SimCity 1 Dat File

[InvisiChem]

A light automated system scolding for emailing the wrong department. lol. Next.............................

[NCGAIO]

The SC4Fix dll is a great example of what is possible without harming EA/Maxis. It provides a great fix for a very aggravating bug.

Let's just point out that the correction sc4FIX's not really the correction of one "BUG" of the game.

There is no problem in the original game that has the need to use  this process because it solves a problem only for moddings added by the User.


Similarly the distribution of the Dat can not be seen as a correction because the CAM also not part of the original game and therefore are also not "BUGs" the errors added for its use.


Now only as curiosity..  If we could distribute dats modified to use the CAM then we could also use the same for SimMars for example?


Or going further .... we could distribute as moddding Dat specific versions for certain epochs or locations as Medieval SImcity for example and only  keeping a copy of the orignal dat which is part of the game if simply just not to charge anything for it ?


What say about  the NAM or SPAM  ... to name but a few ... none of the above cited needs a exe modifications to run so why could not also have an integrated Dat version?


Returning to SimMars ... there were praise for many of the studio on the work by andi however can not be considered as approval for it to solve most of the problems for their use by the modified dats distribution instead of plugins.


See I'm not opposed to what you want, on the contrary, it would open the door to many ideas but everything would be done without the express assurance that it is legal or that it was allowed by the creators for  the nonprofit distribuition by community

Without an express warranty is all just conjecture about permission given in a forum message by someone who might not even have standing to do so.


Just to collaborate in the discussion below is a current link to download a "bugs" correction  based in replacement of Simcity-dat ... there are others!


- http://simcity4.hippotank.com/ ...  note on the page where else it can also be downloaded.




And as to what was quoted ... sometimes silence to give an answer can be interpreted as an elegant way of saying: At the moment we do not agree.

[InvisiChem]

The site is a great example of what I am wishing to do. Pretty much the exact same thing.

Sim Mars would be a great example of when this method would need to be used. It is a complete overhaul of all game aspects, therefore incompatible with most other mods. It is a specialty mod. That would be a responsible and needed way to implement that type of Mod.

CAM needs it to fix a nasty doubling that will occur when including the Total Industrial Census exemplar using the Sums property. I have tried every method, including the Z fix method to solve this, but nothing has worked other than merging it. Good part is all my testing has confirmed for me that Z is correct, the Sums property is where the doubling occurs. Without this property there is no doubling, therefore the IHT fix can be placed in the plugins folder without any noticeable harm to the numbers. It does not contain the Sums property.

There is a lot of possibilities that open up with this permission, but care should still be taken by the community to avoid changing SimCity_1.dat or any other dat file, unless absolutely necessary. CAM changes most of the file on its own, but the only parts I am willing to change in the SimCity_1.dat would still be compatible even with vanilla SimCity_4 RH/Deluxe. The same can be said with the version that was linked, only the IHT fix was in the SimCity_1.dat file. Everyone changing it at will would cause so many different conflicts the results would be disastrous to the community, but with a bit of consideration and care, the possibilities are great and the conflicts minimal.

[InvisiChem]

Okay, interesting results, but not unexpected. Reply back so far........

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.   We appreciate your interest and enthusiasm for our SimCity franchise.  Unfortunately, we cannot comment on whether your proposed use violates any EULA or EA copyrights and suggest you contact your own legal counsel regarding your inquiry.

Best regards,
EA Permission Requests Team

There is a cool part of this message. They state it is the SimCity franchise, so the current posted SimCity terms apply. http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/modding-and-simcity

I say look at item number 3 under "What are the rules?"

Mods may not modify any .com, .exe, .dll, .so or other executable files.

Since the .dat files are not executable files, this should open up our ability to modify this type of file by their own statement.

[Tropod]

my 2 cents......

All the SC#.dats are works of EA/Maxis etc. Redistributing said works would only violate anything if others were flogging it off;
1. as their own.
2. for profit.

Provided neither of these 2 conditions are met, there's no reason why anyone can't redistribute any SC4 content (except executable files). Mods aren't executable files. There's a reason why executable files are the exception & aren't allowed to be be modified/redistributed.

Redistributing (modified or otherwise) SC#.dat files is no different in extracting SC#.dat data, modifying it & re-releasing it under some other banner. This has been happening since the games release by numerous modders & Maxis themselves. Even the Mac *.dat release I provided years ago (*from memory*) provided significant adjustments relating from SC#.dats. To this day I've not seen/heard EA/Maxis come a runnin. I guess it would depend on the context to which these files really warrant adjusting/redistributing.

[NCGAIO]

Contributing to the discussion follows two texts whose authors need no introduction

As one of the people that originally started on this, I can answer specifically.

EA gave us complete permission to do any modifications that we want. In fact they cheered us on in person, and gave us as much info as they could without breaking NDA's or giving up company secrets. Several modders have been under Non disclosure agreement with EA specifically for the purpose of furthering file modifications, and a bunch of us (myself included) beta tested the BAT when it was being made.

Yes, it is perfectly legal in every way. But sorry, you're not going to get any document saying so. These are our personal emails and chat logs with them.

We have talked to them about modding the EXE by the way, but they said they couldn't give us the source code currently due to legal reasons. Modding the exe would be done via dll plugins which can be made, and would be legal if done.

The only thing they remotely have a problem with is the naming of SimMars expansion (which EA employees call "That other Mars simulator" in order to maintain legality)

If you need more proof, EA paid thousands of dollars to fly us modders to San Fransisco in order to learn more about the game code... I doubt they would do that if they considered it illegal.

source: Karybdis

Plug-Ins at Maxis
At Maxis, we took a route that is partly between rolling our own plug-in system and using Microsoft
COM. We didn't want to become dependent on Windows nor the Microsoft-owned COM
specification, but we thought it would be a good idea to implement something conceptually similar. So
we came up with "GZCOM" (Gonzo COM). Here are the basic traits of GZCOM:
...........
...........

· We cut away most of the more esoteric COM features, such as Distributed COM and
some of the DLL-interfacing functions.

· We implemented a simple DLL loading and interface-querying system, so " anybody" could easily write a DLL that " provided new objects" that the main executable could load easily and "treat like native objects".

· Our version (GZCOM) is entirely implemented in just a few platform-independent and
lightweight files.............

source : Paul Pedriana - Game Development in C++ 

[InvisiChem]

Thank you Tropod. I looked those up and they are really cool. Helped a lot of Mac users.

I'm pretty confident that I could distribute this file as planned. It wouldn't cause any conflicts with mods anymore than the CAM already does and the majority of the CAM would still be in the plugins folder. EA has shown they only want the executable files to stay intact both through my conversation with Tech Support and the SimCity.com article for modders. Precedence from both HippoTank and Tropod give me a lot of confidence in this area. The last post by NCGAIO confirms it for me. A huge thanks.

The last position is the stance of the LEX. Again, SC4D/LEX is the home of CAM and it will remain that way.