4 ms·

"With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are mov

"With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team." I'm running a 2.6 quad core with 16gb of ram and a ssd hd they're saying they have better than that (to overcome the internet latency) on their end for each user playing the game? I could understand needing to sync lots of actions with other players to need the server, but calculations? I call BS, that can't be right. Sounds more like a profit driving decision than a technical one.

jquery 14y ago
It is BS, of course. I was disconnected and was able to play for hours. Literally all they need to add is local saving of your city.* *When I quit the game and came back the next day, my city was gone.
- anonymous 14y ago
  Actually I suspect something more like this is happening: your local copy is running the simulation, while it's also being run on the server. Running it locally means you get no lag at all and running it on the server prevents cheating. The two simulations sync from time to time.
  - manicdee 14y ago
    Preventing cheating might make sense in competitive PvP games, but makes no sense at all in a single player game that has traditionally been played offline.
pandaman 14y ago
Depends on what the computations are. Pathing, for example, could be shared among multiple clients and even if your PC is powerful enough to do it without degrading performance, not everyone's PC is as same as yours. PS. I understand the rage against EA. I have not bought an EA game since 2002. I also had been laid off from a studio acquired by EA. So please don't imagine I am Johnny Riccitello trying to save his "reputation" or something. I am just addressing technical misconceptions. EA is evil and has to be put down.
norswap 14y ago
One of the uses is to prevent piracy. If computation is offloaded to the server, writing a crack means reimplementing part of the game.

jquery 14y ago

It is BS, of course. I was disconnected and was able to play for hours. Literally all they need to add is local saving of your city.* *When I quit the game and came back the next day, my city was gone.

anonymous 14y ago
Actually I suspect something more like this is happening: your local copy is running the simulation, while it's also being run on the server. Running it locally means you get no lag at all and running it on the server prevents cheating. The two simulations sync from time to time.
- manicdee 14y ago
  Preventing cheating might make sense in competitive PvP games, but makes no sense at all in a single player game that has traditionally been played offline.

pandaman 14y ago

Depends on what the computations are. Pathing, for example, could be shared among multiple clients and even if your PC is powerful enough to do it without degrading performance, not everyone's PC is as same as yours. PS. I understand the rage against EA. I have not bought an EA game since 2002. I also had been laid off from a studio acquired by EA. So please don't imagine I am Johnny Riccitello trying to save his "reputation" or something. I am just addressing technical misconceptions. EA is evil and has to be put down.

norswap 14y ago

One of the uses is to prevent piracy. If computation is offloaded to the server, writing a crack means reimplementing part of the game.