Product Registration Mod

[Rothchild]

Perhaps people wouldn't be confused about what this mod does if the first post actually had fucking information in it.

Or the first post never once actually says what it does or why you need it, which is a pretty logical source of confusion.

I made a mod for those items to not require product registration.

Seriously?  What part of that sentence are you having difficulty understanding?  No information?  I explained what tags where modified in which files and why I thought it was necessary.

Reiteration; In order to invent the Claw Dipper/Air Bender and sculpt The Guardian Griffon/Octavian from The Ultimate Career Bundle it appears you need to have EP2 registered.  Registration also unlocks 2 investigator cases (SpookyStory and TattooedThief) and 3 interior design jobs.  The mod makes it so that registration is not required.  It has nothing to do with the hair nor the gown from The Ultimate Career Bundle.

[Assmitten]

Hur hur hur.

[dragonic]

Perhaps people wouldn't be confused about what this mod does if the first post actually had fucking information in it.

Or the first post never once actually says what it does or why you need it, which is a pretty logical source of confusion.

I made a mod for those items to not require product registration.

Seriously?  What part of that sentence are you having difficulty understanding?  No information?  I explained what tags where modified in which files and why I thought it was necessary.

Reiteration; In order to invent the Claw Dipper/Air Bender and sculpt The Guardian Griffon/Octavian from The Ultimate Career Bundle it appears you need to have EP2 registered.  Registration also unlocks 2 investigator cases (SpookyStory and TattooedThief) and 3 interior design jobs.  The mod makes it so that registration is not required.  It has nothing to do with the hair nor the gown from The Ultimate Career Bundle.

O, I get it now. Now I know what events are added with this bundle. Thanks Roth.
On a related note, I'm guessing that EA will release more of these bundles that have this type of anti-piracy installed. This time it was used to prevent people like us from accessing these extra jobs, but in the future it may be for regular store items as well. Nice move EA, nice move.

O, and you're awesome Roth.

[Sanati]

After maybe 70 sculptures I finally got a red flashing cube with a missing name which I assume is one of the sculptures this mod is supposed to unlock. I have the pack installed (through the launcher) and the hair styles are working fine, so maybe as Crysill says something more is needed to get them to work. I don't care enough about the sculptures or widgets to look at or change the xml though.

[Rothchild]

Thank you, I completely missed the edit Crysill made to that post.  Out of curiosity how did you have The Ultimate Career Bundle installed (Sims3Pack via the launcher, or .package in the mods folder) when you got the red cube?

ETA: I updated the mod and the first post.  Since one person was able to successfully create one of the inventions and a couple people mentioned red cubes when sculpting, I believe that is based on how you installed The Ultimate Career Bundle (they both had the store tag).  If you installed via the launcher they were considered store items, if you installed as a package they weren't.  Now the sculptures and inventions are set as EP2 so they should function either way.

[Crysill]

Thank you, I completely missed the edit Crysill made to that post.

Sorry about that, I tend to over-edit when following up on my own posts.

Anyway, after further testing, this is behaving very counter-intuitively. I can sculpt and invent all the normally EP2 version objects, but I cannot sculpt or invent the objects provided by the Ultimate Career Bundle unless they are set to BaseGame version. I am running a fully updated game with all expansion and stuff packs. The store content was installed via decrapified Sims3Packs and the Launcher. My tests were as follows:

I set up a mod that made it so all other objects that could be invented/sculpted had a minimum skill level of 10 required. In a situation where nothing can be sculpted, a FailureObject (red cube) is created. In a situation where nothing can be invented, the Sim will simply "Dabble" or "Invent" for several sim-hours with no result.

With only the ProductRegistrationRequired properties removed (defaults to "Undefined" in the parent structure):
All sculpting until level 10 results in FailureObjects.
All inventing until level 10 yields no result.

With the ProductRegistrationRequired and the SKU/EPVersion properties removed (defaults to "BaseGame" in the sculpting parent structure, and "EP2" in the inventing parent structure):
All scultping until level 10 yields The Guardian Griffon or Octavian.
All inventing until level 10 yields no result.

With the ProductRegistrationRequired removed and the SKU/EPVersion properties set to "BaseGame":
All sculpting until level 10 yields The Guardian Griffon or Octavian.
All inventing until level 10 yields Claw Dipper or Air Bender.

To put it simply, the only way to get the objects to work correctly in my setup is to set their version to "BaseGame" and remove the registration properties. Even "EP2" does not work. Despite this, all other objects can be sculpted and invented just fine regardless of the version they are set to. These results lead me to suspect that there may something wrong with my installation, so I would be very interested in seeing the results of those with different setups than mine. The following mods are all set so that only these specific objects can be crafted before maxing out the skill. The only differences among them are what the SKU/EPVersion properties are set to.

[Rothchild]

I'll test the ones you uploaded to try and confirm your results.  It's really odd since IAmTheRad said he was able to invent them with the older mod.

ETA:  Tested InventSculpt_EP2.package and it didn't work.  Tested InventSculpt_BaseGame.package and it worked right away.  I uploaded a new version of the mod.

[Sanati]

I installed the Sims3Pack through the launcher after decrapifying it, same as Crysill. I'm installing the updated mod now, I'll see if that works.

[Rothchild]

That's how I installed it also, and the inventions and sculptures wouldn't work.  They should work fine in the newest version (from after you posted).  I'm curious how IAmTheRad installed The Ultimate Career Bundle since the old version worked for him.

[Jeeves]

I've only tried inventing because of the randomness of sculpting, but aside from a minor aesthetics issue everything seems to be fine. Installed via decrapified sims3pack, and the invention isn't visible when the sim finishes it, but after he/she takes the invention I'm able to see it and place it and whatever else I feel like doing.

Edit: Finally got both sculptures to show up. The first time for each the sculpture appeared before the material block, but didn't for any specific sculpts. Didn't try the random sculpt after that, because it's an ignorable graphic issue and may not even be related to your mod.

[Crysill]

The new mod works perfectly on my setup. Successfully created all four restricted objects. Confirming those is much simpler than the rest, so I haven't tested the new jobs, opportunities etc. at all. However,
they don't have anything suspicious about them besides the registration properties, so I think it's safe to say that everything currently unlocked by registering Ambitions can instead be unlocked with this mod.

[PolecatEZ]

Perhaps a silly question, but how does the game know if it is registered or not?  Is there another file that gets downloaded or a change to an existing file which would let the game know if the user has registered his EP or not?

[Silent Dreamer]

Perhaps a silly question, but how does the game know if it is registered or not?  Is there another file that gets downloaded or a change to an existing file which would let the game know if the user has registered his EP or not?

I imagine you have to log in on the launcher and/or from within the sims store. It is a nasty, and utterly pointless, piece of shit that EA decided to throw in to make sure we were paying attention.

[PolecatEZ]

Perhaps a silly question, but how does the game know if it is registered or not?  Is there another file that gets downloaded or a change to an existing file which would let the game know if the user has registered his EP or not?

I imagine you have to log in on the launcher and/or from within the sims store. It is a nasty, and utterly pointless, piece of shit that EA decided to throw in to make sure we were paying attention.

So if you don't do this with each game session or you choose to have the "store" unchecked and unavailable, then you would not have access to the downloaded content, at least for that game session?

It just seems that tricking the game into thinking you're registered with a single mod, hack, or copied file would be a better tactic than individually cleaning each download or releasing a supplemental patch for each future download package.

[Crysill]

Perhaps a silly question, but how does the game know if it is registered or not?  Is there another file that gets downloaded or a change to an existing file which would let the game know if the user has registered his EP or not?

From a quick glance at the code, TS3 always assumes that the base game, WA, and HELS are registered. However, when it checks for Ambitions registration, it performs some sort of check using values from the two sculptures and two inventions provided by the Ultimate Career Bundle. I'm not sure if registering and downloading it from the EA store generates a personalized version for your game/CD-Key, or if it's just something that gets removed or altered in the usual methods we install Arr'd Store content (would love to hear the results of people who used a method other than decrapified Sims3Pack with and without Rothchild's mod). Either way, for legitimately registered games, the act of installing the Ultimate Career Bundle that EA provides you results in the confirmation of your registration in-game.

Due to that roundabout way of checking if the expansion pack is registered, it is doubtful that they perform any modifications to tag the game files themselves.

It just seems that tricking the game into thinking you're registered with a single mod, hack, or copied file would be a better tactic than individually cleaning each download or releasing a supplemental patch for each future download package.

Normally from an elegance standpoint I would agree. That's technically what the core mod I posted should be. However, the Inventing/Sculpting items were further broken (again: only confirmed with the decrapified Sims3Pack installation) such that even having Ambitions "registered" wasn't enough, so Rothchild's XML solution which also addresses that issue is superior in every way.

In this case, the parts that are edited by this mod were already in the game data as of the 1.12/2.7/3.3/4.0 patch; not added by the Ultimate Career Bundle. If EA continues to use this method, the only time they could add more restricted content is with the release of a new patch. While it does concern me that this seems like a test swipe at the rampant store content sharing, I don't foresee them releasing restricted items rapidly enough that the mod catching up would become an issue.

[IAmTheRad]

I did not invent nor sculpt things in the career bundle when I installed it.

It was a case and a design job that I thought were in the bundle. Truth is, they were in the base ambitions game. Just human error that time.

[VegaBlack]

Just thought I'd throw it out there; you don't actually have to wait to sculpt the statues randomly. They're available in buydebug, along with the new inventions.

Baaa for the mod.

[PolecatEZ]

Perhaps a silly question, but how does the game know if it is registered or not?  Is there another file that gets downloaded or a change to an existing file which would let the game know if the user has registered his EP or not?

From a quick glance at the code, TS3 always assumes that the base game, WA, and HELS are registered. However, when it checks for Ambitions registration, it performs some sort of check using values from the two sculptures and two inventions provided by the Ultimate Career Bundle. I'm not sure if registering and downloading it from the EA store generates a personalized version for your game/CD-Key, or if it's just something that gets removed or altered in the usual methods we install Arr'd Store content (would love to hear the results of people who used a method other than decrapified Sims3Pack with and without Rothchild's mod). Either way, for legitimately registered games, the act of installing the Ultimate Career Bundle that EA provides you results in the confirmation of your registration in-game.

Due to that roundabout way of checking if the expansion pack is registered, it is doubtful that they perform any modifications to tag the game files themselves.

It just seems that tricking the game into thinking you're registered with a single mod, hack, or copied file would be a better tactic than individually cleaning each download or releasing a supplemental patch for each future download package.

Normally from an elegance standpoint I would agree. That's technically what the core mod I posted should be. However, the Inventing/Sculpting items were further broken (again: only confirmed with the decrapified Sims3Pack installation) such that even having Ambitions "registered" wasn't enough, so Rothchild's XML solution which also addresses that issue is superior in every way.

In this case, the parts that are edited by this mod were already in the game data as of the 1.12/2.7/3.3/4.0 patch; not added by the Ultimate Career Bundle. If EA continues to use this method, the only time they could add more restricted content is with the release of a new patch. While it does concern me that this seems like a test swipe at the rampant store content sharing, I don't foresee them releasing restricted items rapidly enough that the mod catching up would become an issue.

My guess would be that it checks if the item is legitimately installed, which would make it nicely self-contained.

For example, shifting around the .dbc files results in them dynamically losing their "tag" in the buy or CAS menus.  Perhaps the game simply checks in the file is where it should be (is tagged as a "Sims Store" item) and maybe also does a hash check on itself to determine if it has been tampered with (decrapified).  If anything about the file is changed, then it will no longer match a fixed internal value.  If the file is not changed, then it simply won't install in an unregistered game.  The fix in the future would require a bit of programming ability beyond me, basically getting Decrapify to seek and destroy the hash check.

This is all just theoretical guesswork though, without having to look at the files.  As far as I know though, there is no legitimate way for a package to tell the difference between a cracked game or a legitimate installed one, just too many variables.  If some supplemental file or change to a file in the game directory took place upon registration, I'm sure it would have been posted somewhere.

[Crysill]

Just thought I'd throw it out there; you don't actually have to wait to sculpt the statues randomly. They're available in buydebug, along with the new inventions.

Baaa for the mod.

Unfortunately, at least in my setup, the sculptures and inventions always exist but just wouldn't be created without their versions in the XML changed to "BaseGame". For example, here's a failed sculpture from the InventSculpt_EP2 experiment next to the fully functional statues from buydebug:

Even in a test without touching the ProductRegistrationRequired values, the inventions and sculptures were still available in buydebug despite not being able to be created normally. Very odd.

This is all just theoretical guesswork though, without having to look at the files.  As far as I know though, there is no legitimate way for a package to tell the difference between a cracked game or a legitimate installed one, just too many variables.

That seems to be the right train of thought. The drop-in-a-file solution you desire would probably be a "correct" Ultimate Career Bundle installation. Whatever the difference is between that and our installation is the only thing separating the "registered" and "unregistered" expansion packs.

[ShortyBoo]

I have the .package version of the career bundle and my sculptor sim makes those red cube failure objects, but her husband who is a level 10 inventor won't make the last two inventions at all. I haven't tried the other careers yet.

[J. M. Pescado]

Newest AwesomeMod cripples this "registration" crap. Remember, kids: REGISTRATION LEADS TO CONFISCATION. Live free or die!

[Motoki]

Newest AwesomeMod cripples this "registration" crap. Remember, kids: REGISTRATION LEADS TO CONFISCATION. Live free or die!

So that yanks it out of the game install itself. Nice.

If they put any of those crap tags on an object inside the package will it cause an error or just get ignored?

[J. M. Pescado]

AwesomeMod ignores all the registration checks and disables all registration, because as everyone knows, registration leads to confiscation. Vote against it in your next election!

[socurious]

Does this shiny new feature of AM impact this mod at all?

[ShortyBoo]

Does this shiny new feature of AM impact this mod at all?

I think it means this mod isn't needed. At least that's how I'm interpreting it.