texture

• Rarity 3: None.
• Rarity 4: Adjustable brightness.
• Rarity 5: Choose your own color. Adjustable brightness.

Creep

• Rarity 4: None
• Rarity 5: Choose your own color.

Badge

• Always rarity 5.

In order to use the decoration, you have to activate it in any of your rooms or globally in your account. You can deactivate a decoration at any moment, and activate again without any limits. All these actions can only be done via UI. Game API doesn't have any information or methods regarding decorations.

Walls, floor, and graffiti decorations will be visible on the new version of the world map. It is already available as an alpha version.

There is a transfer mechanism between your Screeps Inventory and Steam Inventory, so that you can transfer decorations back and forth in order to trade them on the Steam Community Market.



Besides types, all decorations are split into 7 color themes: Fire, Desert, Nature, Sea, Winter, Alien, Mono. They have no special meaning except specific color. Basically, they are just the names for the colors that are used in the decoration graphic. You can restrict pixelization by a specific theme if you wish to craft only decorations of the specific color to match your existing design. This option increases the pixelization cost from 500 to 2,000 pixels.



This update also contains other ephemeral account resources revamp: CPU Unlocks and Access Keys. They are regular tradeable resources, so that now we have 3 account resource types on the market.

CPU Unlocks is a new form of Subscription Tokens. Each CPU Unlock will provide 1 day of unlocked CPU to your account. All existing Subscription Tokens will be converted to 60 CPU Unlocks each automatically upon release.

Access Keys are needed to get access to the upcoming Season World. You will need 5 Access Keys to unlock the first Season. We will announce its launch date later. We will sell Access Keys with 50% discount until that.

You will be able to freely transfer these resources between Screeps Inventory and Steam inventory as well.



With this update we discontinue all new recurring CPU subscriptions purchases.


If you have an already active recurring CPU subscription, it will be effective indefinitely as long as you wish. But new subscriptions will not be sold. Instead, you can buy CPU Unlocks and programmatically activate them once in a while from your game code.

Lifetime CPU Subscription is still available and is renamed to Lifetime CPU Unlock.

• 
  Introduced new property: Game.cpu.unlocked. It's true when your CPU is unlocked regardless of the unlock method: it may be a recurrent subscription, a lifetime subscription, or using CPU Unlock resource.
  
• 
  Introduced new property: Game.cpu.unlockedTime. If your CPU is unlocked with 'CPU Unlock' resource, the value of this property is the unlock expiration time.
  
• 
  Introduced new method: Game.cpu.unlock(). It will consume 1 CPU Unlock resource and extend unlock time by 24 hours.
  
• 
  Introduced new method: Game.cpu.generatePixel(). It will consume 5000 CPU from your bucket to create 1 Pixel resource.
  
• 
  All new ephemeral account resources are exposed in the Game.resources object.
  

We're announcing our new little project: Attack Rank Monthly Video. We automatically recorded all spawn kills during March 2020 and displayed a few of ticks around every event, with total number of kills by players. We hope it will be feasible for us to make such a video every month.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This is a minor update containing the following features:

• Reverse reactions in labs
  
• Room status data in game API
  
• Many various improvements
  

See the full post about these changes in our official blog.

We've been brainstorming a lot lately. We brainstormed the architecture of a Persistent/Seasonal server separation in our Kubernetes cluster. We brainstormed how decorations system should be themed and organized. We brainstormed the financial aspect of Screeps as a business. We brainstormed what would be the mechanic or our first season on the Seasonal World. We also brainstormed a math model for the player rating in Arena, but it's a whole another story... What is really important here is that eventually, when all the coffee was drunk, we came up with a new streamlined concept of in-game account resources that we want to announce in this post.


The most important announcement to begin with: recurrent subscriptions will be discontinued, and 60-day tokens will be replaced with 24-hour tokens.

Yes, there will be no subscriptions in the game anymore. If you have an active subscription, it will remain active indefinitely, but you will not be able to activate a new one. The only method to unlock full CPU in your account will be using a CPU token. This will unlock your CPU for 24 hours. All current 60-day tokens will be converted to 60x 24-hours tokens automatically.

Moreover, we will introduce a game API method to activate a CPU token, and a way to check whether your CPU is unlocked or not currently. This way, you can program an auto-renew mechanism on your own based on your preference, using CPU tokens stored in your account.

The CPU unlocking system is needed to compensate for the server resources spent on running your script, but the recurrent subscription system turned out to be a suboptimal way to achieve this. Many people are unhappy with recurrent payments nowadays. Using CPU tokens, you can buy bundles of 10, 30, or 90 tokens, and control how your CPU is used according to your in-game circumstances.

Along with this, we will introduce two new account resources: Pixels and Access Keys.

Pixels are needed to pixelate (create) decorations for your rooms and your creeps. Also, you can convert any decoration back to pixels.

Access Keys are used to join a season in the Seasonal World, or a special event in the Persistent World. One season may require, say, 5 Access Keys to enter. And season rewards will also yield Access Keys, Pixels and CPU tokens to those who made it to the top of the season.

All these account resources can be obtained in two ways:

• Purchased at our official store, which is currently under development.
• Traded on the in-game market or Steam Community Market.

We're going to provide a fixed amount of all account resources on the in-game market by NPC orders as well. It will not be huge, but the one who's willing to participate in these mechanics using only in-game credits will always be able to do so.

We believe that this system has very appealing qualities in its design.

First, it is reasonable:

• We sell CPU Tokens because we allow you to rent real server CPU time in our cluster.
• We sell Pixels because our designer worked hard on the graphics that enable this "hat economy."
• We sell Access Keys because they unlock more game content that we regularly develop, add, and maintain for your fun and benefit.

Second, it is fair: although we sell it at our official store, but we also provide a legitimate way to be involved using in-game mechanics only.

And third, it is simple: it's just resources! No subscriptions, no recurrent payments, no pay walls. The only three things that we're going to sell are these three resources. And they are tradable in-game entities, not some licenses or privileges.

We will release all these 3 resources in the next major Decorations update. Access Keys will be discounted for 50% until the first season starts.

We are deeply convinced that this system will streamline our business model and secure further development of the game so that Screeps will continue its story.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

UPD: One more screenshot of this feature - a room decorated in blue.