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As far as I can tell, this idea is popular but it is flat-out wrong. I seriously don't understand how this criticism makes any sense. The first Kotaku article

As far as I can tell, this idea is popular but it is flat-out wrong. I seriously don't understand how this criticism makes any sense. The first Kotaku article you link quotes Maxis general manager Bradshaw: "GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player's local computer." She was speaking in the context of online play and region play. There is a bit of ambiguity here, but suffice to say given the context and a modicum of common sense that the servers run the region-level simulation. Nobody has ever presented a single shred of evidence to refute that claim. The servers run the region-level simulation. That is why the region level simulation is not playable in offline play. Because the game isn't playable offline. Because the servers run calculations. I was upset that I couldn't play Sim City when it came out, and I am still upset with continuing region sync issues. The pathfinding code for agents (vehicles and utilities) is abysmal. There are lots of valid reasons to dislike this game. But misrepresenting online-only play isn't among the things EA did wrong. EA built Sim City around region play and they told the truth about that. They say it doesn't work if you're not connected to the region, and when some folks show that, indeed, the region sim doesn't work when you disconnect from the internet, it's total bullshit to construe this as evidence that EA lied about whether it works offline. It doesn't. Are people simply upset that EA won't make some kind of boneheaded mea culpa? "We built the game around online-only region play as cynical ploy to prevent piracy." Yeah right.

jaggederest 14y ago
> That is why the region level simulation is not playable in offline play. Because the game isn't playable offline. Because the servers run calculations. I guarantee you that within a couple weeks, someone will have reverse-engineered the server responses to fake that bit client side. The data it sends and the responses are pretty much just integers. If modders can do it, there's no reason why the authors couldn't.
- deleted 14y ago
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  - joeguilmette 14y ago
    It has been established that the only "calculation" the server does inform other cities of your available resources in your unopened, frozen city. Additionally, it handles game saves. All city simulation is handled client side. So to run an offline region you'd need to engineer a local save, and then figure out a way to determine the available resources in these locally saved cities. Something pretty advanced, like a 1kb CSV might be able to handle it.
    - reductive 14y ago
      Thanks for explaining this. So the real issue isn't that EA officials have lied about online-only, it is that EA misleads their customers on the level of difficulty. Saying the game is engineered from the ground up for online play suggests some complexity at the server level which simply doesn't exist. People with well-examined opinions aren't upset that EA servers don't run the city-level simulation. They are upset at how simple it would be to give users region simulation on their local PC, a server app so users can run their own, or a play-by-email implementation.
      - joeguilmette 14y ago
        I think the blatant lying makes things worse. I find it ironic that the DRM is pushing me to wait until the game is cracked and client-side regions are possible. I was actually happy to buy SimCity, but I want have my saves and run regions offline. Pretty hilarious.
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  So what? It's obvious that someone can reimplement the server logic. This is how we've worked around multiplayer DRM forever. Maxis didn't say "we are incapable of writing this code to run on a local client", they just said "we wrote this code to run on our cloud infrastructure, because it's a buzzword that might get someone stupid to care about us, and because it has a convenient side effect of making piracy more difficult". Of course they could have written the code to run client-side, or to run on independent servers, or whatever.

jaggederest 14y ago

> That is why the region level simulation is not playable in offline play. Because the game isn't playable offline. Because the servers run calculations. I guarantee you that within a couple weeks, someone will have reverse-engineered the server responses to fake that bit client side. The data it sends and the responses are pretty much just integers. If modders can do it, there's no reason why the authors couldn't.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- joeguilmette 14y ago
  It has been established that the only "calculation" the server does inform other cities of your available resources in your unopened, frozen city. Additionally, it handles game saves. All city simulation is handled client side. So to run an offline region you'd need to engineer a local save, and then figure out a way to determine the available resources in these locally saved cities. Something pretty advanced, like a 1kb CSV might be able to handle it.
  - reductive 14y ago
    Thanks for explaining this. So the real issue isn't that EA officials have lied about online-only, it is that EA misleads their customers on the level of difficulty. Saying the game is engineered from the ground up for online play suggests some complexity at the server level which simply doesn't exist. People with well-examined opinions aren't upset that EA servers don't run the city-level simulation. They are upset at how simple it would be to give users region simulation on their local PC, a server app so users can run their own, or a play-by-email implementation.
    - joeguilmette 14y ago
      I think the blatant lying makes things worse. I find it ironic that the DRM is pushing me to wait until the game is cracked and client-side regions are possible. I was actually happy to buy SimCity, but I want have my saves and run regions offline. Pretty hilarious.
cookiecaper 14y ago
So what? It's obvious that someone can reimplement the server logic. This is how we've worked around multiplayer DRM forever. Maxis didn't say "we are incapable of writing this code to run on a local client", they just said "we wrote this code to run on our cloud infrastructure, because it's a buzzword that might get someone stupid to care about us, and because it has a convenient side effect of making piracy more difficult". Of course they could have written the code to run client-side, or to run on independent servers, or whatever.