SimCity mod demonstrates the possibility of offline play

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/14/4102966/simcity-mod-demonstrates-the-possibility-of-indefinite-offline-play

by uptown • 13 years ago

130 95 13 years ago

ilitirit• 13 years ago

Except that you can't save your game...

Still, it's a useful mod for people who have unstable connections. You can also mod the UI to link a rarely button used button to "Sync", so that you save at will.

tomrod• 13 years ago

Save state in a VM?

icebraining3• 13 years ago

On Linux there are "process freezers" that work pretty well for simple applications. I wonder if Windows has anything like that...?

JonnieCache2• 13 years ago

Is the game really that good?

fname• 13 years ago

Not true. The actual Reddit[1,2] posts the article pulls this from says they have been able to sync their game to the servers. It seems that when offline, it saves it locally and uploads upon reconnect. He was able to remove the 20 minute timeout disconnect, but it still saves things locally and uploads upon reconnect.

1. http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a9n5j/you_can_edit...

2. http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1a9t0e/simcity_modder...

mrspeaker• 13 years ago

This whole thing is starting to feel like a case of "no such things as bad publicity" - I kinda really want to check it out now that it's appeared here 10 times.

stickydink• 13 years ago

I'm about to order it, to see what the fuss is about :/

slig• 13 years ago

I believe the fuss is more about "they say it can't be done, but it's obviously BS, so we'll figure it out." than anything else.

Gigablah• 13 years ago

I suggest you hold off until they fix the most crucial issues: players may lose their cities (some have lost days of playtime), or get stuck in rollback loops. Have a look at the top stickied threads here:

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellaneous-Issues/bd-p/sim-city-...

vyrotek• 13 years ago

The fuss is that it's a fascinating train wreck on so many fronts. It's a game that has deep nostalgic roots for many folks and everyone was hoping to experience that 'wow' from years ago. But if has failed to live up to that expectation.

The only reason it shows up here on HN is because there are a lot of interesting technical flaws which we enjoy analyzing. Things such as scalability issues, backend architecture, DRM, leaked client-side code, etc.

myth• 13 years ago

That's kind of like touching a boiling pot of water to see if it's hot. You know you're going to get burned, but you have to check anyway.

gph• 13 years ago

You'll probably be disappointed. Ignoring the fuss of DRM/offline-play the game just wasn't very good IMO. Perhaps if you like watching little Sims and feeling connected on the micro-scale to a city it's interesting. If you're into Macro city management simulation, don't bother. They added some interesting new features, it showed some creativity. But the implementation is poor IMO.

Even if they enabled an offline mode I still wouldn't be playing it. Course that's all subjective so I guess there will be those who disagree. I think most of the yelling and screaming for an offline mode is the gaming community making a Custers' Last Stand on the issue. People are mostly upset about the concept of not "owning" the game and that at some point in the future they might not be able to play this game. I doubt very many of those upset would actually want to play this game in 10 years time. Course I do agree with the fundamentals of that argument, but unfortunately I don't think we'll win.

Guess what I'm trying to get at, is the passion surrounding this game is more due to principles than enjoyment or zealous fandom of the game itself. Well perhaps some of the outrage is over how EA has destroyed a classic series like SimCity. But that doesn't mean the game is good and you should buy it for the playing experience.

sixothree• 13 years ago

Maybe wait for the TPB version.

johnward3• 13 years ago

I bought it and I recommend this. At least at this point. Or even better go buy SimCity4 for $10.

rowsdower• 13 years ago

My brain first parsed 'TPB' as 'Trade Paperback.' SimCity: The Novel sounds like a horrible idea, but I wouldn't put it past EA to try and milk the franchise that way.

leetrout• 13 years ago

I just don't get it. I've not heard one person say they are happy about the state of the game. Yet EA / Maxis continue to ignore the customers. (And they will continue to for the foreseeable future, I'm sure).

I have several friends that picked it up on launch day and a few of them haven't even tried to play it yet. I can't understand the need to have the latest game for the compulsive gamers. To shell out money just to have it perpetuates this cycle of EA selling anything they want and the masses buying it anyway.

I went to play NHL '10 a couple weeks ago on xbox and was greeted with a nice message that the game servers are shut down. At least I can still play the game. What are the odds there will be an end-of-life patch that enables offline, single city game play when EA pulls the plugs on the SimCity servers?

In any case, it's clear that EA will laugh all the way to the bank with everyone's money. I'll keep voting with my wallet.

JackdawX• 13 years ago

As you say in your post, people are buying the game irrespectively. Why bother making changes? Here are the current sales figures in the UK:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/mar/11/t...

Debuted at #2 in the charts. Development time costs money, and the game doesn't need 'fixing' to sell any copies. Despite the negative press in the tech community, most gamers don't actuall care about the always online requirement. I don't see the big deal myself either - most PC games from big publishers actually install malware and rootkits onto your machine! That seems infinitely worse than always-online, but no-one cares about that either.

fusiongyro3• 13 years ago

> Why bother making changes?

One that springs to mind is that everybody you burn on this one is potentially a lost customer of the next one.

TamDenholm• 13 years ago

I dont know anything about the guardians chart here but certainly the charts in shops like Game are not based on any data at all, they're advertising slots, if you pay for the number 1 slot, you get it.

I know this because i had some interaction with a company that checked to make sure retails stores were putting the games in the right shelves that the game companies had paid for.

Anyway, just as a note, this guardian article doesnt provide any data, so it could simply be a paid for placement.

darkarmani• 13 years ago

> most PC games from big publishers actually install malware and rootkits onto your machine! That seems infinitely worse than always-online, but no-one cares about that either.

If you define "most gamers" as the people that bought the products you are talking about it is certainly easier to say that those people don't care about those things.

JanezStupar• 13 years ago

EA doesn't care, they never have.

They will take a game studio, squeeze all the juice out of it and use the profits to buy another one. Ad infinitum.

> http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Electronic_Arts

notatoad• 13 years ago

Nobody says they're happy, yet people keep buying it. You vote with your wallet, but as long as nobody else does, EA doesn't have to care what a few angry people on the Internet think.

gdubs• 13 years ago

I went to the grocery store with my grandma back in 1980's, and she told me she wasn't buying steak because she and everyone she knew where boycotting a manufacturer. That was the first time I heard of the concept. I asked her if it worked and she said yes, they had successfully boycotted several products in the past. I always think of that when I hear talk of boycotting -- that it could work if people were serious about it and actually closed ranks around something.

adventured• 13 years ago

The negative blowback didn't hurt this Simcity launch (yet anyway) for a few reasons. First, so many people had pre-ordered it. Second it was massively hyped up by so many of the gaming sites that bow to the big publishers. Third, it's the next version of the game that will take the big hit from this reputation damage (and EA's brand in general).

By the time it was revealed to be a crappy game, inertia had carried the sales a very far distance.

I've seen this concept play out with eg NBA Live. EA produced a few decent versions of it in the early 2000's, and then produced a few really bad versions of it in a row. The first bad version sold fine, then the next releases sold less and less and the reviews were harsher and harsher.

EA had an opportunity to widen its Simcity base, that's a cost you don't see right now. More people than ever before have powerful desktop PC's. Today I can get a great PC for $600 to $800. Ten years ago, that money didn't go nearly as far (and these are less valuable dollars to boot). EA just burned a lot of casual gamers.

munificent• 13 years ago

> I've not heard one person say they are happy about the state of the game.

People rarely take the time to communicate "X is OK." That information is of no use to the person communicating. They're happy with the status quo and don't want any change. So there's little incentive to go out of your way to say that.

Often the only time people will chime in to say "I like X" is when it appears that X may be about to change.

This is a generalization, of course. People do sometimes go out of their way to give praise. This can be out of altruism ("I want others to know how awesome X is" or "I want the people who made X to get more business because they're awesome"). Others enjoy the process of critiquing. Some when confronted with negative feedback feel it's important to do justice by providing an alternate viewpoint.

theg2• 13 years ago

I will say I am happy with the game. I don't think it's delivered on the experience that was being sold, but I'd argue that the potential is there.

The angry mob on reddit fueled by RPS and other places hungry for pageviews has literally killed the last remaining desire I had to read reddit. Some people just don't seem to be grounded in reality and act surprised about things that were known months ago.

The game is fun, it's broken in spots and the launch was poorly done but I'm hopeful they'll fix it. You are 100% right about people ranting about it yet still buying it but we have to keep in mind that even "communities" as big as reddit are only a fraction of the people who actually buy games.

chc2• 13 years ago

> The angry mob on reddit fueled by RPS and other places hungry for pageviews

This seems to imply that Rock Paper Shotgun is printing sensationalized fluff. I don't think that's a fair characterization at all. As gaming news sites go, I'd say Rock Paper Shotgun is generally pretty thoughtful and reasonable, and thus it's built up a lot of credibility with a lot of people. Is it really being "hungry for pageviews" to report that important statements made about a game's underlying technology are patently false? Because to me that just sounds like good journalism — the kind that the gaming industry could use more of.

maxerickson• 13 years ago

It's interesting how much commentary is blind to the segment of the market that is perfectly fine getting dozens of hours of game play for $60.

mrigor• 13 years ago

https://twitter.com/MaxisGuillaume looks like they're working on fixing a lot of the issues

andypants2• 13 years ago

> I have several friends that picked it up on launch day and a few of them haven't even tried to play it yet

Why not? They won't play the game they already bought because they heard some bad things about it?

Florin_Andrei• 13 years ago

> Yet EA / Maxis continue to ignore the customers.

As long as quarterly projections are met, who cares if there's a mob with torches outside.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

This is the fundamental problem of the business of making and distributing art, whether it's TV, movies, music, or games. It's not a commodity, it's not, generally speaking, fungible so it takes a much more principled stand to force change. If you don't like, say, the way a certain bank or grocery store or gas company or what-have-you does business you can just switch to a competing product. Even if that requires compromises generally there will be alternatives which are suitable substitutes. But that's not the case with artistic works. There is only one The Beatles, only one Veronica Mars, only one Citizen Cane, and there's only one SimCity series. You can decide to avoid playing the new version, and you can decide to play some other game, but these are all wholly inadequate substitutes.

And this is how game makers and publishers have managed to get away not only with astoundingly bad DRM but also in releasing quite broken and incomplete games in some cases. It's because gamers continue to let them get away with it.

ericcholis• 13 years ago

I wouldn't be shocked if a bnetd [1] like situation arose. What's stopping a clever hacker from coming up with a local proxy that just saves everything on the user's PC? From what it sounds like, the server infrastructure isn't doing anything crazy complicated.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle.net#bnetd

lucian19005• 13 years ago

It would not be trivial, since the client verifies the SSL certificate of the server, which is stored in the client binary most likely.

metachris• 13 years ago

You can add new, custom root certificates to the system and use them to manually sign a fake server certificate.

ErikRogneby2• 13 years ago

Despite all of the legal rulings the code is still out there and easily available.

I quick github search returned:

https://github.com/jrmuizel/bnetd

datalus• 13 years ago

The servers have gotten a lot more stable and I've been able to play consistently. The new problem is: I'm bored already. The game isn't as deep as I first thought it was. Not sure if I'll buy the inevitable DLCs to make it more fleshed out.

In offline mode, since it doesn't save my city... maybe it'll offer a different way of playing. Sort of like old school games that didn't have any save points :)

skore3• 13 years ago

> The new problem is: I'm bored already. The game isn't as deep as I first thought it was.

Interesting! So you're saying the lack of fixing problems appears to be a nice cover for a the lack of an interesting game?

johnward3• 13 years ago

There are some major issues. One of them being the traffic problems that were posted on HN yesterday. Traffic is supposed to be somewhat challenging, but there is really no way to fix it unless you remove all intersections. There are also other bugs such as not being able to plop the sign for the trade HQ. Also I built the trade building with the rail road tracks (forgot the name) and it will take deliveries of items like oil but it will never hold the oil or ship it out. It just disappears.

The budget controls don't go as deep as SimCity3000/4. In the past I could shave a couple dollars of the road budget, but that would result in pot holes and less repairs. Can't do that now.

The cities are also very small. I'm waiting for EA to release some "awesome" DLC that gives you a decent sized city. The more I play this game the more I like SC4.

SeanDav• 13 years ago

I am so not going to buy this game.

EA just don't get it so I will help them a bit by choosing to spend my money elsewhere.

ripter• 13 years ago

I've opted for the new StarCraft 2. The launch went smoothly without an issue.

johnward3• 13 years ago

The game has bugs aside from the server issues. I hope they fix those too.

ErikRogneby2• 13 years ago

some interesting reads over on the gaming stack exchange:

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/simcity

Lockyy• 13 years ago

>Region searching is currently broken! When it is fixed, the task you are trying to do will be easy. Until then, the best you can do is invite through the friend system.

How is it that every single thing in this game is broken? I tried playing multiplayer as well once I got bored playing alone and got just as bored except faster because I was still playing singleplayer because nobody will ever join.

frankenstein• 13 years ago

The funniest thing is that the whole thing is not true. Yeah, you can disable the first DRM layer in JavaScript but after 30 minutes you will get always thrown back to the main menu.

rdl2• 13 years ago

Even once all the online/etc. issues are resolved, it's just not a very good game. I'm not angry enough to push Amazon for a refund, but it's not something I'd ever pay full price for. It's actually inferior to CitiesXL Platinum (although broken in different ways; between the two, you could have one decent game).

Civ V wasn't great, either, but Civ V:G+K turned it into a decent and worthy successor. Maybe the same thing will happen with SimCity 5.

MBunny• 13 years ago

I play on NA East 2 mostly and I have not had any issues with the server in a while. Not like the start. There are still lots of bugs in the game but what release like this is ever flawless? Simcity as a game is evolving and trying to become more connected. I agree that they shouldn't have lied about all the work require for offline mode when the game continues to function without a connection. I think offline wouldn't be that bad to add if they felt like the mechanics of the game still worked. TBH if it wasn't for the online mode I wouldn't still be playing. As I play mostly social games with friends. For me it is a plus. I have played other games such as LOL that have had several DAYS of no service but yet there is not much of an uproar about it. It seems like most the people commenting in this thread haven't had very much experience with SimCity 5.

SimCity mod demonstrates the possibility of offline play

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