Simcity

[Wiglaf]

Most 12 year olds at least admit when they're wrong..

[Wiglaf]

See this is ****ing music to my ears, and I'd imagine Maxis'/EA's too right now. There's scores of people like you and Oerdin who feel superior (because they're part of the super cool internet underground criminal piracy culture) to "the man" and "corporate profits." They are so immature they can't even admit when they're beat.

[Sava]

yup

you hang around with a lot of 12 year old boys?

[Sava]

There's scores of people like you and Oerdin who feel superior (because they're part of the super cool internet underground criminal piracy culture) to "the man" and "corporate profits." They are so immature they can't even admit when they're beat.

nah
those companies are making lots of money no matter what I do

actually, i haven't downloaded any games in a while
steam sales are good
i don't mind dropping a few bucks on a game when it's on sale

just mostly movies and tv shows
most of which i've seen or already could have seen because i get the channels

it's more for convenience than anything else

[Guynemer]

From the most recent RockPaperShotgun link...

“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 have it in memory, as a small handful of values from another city. No live calculations done on them. Just raw values, all the EA servers send anyway. And as you’ll only be playing/simulating one city at a time in offline mode (cities you don’t play are “frozen in time”) – those values of how much spare power, resources, etc. other cities have won’t even need updating, until you change cities.”

But how exactly would that work? If those cities are frozen, resources 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 town 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 go offline and don’t play for a whole week, but I keep playing for an entire week.” Okay, with you. “During that week, my client will keep telling me stories about fire trucks coming to help me from your city, I’ll keep getting water from you, I’ll keep getting power from you – of a ‘set amount’ dictated by how much you had spare when you last logged off. This is all processed by my client, not by the server. All the server did was tell me ‘X fire trucks available, Y water available, Z power available, from city with the name ABC,’ as a raw list of values. When you log back on, your water levels will be exactly as they were when you last logged off, because EA’s servers were NOT doing any processing, and my client only 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 not played just as the current game operates. “No processing is done on the cities you aren’t currently playing on – they simply freeze in time and provide a fixed set of values of ‘resources’ that the currently played city simulates. The client does all the processing, which is why any city not being played (online or not) has nothing done to it by EA’s servers if the owner of that city is not playing their city at the time.”

Man. That sounds familiar. I know a game that sounds just like that. I want to say... BimBity 4? No, that's not right. ****, what was it?

[Wiglaf]

IT'S DRM! IT'S DRM! DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU KNOW WHAT DRM IS?

[regexcellent]

Yeah well SimCity 4 had the issue where you could just load up the neighboring town, make a 4-tile landfill in it, and infinitely dump your garbage there.

[Tupac Shakur]

Yeah well SimCity 4 had the issue where you could just load up the neighboring town, make a 4-tile landfill in it, and infinitely dump your garbage there.

That's a very accurate simulation of Staten Island.

[Sava]

Yeah well SimCity 4 had the issue where you could just load up the neighboring town, make a 4-tile landfill in it, and infinitely dump your garbage there.

You can do the same in this Simcity. You can import garbage ad infinitum as long as there's enough capacity.

[Guynemer]

IT'S DRM! IT'S DRM! DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU KNOW WHAT DRM IS?

So you are in 100% agreement that EA/Maxis has been lying about the purpose of their servers all along?

Good! We agree.

[Wiglaf]

You can do the same in this Simcity. You can import garbage ad infinitum as long as there's enough capacity.

That would kill your hope of completing any great work, challenge, leaderboard goal..Also the garbage would become pollution (Air) over time and drift back down..

[Wiglaf]

Yeah well SimCity 4 had the issue where you could just load up the neighboring town, make a 4-tile landfill in it, and infinitely dump your garbage there.

Ssh don't interrupt Guynemer's SC4 boner GAME WAS PERFECT

[Wiglaf]

So you are in 100% agreement that EA/Maxis has been lying about the purpose of their servers all along?

Good! We agree.

I think really only one person was (Lucy) misleading people. And I don't care, at all, because it was always so obvious. They want to avoid calling their customers thieves -- even though that's what many of them are, or would be without DRM.

[Sava]

That would kill your hope of completing any great work, challenge, leaderboard goal..Also the garbage would become pollution (Air) over time and drift back down..

Nope. You can make a city, plop down a dump with extra landfill and never go into the city again. The region never updates because the garbage city never builds up enough pollution to harm other cities.

[Wiglaf]

How the **** can you complete a great work, challenge, leaderboard goal, etc, with an empty city?