simcity offline game mode for offline saves and restore mod

[oldbrokenlink 43]

i was wondering if anyone would like to work on a simcity offline game mode for offline saves and restore mod

 

i can program, but i welcome anyone that can help, including test.

 

but i'm not familiar with simcity/sim stuff

 

to start off with just so that everyone knows you will still be connected all the time and login ect to their drm server, so its not offline like you dont have to do drm or connect to them or be online all the time

 

but what i was thinking was to find out where they get the list of servers that you can select to join

 

either the list is on your computer or when you start the game it gets the list from some master server

 

regardless the thing would be to add a server that you host locally or on another computer or someone else hosts

 

obvious that server would have to support the functionality of the server you normally join when you play a private game and when you do things like saves and reload.

 

it should not be too hard to get something that fakes the client. because it looks like the jason definition is included in the pack files. and its a matter of passing back and forth the correct things.

 

wireshark and proxies can be setup to capture the packet flows, basically allowing capture and analysis or what goes on when you select a server, when you join a server, when u play a private the game while on a server and when you do save and restore

 

then its a matter of writing the correct server code

 

what makes it easier is the fact of what is coming out that when for example a fire truck goes from your town to another no fire truck really shows up in that other town. so its all fake and most likely just happening on your client.

 

yeah a bit disappointing but the simulation of when something comes in or out of towns is fake from what people have been reporting when u for example send money, resources, or people or vehicles or anything out of your town and it says its going to another town but if u were in that other town it never shows up. and the same when u get from another town its really not coming from another town at all. they dont see the firetruck leaving, ect.

 

so that simulation technology that they bragged about is either not there or broken or not fully functional, ect.

 

but that is good cause it means we dont have to handle it

 

so then the idea is to have the client pick local server or friends server ect and then play on like they were connected with themselves and thus have saves

 

 

[Indiana Joe 1,751]

I believe that DRM makes it illegal and impossible to give this game an offline mode.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Yes, I'm afraid this would violate EA's Terms of Service agreement. To run the game, you must connect via Origin to the EA servers. Anything else would be classed as an exploit, or unauthorised use of the software/services. Also, how the game operates with the servers, what you're suggesting wouldn't even be possible.

 

Here are some relevant terms from the agreement:
 

ELECTRONIC ARTS TERMS OF SERVICE

 

11. Rules of Conduct

 

You may violate the Terms of Service if, as determined by EA in its sole discretion, you:

 

- Post, transmit, promote, or distribute Content that is illegal.
- Promote, encourage or take part in any activity involving hacking, cracking, phishing, taking advantage of exploits or cheats and/or distribution of counterfeit software and/or virtual currency/items.
- Use or distribute unauthorized "auto" software programs, "macro" software programs or other "cheat utility" software program or applications.
- Use any game hacking/altering/cheating software or tools. 
- Modify or attempt to modify any file or any other part of the EA Service that EA does not specifically authorize you to modify.
- Attempt to interfere with, hack into or decipher any transmissions to or from the servers for an EA Service.
- Attempt to use EA Software on or through any service that is not controlled or authorized by Electronic Arts. Any such use is at your own risk and may subject you to additional or different terms. EA takes no responsibility for your use of EA Software on or through any service that is not controlled by Electronic Arts.

 

[source]

[Cefien 361]

Well, this is illegal. Except you have special privilege from Maxis or EA.

[oldbrokenlink 43]

im not talking about doing anything illegal and i am not trying to go around the drm or calls they make to make sure  you dont steal their game or that you dont access content you have not purchased. that is authentication and authorization and im not talking about that at all. you will still be connected to them for all those calls. but there is the drm and there is the saves and other requests that are not drm related that are being made when you are playing private game and certainly having some proxy that you run to handle those limited requests should not be a problem. again im not talking about being able to run without connecting to them. im basically giving a way to do saves and reloads from local and perhaps some of the city stuff without hitting their servers. wouldn't they be happy if they didnt have people hitting them so hard, certainly customers would and certainly they would have less need for servers and less cost to them. they still and make certain that people were not robbing them through drm calls which are most likely to authentication servers and not the server you pick for gameplay that has your cities.

[oldbrokenlink 43]

Yes, I'm afraid this would violate EA's Terms of Service agreement. To run the game, you must connect via Origin to the EA servers. Anything else would be classed as an exploit, or unauthorised use of the software/services. Also, how the game operates with the servers, what you're suggesting wouldn't even be possible.

 

Here are some relevant terms from the agreement:

 

ELECTRONIC ARTS TERMS OF SERVICE

 

11. Rules of Conduct

 

You may violate the Terms of Service if, as determined by EA in its sole discretion, you:

 

- Post, transmit, promote, or distribute Content that is illegal.

- Promote, encourage or take part in any activity involving hacking, cracking, phishing, taking advantage of exploits or cheats and/or distribution of counterfeit software and/or virtual currency/items.

- Use or distribute unauthorized "auto" software programs, "macro" software programs or other "cheat utility" software program or applications.

- Use any game hacking/altering/cheating software or tools. 

- Modify or attempt to modify any file or any other part of the EA Service that EA does not specifically authorize you to modify.

- Attempt to interfere with, hack into or decipher any transmissions to or from the servers for an EA Service.

- Attempt to use EA Software on or through any service that is not controlled or authorized by Electronic Arts. Any such use is at your own risk and may subject you to additional or different terms. EA takes no responsibility for your use of EA Software on or through any service that is not controlled by Electronic Arts.

 

[source]

 

 

 

 

by the terms of most agreements any and all modding tools, ect "may violate the Terms of Service if, as determined by EA in its sole discretion,"

 

notice the use of the phrases "may violate the Terms of Service" and "as determined by EA in its sole discretion"

 

it may be and it maybe determined

 

so if EA determines it is then it is, if they dont then they dont

 

lot of stuff for sims, and other ea games outthere some of it is and some of it isn't

 

i'm not planning to go near the is part. i certainly dont want problems from the developers/publisher

 

but ive created numerous programs to to for example unpack and pack game archives, like thosr presented in this forum and even to interface to their servers for example out of game server browser and not once have ive had any problem, often the companies do know and they while not supported have let them continues to be distributed through their forums. they basically say we dont support, we may do stuff in some future release where this stuff stops working, ect.

 

again i have zero (0) plans to bypass the drm. im not going to touch or go near their requests. so if u dont own the game or some dlc my stuff will not help you. but like with other games im looking to give way to save and restore locally and perhaps even to offload some game aspects so you don thave to be hitting their none drm servers and only for a very limited amount of things and only when playing private game. i am not going to be doing anything that interferes with leaderboard, ranks, stats, or xp gained, ect. so perhaps it maybe even limited to sandbox mode. i have to see first what is possible.

 

heck they may even welcome not having to deal with those expensive requests and with the added featue that then people can trade their cities with other people. yes u can then have some website where you publish your cities and share them with others or with your friends or even via email or thumbdrive, ect.

 

re: "impossible"

 

no not impossible. maybe hard, may take a long time, may not happen, but not because its impossible. others have done that and more for other games. all it takes is programming.

 

plus one does notknow without looking into it and trying.

[Indiana Joe 1,751]

I'm pretty sure that EA's goal with this game is to not allow anyone to play without being connected to their servers; they put that "discretion" clause in there for a reason.

 

As CycloneBoom said, they would probably consider any connection modifications or workarounds to be exploits at this point.

 

My advice: you probably should consult more professional legal advice before you try to do anything like this and share it.  Developing stuff on your own is one thing, but once you start sharing it with other people is when you might find legal trouble.

[oldbrokenlink 43]

i also appreciate everyones input, i'll look for someone at maxim to talk to, some one who will be working with modders. i think from what i read they are very interested in this and have been to much success in other games. i mean i go to some amazing sites for the sims. so perhaps for this too. i really like their games and would very much like to play within the space. but i cant to models and textures and sounds, ect im a programmer so i can perhaps do things like this or like the tool to unpack (already done so im not doing it)

 

anyway i read what you and others said, and i am little confused cause how is the advice being given to me different than for any author of the software that unpacks/modifies/creates files used by any game for simcity or sims, or any other game.

 

modding of anykind is certainly a grey area. and still there are both white hat modders and black hat modders.

 

certainly ea is taking steps to shut down all cheaters, hackers, crackers, the black hat ones

 

but ive not seen them go after any white hat ones.

 

do you think the author of unpack/modify/create simcity game .package files or sim, ect is in any legal risk.

 

what about users, do you think they will be banned if ea knew

 

i certainly do no want to do something that would be illegal, but then again there maybe a lot in legal agreements that are not illegal, they just put it cause everyone does.

 

anyways im not lawyer or claim to be a lawyer. ive been working on modding tools for numerous games. including numbers as ive said that worked with companies master servers, ect and those companies honestly didnt have a problem with them. they just said unsupported, ect.

 

it actually helped them in a way to get more sales. i would think ea would not have a problem with people saving and restoring there cities or even trading them with friends

 

perhaps they have just not gotten to that or had not had the idea, of trading.

 

i would think that they would be happy to have people buying and playing their game and they continue to make money on it

 

i certainly have not made any money from any of the stuff ive done

 

also with all the problems that simcity is having with saves right now i would think they would be happy if they had a breather and people would be happy to have some utility

 

if they like it im happy also to give it to them. to add to their list of modding tools that are unofficially not supported, but available.

 

im not going to make a tool that lets u modify your saves, or makes u cheat in any way. i certainly hate cheaters and for that matter people that dont buy the game and steal it. so i certainly not going to make anything they can use.

 

but there must be some modding that they will allow, even tolerate. its already happening. once those unpack / modify / create utilities come out people will be doing all sort of stuff even significant mods.

 

i see games like cities xl, ect that are heavily modded. it does not hurt the company, i think if anything it keeps sales going

[oldbrokenlink 43]

oh one more thing the people who messing around with turtle speed (like in other thread) or with cheeta speed like in reddit, surely they are in big trouble then and people who would use such tools surely then would qualify as cheaters to be banned since it would fall under any agreement such as ea/simcity has

 

the problem is agreement if well written should cover everything and its up to the party(ies) to determine what is and not allowed. ea  / simcity folk just wanting to cover all bases so if they have to do something they have right to and people cant complain u banned me for what.

 

we banned u cause u changed the speed of the game, gave u an unfair advantage, ect. im not saying they are going to do it, but i can imagine they would like to be able to have ability to do what they like. its about leverage and control more than anything. they certainly dont want people that cheat or steal or doing unlawful things. but i think they will tolerate, like they do in so many ways, others. so long as its not something that is cheating, stealing, ect. and being able to save and then restore that save or even share i cant see how that would apply.

 

also im not planning to interfere in anyways with their servers, if anything they would see less traffic, cause when you would play in private game the save or load would go locally not not make request to their server.

[Wilkono 2]

Don't get me wrong - server issues absolutely need to be fixed, but this is something that EA really only has control over, in every respect (legally, morally, ... whateverally). And while I'm curious about such a mod, like others have said above, your ideas would be considered an exploit, not a mod. Even if your intentions were good, others could take the work and make derivatives that did circumvent cheat/pirating measures. 

 

Also from a practical POV, this sounds incredibly difficult to pull off code wise. It's not a simple job. Don't want to put you off if this is something you're going to try for. But be prepared for EA to immediately patch the base game to disable any mods like this (and possibly kick you off Origin for good, if they knew who you were). 

 

While now is not the time for such modifications, I can see this becoming an important step 3-5 years down the road. I believe that EA/Maxis will eventually release a final patch, enabling an offline mode to continue playing the game after the servers are unprofitable. But if they don't, it'll take talented dedicated coders to make offline games a reality. Maybe then, it'll be a better time for such a modification  

[oldbrokenlink 43]

i certainly dont want to be kicked from origin or from other games, never had any problem.

 

so as i meantion i am in no hurry to run into any problems

 

im going to go to maxim and try to find who over there is going to work with modders and see how i can fit in

 

and yes anything someone like me do would be better when they are not changing things, since it will be a pain to develop and maintain, especially if they are making changes to formats and such

 

anyways as u can imagine something like this also needs time to figure out so, its not like anything was going to be released anytime soon

 

and if maxim was going to do it, i certainly dont want to waste my time and reinvent the wheel, but lets hope they have interface for modders. some thread they create like other games have on their forums and perhaps some contact. even an api / sdk ect

 

since im new to simcity i dont know what they did in the past. or how it worked out. i do see a lot of stuff for older simcity.

 

also i know that other companies, including ea, do give modders some room, for example i just got rage sdk from id and that is bertha is amazing what modders can do with it. and other major games i also have sdk and like i said ive been able to build all sort of stuff.  i only do things in unranked mode, since i think otherwise is cheating. i dont mod weapons or anything that effect stats, ect. i do things like being able to list local servers so u dont join a far away one, ect. u know server browser and those are with public apis that i and others tie into. think of all those websites that list the servers for a game how do u think they did it using public api for all those games.

 

including stuff that interfaces (legally) with their servers. they have api that we follow. and again i certainly dont do things to help people cheat or steal or break any laws ect

 

i also done things for ea titles using sdk companies like dice have provided for modders think bf2.

[oldbrokenlink 43]

also keep in mind that it looks like all the stuff they have unencrypted. if they didnt want people playing around at some point they could have easily encrypted it. its just old maxim game format from what i read in the other thread, ok with some tweaks for this game.

 

so its there the jason definition for what they transmit back and forth and some other site published how they got the server list to help people avoid servers. so its either on disk or being downloaded. and from what ive read all the stuff between cities is purely fake. so its not that hard to say this request go to us and this request to them. anyways let me chat with maxim. they must have someone there for modders. perhaps not this week or month cause they are busy but oneday not too distant the fires will be out and their attention will again focus on how to keep sales going before their next game and modding is one of the options they and others have had. think of it as free development.

[jarichp 3]

I don't care what EA thinks. When SC5 is cracked I might downloading the crack for the game I own the game. This always online BS is ludicrous. You never know when the game has been saved, so you exit knowing it might now have synced.

[oldbrokenlink 43]

while i hear your frustration over issues with saves, i think we all have it and some resonable solution would be welcomed, i even think by maxim. but i dont think using one of those supposed cracked games that allows you to play illegally offline is the way to go. first its illegal since you actually don't own the game and you dont have license to use illegal copy. what you have a very limited license to the game under the terms of the license. a bit complicated i know, but it's just how it is. so i would advice until something acceptable, like what i'm proposing, becomes available. plus you have to care what ea thinks because you entered into an agreement with them and with maxim and if you dont live up to that agreement they can take you to court, it could be very expensive, you may even end up in jail and certainly they can ban your account. so its always better to play within the rules, the rules does allow for a lot. just look at all the other games. there are lots of mods, i would say many game companies allow too much freedom in any mod that allows a person to cheat, make it easier to score, ect. i perfer neutral mods that dont give a player an advantage over others.

[oldbrokenlink 43]

Maxis Insider Tells RPS: SimCity Servers Not Necessary

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary/#more-145460

 

maxim simcity developer says that it would take minimal effort to do single player offline mode, people able to play up to 20 minutes offline without syncing! syncing is basically for drm, game saves, check for cheating, and exchanging information required for multiplayer, but not single player and also not for the most transactions between cities! its not real simulator, its mostly faked!

 

 

hopefully maxim/ea will be forced to do single player offline mode, even if authentication when game runs, like in sims they have offline mode

[croxis 150]

The origin drm and the serverside saving are actually two separate systems. In theory local saving can be added without removing origin. You would still need to be online for origin to work and run the program (untill they add something like steam's offline mode). I think this will be more palatable to the community.

[aothe 20]

Remember whats is hapened with the first City XL... (no comment). Personaly i dont care about EA rules cause they dont respect any.

 

If i can play MY Game Offline in my kitchen, my garden or why not, on the beach (cause i bought it) I piss on theyr DRM.

 

(and sorry for my English)

[oldbrokenlink 43]

there appears to be an offline mod already!

 

with editing highways outside boundaries (if modders could open up boundaries to building we could have bigger cities!)

 

and full debug mode

 

http://www.reddit.com/user/trixisowned

http://www.reddit.com/user/AzzerUK

 

it does not however handle saves

 

sadly i'm really interested in having local saves!

 

and not in the removal of drm, it does not bother me.

 

this is because i play exclusively offline so i dont need multiplayer regions, i control all the regions in private myself!

 

and i mostly play in sandbox, since its more about building cities than playing the game and dealing with disasters.

 

and i dont need things like acheivements, although it would be nice to  have achievements for private sandbox mode.

 

you know for like you've passed so much time or your city has gotten so big, but i dont need them since i can see that for myself

 

the reason i want local saves so bad is because i keep losing either access to the server that has my cities and because i would like to trade cities with others and because i'm tired of getting corrupt saves or rollbacks and losing progress. or worse since i cant control when it saves there is no ability to roll back to a specific past version of map, no undo, or having a save in case of crash. it would be nice if i could specify save every 5 minutes, that way if it crashes or i make mistake i do not lose more than 5 minutes of game play

 

why didnt maxim figure this out i never will know

[oldbrokenlink 43]

good news someone found offline save directory!

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1aaftl/found_the_offline_savegame_directory/

 

or at least some journal directory until its synced with server