Testers Wanted: Ownable Carpool Comm Lot Fix - (Obsolete for Bon Voyage)

[syberspunk]

Ownable Car Pool CommLot Fix v1.03 for TS2SEAS v1.0p1
Made by: syberspunk

This is a simple hack, which steals borrows code from Pescado's infamous phonehack, to allow the user to pick and choose who they want to take to a Community Lot from a household when using an Ownable Car. You can choose the "Drive to Community Lot" option, and then after clicking on "Multiple Sims" you must choose a destination. After this, you will then get a pop up dialog box for each valid sim (i.e. a sim living on the lot from the same household) asking you whether they will be going as well. Only the sims that are chosen should be included in the carpool to the Comm Lot. All other sims will be left behind. It works just like the options for the taxi in the phonehack.

INSTALLATION:
This MUST be in your Downloads folder, typically found under:

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\Downloads


Compatibility:
Nightlife and OFB.

I have tested this in my game and it appears to work fine.

This hack is compatible with most, if not all mods by MATY crew (Pescado, TJ, and CBoy), dizzy, and probably more. Again, up to you to help me determine any possible conflicts.

Note: A "known issue" regarding passenger sims, or even the designated driver sim, is if their path is obstructed for some reason, either physically blocked by objects or sim traffic (stairways or doors), the interaction may possibly fall off the queue. This is the case for most interactions with objects or other sims. If this should happen to some passengers, and the interaction falls out of the queue, there is a possibility that the driver may take off before all passengers have successfully boarded. I found that this happens with AND withOUT my hack in the game. If I ever figure out how to force it so that driver actually waits indefinitely until all passengers are accounted for, I may upgrade this in the future. As for now, I just wanted this option in my game, since someone had pointed out that the phonehack did not include this feature (which makes sense, because the phonehack shouldn't relate to ownable cars anyway). A work around for this, is probably make sure the path to the vehicle is clear, for all sims that you want to take, prior to choosing the Drive to Comm Lot option.

REMINDER and fine print (to cover my ass ) :
Remember to ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA BEFORE INSTALLING NEW HACKS. By using this hack, you agree to absolve me of any responsibility or liability for any potential loss of or damage to your data. You have been warned.

HOW TO REPORT: Conflicts, problems, or errors
I would appreciate any constructive criticism and feedback that is actually helpful. With that in mind, it would be helpful, when reporting any conflicts or issues, that you include the following:

1) thorough but reasonably brief description of what you were doing
2) clear, comprehendible explanation of your problem
3) list of hacks that may be related carpools or ownable cars in general
4) archived (.rar or .zip) of log produced by error

Posts which do not include a clear description of what your problem is will be pretty much ignored. (i.e. posts such as "This does not work! I am taking it out! You suck! Nice try! etc.") I can't and won't help you if you don't explain what's wrong.

Please be nice when trying to explain your problem and I might be nice and help you.

Finally, my Thank Yous go to:

J.M. Pescado, twojeffs, dizzy2, and jase439 for being excellent tutors and providing excellent models in their mods. As always, thanks to those creators who've put out some excellent modding tutorials, Quaxi and co for SimPE, and shy and dizzy2 for disaSim2, and the finally letters T and S, and the number 2, all of whom, without which this mod would not be possible.

If I left anyone out, I apologize in advance. You know who you are and you deserve my thanks.

Here's the hack in action. As you can see, I've chosen Angela, but not Lilith and only Angela gets in the car. Mary-Sue was there too, I just didn't feel like including more pictures.

Version History:
v1.01 - Updated for OFB - OFB users must use OFB version or you may experience some unexpected errors (BHAV and Dialog TXT files changed)
v1.02 - Bug fix - needs testing
v1.03 - Updated for Pets

[jrd]

Sweet. Great idea!

[Emma]

Oh, this is great! Thankyou.

[Simsbaby]

This will be one of the first hacks to go in after I install Nightlife! Thank you!

[J. M. Pescado]

I actually have a version of this in my private test collection. Unfortunately, while the code appears to be the same, it will frequently exhibit odd behaviors, like the driver failing to board the vehicle, resulting in wiggyness. Ultimately I find that the new "group" functionality is slightly more reliable.

[syberspunk]

I actually have a version of this in my private test collection. Unfortunately, while the code appears to be the same, it will frequently exhibit odd behaviors, like the driver failing to board the vehicle, resulting in wiggyness. Ultimately I find that the new "group" functionality is slightly more reliable.

I figured you would have had something for this already since it wasn't that hard to do. Probably one of those hacks that I vaguely recall someone mentioning they found in the DC? But I guess it had been removed since I didn't see it in later updates.

The wiggyness is probably the same issue that I mention above. But I did a little play testing, and noticed that in a clean install of the game, in the Pleasant family, even without this hack... if the driver's path is obstructed for any reason, they will also not board the vehicle and the interaction gets dropped. Since it seemed to happen with and without the hack, I figured it's something I'd be willing to live with so that I actually get the option/choice.

I guess the "group" functionality via the phone is a more reliable alternative. I still haven't managed to toy around with that myself so that's probably why I didn't even think to use that instead. Oh well. Consider this redundant. If it doesn't cause anything to blow up, I'll just keep it in for now.

Ste

[J. M. Pescado]

I've had this happen when the driver is standing right next to the vehicle on open ground, so it can't have been a path obstruction.

Other cases have resulted in people getting STUCK in the vehicles and unable to exit until manually extracted and force-errored, or even rendered unclickable by other sims.

[vecki]

I don't recall downloading this (unless it snuck aboard something like the Director's cut or the phonehack anyway) but I get these options popping up already.

* vecki quietly freaks out until she'll get a chance to check her downloads tomorrow

[syberspunk]

I've had this happen when the driver is standing right next to the vehicle on open ground, so it can't have been a path obstruction.

Other cases have resulted in people getting STUCK in the vehicles and unable to exit until manually extracted and force-errored, or even rendered unclickable by other sims.

Hrm. Sounds cruddy. I suppose I'll have to keep a watchful eye for this, and if I run into these problems, then I'll have to defenestrate this hack. Guess you can't win 'em all, huh?

I don't recall downloading this (unless it snuck aboard something like the Director's cut or the phonehack anyway) but I get these options popping up already.

* vecki quietly freaks out until she'll get a chance to check her downloads tomorrow

Hrm... are you sure you get the options with the ownable cars? For sure the dialog box will pop up and ask you to choose people, if you are using a Taxi. Does the game ask you to use your car if you call for transportation to a comm lot? I can't remember. Maybe interactions via the phone will use Pescado's dialog box.

I was told in chat, and I can't remember by whom right now, that the option doesn't show up directly on ownable cars themselves. Anyways, I wanted to see if I could add that option, and apparently I could. But I guess that doesn't mean I should have. In anycase, it helped me learn about the Dialog primitive, so it wasn't a total waste of time.

Anyways, please report back if you run into any of the problems Pescado mentions. If it turns out to be too buggy, then just nuke the hack. Maybe we could dub it another animal killing hack, like oh, I don't know, "parrot killer" or something? Heheh. J/K.

Ste

[Venusy]

To people who have these options without installing this hack: find and remove carhack.package from your downloads folder (if you use subfolders, find the directory you installed the MATY Director's Cut to).

[Database]

Maybe we could dub it another animal killing hack, like oh, I don't know, "parrot killer" or something? Heheh. J/K.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Anyways, before it becomes an animal-killer, I'm grabbing it Thanks Ste!

[syberspunk]

OFB version available. OFB users please use the new version, otherwise you  may experience some problems regarding dialog messages related to the carpool.

Ste

[C.S.]

Er, syberspunk, did you mistakenly upload the wrong package? I'm seeing 'ownablecarpoolcommlotfix.zip', then 'OFB - dancefitnessandbodyskillingv1.01.zip' below it . Which one are we supposed to get?

[syberspunk]

Er, syberspunk, did you mistakenly upload the wrong package? I'm seeing 'ownablecarpoolcommlotfix.zip', then 'OFB - dancefitnessandbodyskillingv1.01.zip' below it . Which one are we supposed to get?

Doh. My bad. Sorry about that. In my haste, I accidentally attached the wrong file. It should be fixed now. I better go back and check the other updates I made and make sure I didn't screw those up too. Lol. Thanks for catching that! 

Ste

[jsalemi]

Had a problem with this last night, and I don't know if it's a OFB problem  because it's the first time I used it in a household with more than 2 family members after installing OFB. Anyway, here's the scenario:  4 member household, two kids are in school, and the husband is going to his restaurant (finally, something for Celebrity Chefs to do ) and wants to take the wife along to help out.  The multiple sims controller pops up, and cycles through the whole household, even though the kids aren't even home. Chose no for each kid, yes for the wife, but she never gets the 'message' to get into the car, and he drives off without her.

Shouldn't it ignore family members who aren't present?  And of course, any idea why it didn't work?

[syberspunk]

Thanks jsalemi for the report. I'm not sure why it would check for sims that are not on the lot...

I only added a few lines of code that I stole borrowed from the phonehack. But... I did notice that I had a few returns going to a different line. I'm not sure why I took that line out. I may have had some reason or perhaps I deleted it by accident? Which is weird... because if it was necessary, then I would have expected to see some error in testing.

In anycase, I went back and reworked it from scratch. I did not delete anything. The original code is essentially intact, with the minor exception of the 3 lines I added from the phonehack, which is only supposed to bring up the dialog box anyways.

Anyway, please download the new version, test it out, and report back any possible errors. Also, try playing with debug mode (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true) on, and if you get any errors, please post the error log.

I will do my own testing later this weekend. But from starting at the code itself... it appears like it should work. Obviously that's not a guarantee (hence the Fix Pending). The code overall is very similar to the code for Calling the Taxi, found in the phonehack. Only a few lines are different, but there is nothing there that I could see (at least superficially) that would include sims that aren't present on the lot. It should skip those sims who are at work or at school. At least I would think so. Unless something changed and there is some check that is either not present or passing/failing (depending on how you look at it) which leads to including sims that are supposed to be gone.

As I understand it... sims that are set at work or at school aren't really gone from the lot... they are kind of in 'stasis' and set 'off-world' magically hidden away until the time that they are supposed to return. So techincally... they are still On the lot, but are flagged in such a way as to be invisible. Regardless... the checks in the code Should exclude them. I fail to see how that one line of code I deleted was essential... but perhaps it did something at the time I just didn't think about it's importance. I probably deleted that line thinking it was non-essential and figured I was cleaning up the code in order to reduce the size of the hack (removing unnecessary lines).

Well... hopefully this quick fix does the job. If not... I'll have to do more testing later and hopefully figure out what might be wrong.

Ste

[jsalemi]

Ok, I've downloaded the new version.  We have neighbors coming over for dinner tonight, so I won't be playing again until much later, but I'll give a try with the same folks and let you know how it goes.

Oh, and FYI for you and everyone here , the 'j' stands for Joe.  I put it in my sig, but nobody seems to notice. 

[C.S.]

I didn't notice the problem jsalemi described, but only because I haven't taken any sim out to the community lot while some family members weren't home . Mine is a different problem though.

I tried taking the Brokes to a community lot for the whole weekend last night. Everyone was home (2 adults, 3 teens, 1 servo), all needs were taken care of, every one was pretty much idling. Clicked on car to 'Drive to community lot', chose the destination, selected 'Mutilple sims', got the dialog box asking 'Will so-&-so be going as well?', chose 'Yes' for each and everyone of them, and here's where the problem is - not all 6 got the 'Go to community lot' action in their queue. The car wasn't selectable at all for those who didn't get the queue. It's sort of an old problem for me actually, back when the phone hack had this feature, only now I do get asked for every sim if they would be going along, but still not every one was queued to go. Didn't seem to matter who the driver was, just like it didn't matter who called for transportation with the old phone hack. In the end, I started a group outing 'Just for fun', then they all got queued up to go to the community lot.

[syberspunk]

Hey CuriousSpurious

That's actually probably a version of the 'known issue' that I mention in the first post. I haven't figured out yet why that happens. In my testing, I had that occur, even without the hack in place. For some reason... if the path to the car gets blocked, the interaction falls out of their queue. I also could not click on the car and try to get them to enter it after.

If I ever find the time to figure out how to remedy this, I try and fix/update it. This is probably the reason why Pescado abandoned this feature. He even mentions it in a reply that he also had issues, even with the driver sometimes failing to board themself.

The Group Outing option is more reliable. I was just hoping for a way to be able to choose sims without being forced to have an outing. If it turns out that the current version does not fix the issue Joe mentions and if it is unfeasible to fix the issue of all sims failing to board the vehicle, then I may also abandon this altogether. If Pescado can't figure it out, I'm pretty much less likely to

Ste

PS. I glanced at your original post in the Phone Hack thread. I vaguely recall (or quite possibly imagined ) seeing some code that actually checks the capacity of the vehicle... I don't know if this actually works or is used all the time or is somehow bypassed and when. Perhaps that might be the cause (before) that limited the number of passengers? And possibly the reason why only a few of your passengers get issued the command to board the vehicle?

It is probably impossible to notice whether all your sims, if more than 4, actually get the command issued. Perhaps... you can try testing it out by having all your sims lined up near the vehicle. Have them Macro.../Procrastinate. Then have a driver pick the option to drive downtown and select all your sims and see what happens.

If all your sims start to move... see if any sims fail to board, and whether the ones that failed had their path blocked. Or... if the ones that failed to board did not even move at all (and thus probably didn't even have the command issued to them).

[C.S.]

Well, it was more of a fool's hope that something had changed in the maxis coding and handy mods like this now works; JMP said he didn't have the problem I described in the old phone hack, so I took it that it's just something funky going on in my game with or without OFB .

It would've been very amusing to see if there was an animation for the sims left behind bawling their eyes out and sitting by the driveway having a meltdown because they didn't get to go along on the family outing .

[jsalemi]

Ste,

Sorry to report the new version is even more hosed -- the dialog box still popped up 3 times (same family, kids in school), except this time it had the name of the car in it all three times instead of the names of the sims.  I didn't test it beyond that point.

[syberspunk]

Lol @ CuriousSpurious. This reminds me of the story my cousins told us once. My cousins family, they were a fairly sized family (3 brothers and a sister). They told us how one time, when they were driving home from a party, they accidentally forgot their youngest brother. I guess they were all so tired, and they didn't think to make sure all the kids were in the car. lol.

Doh @ Joe. Thanks for pointing that out. I kinda just threw that together as a quick fix (or I was hoping so) before I went out. I was kinda in a rush, so I didn't bother testing it.

Anyways, this version should fix the dialog box problem, well the one with the car showing up. I'm not positive it will fix your other problem with it picking up sims that are supposed to be away, off-world or not on the lot. I'll would have to dig a bit deeper to see what's goin on. But since I didn't change any of the checks, it shouldn't be picking those sims up. I'll have to see how i might add other checks to forcibly prevent their inclusion in the list.

Ste

[C.S.]

I usually have 6-7 sims living on 1 lot, that's within the 8-passengers capacity maxis claimed the taxi could accommodate. I even emailed back to ask if 8 sims meant 7 playables+1 taxi driver , and they said it's 8 playables, taxi driver doesn't count. (Edit: I've successfully taken 8 sims in the taxi before, then the old phone hack happened). But that's back when, and I didn't ask about the car in NL.

It is probably impossible to notice whether all your sims, if more than 4, actually get the command issued. Perhaps... you can try testing it out by having all your sims lined up near the vehicle. Have them Macro.../Procrastinate. Then have a driver pick the option to drive downtown and select all your sims and see what happens.

If all your sims start to move... see if any sims fail to board, and whether the ones that failed had their path blocked. Or... if the ones that failed to board did not even move at all (and thus probably didn't even have the command issued to them).

I've tried that to make sure it wasn't blocked path or the sims didn't get the command because they were engaged in some activity; there's room the size of a driveway beside the car I picked for the outing. I had the Brokes all stand there with Macro.../Procrastinate, I selected one of those that didn't get the command to board before to be the active sim, see if they were ever queued but nope, no command to get in the car at all, just like the old phone hack. Making them sit and wait, or putting them on Macro.../Procrastinate made no difference. They just stood there while the others drove off .

No worries though, at least there's still the option to form a group outing, and it still works.

Heehee, how do you "accidentally" forget someone?

[jsalemi]

Heehee, how do you "accidentally" forget someone?

There was a story just this past week on CNN about some older gentleman who left his wife at a rest stop in New Mexico somewhere -- he thought she was "asleep in the back of their RV" when he drove off.  I think the cops finally caught up with him in Arizona somewhere.

[C.S.]

Oh boy, it's kinda hard for me to explain. I mean, forget is forget, you don't accidentally forget someone, know what I mean? It'll be... more like taking for granted what you thought to be true, only it wasn't. Or forgetting to double-check the accuracy of your assumption, you know?

I'd imagine it's probably nowhere near hilarious for the poor thing who got left behind, but I think it's rather funny though, even if I was the one who got stranded . Like, run after the car shouting "Wait! Wait! I'm still out here! Wait!" That's what I think of in the sims when the car drove off without the whole family (I'd also kinda imagine what I'll look like if I could generate thought bubbles, because they'd be coming up fast and furious ), especially when it's a return trip from a community lot. Well, maybe not so funny at first if that caused family members to disappear from the home lot and I had to fix it, but I'd be laughing about it after.