Can i see someone cheated?

[Spons 1]

Dear forum,

I am a geography teacher and created a really cool (at least, i think so ) assignment with SIM4. They must build a big city by a couple of geography rules, city rules and more stuff. Its a homework assignment that will take aprox. one month to make. Afterwards, They have to mail me there saved city and will be graded.

Now, i notice a lot of cheats on the web. My question, can i see when student have used them? Is there a log somewhere in the file?

Don't get me wrong, i am not against cheating, but when there are so many easy cheatcodes, the assignment has no use.

greetings,

Spons

ps: sorry for my poor english. It is not my native language.

[Linoa06 1,374]

Well there ARE many ways to cheat. Most you can find out with common sense, I suppose. The money codes themselves aren't much of a deal, but there's a ton of mods here that allow for bigger demand, or more money, not counting the infamous NAM that overhauls traffic pathing completely.

But is it really cheating? In the end, the same basic rules apply and there's actually a big deal of fun in developing a city in a realistic way, following geography and topology and whatnot. ^^

[asovse1 3]

This is just me guessing outta the blue here, but something I'd suggest is to have a mod-free environment yourself. After you receive your students' cities or regions, be sure you have the vanilla game running. If they were using mods or plugins, you'd instantly see that the most crucial aspects within the city would stop functioning or function stupidly.

As for cheat codes, they're mostly simple. Unless the students were very desperate, "weaknesspays" (1000 simoleons per use) cheat code is awful and time-consuming. "fightthepower" and "howdryiam" resets every time you close the game, right? If it doesn't, just check your power and water supply graph to see if there's anything strange. Warning, it requires graph-reading skills . "you don't deserve it" can be circumvented by seeing which reward buildings have been implemented. You can find one, and search for it in the building list, and if it was plopped through dishonest means, it will say "This building is not available" or something like that.

Maybe someone else has more ideas?

[Linoa06 1,374]

I suppose it could work. You'll quickly see, if they have any big altering mods or custom lots, so long you run the cities on a modless game yourself.

[Spons 1]

Thanx for all your quick reactions. A mod-free environment, is that just the basic game installed at my home, without the extras? And for the cheat codes, i know there are special programs you have to run at the same time as the game (is this a mod?), but they cannot download this at school. I am more worried about the easy money codes etc, cause i read somewhere there are also codes for a lot of money (not 1000 everytime, but more).

The suggestion with the graphs, i will check this. Never noticed this.

Again, thanx for your reactions. I am less worried now and not completely disappointed that all my work at building the assignment was useless.

[Linoa06 1,374]

There are no really big money codes, it's a pain and rather useless to go for the existing ones, unless your students really don't plan out carefully. There are no trainers..Simcity 4 doesn't have that "arcane play" style, so it's very pointless to have trainers to have more "points" and stuff like that. The game truly is about building a city..if something went wrong, you'll see it in the city.

Why don't you play the game yourself for a while and see? :> Indeed it'll just be the basic game without any extras, no mods, nothing.

Graphs are an easy way to tell if someone has been up to no good, as well! They're a crucial part of playing SC4 seriously, and you have graphs about everything, from job demand to pollution to commute time. Do NOT get crazy at the commuting times! This tab is bugged, it is why 99% players use the Network Addon Mod, that adresses all of these bugs. I honestly suggest you let your students use that one addon, since it's one of the best bug fixers that can be.

Why don't you also rate your students' cities based on the quality of life, etc? Infrastructure, parks, maybe extra points for an intelligent design or a city with a certain feel? Things that get quickly to Simcity players and are hard to reproduce with cheat codes. (There's no cheat code for "make my city beautiful").

Hope this helped!

Amy

  Edited August 19, 2012 by Linoa06  

[likk9922 1]

And can I just add that you sound like a pretty awesome teacher?

[TekindusT 3,809]

@Spons:

As it has been said above, there are many ways of "cheating" the game, although every player here has a different idea of what is considered cheating. If you want to keep the game modless, custom content-less and cheatless (we call it "vanilla" here), you'll have to be quite vigilant with several aspects.

The usage of the "weaknesspays" and "moolah" cheats are virtually impossible to detect given that they just give you free money. These are used when your losses are larger than your profits and everytime you have less money. A city based in this kind of cheats, always has a negative balance and sooner or later you should see red figures there.

The "fightthepower" and "howdryiam" cheats have been adressed above, they reset everytime you get into the city and you'll see instantly how your students have managed the water and power issues without a problem.

Suming up, I wouldn't be much worried about cheats, but for demand mods and plopped buildings, which cause demand issues. There are mods that boost your cities commercial and industrial demand, making population rise drammatically in no time, it can look like a good way of getting population and huge cities but it messes the city as unbalances the RCI demand, one of the pillars of the game. There are also mods like the Industry Quadrupler, that multiply by 4 the number of jobs an industrial number offers, which ends up more or less the same way.

The bright thing is that demand issues are detected sooner or later by just running the game. You see a pristine and well-cared city and, in a few years running in your unmodded game, it has dilapidated, everything is abandoned and all buildings are black. Sims flee as rats; quite suspicious.

My answer is, suming it all up, that if you run the game during several Sim-years, you should see "strange things" in cheated cities.

[GMT 389]

yes exactly, only the basic game (sc4) or with the expansion pack (rush hour).

as for the programs, I think you're referring to something like cheatengine. this is not modding, at least not the way we (as sc4 players) define it.

we pretty much talk about mods if we talk about things like the network addon mod (NAM for short, when you "play" the game, you have no chance to live without it as it is both an enhancement and a bugfix to a certain extend).

the most easy way to get loads of money for the game is either a plugin that gives an insane amount of city revenues or the moolah cheat (enter moolah followed by the amount of money you want).

either way, like they cheat in tests, they cheat in this assignment, trust me on that one.

Like someone said already, familiarize yourself with all aspects of data given to you in form of graphs, map overlays, figures. this will surely help you to identify a lot of cheating because of e.g. the records kept for the city funds, employment, enducation, health care, whatnot.

further, if they used mods, you WILL see this once you play their city and stick to the "no downloads" rule. things will probalby act funny, the city will freak out, maybe even get visual feedback in terms of missing props (look out for brown paper boxes)

lets say they use a mod to increase the coverage of their public services and one to reduce the traffic time. what you get to see is a city with great healthcare, low crime, low fire risks, great education and little to no commute problems.

run it for a couple ingame weeks and you end up with bad services quality and ppl complaining about traffic. sure as hell an indication that the creator of the city used such a mod.

and floating down this river, you can identify many cheating attempts like this; if something starts to turn conspiciously funny or suddenly turns very bad, it's most likely due to cheating.

EDIT: so to answer your question shortly: yes you can see it, but not right away. pretty much like correcting an essay, you have to sit down and "dig" into what your students worked out.

If you're uncertain, we can also help you taking a look at it

and by the way: I guess I'm not the only one who's curious about how this assignment turns out in the end; feel free to share your experience, if you want.

  Edited August 19, 2012 by GMT  

[Spons 1]

Thanx for all the tips and tricks. I wrote them down and will check. Especially the "run for a few ingame weeks or years and watch if stuff will freak out" method seems quite good i think.

Again, the assignment is more than just building a city. They have to follow a lot of instructions en goals, like urban planning, balance, step by step written log where the student explain why he build the city that way, historical city planning ideas trying in de SIM4 and see what happens with it in modern city's etc. But i just want to make sure.

I have a mac, so i am going to try a version for the mac (if it exists) and going to "play around" like you suggested. It was already the plan to be a temporarily expert in SIM4, so i can understand what my students has done. Trying to be above their knowledge level of the game

Again thnx, and if anyone has any extra ideas what SIM4 can mean for a geography assignment, let me know. I am just a SIM4 $%&^! at the moment (but will change off course in de coming weeks.)

greetings from The Netherlands

[Linoa06 1,374]

Good luck being above the level of some of your students. If I had been under you in 8th grade I might have turned up greatly.

But it's an interesting experience to try, I suppose, SC4 certainly can have a few educational purposes...Even though it might not be fitting to understand how a city evolves from an old city core. But to understand the principles behind the building of Almere, sure.

One thing you could do is make a small and rather realistic city or region to serve as basis. There's this excellent tutorial I'm hoping someone will link because I forgot the name, about making these cities and developing them with realism and short-term development in mind, rather than having god-like big plans thought out. ^^

Thinking here too, you should take a look at the City Building concept forum. It's a thematic overview of what can people get from the game, basically showing off things from subway maps to roadsigns to residential suburbs to parks. Many people focus on a few of these aspects in particular, I find this very peculiar and entertaining to check, and to some people SC4 is much more than building a string of roads and building, it's all about breathing life in these cities and being creative and derivating more freedom of play than Skyrim could offer.. There are newer city builders that let you build cities sure, but none that give you a thousand ways to build a thousand cities using a thousand different styles.

  Edited August 19, 2012 by Linoa06  

[Fatherted 129]

Good idea!

One or two things:

Firstly, make sure they download the NAM on default to add trams and other realistic transport.

Give them links to custom content they may use.

Secondly, how will they each have a game disc, and are you on rush hour or deluxe? If so, give them the NAM.

[Magneto 316]

Make it fun and they will learn! It is a beautiful project you have assigned to your students, bravo.

The idea of making them keep a step by step written log is absolutely brilliant, it will force them to reason more and at the same time it will prevent some form of cheating I think.

As for playing the game "vanilla", I think you might consider let them grab at least the NAM (Network Addon Mod), as it will increase possibilities with networks and introduce realistic ones (tram). I guess it depends whether you want to emphasize the importance on transportation, just a suggestion here...

About cheats, I don't think it can defeat the purpose of your assignment. It's difficult to cheat with a step-by-step log. If suspicious mods have been used to influence the game, you'll be able to notice weird things just happening by letting the game run a few years. If there's no change in traffic patterns, pollution, no sudden abandonment or such weird things it's probably clean. The only cheat that would be impossible to uncover (unless a student goes too greedy) is money. But it would only be a minor issue since the goal is to have a good income/outcome balance for the city, not a big bank account.

I wish you all the best for this nice project!

Cheers

[Fatherted 129]

Lastly, are you playing by city or by region? If by city, remember demand is very low at the start, so make sure you let them make a city in another tile to stimulate demand in another.

[Skyrunner27 23]

Well you could just check the funds tab on their cities. If you see any strange increases then they probably used a cheat.

[Evillions 552]

I think you should create a set of plugins or mods for your students to use. For example, I would use the following:

NAM - Keep the traffic capacity at medium or lower, the default game's path finding is atrocious in my opinion. Other than that, you should allow your students access to the other transportation options.

Seawalls - Large metropolises need these to prevent excess water flow.

Other than that, you will need to control this assignment as much as possible. Is this assignment conducted in school or out of school? Another thing, you can not let your students learn about the plugins folder and modding sites such as this. Otherwise, expect massive cheating.

[k50 427]

Seawalls - Large metropolises need these to prevent excess water flow.

Spons, for the record, seawalls are nothing more than decoration, the game water doesn't change elevation... unless you have a mod

[Fanoboy 4]

Well, check the Plugins folder in the Program Files Sim City 4, or documents, if you see something other then the background(Dark bluish pictures), there maybe something. But I mostly recommand a mod free game

If you see strange money incrases like 9,999,999,999 or 1,000,000,000. They might be cheating money. but if you see anything else strange like no pollution, demand all the way up. it might be cheat mods.

  Edited August 20, 2012 by Fanoboy  

[asovse1 3]

Ooh, here's a fun one. If you have administrator privileges on your network, set the Plugins folder on both the program directory and the individual user's directory to write-lock. Combine THIS and the fact that the built-in cheats are dead-simple to spot and ineffective to use, and you have a teacher's fool-proof cheat guard.

Keep in mind I'm still under the impression that this project is done at school. But even then, you should encourage your students to wrap up any work AT school before submission for maximum guard.

As for executable trainers and installers, you'd need basic administrator privileges to install them or even run them in a way that it can access the game's directory, (I hope I'm not wrong, that would be very embarrassing and offensive to those who actually know the answer) so you're pretty much good there.

  Edited August 20, 2012 by asovse1  

[Superbacon 380]

One thing you can do is have them attach their plugins folder with their finished assignment. And maybe all funds charts and whatnot.

[Fatherted 129]

One other thing: Check the income/expenses graph and see what they are making, and then check the funds graph. I get +30,000 a month, so a steep funds slope is not always a cheated one.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

As a retired educator and a long time player of this game, I might be able to give you more help than some of the others. Please send me a copy of your assignment by Private Message (PM) and I'll offer any suggestions I may have.

Is your assignment based on SimCity 4, SimCity 4 Deluxe, or SimCity 4 Deluxe Digital edition? Either of the first two require published patches to run properly. If the base copy on your server is unpatched in either of the two cases, your assignment is in jeopardy.

[Spons 1]

@ A Nonny Moose, the assignment is in Dutch

Everyone thanx for all the help. I ordered a Simcity 4 deluxe cd-rom, which the IT guys at school will install on the network, along with the NAM mod. Then the students can go nuts. The assignment is for students of 16 and 17 years old, so the assignment has a lot of theoretical geography which they must understand and put into the city.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

@ A Nonny Moose, the assignment is in Dutch

Everyone thanx for all the help. I ordered a Simcity 4 deluxe cd-rom, which the IT guys at school will install on the network, along with the NAM mod. Then the students can go nuts. The assignment is for students of 16 and 17 years old, so the assignment has a lot of theoretical geography which they must understand and put into the city.

There are two published patches for that CD. Depending on the version (SKU) on the disks, you have to select the right one for EP1. You will need to register (free) on this site (or your IT guys will) then scroll down to the EA Support button. As a minimum you need the EP1 patch to bring the game to build version 1,1,638. EP1 is a set of bug fixes.

The other patch is for custom content night lights. Your IT guys can find it on the BAT page, but if you are only running a basic problem without custom content, you don't need it.

The basic game without the Network Addon Mod (NAM) has several deficiencies in the simulation for traffic pathfinding, but that's another story.

Oh, and since you are in the Netherlands, don't expect any student to create polders with the unmodified game. It can't be done.

  Edited August 20, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[vivapanda 422]

Sounds very interesting!

Especially considering I'm going to 5th class (16-17?) next year

Unfortunately I don't have geography anymore, it didn't fit in my nature-health/technology profile. I could read a bit trough the exercise if you'd want me to.

Greets Michael

  Edited August 21, 2012 by vivapanda  

[7238320 77]

Maybe the SC4Savegame Explorer can help.

The download can be found here at the BSC Exchange. (You have to be registered on the LEX to see the download button.)

More information can be found in this thread.

[jdenm8 362]

Like has been said previously, get your IT guys to write-lock the directory to remove the possibility of most mods and cheats (This will probably already have been done as basic maintenance). The built-in cheats really are cumbersome and just plain awful and the Extra Cheats DLL needs access to the Plugins folder to work, part of the Documents folder I'm sure your IT guys can restrict access to.

You should be able to easily tell from their profit/loss chart whether they're cheating or not.

It's great to hear you're installing the NAM! Just note that it only has language packs for English or German, so there may be an issue there with the additional plugins which will only be labelled in either of those.

The only other thing I can recommend is what's called a slope mod. It restricts the maximum gradients of transit networks like roads and such. The built-in slope parameters are pretty relaxed and basic. I'd recommend one of Ennedi's less restrictive ones (like mountainous) of the BRF one. The BR one is available here on the STEX and the Ennedi ones are at the SC4D LEX. There are multiple more however and if you do a little research, you can find more that may meet your needs (Possibly my one, which isn't available here for personal reasons).

  Edited August 21, 2012 by jdenm8  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

If you are running Deluxe then I do recommend the NAM, probably the German version as being somewhat like Dutch unless your students are already fluent in English.

Any slope mod is a matter of aesthetics, and I would give that a miss for a simple project. A little coping is a good thing for a problem solving project of this nature. I hope you realize the nature of this program is an exercise in problem solving.

[Linoa06 1,374]

Lol both languages are kinda very different, the English version has the advantage of having more support here to begin with. I think the NAM is really the only necessary plugin too, however, as far as the assignment goes.