More Awesome Than You!

New Phone Hack update, adds improved headmaster invite (can now call headmaster if toddler will make autotransition to childhood at 1800 during headmaster scenario, instead of waiting until next day - no longer necessary to only try for babies on Thursday). Now possible for teen to introduce adults to callee: No longer strangely shouted at unless join is declined. "Harassment is bad, 'mkay?" protection moved further down in the call process to support future sims with nocturnal living habits.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/blue.gif)
UNI: (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) phonehack.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/uni/hacks/phonehack.zip)

RTFM:
Phone & Taxi Hack: SHINY EDITION! (v6.8b) for TS2U v1.0
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado & Doctor Boris)

Special Thanks To:
Quaxi, for writing SimPE
LilAbner, for the Swedish translation

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place in your MYDOCU~1\EAGAME~1\THESIM~1\DOWNLO~1 directory.

BUGS FIXED:
1. The parent of a child who is on the phone will not invite himself inside.

2. The Headmaster will no longer self-invite himself when he calls you, nor
   will the phone freeze up.

3. You should now be able to properly invite new Headmasters even if your Sim
   has married a Headmaster.

4. Sims invited to community lots either by "Invite Sim To Community Lot", or
   by calling them using a standard phone installed by a hacked community
   collection, will no longer stand there like logs unless someone interacts
   with them until they pee themselves. They will either be controllable by
   you, or, if you invited your own family members for some reason, they will
   function as standard visitors. This is done because of weirdness involving
   taxi boarding if members of the same family which did not arrive together
   are present when one leaves by taxi.

5. Visitors invited in such a manner, if controlled by you, can be directed to
   go away by clicking on a public phone and choosing "Go Home". They will
   walk off the lot. "Call Taxi" is disabled for such visitors because it
   causes bad things to happen.

6. "Invite Sim To Community Lot" taxi option disabled on standard phones if
   you are already on a community lot when placing a taxi call, because it
   will not work and causes weirdness. Nonfamily controllable sims may not
   place a taxi call using this phone, either: It causes badness.


ANNOYANCES ELIMINATED:
1. Sims will no longer hang up the phone before repairing their relationships:
   They will now converse until their relationship with the sim they are
   speaking to is fully repaired (from their perspective), AND their Social
   need has been fulfilled. No more babysitting and forcing them to keep
   calling until they actually are DONE. After the relationship is at 100 and
   they are fully Socialized, they will automatically hang up.

2. Teens can now go and sneak out even, or especially if, they lack a guardian.
   This should not be construed as support for parenticide, although we're sure
   some of you are going to try it now. In event that no adult is present, the
   teen sim no longer requires permission to go out, because, obviously, he has
   nobody to request it from but himself. The options to "Go Out" and
   "Sneak Out" will appear at the appropriate times.

3. Midnight Call Lock - Ever wondered why your Sims somehow seem to decide to
   go to sleep earlier when you're not playing? Tired of them simply screaming
   at you even though normally, they never go to sleep under YOUR direction
   until like 2 in the morning? We couldn't make insomnia-tracking to determine
   which families are regularly insomniacs, but you are now protected from
   accidentally doing this: If your sim attempts to call another sim outside of
   valid calling hours, he will pick up the phone, then realize this is a bad
   time and put it down before bugging the other sim. You may still attempt to
   place emergency, service, transportation, sneak-out, and crank calls
   normally.

4. No more dumbass phone calls: Friends who miss you no longer make stupid
   phone calls just to waste your time with their whining: They will instead
   make a USEFUL phonecall, so if a friend you haven't heard from in awhile
   calls you to talk, instead of bitching about it, this is why.

5. Sim-children should no longer bug random adults that they bumped into on
   some community lot by phone. Sim children should only call their relatives
   or other children.

6. Sims should no longer place casual calls when they are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE
   HOME. No more truant children calling for kids which are at school, or
   people calling when they SHOULD be at work.

7. Now possible for teens to introduce people to adults using the phone:
   Teens no longer shouted at unless phone call join is declined.

8. Now possible to invite headmaster if toddler will auto-transition at 1800
   while headmaster scenario is in progress.

9. Calling in sick no longer generates a useless NPC to clog your data files.


FEATURES ADDED:
1. Set Ringer - Set the number of rings you want your phone to ring when an
   incoming call is received: 5, 10, 15, the default 20, or even OFF, which
   means you will not be notified or receive any incoming calls.

COMPATIBILITY:
This hack is for TS2 University. It does not function with the non-expansion
pack version of the game.

SIDE EFFECTS:
May cause computer damage, incontinence, explosion of user's head, coma, death,
and/or halitosis.

CHANGELOG
v6.8: Fixed toddler HM call. Added anti-useless-NPC.
v6.7: Code reorganized, cleaned up. Added Headmaster tweak, anti-teen-shouting.
      "Harassment bad, 'mkay" protection moved further down to support future
      sims with potentially very different rest habits.
v6.6: Issues with freaky dead kid collection fixed.
v6.5: Corrects new issues introduced in the expansion with invited sims on
      community lots: Should now be properly controllable or autonomous and
      leave properly when told to bugger off if controllable non-family.
v6.4:
1. Incoming calls received on cellphones no longer abort without answering.
2. Novel publisher call now overrides ringer setting to default so that
   you don't accidentally miss this call.

Oh, yeah! Every time I play my Email lot I wish for this. Perfect.

Thanks alot, need to get a kid in private school soon.

Oo, yay, this is great - thank you!!

P.S. Who is Draklixa, and why does he/she get congratulated in every RTFM?? Just curious, is all.....  ;D

I couldn't live without this but I have one problem with it.  Caller ID repeats and repeats itself when phone rings.  I always wind up turning phone off but in new homes I often forget and this happens.

There's no caller ID. I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you on drugs, soldier?!?

This is yet another wonderful tool. Thank you so much for making my game playable and enjoyable....YIPPY

The Insiminator has a caller ID feature. I'm however, not all too sure, since I don't use the Insimthing. Big things that do too much frighten me :D

G.

That is definitely not on our list of supported products. I don't even know what relevance the two have. Why does the Insimenator have anything to do with phones, anyway?

Thanks, JM!
This is is third version of the phonehack that I'm installing!  I had problems with the first one (MY fault; a Sim was on the phone or something when I saved) but I'm giving it another go--I'm so excited to see how it works. :)

The Insiminator has a lot of things, that's the reason I don't use it. It reminds me too much of the testingcheatsenabled thing which I genuinely abhor. What's your reason for not liking it (the Insimthing)? For gifted modders like you this monster should be a cinch to tackle.

G.

Other than the fact that it, at least used to, conflict with everything under the sun because of its overreaching, grabby nature? Other than the fact that a single giant bloated uber-mod is a royal pain in the ass to debug when something goes wrong? No reason, really.

2. Novel publisher call now overrides ringer setting to default so that
   you don't accidentally miss this call.

It says not to turn your phone off if expecting a call from the publisher, is the above statement now indicating that you can in fact turn your phone off, or will it just override the amount of rings?

The update superceded the old instructions. Now the novel call is received regardless of ringer on/off. I'll try to update that part in the manual for the next version when I include the anti-useless-call-in-sick-NPC.

Would it be at all possible to include an alternative version that DOESN'T stop townie kids harrassing innocent Sims & parents of kids on the phone turning-up to similarly harrass?  I've tried to work out how to alter it in SimPE, but I can't.  I rather miss those aspects of the game, I find things like that highly entertaining.  I've noticed since Uni that there are certain Sims in the game who seem to be designated as 'phone-stalkers' (up to now, mine are all teens & YA's, apart from one nanny), so obviously they're slipping through your net.  One of them has made herself about 20 BF's so far from ringing people she has a 0/0 relationship with.  No wonder she's behind on her assignments.  (BTW, I've wanted to ask you this for ages, but have been too worried about my lips.  I don't need to worry anymore now that they're gone.  Never felt a thing, either).

Thank you, JM. Perfection. :)

The original phone hack was the first one of your hacks I ever installed, and it just gets better and better!

The dmaTeleport (comes with live in NPCs) has this function.  It is my saviour!  I can ignore Marsha Bruenig the pain and Prof. Audrey the slut when they start stalking!

How about an "Auto Off" for the ringer (which only rings if the sims are all awake)? That would be a cool option, IMHO.  ;D

Rathre annying, though, if one of your sims is a nightworker and sleeps in the daytime!  Then the phone wouldn't ring for anyone else to "hear"!  (Including you!)

I tend to put the phone in an isolated room and never answer it at all, it's not overly important anyway.

It's often a darned nuisance!  And the number of phonecalls that are made for a sim who is at work!  If the majority of humans can keep track of when their friends are at least likely to be at home, you'd think a computer program could!

Technically, there's no real point in accepting phone calls, because the phone calls are just generated arbitrarily based on a sort of "The One" effect. You'll notice how often one sim will be consistently chosen as your tormentor until you meet someone new, regardless of your relationship state. I suppose we could make it slightly smarter about choices...

Would be nice, like if it chose the rockiest relationship for example.

I have a suggestion. Being a little bored, I decided to play the way I used to. You know, actually celebrating birthdays and weddings with parties, silly stuff like that. Well anyway, unless I'm totally missing something, it would be nice if a child can throw her own party and invite her guests. I got a kid (right now, alt tabbed actually) who is about to have a party, she has three little friends who would love to come over, and since the adults barely know the kids (and might not even be able to invite children), she has to be stuck having her parents invite their own friends over. A bunch of stuffy adults at a child's birthday party, man what fun. Come to think of it, can adults invite kids? I guess it would also be cool if they befriended kids and invited them to a toddler's birthday, so the toddler has new friends to make after the transition.

If adults know the kids, they can invite them, but beware of having the party after school, as by the time it's under way, all the kids parents turn up and take the poor things home!  If you want kids at the party, best to use Aging off to control that the kid grows up at the week-end, so you can have the party in the afternoon.  (Oh, the adults must actually be friends with the kids, or they probably won't show up.)

Yeah, see that's what I don't like. Though really, now that I think about it, it is more realistic that way. I wasn't really allowed to pick my own guests until I was a teen. So I guess it does make sense, I just don't like the thought of adults befriending children. They should like them, but not be really close to their kids friends, it's kind of creepy. Especially if the kids then grow up and the adults suddenly want to flirt with them.

Never happened to you?  I think any red-blooded male will try to flirt with pretty young women (or men, if they are that way inclined) and it doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't run a mile if it looked like getting out of hand!

I don't. It's profoundly undignified and tasteless.

Perhaps your blood is blue?

JM, is it possible to include the original 'Multiple Sims' option where the whole family, up to the maximum number of 8, can go to the community lot together? It seems that now, only up to 4 sims are asked when playing in the base neighbourhood.

I have never observed that problem. Is everyone awake and available?

The hack is ace, J.M. Ta muchly.

On another note, thank all that's good that you're not one of those males that likes to flirt with the nubile wenchette. It is tasteless, undignified and mortifying to watch. I shudder at the thought.

"Now possible for teen to introduce adults to callee: No longer strangely shouted at unless join is declined."

I'm intrigued. Is this to do with some function that allows multiple sims in a household to yap down the phone at a sim on the other end? A conference call sort of thing? And pre-shiny-phonehack teens were lectured if they asked an adult to join?

Well, Beau's son was always asking him to join the conversation, both pre-phone hack and pre-Uni, so I think that may depend on the relationship score between parent and child!  Beau never, to my recollection, lectured anyone!

What would happen is that if an adult tried to join a call started by a teen, the call would implode instead for no really good reason. Now it will ask you if you want to join, and only when you say "No" will the adult perform the "Get off the phone!" shout.

Yes, they are all awake and available. I've even tried making them sit on sofas and chairs (freewill is off) to wait for the taxi to arrive in case somehow the option was dropped because they were taking a pee or shower. Initially, I thought it was something to do with having resurrected all the dead (the Goths and Crumplebottoms, who were made to find their own place first, then moved in with different families by invitation after I've settled said families into lots I built myself, Michael Bachelor, Darleen Dreamer and Skip Broke were also resurrected and reunited with their family), but the Pleasant family was affected too, where I had Herb and Coral Oldie moved in by invitation.

Edit: The resurrections were done through SimPE and Tombstone of L & D.

Hi JM I Have a problem using this mod with nightlife I have attached a copy of my error log but I do not know if u can help yet. This is a very good and I hate it when the sims friends call up and say havent heard from........... and so such rubish.

Cool. Never saw error 56 before.

I'd guess that NL expects more than 2 arrays for "Phone Line" (0x6C734ADB).

I will note this down as "Not Nightlife Compatible". Nothing I can do until I at least receive an objects.package from NL.

for the love of sam send this JM character an NL objects package el pronto!

I haven't tried this in debug mode, but the phone hack definitely interferes with Nightlife's "manage groups" function. Every time I try to do this while the phone hack is installed I end up calling Sims instead of grouping them. Can't wait until you get a chance to update this for the new EP.

By the way, is there a list on this site of what hacks do (or don't)  seem to work with Nightlife?

Hmm. Can only certain age groups participate in these calls? I ask this because I spent about 15 minutes clicking aimlessly on various characters while somebody was on the phone in a dorm, and could see no option for joining at all.

Idiot's guide, somebody?

In UNi and the base game there is no option to "join", you select "call" -  "sim"  and when they pick up the phone a box pops up asking if you want to join the call.

wtf! I've never seen this. A sim needs to Call - Sim while another sim is on the phone, then?

You need two landlines for it to work - one Sim calls a friend, neighbor, or whoever and while those two are conversing, another Sim in the house can pick up the unused telephone and join in the conversation if they want. A dialogue window will pop up asking if the second Sim would like to join the convo and you can accept or decline.

Yes that is correct, while a sims is on the phone conversing with someone, direct another sim to pick up the phone and call a sim (from another phone) and you will get a pop up asking if you want to join the conversation.

On the lot I'm playing there is an adult who used to have terrible grades as a teenager and flunked out of college.
I have a pair of toddler twins who were going to age transition at 18:00 on Friday.

Friday afternoon another sim tried to invite the headmaster. However I got a response that private schools are not interested in kids whose grades are below C.  On Saturday (the twins have turned into children), the headmaster was successfully invited.

I'm not sure whether the issue with Friday was caused by the adult who flunked out of school, but I can't think of any other possible causes.

Didn't keep a savegame for it to retest, sorry.

Hmm. Interesting. Could be that toddlers have uninitialized values. I'll put a check for that in the update.

Toddlers don't have any grade points, so the headmasters thinks they have an F. They are reset to Cs as they become kids.

I had to remove this hack after installing NL as children suddenly could only call adults.  Pain in the butt when they wanted to be friends with a new townie child and couldn't contact them.

Well it was either this one or autoyakyak.  My first instinct is to say this one though because of the new 'groups' function in NL.

I had a message coming up saying my Sim child couldn't call anyone because he didn't know anyone yet.  :P

I'll be definitely waiting for this 'un to become Nightlife compatible.

Your phone hacks are wonderful and provide options that I would love to utilize however all your phone hack functions remove the sims autonomously hanging up the phone when either their social bar is full or they have gotten their requesit daily relationship score from the call (I think it's 20).  What this means is that I can't que my sim up to make their daily phone calls and then do something else in the household.  I have to babysit the caller or else they will just yack until they drain their bars and dissolve into a puddle :(

Umm, that's meant to happen. With the phone hack, sims talk until social is at full, and until STR (short term relationship) is at maximum. If you just want to call a few friends, and maybe the sim's family, try looking up the AutoYakYak (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/hacks/autoyak.zip)'s number.

But doesnt autoyak "call firends/family) cause them to chat until their relationship is at max too?

Whoops. I knew something was wrong with that post, but couldn't for the life of me (or the lips) figure out what it was when I hit the post button. I normally play with Power Idle on, and freewill off, so the sims take care of their needs sans micromanagement. Is it true Nightlife has broke it, or is it just College Rampage that is broke?

File not found for download?

Can't find the update of Dr Boris.

is this the updated version or what?   I can't download it,  I think it said "I was not authorized to veiw this page or something like that.   :'(     :'(

This is still the old version. Presumably when the updated file is available, it will be in the Firing Range.

I wish that invitees would take the highest relationship score in the *household* to determine whether to show up or not.  Would make it a lot easier to invite folks.

I usually invite cousins to kids' birthday parties, the parents usually know them and they usually turn up.  Also, I've generally found that family gatherings make for better parties and they're more likely to get the "Had a great party" memory.  Just have to make sure the party starts early enough so parents don't take the kids home halfway through!

Z.Z., where have you been? Good to see you back!

Thanks for your concern, laeshanin!  I've just had a bout of depression so I've immersed myself in a new neighbourhood till I felt a bit better.  Makes me feel even better to find so many people concerned about me!

Hey, just IM me if I'm on line. Always happy to lend an ear.

Thanks, Laeshanin, but I do actually get over these things by myself , and I don't have any real reason why I sometimes feel this way, so it's actually quite difficult to tell anyone about it, because there's really nothing to tell.  Thanks all the same for your concern.

Phone hack still seems to work after the Uni patch.

I'm glad about that!

Oh, Most Awesome one!!  I am having problems with the phonehack in NightLife.  I LOVE this and miss it.  It causes my sims NOT to be able to call a sim and just talk.  They just stand there and  with no advacement of the social bar and they seem frozen while the other sims carry on around them.  Will you be updating this one for NightLife??  I really do apprecieat all your hard work on these awesome fixes and hacks!!  Untill they change things for an exp. pk. they work like a charm!!  Then ol' Maxis has to go and screw around with them to give us another exp pk.  Thanks again for your hard work!!  I'll keep checking back in with ya'

Patty

I have nightlife too and have removed it an long time ago. U have to wait for JM to get his Nightlife expansion before it will get fixed.

I just don't know why every time they make a new EP they have to change so much!

A) because they're idiots; B) because they're idiots; C) they like to see us cough up inordinate amounts of cash on a heap of junk; D) because thye're idiots. *select all applicable*

 :-\

The thing is, expansion packs inherently expand upon what is already there.  In most cases, you cannot have some of the new and some of the old, you have to choose new or old (to install or not to install, that is the question....)

While I'll be receiving my Nightlife CD sometime this week, if I do install it I won't actually be playing it proper with my established families until these various bits of functionality are restored.  I have just in the past few days been playing TS2U on my second account to try and figure out which hacks work post-patch, and it's good in one way because it serves to prune custom content to just what I need to enjoy the game.  The bad thing is, I haven't got through them all, and I probably won't have before NL arrives, and playing families just for testing purposes is not as enjoyable as playing the ones I know.

Make good use of disposable guinea pigs, I say, and when the modders catch up we can go back to our scheduled family programming ;)

Annoying, though, that everyone who cares what happens to their game feels obliged to go through this process!

Well, I tend to see it as being at least partially beneficial to my existing families.  Having practised the integration of a driveway, for example, I won't have so much chance to mess up their house when I get them a car :)

True.  Anyway, today I shall install NL after moving out my Sims2 folder, then I'll do the same, and have YET ANOTHER Pleasantview!!!  I just wish there was a way of changing them to another number and then keeping them all together!

Perhaps just create a custom village for your testing, since then you just need to plonk down a pre-fabricated lot, make your changes, and then add Sims.  If it really turns out well then you can keep it around, but if not then just get rid of it.  Although, if you do in the process make some lots-with-driveways which could work in your regular 'hoods, you could save those to the lot bin and save some time that way.

True!  And I sometimes wonder if I'll ever play some of those old versions again!  Need 48 hours per day!

I received and installed Nightlife today.... although I haven't had much play time on it, I like what I see so far.  Only thing is, the phone hack is going in straight away.  I just cannot stand friends phoning up to whine about not calling.

Well, I started putting back my hacks, or updated versions when I could find them, but something odd has started happening to my houses.  Before I put the hacks back in, I could build driveways, no problems, but now I can't.  I can use the extension and put that over the pavement, and the sim will get in the car and the car will just vanish for a while, then come back (like they do if they're in a garage and there's another car on the drive, but I can't put the drive that goes over the road and when the sim gets in his car he backs out into the road and then drives off!  I suppose it could be a download, but I haven't a clue which!  And I haven't put that many back yet.

Zephyr,

You may not know that driveways cannot be placed if you have the "moveobjects" cheat activated. For what it's worth. ...

Stephen

That must be it!  Thank you so much!  Why on earth can't there be a reminder pop-up when you try?  Must be to do with the portals being in danger with Move_objects on!  (Which I find you now have to type like that or it doesn't work!)

Not here... "moveobjects on" (lowercase and without the underscore) still works fine for me.

I think we might wanna move this discussion to another topic, if nothing else so that it's flagged as a new issue :)

I realised that i could place the extensions, it was the driveway which actually allows your sims to drive off that I couldn't place, but when I deactivated Move_objects, I could.

Returning to the Phone Hack, I have noticed something wierd!  If my sim received a phone call from a friend, as soon as they hang up, the friend walks into the house!  Also, the phone can start to ring at 1 am and still be ringing at dawn!

Please, tell us when you'll make a version to Nightlife...  :-\ This hack is simply a must!

Well, as I said, it works after a fashion, and it's better to be with it than without it.

I use already a month (NL) the phone hack "in test" without any problems. Here is the version I play with. May be you can try it too, and write your conclusions.

[attachment deleted by admin]

I for one will definitely give it a try!

Thanks, Gali!  I'll try it.  :D

I'm pretty confused by this. If I have nightlife, but not uni, can I use this hack? And does the old, out of commision no-ep version work, or was it discontinued because of some sort of problem?

The original was updated for Uni as there were a lot of problems such as sims not being able to use the phone, but I think it's still available for people with just the base game.

The Uni version works after a fashion in NL, but there are problems, such as you can only set the ringer off, not the number of rings options.  Also, if a sim answers the phone, when they hang up the caller arrives on the lot.  If they call someone and hang up, the callee calls back immediately, even at 4.00am!