We’re glad to announce that Screeps now has user-generated authentication tokens support. You can use these persistent tokens to authenticate to our undocumented Web API endpoints without using the sign-in process. Use your Account / Auth Tokens section to generate such a token.

Please note that the usual sign-in process will start using Google Invisible reCAPTCHA effective February 1, 2018.

If you have an external tool which uses https://screeps.com/api/auth/signin endpoint automatically, please change it to use Auth Tokens before February 1, 2018! Otherwise it will stop working.

Doing this is trivial: you need to drop using auth/signin endpoint and set X-Token header in all your requests to the persistent token generated from your account settings.

Learn more about this feature in the documentation.

We’re glad to announce that Screeps now has user-generated authentication tokens support. You can use these persistent tokens to authenticate to our undocumented Web API endpoints without using the sign-in process. Use your Account / Auth Tokens section to generate such a token.

Please note that the usual sign-in process will start using Google Invisible reCAPTCHA effective February 1, 2018.

If you have an external tool which uses https://screeps.com/api/auth/signin endpoint automatically, please change it to use Auth Tokens before February 1, 2018! Otherwise it will stop working.

Doing this is trivial: you need to drop using auth/signin endpoint and set X-Token header in all your requests to the persistent token generated from your account settings.

Learn more about this feature in the documentation.

• Runtime servers upgraded to Node.js 8.9.3 (LTS). It ships with V8 5.8, a significant update to the JavaScript runtime that includes major improvements in performance. This enables many modern ES6 language features, such as WebAssembly support. Since it’s a major release, it may have different performance profile depending on language features you use.
  
• Added binary modules support to the in-game IDE and require mechanics. Learn more in the documentation.

• Runtime servers upgraded to Node.js 8.9.3 (LTS). It ships with V8 5.8, a significant update to the JavaScript runtime that includes major improvements in performance. This enables many modern ES6 language features, such as WebAssembly support. Since it’s a major release, it may have different performance profile depending on language features you use.
  
• Added binary modules support to the in-game IDE and require mechanics. Learn more in the documentation.

We have always put little attention to graphics in Screeps, since this is a rather niche game for programming nerds. In terms of technology, the game engine has been a simple set of SVG objects moving across the web page. It allowed for rapid development without distracting on complex visual components, but it ruled out any appealing visual effects (like lightning). Besides, this approach suffered from subpar performance when a lot of objects were on screen. So it's time to change that!

In this update, we are excited to reveal a full-blown graphic engine for Screeps based on WebGL and PixiJS. It will allow you to:

• Leverage your machine's GPU even in the browser to significantly boost performance without any lags when scrolling.
  
• Save your laptop's battery juice since GPU is much more energy-efficient for this task than CPU.
  
• Add new visual effects to enrich the game atmosphere and yet retain our usual relaxing, abstract style.

In the picture above, you can see some samples of how the new renderer transforms the game when activated. The new feature is beta so far, so to activate it, opt in using the checkbox in the Display Options section of the right panel. Not all features have been 100% migrated to the new renderer yet, and bugs are possible, but you can get a whole new impression of the game right away!

Please inform us about any issues you encounter in comments.

We have always put little attention to graphics in Screeps, since this is a rather niche game for programming nerds. In terms of technology, the game engine has been a simple set of SVG objects moving across the web page. It allowed for rapid development without distracting on complex visual components, but it ruled out any appealing visual effects (like lightning). Besides, this approach suffered from subpar performance when a lot of objects were on screen. So it's time to change that!

In this update, we are excited to reveal a full-blown graphic engine for Screeps based on WebGL and PixiJS. It will allow you to:

• Leverage your machine's GPU even in the browser to significantly boost performance without any lags when scrolling.
  
• Save your laptop's battery juice since GPU is much more energy-efficient for this task than CPU.
  
• Add new visual effects to enrich the game atmosphere and yet retain our usual relaxing, abstract style.

In the picture above, you can see some samples of how the new renderer transforms the game when activated. The new feature is beta so far, so to activate it, opt in using the checkbox in the Display Options section of the right panel. Not all features have been 100% migrated to the new renderer yet, and bugs are possible, but you can get a whole new impression of the game right away!

Please inform us about any issues you encounter in comments.

It’s big time! 2 months after its creation, shard1 is available for settlement from outside. The portals leading from shard0 to shard1 and back open their doors for all the settlers, traders, and highway bandits out there.

But aside from the evident feature of transferring players’ creeps between worlds, these portals will leverage another interesting game mechanics, NPC Events.

We won’t delve deep into all the details but leave it for you to discover, especially since the events content and mechanics will change with time. But one thing is sure: it’s worth keeping your eyes on what comes out of these portals (including with your Observers), it could be something tasty!

By the way, a little hint for you: when an NPC creep that took part in an event like this dies, its resources don’t drop on the ground but are placed in a container created automatically so that you can conveniently grab them in time.

Good luck hunting!

It’s big time! 2 months after its creation, shard1 is available for settlement from outside. The portals leading from shard0 to shard1 and back open their doors for all the settlers, traders, and highway bandits out there.

But aside from the evident feature of transferring players’ creeps between worlds, these portals will leverage another interesting game mechanics, NPC Events.

We won’t delve deep into all the details but leave it for you to discover, especially since the events content and mechanics will change with time. But one thing is sure: it’s worth keeping your eyes on what comes out of these portals (including with your Observers), it could be something tasty!

By the way, a little hint for you: when an NPC creep that took part in an event like this dies, its resources don’t drop on the ground but are placed in a container created automatically so that you can conveniently grab them in time.

Good luck hunting!

• All credits amounts now work with 0.001 precision, including order prices, credits balance and transactions history. User credits balance and order prices are stored in the database as thousandths in integer format which prevents rounding errors. In order to update your private server data, an automatic database upgrade will be performed, see this commit .
• Added new StructureSpawn.spawnCreep method. createCreep and canCreateCreep are now considered deprecated, but still will be available for backwards compatibility. See discussion in this pull request for details.
• When you click “Respawn”, all structures now don’t vanish, but change their owner to SYSTEM_USERNAME, so that other players are able to withdraw resources from them.

These changes are supported in private server v2.10.0.

• All credits amounts now work with 0.001 precision, including order prices, credits balance and transactions history. User credits balance and order prices are stored in the database as thousandths in integer format which prevents rounding errors. In order to update your private server data, an automatic database upgrade will be performed, see this commit .
• Added new StructureSpawn.spawnCreep method. createCreep and canCreateCreep are now considered deprecated, but still will be available for backwards compatibility. See discussion in this pull request for details.
• When you click “Respawn”, all structures now don’t vanish, but change their owner to SYSTEM_USERNAME, so that other players are able to withdraw resources from them.

These changes are supported in private server v2.10.0.