Mod/3rd Party Tool Idea Question

There's always going to be a fine line somewhere in between modding the game using the hooks that are there intended to be utilized in such a manner and hacking it, at least as far as the game developers are concerned. We players can guess when it comes to things like LUA programs that somehow interact with the game without, I assume, being actually inside of it. But instead of guessing, I would suggest a cross-post to TS3's Answers.HQ board so that an EA Community Manager can hopefully deliver some official guidelines as to how the open discussion and public sharing of such programs might be taken.

I'm still going to recommend that AHQ post, which from the sound of it should confirm everything you just said because it all sounds totally logical. Then if some day an unfounded complaint is lodged or a misunderstanding arises and EA shows up on your virtual doorstep threatening take down orders or some much more minor thing such as blocks being placed on discussing these utilities on EA-hosted channels like this one we are on now, you would have a prior official response to link to and fall back on.

And LOL no, Twallan is the guy who wrote NRaas mods. He retired from TS3 and modding this game coming up on seven years ago now. We have been keeping NRaas going, supporting the players, updating, and enhancing the mods since then. You might like to stop by nraas.net and meet our developer. I'm just on "staff" as a wiki organizer there. When it comes to C# and modding the game, I couldn't script my way out of a paper bag if someone's life depended on it, but fortunately we have that talent covered in other ways. :)

Hey thanks am I to understand your the guy who wrote the Twallan set of mods? If so they are awesome :).

On Topic: I think in the end I'm not going to worry too much, the software doesn't 'connect' in anyway to the Sims game at all or use any copyrighted assets its purely a simple program that allows players to track their game similar to spreadsheet software so I think in reality it wont breach any kind of EULA as its fully separate from the game in everyway. The mods that run alongside it are not hacks but just simple (and really simple at the moment with my knowledge of the Sims 3 .dlls and C# hah) pure script/object mods that give prompts to update the tracker. I think none of this should be an issue with EA in hindsight, just got a bit paranoid. :) The software will be released for free anyhow so even less reason to expect any problems on that front also. Will just see how it goes, start small and see if people are interested in the project. In the end hopefully the worst thing that will happen is people play The Sims 3 more. (In theory hah).

Thanks again, hoping to see how to unprotect the dlls now so as to control weather etc. :)

Nyt.

Thanks yeah I see what you mean. In the end I’m thinking I will just make it as a strait mod and forget the added software bit that way I’m in the same boat as 1000s of other mod developers :). Should be doable with some creativity like custom moodlets etc Can save the software idea for my own stuff I think! Sorry to call you Twallan then, it’s great the mods are still going though either way! Would be cool to speak to other C# devs as it’s a lot to learn how to code like those mods do hah. Thanks again!