Simcity (5) & Cheats

[MatlockMan 370]

Had a thought.

If Maxis is certain that Simcity 5 is going to be online, I'm guessing that cheats will NOT be included in the game. Reasons for this include making the resource game very easy to manipulate etc etc. I don't cheat all the time (only when I use 'weaknesspays' because I want to rapidly build a big city) but is there any chance that cheats will be used in the 'new' Simcity?

[Mark Waybill 242]

If there is a single player mode which I believe from what I heard there will be, any cheats will be usable there I should think.

[nashville nelson 51]

There is a global leaderboard and as far as i know a global market for resources so i don´t think cheats or mods will be allowed. Maybe there will be an extra planet for this kind of stuff.

[KeanoManu 42]

This is my biggest fear with all this online crap. I usually money cheat so that i can just build what my imagination and creativity wants but if it's mandatory to be part of some global online market then that will of course not be possible. Which will kill much of the fun for me. Probably even to the extent that i won't find it worth buying.

And if i look at most of the CJs here at Simtropolis, i doubt that most of them play without money cheats.

  Edited March 11, 2012 by KeanoManu  

[TheRealDeadaim 38]

It'll be quite easy for them to detect when you've used a cheat and exclude you from any ranked ladders. Only time will tell though.

[tSlater 134]

Cheats of some sort have been in ever Sim City game as far as I know, it'd be a shame to see them disappear now. I remember typing cass over and over again in sc2k to get whole city blocks to burst into flames.. or a cussword to get a popup box to scold me.

[jacksunny 741]

Perhaps cheats could be included in the single player mode, just not in multiplayer, and I wouldn't worry about it. Someone will create a money mod eventually anyway.

[hamsterTK 93]

Obviously the solution is to allow players in single player mode to cheat and not communicate stats to the leaderboard while they are doing so.

[KeanoManu 42]

Yes, that's the obvious solution. The problem is that in the AMAA they did a few days ago they hinted that even the single player mode would have some contact with the online world.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Or how about Ponzi Schemes or negative interest loans/bonds?

SimCity 2k, 3k, 4, S and Cities XL all have loans/bonds and SC 2000 had the negative interest bond (because they used a signed short integer) while SimCity 3000 had the tax rate cheat (keep taxes at 0% most of the time for demand then have taxes at the maximum for the day taxes are collected each year).

If no cheat codes are allowed, then there should be a free money loan or stipend that automatically drops you from global statistics and possibly gives you good resource prices not at global market value.

  Edited March 11, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[squeaky024 14]

I really do not want a "global" market for singleplayer or mulitplayer. I play my simcity as if I were on a ficticious planet, so my prices will be completely different from something on earth. I don't care about leaderboards, I don't care for online contact on my singleplayer, I just want to be left alone there in my own little world

[Mark Waybill 242]

I think single player cities should have the option not to be joined to SimPlanet or wtvr it's to be called MaxisWorld or wtvr. Then, if you cheat somehow your city is tagged as a C class city or a city.cheat or something, and then if you wish to connect a city to MaxisEarth you can but only if it hasn't used cheats?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I think this whole thread is premature or perhaps immature. We have no idea what will be in this game nor how it will operate. All we've seen so far are bits and pieces. We should not be wasting time on stuff like this until we have a better appreciation of whether any of the "cheats" we know and love are even needed.

The only thing for the developers is "Thou shalt not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain". I forget which book of the Bible this is in but it means that you must not withhold resources that allow a player to be successful. For example, 100000 Simoleons is not enough in hard mode to build a city in less than polynomial time.

[MatlockMan 370]

I think this whole thread is premature or perhaps immature. We have no idea what will be in this game nor how it will operate. All we've seen so far are bits and pieces. We should not be wasting time on stuff like this until we have a better appreciation of whether any of the "cheats" we know and love are even needed.

The only thing for the developers is "Thou shalt not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain". I forget which book of the Bible this is in but it means that you must not withhold resources that allow a player to be successful. For example, 100000 Simoleons is not enough in hard mode to build a city in less than polynomial time.

I don't see how it is 'immature,' but sure it could be premature. I think a bit of healthy speculation doesn't hurt, and if anything could alert Maxis to some aspects of the game we do want retained in SC5, since they check SimTropolis and stuff.

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Just remember, it's a simple matter for Maxis to enable/disable cheats. Cheats are actually developer "shortcuts" that developers use to quickly test a particular situation without needing to build up a scenario the normal way. It's entirely up to Maxis whether they should be enabled or not, it's merely just changing a boolean variable (eg. setCheatBox to true to allow cheats to be used in non-debug situations).

But online play might make this difficult.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

They already showed that they could summon a fleet of commuter cars in debug mode and put them into a closed loop that will not despawn and just drive around in circles furious.

That sounds almost like an Inception scenario. Build a city with no exits and no working buildings except maybe a handful of restaurants and a hotel (and a cheat building that looks like a Parisian business but produces all the food required to keep the restaurants supplied) but instead of RCI, line the roads with nonfunctional landmarks. The true population and tax income would be negligible (if you wanted the city to self-sustain, the landmarks would need slight negative maintenance fees to cover infrastructure costs). Then spawn various Sims to populate it "realistically" then go into first person mode and start recording --- which would be akin to the girl's first practice at creating.

If there is a "Rush Hour" type expansion pack/tie in game (Streets of SimCity, SimCopter, My Sims/Sims Urbz), where you get to do what you could in My Sims mode (which was in Rush Hour) where you can have up to 8 Sims with homes and jobs and you can drive their vehicles (and chose from a car of their wealth level or 1 immediately below) and it has a networked mode where competing players can each take control of a sim. You could design a race track that has no accidental instant game over neighbor connections (your UDI mission ends when you drive a vehicle through a neighbor connection) based on that above scenario (only you would need to have a population of at least 8 with stable jobs) or an modern urban setting (which would be similar to the city in the outer dream).

Actually, my friend gave me a link to a Counter Strike map based off SimTower: http://www.gamebanana.com/maps/154764

If we get a SimTower 2014, it might have a mode similar to that (which could either be based off the preexisting clear out the bomb threat scenario or an entirely new security vs robbers targeting a hotel suite, the second scenario being like the hotel in the middle dream level).

  Edited March 12, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Access to debugging code is fine for single players. However, when a group is involved, I doubt this would be acceptable unless there was a general agreement. This means a chat/voting system among the members of each group and waiting for a response for those who would be currently off-line. Arbitrary use of such enablement could easily lead to some rather hot disputes.

Perhaps this topic needs to be deferred until we see what's in the game and whether there is any need.

[KeanoManu 42]

Well, yeah. That's the whole point of the thread. No-one excepts cheats to be available in online mode. But when they talk about that single player maps will still be in touch with the global online market it raises questions if they will allow cheats for single player. The answer they gave in that AMAA was very vague and they should really clarify exactly how the SP/MP relation works. How big focus they acctually have on MP. Sure, it could just be that they want to talk much about it because it's something new. But then they should make that very clear. The fans of this genre are wounded after the betrayal from MonteCristo in terms of SP/MP modes.

It all depends on how they create it i guess.

If it's mandatory to be part of the global economy and that single player cities in some way has the ability to affect the global market then it would be dangerous for them to allow cheats as that would potentially/probably ruin their market for 'honest' players. I think this is the fear that fuels this thread, at least it is for me.

The best solution would be to have three choices for market prices in single player.

1. Use the current market values in the online economy. No trade and stuff like that, just use the numbers. It would be okay i guess, the real markets values in real world changes all the time and this could simulate that.

2. Static values that Maxis sets. You know what you get. No hassle.

3. The player can set the market values themselves. Good for those who really like to have 110% control of things.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

#2 was Cities XL's method where the trade partner of last resort had a 500% margin.

[meowza 230]

This is what they have to say for now about cheats...

...

IncGamers: Some of the best times I've had with SimCity in the past is when I've cheated, given myself a bunch of cash and let my 'creative vision' go wild. Are you planning on supporting that kind of thing? 'Cheats' almost seem to be a dirty word nowadays...

Jason Haber: I don't really want to talk about this much, but we are aware of how important that sort of thing is to people out in the community. And us personally, I've played SimCity and I've cheated a lot.

We need to figure out how it will fit into this SimCity and the world regions of multiplayer.

http://www.incgamers...ltiplayer-world

  Edited May 17, 2012 by meowza  

[Mark Waybill 242]

I never saw the necessity to cheat in SimCity, unless I was aiming at building an 'ideal' city, where naturally financing would be different to the present reality anyway. The only other time was when I was making a small profit that was stable but would take hundreds of years to accumulate enough to construct a new project and I'd maybe give things a nudge in the right direction. The only other example where I've found cheating to be useful is the God Mode 'cheat' for mass planting of trees, because building from a forest covered tile initially took up a lot of computer power.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

What may be considered a cheat to one person, may be simply considered a modification to another.

The concept or definition of what constitutes a 'cheat' in computer games that can be modded is rather subjective and subject to individual opinion, and would fill many threads of 'discussion'.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

What may be considered a cheat to one person, may be simply considered a modification to another.

The concept or definition of what constitutes a 'cheat' in computer games that can be modded is rather subjective and subject to individual opinion, and would fill many threads of 'discussion'.

Yeah, along these lines, I always kind of felt that the CAM (or some of the other demand modifiers) was a cheat, but you could make the argument that it is a completely legitimate modifying tool. At the same time, I am totally guilty of using the "fightthepower" cheat and using the easy garbage disposal options, so... Continue speculating, please.

  Edited May 20, 2012 by NMUSpidey  

[baertooth 330]

IG: Some of the best times I've had with SimCity in the past is when I've cheated, given myself a bunch of cash and let my 'creative vision' go wild. Are you planning on supporting that kind of thing? 'Cheats' almost seem to be a dirty word nowadays...

JH: I don't really want to talk about this much, but we are aware of how important that sort of thing is to people out in the community. And us personally, I've played SimCity and I've cheated a lot.

We need to figure out how it will fit into this SimCity and the world regions of multiplayer.

This is a quote from a recent article. Reveals that at the very least the issue of cheats has not be resolved and probably hasn't been worked on much.

And from what's been revealed about the game so far, I've inferred that single player will probably be just like multi-player play where a region is created and the tiles are chosen by the players except one person will have the whole region and play all the tiles in the region. I think that's what they mean that it can still be played "single player".

What will probably have to happen is what when the region is created, cheats will no longer be called cheats but "variable regional parameters" that will be set at the beginning of the game and all tiles will be affected in the region as VRPs are set. And if this is the route they take, then either though code they'll have to compensate for the modified region on how it affects the global economy or else if VRPs are modified, they'll have to cut off the region from the global market. If the latter is true, then it might be a hack way of cutting off from the global market (which would make moot a certain argument for the global market they have).

That's one of the problems with online play is certain functions like cheats will probably won't work so well with the model they're implying they're using. As far as the economy goes, this probably wouldn't affect me as much as others as I don't, or at least haven't, been that much of a plop to try to create a fantasy city or recreate a real city. I always grow my cities so I work inside the economy as-is but if an economy is forced then players who like to just make the city instead of growing it will probably suffer. But there are times when I do minor money cheat when I know where I'm going but I don't want to wait for the necessary time to burn off so I'll bump myself into the black.

But I also disagree with locking buildings and I usually unlock everything at the beginning of my cities. I like being able to build right from the beginning tho most of the time I don't use buildings until my city needs them or it's appropriate to use them. But I decide that, not some milestone or whatever in the game decides that.

It'll be interesting anyways. Because the code for the online part of Simcity must be a real bear, and the backend on this will probably be crushingly complex. If you look at what they're revealing now as a way to measure where they are at development wise in the game, the code being written for the online portion is either so unworkable they can't/won't demo it or they haven't begun writing it yet. And there is a lot of play testing that has to happen for this game to go gold and with the above developer's statement I would have to say I'm hedging cheating won't make it in until after the game has launched. And this might be sound strategy for them because it gives them a chance to see if there is actual demand for cheating and if afterwards there doesn't seem to be much, they can just blow it off and develop something else instead.

[simcity:) 4]

http://www.simcitydownload.org/simcitys-sandbox-mode-details/

 

this should help

[Herdervriend 46]

When Cities XL had a online mode, there were cheats/trainers to. And even for Battlefield 3 there are cheats/hack/glitches people can use. So I do not know for sure, but IT's possible.

 

For me it would be nice. Because I am the biggest $%&^! on the world. And never actually played a game without cheats, offline at least. Online I played without cheats and always got into problems.

 

I like cheats. But with a leaderboard and so on. It seems quite unfair to use them. So I would like to not have it here. Even if it makes it easier for me to build what I really want. Though also makes me wanna stop playing early, because when I use cheats, after some time a game just becomes boring.

[magicrobbie 77]

Remember that we won't be able to load older saves. So if one screws up a city for whatever reason, the solution is probably to either start a new city from scratch or to buy resources online with real cash to get your city going again.

Aside from the (in itself limited) sandbox mode: always-online, forced-multiplayer and forced-leaderboards create an environment not compatible with cheating and modding.

[Kayo 5]

Hi all

 

I find cheat code for player want to play in sandbox mode because can't wait to have a big city.

Cheat Codes

While playing the game in Sandbox mode, enter one of the following codes to activate the corresponding cheat function:

 

Result Cheat Code Add §100,000 to city budget [Alt] + W Toggle Air Pollution [Alt] + A Toggle Crime [Alt] + C Toggle Fire [Alt] + F Toggle Health Issues [Alt] + M Toggle Ground Pollution [Alt] + P Toggle Homeless Sims [Alt] + H Toggle Sewage [Alt] + S

The website for full informations is: Click here

[elektrichead22 10]

the same cheat that worked in empire total war and napoleon total war should in theory work on this game even if it is in the cloud.... pause the game after a save then search for the simoleon value ..... will probably get a few hits... do it again after the next save then you found the file.... then change the value....