Sim City Societies Could Not Connect to the Server Please Try Again in a Few Minutes

SimCity Modder Tells Us Offline Regional Play Easily Done

Always Offline

A key moment in the week's SimCity shenanigans was unquestionably the appearance of a video from a modder, Azzer, announcing he'd constitute a way to remove the game'south offline timer. The final nail in the ridiculous-claims coffin, this mod demonstrated that everything but the asynchronous multiplayer was running on your home machine. We got in touch with the homo behind the modernistic, one Azzer, and he had a lot more than to say. In his opinion, the information coming from the servers is so rudimentary that despite Maxis's claims, at that place shouldn't be any problem at all in simulating the regional play offline.

So many of Maxis's claims about how SimCity runs have come up down to the importance of the information from the servers, driving the experience of players whether they're seeking social conglomeration, or going information technology lonely. And even in Bradshaw's revisionist version of these claims, nosotros're still being told that the manner it works is "innovative". Not and then, alleges Azzer.

"I've analyzed all of the information calls to and from EA servers - all of the APIs, every request for data, and all of the data that comes back," explains the modder. And in doing so, he'south found some surprising results. "The SimCity servers are not doing any calculations that could not be done on your PC, even for an unabridged region single thespian offline mode, let lonely just the city you are in."

It'due south his conventionalities (clearly nosotros don't have a clue - we're non experts hither at all) that the servers aren't chugging nearly as hard as Maxis say. "All the server sends to your customer, is some very basic data about each metropolis - how much ability they have available, how much spare fire trucks, you know - that sort of stuff. It's small, and it'due south sent every bit raw numbers. Your customer then just goes 'oh there's Xxx power spare from city Z.' Information technology's that simple."

Only this seems to contradict the claims from Maxis that the servers are, "using new applied science to realize a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the earth we live in." How does Azzer answer to that? "The server side calculations are all, bluntly, rubbish." Ah. In his stance, clearly. "Every flake of it," he continues. "The just 'good' they do at the moment is for a multiplayer region - they are only a way for my metropolis to tell your city how much power I take spare, and update that data every few minutes while I play. A middleman of sorts."

In fact, Azzer thinks that even despite this, the tech isn't nearly as good every bit it should exist. "The servers are terrible, the MySQL set up-upwards sloppy, and they are trying to handle all of the saving server side ("the cloud") which is bogging them down constantly - they aren't optimized for how many simultaneous cities are continued at once. Hell, this "cloud" saving isn't fifty-fifty very clever is it - if you change servers, all your saves are gone. They don't fifty-fifty "cloud" your saves between their own servers."

Matching the information we received from our Maxis mole, Azzer explains that the but other part served by the servers - beyond the obvious "fluff and guff" equally he calls information technology of invites, conversation, leaderboards, etc. - is to forestall cheating. "Nigh of the processing piece of work is probably their attempts at anti-cheat stuff, checking a city doesn't do... something... at an unrealistic speed."

As nosotros've repeatedly pointed out, while not offering an offline version of SimCity is entirely Maxis's telephone call, our issue this week has been with their claiming information technology would be near impossible, rather than their simply assertive it undesirable. (Obviously we have enormous issues with whatever game beingness bedridden by such DRM, too.)

So how simple does Azzer call back getting an offline version going might be? "They could make an entire region unmarried histrion offline with absolute ease. Information technology would be as uncomplicated as coding in a switch proverb, 'Is this person playing single player? Take the ability values of each city from local retentivity instead of ask for it from the server instead.' The just affair missing is saving to local difficult drive - only let'south exist real, the lawmaking for saving your city already exists, I tin't imagine even that would take more than an hour to put into the customer (and it probably already exists in the customer for development builds), plus a piffling bit of time for the UI elements for Save/Load."

"For an offline mode," he continues, "instead of asking EA servers how much power is available from a fellow city in the region, it will simply accept it in memory, as a small handful of values from some other metropolis. No alive calculations washed on them. Just raw values, all the EA servers send anyhow. And as you'll only be playing/simulating i urban center at a time in offline mode (cities you don't play are "frozen in fourth dimension") - those values of how much spare ability, resource, etc. other cities take won't even need updating, until you lot alter cities."

But how exactly would that work? If those cities are frozen, resource won't be renewed, nor depleted? "Let's say you and I play in a region together," says Azzer, talking about the regular online game. "You build a boondocks that has lots of power and water (water is a consumable just like coal) and spare fire trucks. I build a big casino city with lots of criminals. You become offline and don't play for a whole week, but I keep playing for an entire week." Okay, with you lot. "During that calendar week, my client will keep telling me stories about fire trucks coming to assistance me from your urban center, I'll keep getting water from you, I'll keep getting power from you - of a 'set corporeality' dictated by how much you had spare when you last logged off. This is all processed by my client, non by the server. All the server did was tell me 'X fire trucks bachelor, Y h2o bachelor, Z power available, from city with the name ABC,' every bit a raw list of values. When you log back on, your h2o levels volition be exactly equally they were when you last logged off, because EA'due south servers were Not doing any processing, and my customer simply affects the city I am simulating."

Crikey. So an offline version of the game could act in exactly the same way. You could play multiple cities in your private region, each freezing when non played merely as the current game operates. "No processing is done on the cities y'all aren't currently playing on - they only freeze in time and provide a stock-still gear up of values of 'resources' that the currently played metropolis simulates. The client does all the processing, which is why whatsoever city not being played (online or not) has null done to it past EA'south servers if the owner of that metropolis is not playing their city at the time."

Nosotros likewise spoke to Azzer near the rather strange happenings with the threads related to his modern vanishing from the EA forums. A series of tweets from, Erik Reynolds, "senior director of worldwide communications" (but plainly not mathematics), explained that he was going to exist "grand% clear".

"Due to our ToS we need to delete the thread nearly the hack/modernistic from our forums. Please move it to other places and go on the dialogue."

So slightly less than grand% clearly, he added,

"In the past we've supported the modding community and in the futurity nosotros are committed to supporting. Hacks are non mods."

This wasn't an ambiguity he further cleared up. It was one that surprised Azzer too. "A thread I made detailing all of the modding work (and clearing upward any mis-information as well) on the EA forums was deleted within thirty minutes of posting (after 3 pages of replies)." But despite Reynolds' stating an apparent distinction between hacks and mods, the baby and the bathwater have been thrown out of the EA forums. (You can read Azzer'southward deleted thread here.)

"Hours later," continues Azzer, "a new sticky thread appeared saying no mod talk was immune whatsoever more than." But how strictly is this being moderated, the modder wondered. And so he started a thread titled, "Mods and rockers", discussing the 1960s British music culture. "Just to see if they were deleting threads without even looking at the content."

Were they? "It was deleted within thirty seconds of posting. Yes, I was plain request for a deletion with that thread championship - merely I giggled anyhow."

Nosotros'd love to put these points to Maxis, and to be able to provide you with their corrections for the in a higher place, forth with their clarifications and responses, just they're ignoring the states.

keysthountim.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/simcity-modder-tells-us-offline-regional-play-easily-done

Share this post