Offline Mode is in the game

[Jimmy Jam TF2]

... But hidden/disabled for us normal players. Using a hex editor (like HxD), you can go through TheCrew.exe and easily find references to the much requested offline mode and local save data functionality. To be more exact, there is a certain part of the exe that sets up the title screen, you can find where it tries to load the video file for the background (Logo_TheCrewCAU.bk2), and somewhere around there it lists the options for the title screen, such as Continue, New Game, Options, etc. Among those you can find options such as "playOffline", Save Game, and Load Game.

This absolutely means that the offline mode and local save data functionality are still in the game, just disabled/hidden. Could it be the end of life plan? In my opinion, yes. It will come down to simply flipping a switch in the source code.

To expand further on the topic, basically most of the game is offline already. The game is peer to peer minus freedrive matchmaking, where it tries to connect to other players using some ubisoft central server (also gets your cloud save data from there). Hypothetically, the game could be easily changed to use local save data and a custom matchmaking server for freedrive, rest of the game (races, missions, etc) are peer to peer and do not require any central server.

I'm saying all this so everyone knows what's really up and to clear any confusion regarding the game's offline capabilities, and so no one will ever make excuses for ubisoft/ivory tower for just possibly killing this game off completely one day, but I heavily doubt that's gonna happen anyway. Hopefully it won't.

[tigdera]

Thanks for posting this! I just recently revisited The Crew again and loved the experience. I always hated and feared the prospect that the servers of the game could shut down one day, making it impossible to visit this amazing game world. Of course there´s The Crew 2 (which is online only as well), but it doesn´t equal the magic of the first game for me personally!
So, your post gives me some hope for the future!

[Steel Jackrabbit]

the data-mining and modding community will have fixes for this when the day comes, mark my words. They will definitely have private servers or even just offline with local save mods for this game too. and if its already halfway implemented like you found it will be even easier

[Jimmy Jam TF2]

Originally posted by Steel Jackrabbit:

the data-mining and modding community will have fixes for this when the day comes, mark my words. They will definitely have private servers or even just offline with local save mods for this game too. and if its already halfway implemented like you found it will be even easier

I wish it was that simple. The game's exe is packed with some protection that doesn't allow you to modify any of it's contents past the PE header (offline check before it even launches uPlay), should be a relatively simple crack for it but no one has done it yet (I'm researching it myself, got a clue recently that goes by the name of "VMProtect").

Outside of the exe, the game files mostly consist of foreign file formats, however the existing Far Cry 3 (Gibbed) tools look like they only need slight modification to work with the crew's files properly, they're nearly identical. The archives (.fat/.dat) are unpackable, and I'm working on a repacking tool.

Speaking of a "data-mining and modding community" [discord.com] ...

[Arthur]

Glad to see people interested in the inner workings of this game. Hopefully they do add an offline mode once they decide to shut it all down.

[Jimmy Jam TF2]

Update: big discoveries have been made. Some of you might know that all HUD in the game is just adobe flash files (.swf), and turns out they can be viewed if you unpack them out of gui/gui_patch/gui_patch_1.fat/.dat (You can download the .fat/.dat unpacker in our discord server I linked above in post #3). The HUD files come in a ".bwf" format, but software like ActionScript Viewer can open them. Seems like they're just pure .swf's, but 41 bytes longer, possibly some header for the game's file loader, I don't know.

According to hudlogin.bwf (title screen and main menu), if the game is in production mode when you press start, instead of connecting to ubi servers and getting your player data as usual, you will be booted into some sort of alternate main menu. The function is called "playOffline", and most likely the strings referencing loading/saving data are buttons in this offline play main menu. "playOnline" is the function that's called normally for us average players when we press start, that are not in production mode.

The game might not even need to be booted entirely in production mode, as long as the "_root.ProdOnly" variable in flash is set to true, you will get access to the offline play main menu, and possibly to all/most of the features, depending on how much protection the developers put into the code (probably not be a lot).

This can be achievable in 2 different ways (that I thought of so far):
1. Figuring out how to enable this production mode. It might be possible through exe or uplay launch commands, but I'm not sure.
2. Manipulating memory while running the game, and changing this _root (global) ProdOnly variable to true using some sort of memory editor like Cheat Engine.

A few more details is that I'm pretty sure the ActionScript version is 2 (heavily doubt its 1 and its clearly not 3, because 3 doesn't have _root global variables), and that there's also a _root variable called "_root.fake", it seems that if you set it to true (before title screen is loaded), you will be given an entire fake offline identity with the name of -=FERGUS=-, which could unlock even more interesting hidden features.
All of the info applies to any version of the game.

That is all for now, but this is a big step forward in unlocking this game and the offline mode. I'd like to remind anyone interested to join our community on discord that I linked in post #3.

[Arthur]

Originally posted by Jimmy Jam TF2:

Update: big discoveries have been made. Some of you might know that all HUD in the game is just adobe flash files (.swf), and turns out they can be viewed if you unpack them out of gui/gui_patch/gui_patch_1.fat/.dat (You can download the .fat/.dat unpacker in our discord server I linked above in post #3). The HUD files come in a ".bwf" format, but software like ActionScript Viewer can open them. Seems like they're just pure .swf's, but 41 bytes longer, possibly some header for the game's file loader, I don't know.

According to hudlogin.bwf (title screen and main menu), if the game is in production mode when you press start, instead of connecting to ubi servers and getting your player data as usual, you will be booted into some sort of alternate main menu. The function is called "playOffline", and most likely the strings referencing loading/saving data are buttons in this offline play main menu. "playOnline" is the function that's called normally for us average players when we press start, that are not in production mode.

The game might not even need to be booted entirely in production mode, as long as the "_root.ProdOnly" variable in flash is set to true, you will get access to the offline play main menu, and possibly to all/most of the features, depending on how much protection the developers put into the code (probably not be a lot).

This can be achievable in 2 different ways (that I thought of so far):
1. Figuring out how to enable this production mode. It might be possible through exe or uplay launch commands, but I'm not sure.
2. Manipulating memory while running the game, and changing this _root (global) ProdOnly variable to true using some sort of memory editor like Cheat Engine.

A few more details is that I'm pretty sure the ActionScript version is 2 (heavily doubt its 1 and its clearly not 3, because 3 doesn't have _root global variables), and that there's also a _root variable called "_root.fake", it seems that if you set it to true (before title screen is loaded), you will be given an entire fake offline identity with the name of -=FERGUS=-, which could unlock even more interesting hidden features.
All of the info applies to any version of the game.

That is all for now, but this is a big step forward in unlocking this game and the offline mode. I'd like to remind anyone interested to join our community on discord that I linked in post #3.

Epic

[Jimmy Jam TF2]

This is what the production mode online/offline play screen looks like
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3047974296

[hidra.master.jmp]

When will this wonder be available?

[hidra.master.jmp]

I really wanted to play the 2014 version of the crew again!

[Jimmy Jam TF2]

Originally posted by hidra.master.jmp:

When will this wonder be available?

No clue, it's all very unpredictable, could be in years, or could be tomorrow.

[Jimmy Jam TF2]

Just gonna do a nice little bumpy bump because of certain recent news.

[Cpt BaseballBatBoy™]

so wow March 24 all our Progress is lost all our Memorys Lost. Never Again Always Online Games from Ubisoft

[ChemicalFlood]

We need an offline patch asap

[Cpt BaseballBatBoy™]

Originally posted by ChemicalFlood:

We need an offline patch asap

dude its done. Theres only hope for a Community Patch

[мяFunreal]

look at Need For Speed World. It was shut down but then some people made their own servers.
I'm sure someone will back up the game files and find some way to make it run.