2022 Plumbob Elements Progress Update

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you all had a safe holiday! I can't believe it's actually 2022... Without a doubt, last year was probably the worst year ever, but the silver lining was getting into modding and meeting some amazing people in the community. I am eternally grateful for your support, it truly means so much as a single dollar could mean not being able to pay your bills or buy a meal. 

Starting the new year fresh I want to start giving more progress updates on the project you're all anticipating.

Near the end of last year I hit a huge wall on Plumbob Elements. The game would often crash because of certain commands, and I just lacked some knowledge of how to even implement certain things well. I had to take a step back and start "smaller". 

The Smart Doorbell and Simzlink were ideas I had when I had first started modding and thanks to getting involved in Discord communities and meeting other creators, I seriously learned so much to complete them and be inspired for Plumbob Elements.  Like creating custom object meshes/textures, advanced scripting techniques like custom loot and custom tests to really expand the capabilities of Sim interactions, and I even fixed my major game breaker that caused certain commands to crash the game.

Besides the phone-like app you've seen in videos and screenshots, there are many other components involved to make Plumbob Elements run. In the past few weeks I've made some serious headway on the infrastructure that will power the Online Service. 

In an effort for full transparency of how your funds will be used, I am including the current cost forecast to run each component.

This map shows how each piece of the system will communicate with the app. Starting with:

Your Device. 

The Sims 4's simulation server (Python) has the ability to retrieve sensitive data about your operating system, and even execute insecure code within the game. To keep your game and device safe, The Plumbob Elements mod within The Sims 4 will never communicate with the outside world directly. Any events and actions from third party services, plugins, and even the Lot 51 Online Service will be processed by the Plumbob Elements app first. Sensitive information about your device will never be collected or uploaded to the Online Service. Privacy is king/queen.

The Online Service at launch is planned to comprise of 5 major components: Scrapbook sharing, Delivery system syncing via Drone/Carrier, Sim syncing, and Friend Codes.

Login System

A login system has been setup through Auth0 which will store your login credentials to the Online Service. They provide all the necessary tools to keep your account safe, like threat detection and two-factor authentication, and meeting various security compliance requirements. This component will support up to 7k users for free which should be more than enough for the first year of operation, otherwise the upgrade will be $23 USD per month.

Scrapbooks

Scrapbooks generated in the within Plumbob Elements will be sharable and visible to all of your friends in and out of the actual app, which means those screenshots will need to be uploaded somewhere. I'm currently working on setting up this infrastructure through Backblaze B2. From some preliminary calculations it will cost around $0.05 USD per 1 GB of files per month, which would cover around 200 high-res screenshots. Files will also be cached and routed through Bunny.net CDN. They offer on-the-fly image manipulation like generating different sized images for thumbnails. This is offered at a flat fee of $10 a month regardless of bandwidth and size and doesn't involve any additional development time to implement. In addition, these images will be cached across America and Europe delivering them as close as possible to you at the quickest speed. This will cost around $0.04 USD per 1GB. At this point in time, thanks to your contributions on Patreon, it seems feasible to keep this part of the service free of charge for at least the first year of operations. It is potentially the most expensive component of running the Online Service and may end up requiring that I charge a fee for hosting large collections.

Deliveries & Object/Sim Sync

Plumbob Elements will have the capability to serialize in-game objects to send to any of your friends. This includes orders created from the Gigazon Delivery "app", or sending a complete "RVSN Ink for Yourself Memory Keeper" with all of its text entries. If your friend has the pack/CC object installed in their game, they will be able to reproduce it in the exact same state as your game. To make this work asynchronously, meaning you can send an object to your friend at any time, and they receive it the next time they go online, this data will need to be temporarily stored within the Online Service. This component is still in the planning stages and will need more thought on scalability. The costs associated with this will most likely be a low monthly flat fee based on the size of the database requirements.

In addition to objects, with the help of ThePancake1, I've discovered how to serialize Sims, including their facial features, and even all of their different clothing styles. The idea for the Sim Sync component is for you to be able to upload different Sims and have them show up in your friends games as walk-by's and party guests. This will need the same thought and planning as the object component on how this data will be stored in the Online Service and retrieved by the app. 

Friend Codes

How does Plumbob Elements know who your friends even are?! I've implemented a system similar to Nintendo, where you will have a friend code that you can share with anyone. They will be able to create a friend request using this code. If your code ends up getting exposed to the public, you will be able to instantly rotate your friend code to prevent any new unwanted requests from coming in. Once you've accepted a request, all of these features will be unlocked between you and that new friend!

Online Service API

The API that connects all of these components of the Online Service will be hosted on a Digital Ocean server. This costs around $40 USD per month and is powering the current Lot 51 website. This should be able to handle the request load at launch, and can be duplicated and expanded horizontally with a load balancer should one server not be enough. This API is currently protected and cached by Cloudflare, providing a Web Application Firewall with bot protection. This currently costs $20 USD per month.

I will also need to build moderation tools to ensure that inappropriate content can be reported and removed as swiftly as possible. As a web service in the United States, this app will be bound to rules and regulations surrounding COPPA, CCPA, Millennium Rights Act (DMCA), and preventing Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) from being hosted. Some of these regulations require registration fees to legally handle their requirements like becoming a designated DMCA agent.

Twitch & Other Chat Providers

Another major component of Plumbob Elements is to connect to services like Twitch, YouTube, or Discord and process messages like a chat bot. Allowing other people to run commands in your game, like starting fires, stealing money and more! Because we have the benefit of you running an app on your computer, your third party services will be able to connect directly to Plumbob Elements which should prevent any slowness in message delivery or even downtime if the Online Service ever went offline. Messages will be processed privately on your device and accepted/rejected based on whatever settings you have in the app. These services offer these connections free of charge so there won't be any cost incurred! Woohoo!

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While super technical, I hope this gives some insight into the current progress of Plumbob Elements and some of the complexity involved. There are a lot of moving parts that could make or break the project, and as a single person currently doing it all, there will no doubt be more road blocks on the way, but I'd like to give more updates, more often this year and would love to hear your feedback to shape the development of this service.

If you have any thoughts just drop them in the comments below, or connect your Patreon account to Discord and join the Secret Lab (https://lot51.cc/discord). Your patronage unlocks channels only visible by other Patrons! I may start posting more quick updates there as I find out new information and work on features.