Ok, im not a game dev and i dont know code, i just love games. i was wondering hoe difficult for someone who knows code to take a game like Motor City Online by EA and convert the code to a single player game or one better, make it functional as a lan based or server based game that could be hosted from a server. the reason im asking is ea cancelled this game about a year and some odd months ago and every racing game i have played since has failed in comparison to anything released since. here is a brief overview of the game: it had chat rooms, random spawning car auctions + parts,top ten weekly results with prizes on tracks, betting for money and pink slips, trading etc. i know it would take a badass server or multiple to keep track of stats parts inventory databases etc. . .but would it be at all possible? just leave some input comments, practical solutions etc. . .i'd like to hear if it would be at all possible. i know a few people that tried to actually BUY the game from ea, got into talks with them about selling it, but they declined eventually. if it could be made functional on a multiple server-system it might be possible to get this funded and have some cash to throw around. i just wanna hear dev input, thanks :)

Disassembling the game and hacking it into a LAN based one is possible, barely. The easiest way would (probably) be to analyz the protocol and write a custom server. You'd have to find a bunch of dedicated and experienced hackers wanting to spend a long time on the project, so wheter it's realistic or not largely depends on the size of the game's community.
Another problem is that EA is likely to shut the project down, even if the game is already dead.

Hiya, here's a few thaughts to chew on...

Unofficial mmog servers have been around for a while; most notably, Ultima Online. Check www.runuo.com for more info. You can also google "Dark Age of Cammelot free server" or something for a few in development.. which are mostly playable.

Its not illegal to make, run or play on private servers so long as no money changes hands.

mmogs take ages to crack, you need to snoop the packets the client sends, which are normaly encrypted. This takes months. Then start figuring out what they are, and what they do (another few months). Then you can start building the server to deal with these packets. It will take a very skilled team a long long time to even get one person logged into the world.

Best of luck...

a little OT, but..

why is it legal for people to make their own versions of your server? cant these comapanies sue? obviously they are losing revenue because of this. seems even worse then pirating to me...

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Original post by graveyard filla a little OT, but.. why is it legal for people to make their own versions of your server? cant these comapanies sue? obviously they are losing revenue because of this. seems even worse then pirating to me...

Well, the players still need to buy the game itself (I suppose).
The aditional charge for the servers seems not neccesary in this case, since EA doesn't own the private server, and doesn't maintain it. So they wouldn't loose any revenue there.
But the last time I checked, disassembling a server itself or the game is illegal.

Its fairly simple...
People have the right to program, publish and run whatever programs they like, so long as those programs are not used unlawfully.
When you buy an online game, you are buying the client license, not the server. That is still the developers.
An unofficial server is not the product covered by the developers license agrement so they have no say over its use beyond the client license.

The possible furthest extent of their power is to cancel the client license of people who play free servers. Which would be a stupid thing to do anyway.

Charging people to play unofficialy is a grey area.. but almost certainly illegal.

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Original post by DogCity Its fairly simple... People have the right to program, publish and run whatever programs they like, so long as those programs are not used unlawfully. When you buy an online game, you are buying the client license, not the server. That is still the developers. An unofficial server is not the product covered by the developers license agrement so they have no say over its use beyond the client license. The possible furthest extent of their power is to cancel the client license of people who play free servers. Which would be a stupid thing to do anyway. Charging people to play unofficialy is a grey area.. but almost certainly illegal.

And if you read the license to these games you will find that you can only use the client on official servers. You are not supposed to use them on emulators. Creating the emulator is perfectly legal, but to avoid any legal issues you should also create your own client and content. Blizzard has taken a tough stance on this issue as evidenced by the cease and desist letters they sent to WoW emulator developers. If run the server on your own local lan then you aren't, in all probability, going to get caught. But you are still violating the license agreement.

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Original post by DimeSlime i was wondering hoe difficult for someone who knows code to take a game like Motor City Online by EA and convert the code to a single player game or one better, make it functional as a lan based or server based game that could be hosted from a server.

The source code to the Motor City Online game is not available, and without a live server from which to log packets then it would be impossible to develop an emulator through packet snooping. Even if someone managed to reverse engineer the entire client they would likely never be able to emulate the original servers since there is nothing to use as a reference. So unless EA release the source to the offical server I think it would be too difficult an undertaking for someone to do what you want.

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Original post by mldaalder Quote: Original post by graveyard filla a little OT, but.. why is it legal for people to make their own versions of your server? cant these comapanies sue? obviously they are losing revenue because of this. seems even worse then pirating to me... Well, the players still need to buy the game itself (I suppose). The aditional charge for the servers seems not neccesary in this case, since EA doesn't own the private server, and doesn't maintain it. So they wouldn't loose any revenue there. But the last time I checked, disassembling a server itself or the game is illegal.

well, my main problem with this is that its still taking revenue from the company. why pay to play when you can play for free? it seemed like pay to play games are some of the only games that can not be pirated, but a situation like this is pretty much the same thing in my mind. its good to see Blizzard is cracking down.

Actually, you can't write and run any software you want, if that software infringes on intellectual property. Most common for software would be patent rights. Remember LZW and the GIF file format, for example? Or MP3 encoders?

In this case (taking about Motor City Online where the servers are now non-existant) it would be ten times easier to just start from scratch writing the game (fresh client & server) instead of trying to hack something together.