More Awesome Than You!

Updated with new improvements and featureslike, including the "Call Family" fambly phone directory for unintroduced family.

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/green.gif)
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) autoyak.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/pets/hacks/autoyak.zip)

RTFM:
Auto Yak-Yak (v0.96b) for TS2U - TS2PETS
Made by: Flying Fish System (J. M. Pescado & Doctor Boris)

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

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

FEATURES:
Adds the following calling features to your phone:

I. CALL FRIENDS:
    Automatically picks and chooses existing friends and calls until relations
    are repaired. Will not appear if you lack any friends in need of calling or
    if nobody is available to be called (at work/school, too late, etc.)

II. CALL ENEMIES:
    Automatically picks and chooses existing disliked sims to harass until
    relations bottom out (unilateral). Will not appear if you have nobody you
    dislike or nobody can be harassed at this time (too early, not home).

III. CALL FAMILY:
    Presents a dialog of family members looked up in the phonebook, including
    those you haven't personally met yet: Useful for introducing sims to their
    relatives without ridiculous amounts of shuffling between lots. Will not
    appear if there are no relatives with STR < 95: Use "Call Friends" instead.


COMPATIBILITY:
This hack is fully compatible with all FFS hacks. Tested for TS2PETS.

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

Fantastic!  Thanks.

Cool :)

This is perfect!  Thank you so much.  :)

Wow!  This is great!  A wee fix for those of us who tend to neglect our relatives...

Cain't say it enuf...love what ya do, JM!  ;D

I just installed this, but I'm not getting the "call friends" option..... I'm going to reinstall, then post if it still does not work....

If your relationship is maxed out with all of your friends, the option will go away since there will be no point in calling anyone.

oooh!

I was hoping for something like this - when I had a couple of elders who were getting close to death - I wanted to max the family relationships to guarantee bigger inheritances...  but then, I trashed the neighbourhood and started over...  will look forward to using it when my original sims get closer to that life stage!

thank you!

Ness

Love ya much!

Great for Popularity Sims who I find neglect their families dreadfully!

Oh, I needed this!  My star line family was getting so big that I was wasting a tremendous amount of time just trying to keep track of who knew whom!

Golly, JM!  If you keep eliminating all the tedium from The Sims 2, all we'll have left is something that's fun to play!

I am currently having an issue with the phones in my sim's dorm - I have the latest version of this and the phone hack.  Each time I have a sim 'call friends', I get the  "hi _____ do you want to join our call?" popup even though no one is on the phone.  If I say yes they just hang up and it happens again, if I say no, they can then 'call friends'.  Am I the only one this is happening to?

This is a known effect of what happens if you install the phone hack while somebody is on the phone. Make sure people in all saved lots are not on the phone before installing phone-mods of any kind.

In one of my lots it only affect the teenager, not the parents, and once she moved to Uni it all sorted itself out.

I've been using autoyak and the phonehack since they were downloadable. Love them. Make keeping friends work so much better. Now, for my problem. I recently reinstalled my game (did quite a few stupid things before I knew better, decided to nuke the ticking timebomb and start fresh). Ever since, phone doesn't work. I can call to invite over, but if I Call Sim, or Call Friends I get problems. The actual call seems to start. The call icon never gets replaced with the thumbnail of the callee's face. In the relationship panel, the callee never moves to the far side. The relationship never increases. In the motives, social does not go up.

I do not understand this. It worked perfectly for me before. I even downloaded a new copy in case I had somehow gotten a currupt file. I can still invite, and autoyak. But I miss the call friends option. Any clue? :'(

It may be a bugged callee. Any idea who is being called?

Suspected it might be the lot. I tried 5 other lots, and even checked the other 'hoods, just to be sure. It's happening everywhere.
As for the callee, it doesn't seem to matter. So far this has occurred on at least 10 lots, calling different people.

This is certainly mysterious, then. I don't have a good explanation of why Call Friends and Call Sim don't work, since the two run on partly independent codes. This is a Uni-equipped game, correct?

Yes I have Uni, and both mods worked perfectly until I reinstalled. Just to check possible conflicts, though I can't think of anything that would be, I even took out everything from my download folder but your phonehack. Still no go.

Does it happen without the Phonehack, and only with the AutoYak? If not, does it resume happening (make sure nobody is on the phone still!) when you reinstall the Phone Hack? Are you installing the RIGHT Phone Hack?

I am using the version that came out with the new family option. To test I took out everything But the phonehack. Still had a problem. I haven't tried it again without the phonehack. I will go test that now.


Update: With the phonehack out of my game, the call sim function works in exactly the lame-ass manner it is supposed to. I'm not sure if this is good or bad news?? ???

Now hang up the phone and put it BACK. Does it still break? And does the AutoYak function correctly in the absence of the Phone Hack?

Okay. Phonehack back in. The only thing in my download folder. It broke again. They just stand there like dolts as social decays and the relationship does not change. No pacing like normal on the phone. No movement at all. Stupid little pixel people look like they are in trances.

Weird. Are you SURE you're not using the WRONG version? The "new family option" is a part of the AutoYak, not the Phone Hack. Make sure you're not using the wrong Phone Hack, like Phonehack Old.

After the problem showed up I redownloaded, but will do so again, just to make sure I didn't screw up.

Thank you. Reinstalled it with no one on the phone and it works fine now.  :)

It's not the old version. And I redownloaded. But, now the autoyak features work with the phonehack out (before they wouldn't), but putting the phonehack in tends to break everything but invite. Oh well, I appreciate your suggestions; I'll just live without the phonehack.

I'll look into this to see if I can reproduce the results, but this is a mystery. You say they just stand there? Get them to stand there, and while they're doing it, force an error on them and send the log.

I guess I have the old version,but I wanted to tell you how awesome this hack is.  All my sims are at max relations with all their friends all the time.  I used to go to sim pe to max their relations before they go to uni cause they would lose their friends.  Now, I give everyone a cell phone and have them all call friends together every night- it works great.  This and the Macro Socializer are my new favs.  Keep up the great work- we really appreciate it.  You and other hackers, made this game the most awesome game ever!!!  I was playing with someone elses game(to give them the ropes) and I know now that I will never want to play this game without hacks again.  Oh, did I say thanx!!!!!!

I have a family that I started in CAS with the mother, father, and two toddlers.  The toddlers are now grown and graduated from college, and the family has several more children, some in college and some still at home.  The first two children now are married and each has a child.  So these would be the CAS mother and father's granchildren.  But when I use the Call Family option on their cell phones, neither has the option to call the one grandchild, and only the father has the option to call the other grandchild.  Why doesn't it recognizing the grandchildren as family?

Are they not home? People who are not home do not appear on the list.

They have been able to call them when the children are supposed to be in school.  But this time I had them both try to call at the same time, but not actually place the call, and the girl was in the father's panel but not the mother.  I believe it was in the afternoon after 3 pm because their other kids were home.  I will check it again.

This works great with NL, except for one very minor issue.  The Call...Friends shows up as Groups...Manage Groups when you look at the icon in the queue.  It functions just fine, only the name of the action in the queue is incorrect.

Karen

Hardly dare post here...  but
Kitiara - for clarity's sake are your sims frozen completely or just frozen trying to use the phone?  I ask because I lost free will completely this week as the side effect of a misnamed file (aka a stupidity problem) - JMs nme fix was enabled but named nme.off    I just swore when I pinned that down and disabled it....

A few people on MTS2 reported phone problems - mostly sims missing from the phone book who turned out to be invisibly stuck on the lot.  Inge's shrub fixes that of course.  Clearly not your problem, but might help someone else - unless they are all invisible stuck on the lot from last time you called them!

My post was from August. About a week later it simply cleared up. No idea why. If I changed something I no longer remember what it was.

It's been awhile, but if I remember correctly they started the call just fine then would just stand there with the phone. I could cancel out, so they weren't completely frozen, just standing around like morons.

That'll teach me tol read the dates before I post!   :D

This is one of my most valued, most used hacks.

That was before NL when it rendered children and teens jumping out of freewill interactions and standing around like posts and I had to take it out. (Bugger! It was such a sweet dream, while it lasted...)

Any chance of it being updated anytime soon, Most Awesome One?

I'd be happy to test it!

I have been using the AutoYak with no problems, post-NL.

Do you have another hack that is conflicting?

Works fine for me too, only occasionally Cassandra goth will be called and then disappear, although my sim is still, presumably, talking to her as he/she hasn't called anyone else!  I just clear offworld loiterers since there's no icon in the queue to cancel.  I always do that now to get rid of unwanted callers.

I'll check for hack conflicts again, since I could have missed removing a non-NL approved hack. I'll check again more carefully, especially since you guys haven't have any problems with it in NL.

I'll let you know when I find out... haven't been able to play much at all lately, the other half is feeling neglected, and I need to pay him more attention, otherwise my Sims disks will go AWOL or my graphics card will go missing...

Ever since NL (I believe), the Call/Family option has been missing from my phone menu. Is this because of something I did, or does the hack just need to be updated? I really miss this feature, it would help so much with my massive Legacy family.

Are there any family members which are not at a relationship level of 100, do they have phones, and are they at home (not at school or work)?
The menu won't appear if there are no valid callees.

If they are at that level, then they may be called with Call Friends if the relationship deteriorates while the caller is on the phone.  Call Family is most useful, I find, for newly transitioned kids to get to know their cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents or older siblings away at college.

No, this is for family who is 0/0. Nieces, nephews, cousins. No matter what time I try, call family isn't available. It just doesn't appear at all for me.

Sounds to me like something else is interfering with the Autoyak menu.  Maybe you don't have the latest version of the Phone Hack?

Also, it might be worth checking in SimPE to make sure all these family members are actually flagged as family.

I'm pretty sure I do, but I'll check phonehack. And SimPE scares me silly, so I don't use it.

Which version do you have?  I usually use the Classic version as I find it easier to operate.  All you need to do is the look in the Relationships menu for one of the sims you know is having this problem and see if the check box called Family is ticked.  If not, just click on it to tick it, then save it (commit).

I don't have any version. I had one, got horribly confused and annoyed at having to go through so many complicated menus and technobabble that I uninstalled it and got Sim2Enhancer.

Well, in that case, you should be able to do the same thing.  What seems to happen is that sometimes the game for no apparent reason just unchecks them as family.

Well, I checked- my phonehack is up-to-date, but somehow, I'd missed an autoyak update!  :-[ Mine was from June 19th, and the last update was July 31st. I now have the call/family menu again.

Did it always pop up with a list of people to call? I thought it used to autocall, like call/friends did. Maybe I'm remembering wrong. But I have it back now, at least. I'll just have to have them call each family member individually.

Yes. It always popped up the list so you can pick which one to call, since you could have lots of them and they might be all at 0/0, so maxing them out could take days.

However, once they are friends, they're included in the Call Friends loop.

That's right, I'd forgotten. I'm glad to have this feature back. Now my Legacy can actually acknowledge all those cousins, nieces, nephews and grandchildren that are hanging around.

Also, once they appear in the phone list, even if you only get your sim to speak for one minute, you can put them into your groups.  They probably won't come on an outing until they are around 40 - 50 friendship score, but once they reach that, you can invite them on an outing at your house and just for fun, and if you have a few things for them to do together, the friendship scores should go up fairly quickly.

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but why is AutoYak not in the "Index of /ffs/nl/hacks" with all the other zip files?  I see that it is in the NL Director's Cut, so it must be OK for NL.

I have a menu "Call... Targets"

Targets for what? Love? Hate? Friendship? This Sim doesn't have any enemies and, as it turns out, only one friend who isn't a relative (he's young).

I totally LOVE this item. THANK YOU!!! I had to turn off aging for two days so that my former townies could catch up with all their friends, but now they can maintain their relationships in a relatively short period of time and I don't have to have one of them dedicate her life to answering the phone and hearing how sad it is they've all lost touch.

:)

I have NL and it works great. The Call... friends is in the expected place. I haven't played a family with lots of outside family yet but when I do I expect it will work there also.

Hoorah!

As discussed in this thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=7.msg80702#msg80702),

Call --> Targets, which will identify those Sims that are known to your Sim, but not yet family friends, so you can cultivate the friendship with them first.  It will bring up a panel, much like calling a Sim that you choose manually, and you can choose (or not choose) whomever you wish for your Sim to friendify.  It will pull up any random Sim that's known to your Sim that isn't already a family friend.

Oh Very Cool. Thank you. I was afraid to use it because I didn't want my nice Sim to start making harassing phone calls without provocation.

This is going to be very useful for my Popularity Sim who doesn't have any friends except his mom & brothers!

I always think it's a pity there isn't something like the campus directory for non-uni sims!  After all, if random townies can call your sims when they move in and ask them on dates when they've never met, why shouldn't your sim be able to do the same? ;D

ZZ: "call anyone" by dizzy2: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=72672

I don't use it myself, but this seems like it is what you want.

I was hoping when I saw the Campus Directory for Uni that the same thing would be available in the regular neighborhood, but I was disappointed when it wasn't.  I tried Dizzy2's "Call Anyone" hack, but my neighborhood is too big for it to be useful to me.  It lists every single Sim in your neighborhood, including all three Social Bunnies, although you can't call them.  (Dizzy did say not to try this because it can cause problems.)  On my machine, it lags sometimes between scrolling through the pages, so it took too long for me to find who I wanted to call even when I was just calling a sim that was already a friend.  So I took it out.  I would prefer to use Inge's teleporter shrub to bring in Sims who I want to introduce to my Sims.

So I'm not saying you shouldn't use it, but just be aware if you have a very large neighborhood.  Even if you don't have a lot of playable sims, there are so many townies and NPCs and now dormies and downtownies floating around that you don't even see.

Yes, I did know about the hack, but it wasn't really what I had in mind - just like the uni campus directory only lists sims who are on the campus (whether playables or not) I had in mind that in the main hood there would just be sims attached to that hood, then the same for downtown!  And not including NPCs, that your sims can meet easily enough anyway.  And the uni campus directory is a separate list from your sims list of friends and acquaintances, so their own list doesn't suddenly become unmanageable!  But if there is a sim you particularly want your sim to meet, then you can do it at Uni without resorting to teleporters etc. so why not in the other hoods?

Because Maxis is stupid.   >:(

I wouldn't say "stupid". In this case, there's a perfectly good reason: Because if you list every single sim in your neighborhood, this comes out to a few hundred sims. As people have reported, "Call Anyone" can very well lock up your game from the sheer weight.

So they figure it should work ok on campus because there tends to be fewer sims there?  I still think that a text list of playable sims shouldn't cause too much of a load, and you'd only call it up when you want it, not everytime you place a call.  From the counts I've seen, there are far more nonplayable sims than actual playable ones, so only listing playable sims should result in a much smaller list.  Sorting it by household much like the teleporter shrub should help as well, because it wouldn't have to list all sims at once.  To look someone up in the phone book, you have to know their last name, so it should work the same way.

I agree with that, Rainbow - the teleporter shrub actually lists every available sim, which can be over 600 of them, but since it doesn't list them all at once, it doesn't seem to cause any perceptible lag.  And I find that calling sims on the phone results in making friends with them far more quickly than even living in the same house!  How many family members never get beyond about 20 on a daily relationship until one of them moves out?

There's a reason for this: Befriending a lot resident is over twice as expensive in terms of sim-time as befriending non-residents: You occupy BOTH sims for the same amount of sim-time, meaning you pay twice the cost, AND there are extended handshaking delays involved if both sims are not simultaneously idle.

Conversely, the time of a visitor is effectively free, because visitors require no resources to sustain, nor does having a visitor over consume its time: Therefore, you pay only for the time of your resident sim, and the visitor's time is free. Even better is socializing visitor to visitor, but unfortunately, there is no reliable way to make this happen, and when it occurs randomly on community lots, the results are often undesirable and/or counterproductive. Even arranging the scenario at one of your lots tends to be an annoying exercise due to the extremely short attention spans of sims.

Plus quite a few visitors actually dislike each other (especially, it seems, in Veronaville!) on sight, and spend their time arguing and poking each other, totally ignoring your sims' attempts to make friends!

There seems to be some kind of programming involved when sims come to welcome new arrivals - pick the three most incompatible sims possible!  And when you've done picking fights with each other, why not go and pick a fight with the sims you're supposed to be welcoming!

Until sims are actually good friends, I prefer to keep them apart and to interact on the phone!

It seems that if you can get a sim to come over, or they walk by your house where you can greet them, the auto socializer is faster at making friends than the phone, because they can use interactions such as telling jokes, admiring, and if they have the skill, Bust A Move.  LTR also gets more of a boost for those best friend wants.

Well, maybe I'll try it sometime..........although I tend not to use mods that take over my role as Supreme Being!

Don't think of it as having it take over your role as Supreme Being. Think of it as acquiring a sergeant to scream at your recruits for you.

 ;D  Well, maybe.... (but I get bored if I'm simply the onlooker, even if it means I do see most of the game!!!!)

That's why I prefer larger households.  That way I can set up a scenario with the autosoc or Skillinator, saving my wrists from the strain of constant clicking, and pay attention to my other sims.  I love when everything hums along like a well-oiled machine.  Then when I want to do something special, I slow things down and take control again.  I always use the spacebar to continuously scan through my sims, watching them, seeing how they are doing, giving commands, etc.

I always have problems with large households, the game just gets very jerky.  Maybe it's all my downloads....... ???

Well, maybe you feel like just an onlooker, but for me, those scriptations are basically rote procedures I was going to have to do anyway, exactly as written. I don't really feel a sense of greater involvement for having to manually issue those commands, merely a sense of irritation and repetitiveness. This is the sort of thing you delegate to underlings.

I usually just get them started, then wait to see what happens once they stop congratulating each other!

I know what JM will say to that.  Sims are inherently stupid and will always choose the most stupid thing to do when left to their own devices.  ;)

Oh, I've had sims do some quite intelligent things at times!  For instance, one morning I directed Sim A to serve toaster pastries.  He put them in the oven then went off to clean a counter (stupid), but his partner just strolled in and took the toaster pastries out and served them!  Now that (for a sim) was intelligent!

I am not positive this is the mod causing my problem, but I think it is. Sometimes when I use call Sim/invite over/ the calling Sim jumps off of the phone and is standing still beside it. I usually have to try 2-3 times before they hang up properly and the dialog of "Thanks I'll be right over" occurs. I have tried waiting to see if just the dialog was missing, but the invited Sim doesn't come over.

On occasion when a sim hangs up from calling another sim the sim that was called is suddenly in the house standing by the phone and caller.

The call friends and call family features seem to work great.

I had that problem of called sims suddenly appearing on the lot - but it was after installing NL and before the first NL patch - so I think it was a problem with NL and not Autoyak!  If I remember rightly, I tried removing autoyak, and the problem still occurred.

Yeah, I've heard of this happening even without this hack installed.  I think it was discussed over in the Phone hack thread.

It was, in some depth, I think.

Thanks. I knew that I read something about it quite a while back before I had the problem, but couldn't find the same thread and couldn't remember what solutions were offered. I'll go look for the other thread.

Forgive me if I'm asking a question that's already been answered elsewhere, but is this hack OFB-Compatible?

Indeed, are Hacks in the Armory here because they are ok with it?

I know most of them PREDATE OFB of course, but can one assume that they REMAIN here unaltered - rather than put BACK INTO the Firing Line - because they're in need of no alteration?

Sorry, it's just I'm a bit confused about which of the OLDER Hacks are safe and which aren't.  ???

All OFB compatibles: http://moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/

Thanks, Jordi!  :D

I am not sure if you have seen this error but it seam to come up a bit in my game if I get the option to join a phone converstaion and accept it I get this error log.

Give it a try now, should be fixed.

Thanks JM I will give it a try and let you know

I know it's not a rumour because I read it here, but the RTFM doesn't have anything about it and I can't find or don't have the option in my game.

None of my sims can Call... Targets.  They can call friends or family from the Macro... menu, as per macrotastics, but no targets.  :-[  I have autoyak dated June 06, 2006, and I have the other items needed for macrotastics.  Do I need something else?

I can't imagine that it's due to a conflict.  I have barely half a dozen other mods, strictly critical items and all Awesome.  ???

Oh, and I have Uni and NL EPs.

You don't mention it, but do you have the Phone Controller installed? http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,131.0.html

That and AutoYakYak work together to let you call target, etc.

Also, sometimes a sim just doesn't have a target to call, so the option doesn't appear.  It will only pick from sims your sim already knows and isn't friends with, and it does a basic check to see if that sim is available to talk (i.e., not at work or at school).  If you sim knows very few other sims, then there may not be any targets to call at the particular time you're trying.  If you have the phone controller, and you know your sim knows other sims who aren't friends yet, try again after 6pm or so and see if the 'call targets' appears.

Nope, I didn't have it.  Thank you!  :)

I read over the description for the phone hack before, but it doesn't fix anything critical and I didn't find its features particularly compelling.  Maybe there should be a footnote about it in the autoyak or macrotastics rtfms for noobs like me?

Anyhoo, off to try it now...

EDIT: To the powers-that-be, the link for the Shiny Edition Phone Controller in the Armory is dead.  I dl'ed the Nuclear Edition for the appropriate EP from the Firing Range.

EDIT #2: I still don't see the option to call targets.  :-[  I looked in the self-menu under Call... and Macro... and the wall phone itself.  They can call Family, Friends, and the usual suspects, but no Targets.  These sims (now adults) were born in-game so they have 2 or 3 panels' worth of sims they've met in their address books, so a lack of targets isn't the problem.  What else can I try?  ???

EDIT #3: Hmmm, I think maybe the problem is in the Autoyak.  There's no option to call Enemies, either.  I didn't notice this before because most of my sims don't have any enemies, but just checked one crotchety elder who does.  His enemy is most definitely home; I manually had him call and harass...  :D

The targets option won't appear if your sims have an already massive surplus of family friends, as it would be unnecessary and likely counterproductive to make more!

The enemies option will not appear if it is an appropriate time to call them. Enemies may only be called at the wrong times, because otherwise it won't tick them off! Wait until after 0200 for NL+ or midnight for pre-NL, unless your enemy is a vampire, in which case the correct time to harass them is during daylight hours.

But Pescado!  What about teens?  They may be currently living in a multi-generational household with well over 50 family friends, but eventually they're going to have to make their own way.  Since I don't let my teens kill kittens, gaining skills and getting a start on accumulating friends is all they do.

Another major activity my sims engage in (esp. elders) is going on outings for profit.  With 1 or 2 friends about to fall off the 50/50 threshold and 1 acquaintance at around 40/20, you're pretty much guaranteed the highest outing rating once you get all guests up to 100 daily with the host.  At the end of it all, needs are greened up and they will have earned anywhere from $2000 - $5000 from gifts in about 4 sim hours.  Anyway, my point is that acquaintance is important to getting a strategic ratio of guests to relationship points.  My elders need to cultivate their targets for maximum profits from their outings!

You can still have teens call other sims normally, and AutoYakYak will keep them talking until they hit the friends stage (and all the way up to 100 STR, if you let them go that long). Call/Targets is handy if they know a lot of folks already, since it winnows down the call list, but teens usually won't have as big of a relationship list as their parents.

Oh don't get me wrong, Autoyak is a great improvement over nothing at all!  It's most definitely staying in my game.  :)

It's quite possible that Call/Targets wouldn't do what I'd like, even if I could get it turned on.  That's hard to say since the docs are thin, and I haven't been able to get the right conditions to see it in action.  Mainly, I was challenging Pescado's position that a household with many family friends has no need for more.  I gave two examples where individuals may benefit (indeed, profit).

Under just what circumstances does a sim have a valid Target?  I played some sims in Uni with only 5 or 6 friends, and they don't have this option either.  ???

JMP will correct me if I'm wrong, but it has to be someone the sim already knows, who is available to call at that time (i.e., not at work or school).  As JMP said earlier, if there are a lot of family friends this won't appear, but I don't know if that carries over to Uni.

Thanks for this it makes life so much easier for my sims :)

When you have enough to fill any job requirement in the game with a healthy margin, the option disappears since it is pointless (and needlessly computationally expensive) to run it, as your friend-calling selection at that point is largely arbitrary and not motivated by a strict desire to make specifically new family friends with no overlap. Aforementioned teens would end up moving back in anyway, to avoid having to create ANOTHER house (endless house spawning is both undesirable and greatly slows down progression speed in your neighborhood, as 2x the families consumes about 2x your PERSONAL time to maintain!). Even if for some decidedly masochistic reason you DID split them off into dozens of new houses and suck up the massive time sink doubling the number of houses your family is split into, the "call targets" functionality would be wasted in such a case, as overlapping friends would no longer be relevant.

Pescado,

Is it just my game or does Autoyak need to be updated for Pets?

Thanks,

Pcgeekri

I've been using the 'call anyone' mod for quite some time now. The sheer number of sims in the phone directory seems overwhelming at first, but I just sort them by friends (the smiley face icon at the top right of the panel) and start from the beginning. The sims are listed in order from friendliest to least friendly. It's great for promotion time!

This happens on my Uni lots, but only when my sims use their cellphones to autonomously call other sims. When they hang up, the sim(s) they were talking to suddenly appear(s) on the front lawn. Often multiple sims make autonomous calls, spawning multiple spontaneous visitors. Sims without cellphones don't seem to have this problem. It's very strange.

The AutoYak is standalone and thus does not scan for any conflicts. It should work...but it is still untested.

Pescado,

Sorry, I should have explained better.  The pie menu for Autoyak is not showing for cell or phones.  IE. no friends, family, or target menu.  And the date on the last modified is june 6, 2006.  Downloaded it again from the http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/hacks/ webpage. 

Thanks,

Pcgeekri

I think it's the Phone Controller that generates that menu -- autoyak just keeps them talking on the phone until their str maxes out.

The options will not appear if there are no applicable choices, but I will keep an eye out for this...once I finish updating so I can attempt installing Pets.

Pescado,

Yes there are applicable choices.  Example one relationship is tagged friends with an STR of 55.  There are others for this particular sim which he could make enemies.  Family should not be an option and therefore isn't displayed.

Later,

Pcgeekri

I am having the same problem as pcgeekri.  Call...Friends, Call...Family, and Call...Targets are missing from the menu.  I'm using the latest version of the phonehack updated for Pets but it doesn't seem to help.  All of my households have plenty of friends, so it's not a question of there being no one to call. 

Karen

Does this happen without the Phone Hack? I wonder if Pets did something really wonky to the phones, because I know they rearranged a ton of phone shit for no apparently logical reason.

I took out the phonehack and phonehack_talk_module.  I still don't have Call...Friends/Family/Targets on the menu, either for cell phones or regular phones.

Karen

ETA:  I put the phonehack and its talk module back in.  Took out a bunch of non-MATY hacks and left autoyak in.  Still no Call...Family/Friends/Targets options on the phone.  I had my Sim call someone she had about 50/40 relationship with (using the new Call...Sim...Just to Talk option on the phone).  They were not friends when the call started.  She didn't hang up until they had a STR of 100.  So I would say the phonehack seems to be working fine, and it's the autoyak that's broken.

I'm also having the the same problems described above.

Also, I'm seem to be getting the olde phone attack spam. Incessant phone calls for 2-4 hours a day. (Everytime you put the phone down it rings again).

I only have your Pets approved stuff in my downloads. (and TwoJeffs approved mods).

Confirmed that something wonky has been done to phones. All custom phone-call additions are currently broken. There does not appear to be an easy plug-in facility detected at present. Later updates soon.

This is with the Phone Hack? Because if you're getting incessant phone spam, just kill them off with "Set Ringer Off".

Don't suppose there's any way we could get a phone hack lite that just shuts the ringer off but doesn't mess with the menus and other stuff, or is that even possible? I know Dizzy has one that mutes the actual sound, but you still see the animation and the damned sims still answer the phone.  :P

Not sure what you're trying to say, there's not much to the phone hack beyond that, and actual bug fixes. Everything else in the Phone Hack is essentially necessary to some degree. Messing with "menus" is not really a part of it at all, other than the Headmaster Call Bug fix.

Hmm, well I know it changes the way the taxi works and a bit and such. Oh well, was worth asking. I'll just play without phones in the houses for a bit.  :P

Actually, the only phone hacks I did were a "call everyone" mode (which I don't support) and the "auto lateral" (which still works fine).

Oh I meant Squinge, haha. Sorry. :O

With the latest autoyak, I still don't have the call/friends option but call target is present : on my sim instead of on the phone (my sim doesn't have a cell phone) Is it normal ? (it works, when I instruct her to call/ target she walks to the phone)
Pioupiou

Okay, we seem to have hit a stable release.

First, the few changes:: The Call X option will no longer appear on the regular phone, because Maxis has crippled phone plugins. The option will instead appear on your sim, either seamlessly with the rest of your cellphone call options, or by themselves if you lack a cellphone. Note that Macrotastics will be required if you lack a cellphone, as the Macro library is used to locate a regular phone to use. Other than that, it should largely work as before.

This seems to be working fine so far with the latest version.  I'm really glad to have Call...Friends back!

Karen

Forgive me if I sound stupid, but I have never used Macrotastics and don't know/understand how they work.  Is there something else I need to download outside of AutoYak?  Or is this something I need to do via the cheat window or some other in-game interface?

Click here to download Macrotastics (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/pets/hacks/macrotastics.zip). Make sure you RTFM.

Call Friends may not appear depending on whether they have/need to call their friends.

Do they have phones and all that? And are you CERTAIN you're using the latest version? Versions are often updated VERY frequently, so always redownload first.

Okay, I'm mystified, then. Because it works fine in my game. Are you CERTAIN they are actual friends, and not people you dragged the relationship bars on (which doesn't set friend bits), that they are home at the time(not at work or school), are awake, have phones, and are not maxed out? Try waiting and seeing if the option appears later on its own.

Downloaded the hack from this thread and the time modified on the file is 6 June as opposed to 22 October on the one in the Pets directory.

I have autoyak, callover, noeatcrap and phonehack (nothing else) and the autoyak is not showing any options for me either on the phone or on the sim. I don't really want Macrotastics... is there any other option?

If you downloaded from the thread previously, reupdate. There was previously only one link for the OFB- version.

I have the similar issue of the friends option not showing up, but it's only in some households. Some do have it, cellphone or just a regular phone, and some just don't whether I move them to a new place or not. I'm not sure why.

I checked that the sims do have friends status, called them individually to see if it's the issue of them being away, but they do have the friend status and aren't away. All hacks have been updated and the results are the same.

Edit: I tested moving a household without the calling friends option into a household with one, and it showed up. But once I moved that household out to a new lot, the option disappears again.

I got the most updated hack (from what I could find) today, here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/pets/hacks/ (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/pets/hacks/)
I had not downloaded any Pets hacks before today.

What is the age of these lots? Are the lots which have it from pre-Pets while the lots which don't are newly installed? If you've tried everything to get it to appear already, try forcing an error on anything on that lot, then attaching the error log so I can see if the controller is actually there.

Both of these lots are pre-Pets, but one of them has it and the other doesn't.

t11910.txt doesn't have it and t250511.txt does.

As I suspected, the AutoYak controller is simply missing from the lot. Will look into why it ddin't spawn.

I noticed a problem yesterday with trying to call a child.  All the playable teens in my hood have cell phones, but none of the kids do.  When I try to call a kid, it says "So-and-so doesn't have a phone".  But the kid in question does have a regular phone in his house.

Karen

I realized  yesterday that autoyak wasn't working for me either.  I was playing the two new maxis lots (Kim and Kat families) in my test neighborhood..

Oops, went back to download all the phone related hacks and I didn't have the most recent.  I hope it'll work now.  Will there be a newer autoyak than 10/21?

Pescado,

I'll be glad when this mod is functional again.  Realized just how much my sims have used this in this past.  Thier number of freinds are dropping fast. 

Later,

Pcgeekri

It does work, at least with macrotastics. The problem is getting the Sims to stop yakking.

All my lots have lost the Call/family option.  The call/friends and call/targets are there but not family, did I miss an update where it was intentionally removed or is something strange happening in my game?

Are there valid family members to be called?

-Not already 100 STR
-Not at work or school
-Possessing a phone or cellphone

If any of the above three is not true, the option does not appear.

for one or two families I can see those might be factors, but is definately not the case for every lot in my hood, I've tried different lots at different times of day and different days of the week, none of then can call/family.

Specifically one lot where the adult female in the family has two siblings, eight children, 18 grandchildren, and eight nieces/nephews of ages ranging from child - adult (including YA), every lot has at least a normal telephne, some sims have cell phones, relationships range from fairly high eighties down to almost zero.  And she can't call/family at any time of day or any day of the week, when at least someone should be home and therefore callable.

Yeee-haw!!!  Auto yak finally showed up when I clicked on a sim.  Version whatever the lastest is WORKS! I'm doing my best not to dance around the computer room.  ;D

Are you using it in OFB, or using it in Pets? Don't use old OFB versions in Pets. The Pets version has not been back-tested for OFB yet so remains seperate.

Pescado,

Just noticed the new version here.  I ususally just check the URL http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/hacks/ where I usually just look for dates to see what you have updated like the MissingManagerFix which I downloaded earlier today because it has a new date on it.  Let me try the autoyak I just downoaded here for Post Pets. 

Edit:  Thanks Pescado, yes it works with the cell phone.  Sorry about the drama.  (It's a Queen thing.) 
        I'll start checking this url: http://moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/pets/hacks/  I didn't think about you starting a new directory.

Reminds me of what Toto said to Dorothy when she said "I don't think we're in Kansas any more.", Toto replied Uh-DUH!

Thanks,

Pcgeekri

Since I'm the proud owner of the Pets ep, I'm using Pet's versions of your hacks.  I have been reading the posts.   :)

   Hello Pescado, i just downloaded your update to the AutoYakYak from
http://moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/hacks/?M=D     a couple hours ago.
   I don't have Pets EP and now i'm having a problem.  I tell my sim to call/Friends, they bring cell phone up to their face, then immediately put the cell phone away.  I had debug mode on and no errors produced.   Also, the option to call/Family was not available, tho she had a sister who was home at 96/96 relationship available to call.  She was able to call/Sim.
  I wasn't sure if i had downloaded the update to phonehack a couple days ago, so i downloaded that again, at the same time.

I'm having problems with this hack. When I use it, the sim I call shows up on the lot. 

I think thats a problem which the cause of is unknown.

That's an old, old bug going back to the base game. I have no idea if the current version of this hack is contributing to it in any way, but it has happened and still happens even for people without any hacks.

Oh, old bugs came calling on me. I forgot about Lizzies Love Bed being in my game and suddenly I had the one, the only JUMP BUG! I almost fell out of the chair. I found the bed and deleted it pronto and it will stay gone. Especially since I like TJ's CR a lot more.


SimMoon

I'm also getting this when using the call...friends/family/targets tey talk to the phone for a few minutes and then *bam* the sim is on the lot, no jump-bug type resets on the phone user though, they just hang up, turn around and start socialising face to face.

   After deleting every old/unwanted file i could find, and still having that problem, i removed the entire Downloads Folder to my desktop.   Created a new empty Downloads folder, re-downloaded the autoyak package and started my game.   The autoyak is the only thing in the Downloads folder.   And my sims are still unable to Call/Friends.  They pick up the phone then set it right back down again.  Does Autoyak need another hack to work?  Am i the only one having this problem?

I've been using the updated hack for awhile and haven't seen any of that when a sim is on a cellphone or a regular phone so far. The new version fixed the issue of the autoyak not spawning on some lots though.

I was getting this too and finally just macro-socialized with each friend until we were 100/xx and then chose "Call...Friends" again and when the friend showed up I macro-socialized.... kept doing that until I went through the whole friend list. I did it because I needed to keep my connections... but the next time I used that sim to Call...Friends he stayed on the phone and his friends stayed on the phone also... they did not come over to visit at all. So for the rest of that sim's life he was able to socialize with his friends on the phone as usual.

I was only playing that sim - I needed his lot and he was elderly so I was waiting him out. So I don't know if this will bleed over to my other sims. I'll check it next chance I get to play, but I figured someone more awesome than I would like to have this information.

I'm having the same problem.  Every single attempt to Call...Friends or Call...Family results in the called Sim being transported to the lot.  I have all the FFS phone-related hacks installed, including the new Pets service call fix.  I didn't notice this problem before today.

Karen

I'm having the problem that if more than one Sim lives on the lot and the extras don't have cell phones, only the first one gets the "Call->Friends" menu item. 

I noticed it first on a lot with 3 Sims.  The first Sim had a cell phone and could Call->Friends.  The second Sim didn't have a cell phone and couldn't Call->Friends, but was able to after she bought a cell phone.  The third doesn't have a cell phone yet and can't Call->Friends. 

I then moved their younger brother in; he appeared at the bottom of the row of icons.  He didn't have a cell phone and couldn't Call->Friends. 

In a later session, he found his own place and moved in with two graduated but not moved out students.  The game placed him at the top of the row of icons for that house.  After his move, he could Call->Friends.  The Sim previously at the top of the list had a cell phone and could Call->Friends.  That Sim's girlfriend did not have a cell phone and couldn't Call->Friends.

So it seems that having a cell phone or being at the top of the icon row allows the Call->Friends menu.

No, I'm not having the Sims teleport in when called.

Did you have an available, non-occupied wallphone? That's kinda necessary for the menu to appear without a cellphone.

   I went to my test-lot, one adult, 2 teens, 1 table phone, no cell-phones.  Gave them a wall-phone.  Direct the adult (who has 4 friends available from 55 to 96 daily relationship) to Call/Friends.  He picks up the wall phone then immediately puts it back.  8:30 AM.   I have base game/Univ/NL/OFB/FFS.  Do not have Glamor/Pets.  He can Call/Sim each of those friends individually.

Nope, I also have that problem. It happens with the cell-phone at least, but I didn't try using a normal phone.

Have you updated to the newest version? If so, force an error on something, any random thing, and attach the log so I can see if the controller failed to spawn or something.

   Yes, AutoYak was working until this latest update.   Used LotDebugger under Debug mode and created a long error log.  (Just as the RTFM warns). 

Additional information:  When I try Call...Friends or Call...Family, the conversation starts out normally, but stops after a short time, at the point where I would expect the first relationship boost to occur.  That's when the called Sim appears on the lot.  At that point I can use Macro...Socialize Friends to get the relationship up to where it *should* have been using Call...Friends.

Karen

Yep, both houses, tried both the basic ivory one and the new black one from Pets.  Tried putting in two wallphones (same and different types); didn't help.

Here is a sample error log.  The active Sim, Greg, just did Call Friends and the first target Sim located is Joanna Blake, a townie that he has approximately 75/27 relationship with.  All Sims in this family have cell phones but there is a wall phone in the house. 

Karen

EDIT:  I just realized that the version of autoyak in the director's cut is dated 10/24/06 5:32 pm, but the version at the top of this thread is dated 10/24/06 5:59 pm.  What's the difference between them?  If something was fixed in the later version, then those of us who depend on the DC for the latest versions didn't get the update.  That could also explain why some people are having this problem and others aren't.

Off to try the newer version now....I'll post again with the results.

EDIT AGAIN:  It worked!  The 5:59 pm version does not cause the teleporting issue I was having before.  Can you please update the director's cut with the right version?

[attachment deleted by admin]

I see the controller. I also see some old Syberspunk phone plugins, which no longer work in Pets. Perhaps those are gumming up the works. You could also simply be lacking a cellphone, or your phone line could be busy due to people trying to spam-call you.

Definitely an abnormal effect. Did you update to the newest version? Some of the intermediate versions up for about 5 minutes were broken.

   First off, i obviously need to clear up something.  I don't have Pets, so the Syberspunk phone plugins are correct for me.  The Call/Friends option IS available, but my sims pick the phone up (for those with cell-phones, they bring it up to their ears then put it away, for regular phones, they pick it up, bring it half-way then put it back.   This happens on all lots, no matter the time of day/evening.  Both regular neighborhood and at College lots.  The Call/Friends worked fine, for me, before this latest update at http://moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/hacks/?M=D
   I just did another try in my test lot, first i removed my Downloads folder to my desktop, created a new Downloads folder.  Re-downloaded the Autoyak and the FFSdebugger.  Went into my game and that lot.   Lot time 8:10 AM.   The adult was once again unable to Call/Friends tho that option is showing.   This test lot only has one table phone, no cell phones. Turned debug mode on, used Lot Debugger to Create Errors/In-World.   I clicked Cancel on the first error, then Reset on all of the rest of the errors.
   If you want me to test it a different way, let me know.  I have Holiday Edition Base Game (last years), Univ/NL/OFB/FFS.
   Are Cell Phones required for this latest update?  One land-line needed for each cell phone?

Ah. Pre-Pets compatibility issue. Doublechecking it.

Not seeing any obvious explanation. Have you updated it to the most recent standalone, or are you using the Pets Director's Cut (which you shouldn't be)?

   Ahh, total confusion here.  In my normal game (complete Download file) and that test game (only those two hacks) i downloaded from the Index of FFS/OFB hacks, under Hack Directory - All Hacks.   http://moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/hacks/?M=D
   For that test game, should i have gone to each individual hack thread, and downloaded from there?
    I don't download from the Director's Cut, as that would install all hacks and i don't want some of them.

You don't have to download any parts of the director's cut that you don't want.  Open the director's cut zip file, then select whichever files you want to install, and extract only those files into your Downloads folder. 

Karen

Try new version. Should be working now.

   <<< Jumps for Joy >>>   My sims can Call/Friends again.   :)
   I truly appreciate all the hard work you do, and putting up with me and my small problems.

Must you have something more than AutoYakYak, or is that enough to make it work?

I believe phonehack is strongly recommended, if not required.

Macrotastics is required for non-cellphone use in Pets.

Thanks

I've recently installed pets and I've downloaded the moreawesomethanyou-pets.zip folder today, so i assume all of my hacks are current ones.

I don't have the option to call friends/family, so is there somethinh I'm missing here?

ETA: I'm obviously losing my mind because I always thought to get the option you clicked on the phone, not on the sim?? Unless that's a recent change, in which case I should either read more posts and/or keep off the booze (or get on it more perhaps)  :P

You need to A: Have family, B: Not be at 100 with them (no point in calling there), and C: Someone who fits the criteria must be home.

Apparently, Maxis bunged up the code inside phones, so the option had to be moved to the Sim.

Thank god I don't have to give up the booze just yet then!  ;D

I have an interesting new variation on the old problem of sims showing up on your lot when you phone them. Now, if someone calls a child on the phone after children's curfew in the evening, the called child's parent appears on the lot (as if they had come to take the child home) and stands by the entrance port (possibly because there is no child to take home), while the phone conversation with the child goes on as normal.

(If I then interact with the parent, they remain as normal guests until 2 am. And they don't need to be greeted before interacting.)

Hope this is helpful il finding out what's going on... I assume it's AutoYak because of the related problem mentioned above. It could of course be something else entirely.

There are daily upgrades to JMP's most popular hacks... make sure you've got the newest ones from http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/pets/hacks or replace "pets" with the last expansion pack you've got.

Well ok someone's cheating here  ;D

There's now a version of autoyak under Pets that's dated 6 November, and it's still the 5th over here!

Anyway -- will download and install, then report. (I thought I was safe, I had redownloaded all updated hacks just last night...)

The current hack is only current until someone files a bug report on it...

The file server's on Malaysia time, isn't it?  I always figured that was the explanation for the time difference.

Yup -- there's a 12 hour difference (ahead)  from the US East Coast.

And 16 hours from the West Coast.

Um, shouldn't that be 15 hours?  The left coast is only 3 hours behind the east coast.

Ok, now running with the latest, shiniest and awsomest version of Autoyak, and the parent still shows up on the lot when I call a child. Further checked that this also happens when I call via "Call Sim", not just "Call Friends" (which had been where I'd seen it previously).

In all cases I've been calling from a mobile. My Sims don't use landlines as a rule :-)

Stalker Parent Fix is part of the Phone Hack.

So it is, I had forgotten.

However, I have the latest version of the phone hack installed (yep, checked right now, 23 Oct...), and this is still happening.

Check for conflicts with other hacks. I know several other hacks also mess with that BHAV, and you may be getting the defective version of the code as a result. Look for anything particularly pertaining to child curfew times.

In particular TwoJeffs' Vistor Controller must be loaded after this hack to avoid errors.

As of a week ago, the East Coast is now 13 hours behind Malaysia time since we went off Daylight Savings Time.  We went backward one hour, so it's now a 13-hour time difference.  Auto detect in preferences doesn't seem to work for me, so I manually typed in -13 and that seems to work.

You're right -- I was in Iceland on the day of the change, and forgot to take it into account.  Nevermind...

I'm getting the same result with the parents of children teleporting over.  I know it didn't happen before Pets, but I can't say more precisely when it started.  I don't have Pets, just the standard EPs up to OFB, and I'm only using a selection of hacks from the official OFB directory.  Apart from your hacks, I only have TwoJeffs mascot trophy, crystal ball, and Crammyboy's nudist hack.

Other than Pescado's, I have the following hacks installed:

Paintings stay visible by Twojeffs (updated after Pets)
Food already available + Low food warning + Visitors snacking fix by Twojeffs (not updated)
Moveinall by Pinhead at MTS2 (not updated)
Custom objects placeable on shelves by Numenor at MTS2 (not updated)
Pregnancy wear any outfit from MTS2 (not updated)
StayThingsShrub (not updated)
Timeclock + Help shoppers first by Paladin at Simwardrobe (not updated)
Teleporter shrub by Inge (not updated)

The two that looks most likely to affect phone routines are the teleporter shrub and the moveinall. I will try removing them as my next step.

I also have a number of hacks by Pescado that haven't been updated yet, but I kind of assume that if one of those was the cause it would already have come up here...

IIRC moveinall modifies the TTAB for PersonGlobals, and is therefore the most likely to cause all sorts of mayhem.

The teleporter shrub does not contain any phone globals at all. It puzzles me why you would think it does, actually.

Hello,

long time lurker here. Anyhow, I`m having trouble with the AutoYakYak hack ever since I got Pets. I downloaded the November 5th version of it and the new Phone Hack, but I still don't have the option to Call Friends, Call Enemies, Call Family, etc.

I believe the phone hack works since I have the possibility of programming how many rings before stopping, but I don't have these very essential features. Can anyone help?

All hacks I have come from Pescado, TwoJeffs or Inge (abduction pie, college telephone book, no baby harassment, noemptypotty, etc.) except for hacked objects like Toddler mirror, Merola Multi-Paint

Thanks

The options now appear on the sim instead of on the phone. Check that you aren't just clicking on the phone.

Also, make sure you have Macrotastics (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/pets/hacks/macrotastics.zip) installed, it's now a requirement.

If the options now appear on the sim, does that mean that they must have a cell phone?

Nope. They will use the nearest phone.

I'm having the same problem.   I have autoyak installed and macrotastics installed and I still have no options to call friends or targets...neither on the sim or on the phone.  The targets are at home and I can make him call them manually, but I can't seem to use the autoyak at all.  I have had this problem ever since I got Pets and I have downloaded the autoyak every time it is updated because I keep hoping the problem will be fixed.  The only hacks I have are Pescado's.  I suppose what I will now do is take everything out except the autoyak and see if that works.  I'll be back.

Dream

ETA: OK, with all hacks gone except for autoyak and macrotastics, it works.  So I will now go through the long process of putting everything back in one at a time to find the culprit.  I'll let you all know which one it is.

LOL! That would be my bet if I had the kitten killer!

I do have an update on my problem though.  I put my whole hack folder back into the game with the intent on sorting it out later tonight (I just wanted to play for now) and when I did that the autoyak still worked! I have no idea why, but I'm not complaning!  :D

Dream

When I take my electronics in for repair and it works perfectly both there and when I get back home, I say:

pinhead finally updated this (for NL at least I think, definitely by OFB) to use the social plug-in method, so it no longer conflicts with the TTAB for PersonGlobals. However, if you have Pets, you should not be using moveinall (or any of it's variations) because the update has not yet been officially released. I have been communicating with pinhead, and he has provided me his updated version. I will pretty much be taking custody of the moveinall hack and the responsibility for its future compatibility. When I get around to it, I'll test it out myself a bit before releasing a public version for testing. Probably sometime this week; if not today, then probably by the weekend.

Ste

Yay!!!

All Rainbows suck!

All Syberspunks are awesome, and all Pescados suck.  :P

I can't get "Call enemies" to work when trying to harrass a vampire.
The option does appear at the correct time (during daylight hours) and and she does call the vampire (once), but the relationship does not seem to be affected.
Is it because my sim has too many nice points, or is it related to the vampirism somehow?

If you called once, and it worked, then that sim already bottomed out. Note that YOUR side of the relationship isn't affected, but whoever you harassed gets -50 towards you.

I was trying to get a sim to call a vamp the other day, forgetting about daytime harassment, but I didn't get an option to ring the vamp at all in the day, only at night.

Is there anyway to make them keep talking to a friend on the phone until their social bar is maxed out? This would prevent them from trying to call a maxed out friend every ten seconds while macro'ed.

I've been meaning to ask this a long time: what is "call targets?"

Targets are Sims who are known to the caller but not friends.  You can use Call...Targets to call an acquaintance and talk until they become friends.  Very useful if you need a friend for promotion or to fulfill a "make a friend" want.

Damn, I never knew that.  Always thought it was a harassment thing.

Targets are also sims that aren't friends of any other sims in the family because only family friends are counted for promotions.  Your sim would be wasting time making friends with a sim who was already friends with someone else in the household.

cool, good to know.  :)

Does anyone know if this works with Seasons? I am attempting to try it out - so far it isn't working. Am going to try removing all my hacks except for autoyak and see if that makes any difference. I so love this hack but when I got seasons I removed all my hacks and lost this one. I am hoping it will work again!

Thanks!

It does. Make sure to run Paladin's Hack Conflict Detector in case something's interfering.

Also make sure you've got the Seasons version of the hack.  I think the Pets version is very non-Seasons compliant, if I'm remembering correctly.

Actually, it's all the same version, there's actually only one Autoyak version that's compatible with everything.

Curious if anyone else has recently lost the "Call Friends" option from the pie menu?
I still have "Call Targets" available, but not the "Call Friends" No idea why and befoer I go digging through hack to find out which one borked out of no where sometime between last week and this week I just wanted to check if anyone else has run into something similar.

Are you sure the option is actually "lost"? The option will only appear when the algorithm detects people to call. The logic of WHEN that is was recently altered for improved efficiency: It no longer attempts to rabidly maintain EVERYTHING at 100, only those where STR is close to LTR. Which means if you're already at 100/100, it will fight off decay as before, but if you're at, say, 100/20, it will do nothing and just let LTR cook on its own until the two numbers are closer.

Hmmm. Yes it was temporarily "lost". What when why or how is known only by the gods of sims2 WTFness. After making the above post I redownloaded the directors cut and overwrote all the hacks I have from it, which includes autoyak, fired up the game and viola. Call Friends option was back.

Guessing the version I had was somehow corrupted or... something.

I have never been able to get "Call - Targets" on a University Lot. I've tested with a group of new YA's, as soon as they all meet the Freshman Professors I try to "Call - Targets," but the option doesn't exist. "Call - Friends" and "Call - Family" work as normal, except that Professors are not included during the "Call - Friends" macro. Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, is it intentional?

This is intentional, because the sense of "family friends" on a university lot does not exist or produces meaningless results. As this option is aimed at increasing family friend counts for job purposes, and this does not exist at Uni, since the Uni household will necessarily disintegrate after graduation, before anyone can actually get a job. Therefore, the option has no use there.

The same thing happened to me, after I reinstalled everything (all eps with patches, no stuff packs).  I solved it the same way you did, thinking I had the wrong version or something, but it was weird because the one I copied from the Director's Cut was the same date and size as the one I already had.  Works fine now, though.

Except for greek houses?  I do get the option on a level 5 greek house, but not sure whether it's because of the lot, or because this sim hasn't reached BSOC yet?

It might be enabled on Greek Houses specifically because they still use friends, yes.

Since BV, I seem to have lost the "Call... Friends" option. When I click on a sim and choose "Call...", I get all the normal phone options (like "Service" etc.) plus "Call... Targets", but not "Friends". Some of the friends are elders, at least one of them had to be at home to call (8:30 pm). STR all at 98, LTR close to 50.

ETA:

Just noticed that I might have had an older version of the phone hack before BV installation (where I put the new BV DC into the download folder) and thus never experienced the newer version's efficiency. Please ignore me.

/me points an laughs at sloppyhousewife

This is a new design feature: Call Friends no longer maxes out EVERYONE to 100 if they're still on "cook LTR". Since your sims have a very large STR/LTR gap, there is no loss inflicted by not immediately dialing. Once STR and LTR have become closer to being equal, those will be auto-called again. Call Friends is made more efficient by concentrating on only those relationships at risk for actual damage through decay.

I am unsure and would like to know, please, if Autoyakyak has been updated for Bon Voyage yet?  Someone told me that it was, but I haven't been able to find anything here that confirmed or denied this.

thank you.

All hacks updated or new for BV are in the BV directory (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/index.php?dir=bv%2Fhacks%2F). Autoyak is in there.

An observation: I'm getting a situation where "call friends" is available on cell phones, but simultaneously unavailable from house phones (all phones in my game are maxoid - no cc phones).  I tested this several times to make sure it was not simply too late to call, or during work hours, etc.  It seems that even if my sim can successfully call friends with his cell phone, he can't do it from the phone in the living room.  This is consistent for all my lots in my main hood.

I have installed BV director's cut hacks, running with base, uni, and BV.  No nonawesome hacks are currently running.  I will redownload autoyak to make sure it's not an issue of not-most-recent-update, but I'm pretty sure I have the latest.  I run with debug mode on, and no errors have logged.

This is a known issue produced by changes introduced during Pets: It is no longer possible to create a Phone Plugin that will appear on phones. Therefore, the "Call Friends" option will therefore only appear on your sim...regardless of if he has a cellphone. If he has a cellphone, the option blends transparently in with his menu. If he does not, choosing this option will have him seek out the nearest standard phone to call with. There is no really sane reason why you would use a wallphone with the cellphone available, as you don't need to translocate.

Also, a new update fixes an apparently BV-introduced ADHD issue. There may also be an ADHD issue with auto manager checkin from phones on Power Idle. This remains under investigation.

OK, with you.  Select "call friends" from sim, not the actual phone.  I generally use cell phones anyway.  I had noticed the ADHD thing, but the latest update seems to have taken care of that in my game.

I've downloaded this from the Seasons hack list and it still isn't working.
I get all the normal call actions, but no Call friends or family.  I've cheched the relationship pnel and there are people they could call, but it doesn't show up in the menu.

Is it a time when they can be called?  If there's no one available (i.e., at work or school), they won't show up in the available list.

Are you trying to use the menu on the phone, or the menu on the sim? With Pets, EA broke phone plugins, so it had to be moved to the sim menu.

Does you sim have a cell phone? I've noticed this option is gone if my sim has a cell phone, but shows up if they don't have one or I take the phone out of inventory.

Check to make sure you are not oldversioned - if you are running BV or BV hacks with the seasons version of autoyak, this may be the cause of the problem.  Additionally, your sim needs a cellphone to get the call friends/family options.

Fixed it for you.

Really? This will work on home phones now? Shiny!!

Just thought...have you checked that no-one is actually using the phone or if the phone is ringing? Any sim-menu>phone options disappear if the phone is in use in some way.

If you're referring to my quote (and I'm not sure you are), I was not saying that. I'm just saying you do not *need* the cell phone. You will get a social menu that is not in any way related to any type of phone, though.

If you have a cellphone the options go with the other cellphone options; if you don't, you randomly have a "call" menu on your non-cellphoned sims containing these options which, when clicked, send them hunting for a phone to use them on.

Thanks peoples.
I'll try clicking no the sim and everything else I can think of.

I did notice that when someone called they would stay on the phone until the relationship was 100% daily though, so I guess it's working in some way.
Let's see here, I'm running Seasons with the one I downloaded from the Seasons list of hacks, the phone is not in use when I click on it, none of my sims own cellphones and I don't have Pets - completely bypassed it from OFB to Seasons.

Keep in mind that, if certain sims are at work or their relationship with your sim is already very high, then autoyak won't see them as options.

Also, it doesn't show the "Call... Targets" option as soon as you have a certain amount of friends (I think, it's 20).

I think it is 15-I noticed that too shw. I wish it always showed the call>targets option as it would be so much easier for my Popularity sims. Hint, hint, Pescado ;D

Your dumb Emma-type suggestion has been noted. Something to accomodate your dumb Emma-type urges will be made available in the next version. If I remember it. Death to Emmas.

That's why I thought it's 20, because of the 20 Best Friends LTW. But if I'm not imagining things, you can call any old sim now with the normal "call... sim" option, too, and they will talk until they're friends, not just until the social bar's full. That's how I got the 30 BF impossible want ;D.

Thanks, you old git :P

I'm finding that I'm not really liking autoyak deciding that it doesn't need to call particular sims.  It seems to leave my teen sims in permanent social desperation unless I want to sit there and manually call sims.  I've got several teen sims in different houses where the social is in the absolute red, they have several friends with STR in the 60-80 range (or thereabouts) and autoyak isn't even making the call friends option available for them.

Please fix?  Doesn't seem so bad with other ages, but this feature is killing my teens!

Dead Ness Mode added so that low-priority calls where LTR is simply cooking will be made anyway if Social is lower.

This isn't likely to REALLY fix the issue, since I've seen sims go into social whine even making full 30-friend calls a day, but Dead Ness Mode has been added, for whatever good it will do. Death to all Nesses.

I've been experiencing some oddness with this one. At least, I'm pretty sure it's this one. I have both the phone hack and autoyak, as well as the phone hack module.

Anyway, I've got a popularity sim who just went to Uni and aged up as a young adult. She has a cell phone and has had for a while. There are two weird things that are happening:

1. Sometimes the 'Call ... Friends' option does not appear for her. I haven't figured out if it's random or associated with anything, but sometimes when I send her to call Friends, the option isn't there. I keep forgetting to test it out on anyone else, but she's the first one I noticed this problem with.

2. The priority in which she calls her friends is completely messed up. She will call those with the highest LTR/STR first. When the option to call friends appears and I click on it, she invariably calls all the folks she's already 100/100 with and ignores the folks that she's 70/42 with. She is a pop sim, so I've been working on the 30 best friends want, so this is killing me that the phone isn't working like I had become accustomed to. She has enough best friends with high relationships now that by the time she gets through all those high ones to get to the ones I need her to be calling, she needs to hang up and go pee.

Anyway... Not sure what might be going on here, but it seems directly related to this hack.

Call Friends is primarily a damage-control algorithm. It will NEVER, however, call anyone at 100 STR, because that would be pointless. What you're PROBABLY seeing is damage-control efforts being performed on 98/100s. Since 98 is less than 100, this means that LTR will decay down if this situation is not corrected post-haste. Thus, this situation receives higher priority for resolution than a 70/42, as 70/42 is still "cooking". AutoYak will assign relationships that are still in the "cook" phase a lower priority than those which require damage control, and will not call them at all if social is adequately high, as little would be gained by such an action.

Basically, the Computer is smarter than you are. Trust the Computer. The Computer is your Friend.

Okay. I'll take your word for it. :) I tested it on some other sims and it did seem to be working as expected.

I've read through the last two pages of posts, and I think I've got how this works now with relatoinships still in the 'cooking' phase.  I'm assuming, however, that if a friendship was in danger of being lost due to decay this would also be given priority?  If so is it possible that such cases receive a higher priority than the 98/100 relationships?  There are times when I want to use it to just save losing any friends, but these are generally the last to be called after hours spent calling those in no real danger.

I've also noticed that some friends aren't being called.  I'm presuming now that this is by design with the 'cooking' phase, and it's saying that there is nothing to be gained.  It seems to be ignoring those cases though were it's possible for the sims to become best friends.  This is leaving those wants unfulfilled unless I call them manually.  Any way this check could be added?

You can always use the phone hack and do Call...Targets for that purpose. I usually have new sims do that, then switch to Call...Friends when all their targets (or sufficient to provide them with all the promotions they'll need) have turned to friends.

Yeah, I use the call targets option (or socialize ... friendly if the other sim is on the lot) to make them friends.  I then tend to ignore the relationship unless it's in danger of being lost, or when there is the possibility of them becoming best friends rather than just friends when the LTR goes over 50.  I suppose it's more relevant to popularity sims, and the wants to best friends appear.  At the moment though the call friends seems to ignore them until I guess the LTR gets very high so they don't become best friends unless I call them manually. 

More punctuation is needed. Also "wants to best friends" does not appear to make sense.

Grammar Day 2007 - thank you for participating.

98/100s are at a high priority because STR is less than LTR, which means you are at extreme risk for losing points. Loss-avoidance ranks higher than your perception of danger. The Computer is smarter than you are.

Yes, but at the same time, you may specifically want those done in a specific order, so as to maximize ASP gained for hitting the best friend wants in correct order.

Okay, I'll put more trust in the computer lol. 

As usual, there's an explanation for the behaviour which at first seemed wrong to me, but now makes sense  :)

When the relationship is that high, loss of points seems irrelevant.  Just so long as it doesn't dip below 70, I can't see how it really matters.  Is the LTR good for anything after 70 points?

Yes. Not MUCH, but loss-avoidance still rates higher on the scale of things to do than, especially as patching a 55-point friend can take much longer, and depending on the combination of things you have installed, the loss-avoidance window can be very tight.

I guess I'd rather have the marginal friendships boosted 10-20 points out of the danger zone first so my sim can go do something else for a couple of days.  When the ritual starts with the highest relationships, you have to do the whole thing again the next time the sim has a few hours to spare.  I'm not sure what the magic about 70 is, but I'd certainly vote for re-arranging the priorities so relationships over 85/90 are ignored completely.

I believe over 70 is when your friends stop calling you to harrass you about how much they miss you.

There's nothing special about 70, it's just BastDawn's comfort number. The whining about how they miss you was quashed by the Phone Hack, anyway, and that occurs somewhere around 55.

The ritual chooses what it does because it is running damage avoidance first. It's sort of like a situation where the house is on fire at the same time that the dog wants to play. You deal with the immediate concerns that result in damage if neglected first. The AutoYak is prioritizing the avoidance of LTR loss over the loss of inconsequential points. And frankly, if you have problems with "whole thing again the next time your sim has a few hours to spare", either your sims have an unmanageable number of friends, or your time management sucks. Installing Enemies Accumulate can also reduce the amount of timesink involved.

Preventing relationship decay isn't the only reason for using call friends.  This is the situation I hit again yesterday:- I wanted to send the sim to work in platinum by filling his want to make a new best friend - didn't matter which one.  I'd worked up several relationships so they just needed a call to tip over the boundary from friend to best friends.  He has an hour or so to spare before he goes to work to use the phone.  If I use call friends, the sim spends the hour before work calling all his best friends.  He doesn't make a new best friend, goes to work non-platinum and comes home unpromoted.  Next morning I set him to call friends all over again.  If I want to send him to work platinum, I have to do it the Eaxis way by tracking who he's sucking up to and which of them is at work when.  Then I have to queue him to call them all in turn until I hit one that isn't at work, then cancel the others from the queue so he can fill another want later.  Surely I'm not the only one with this problem?  And yes, my time management has always sucked in RL and sims.

Maybe what I'm wanting could be described as a BF target.

If you want to satisfy a SPECIFIC want, you have to do it manually: There is no current way to retrieve any useful information about a sim's want status in code to target their behavior more intelligently. If you want a best friend, you should pick one manually to do, as AutoYak does not have any specific bias on this decision. If it were to intentionally focus on making best friends, you might be cheated out of an opportunity to do when it occurs while it is not a want, or when your ASP meter is full already and the excess points will be wasted. Therefore, as there is no special benefit conveyed by the formalization of the relationship, it will work simply on loss-avoidance. If you have a specific objective in mind, you will still have to do it yourself: Macro systems are just meant to cover generalized behaviors and micromanagement, and not highly specific want-related goals. There's still SOME game to be played. If your time management is really that bad, Power Idle Moar.

I can see you wouldn't want to link it to wants - that wasn't actually what I meant.   I hadn't really understood that "call targets" and "call friends" are fundamentally different in intent even though the names suggest they are the same.  Call targets is a tool to identify sims actually at home whereas call friends is macro to automate routine relationship maintainence.  I find sometimes that I'd like to be able to pick which friends to call off a list filtered down to "friends at home" i.e.an option similar in intent to call targets.  It's not that important, I can do it manually; my time management isn't that bad, honest!  ;D

I thought 70 ltr was required to fall in love.  I didn't know about the whine thing at all; I guess the Phone Hack has made me complacent.   :P   If it's not that important, then why bother unless there's a risk of losing best friend status? 
(I don't really care.  But that doesn't mean I can't argue!)

Call Targets is a macro specifically for choosing sims that are NOT already family-friends, so you can enfriendinate more people for career requirements or Greek houses. Call Friends is the automated friend-maintainer.

OK I've got it.  There isn't one for targetting potential best friends. If your sim wants 20 best friends you reckon we should do some of the work ourselves.  ;D

While I'm thinking about making friends, but do you know why the "made friends with bigfoot" vacation memory is buggy? Your sim has them as a friend, but the vacation memory isn't there.  I bet they had this bright idea of having bigfoot forget sims and didn't implement it properly...

Autoyak still isn't working in my game since installing the Ikea sp. No error is generated but sims just have a continuous loop of picking up and putting down the phone handset. I've got the latest version of Autoyak and I have replaced all the phones, but it is still happening.

Try downloading again, it was updated already. Also, death to Emma.

I downloaded it this morning-and it still isn't working. :P Just downloaded again-it is the same one as I have installed. Cleared cache and everything. The one I've got is dated/timed: 26/06/2008  04:52:54.

All Pescados Suck!

The new version has stopped the phone cycle for me - although I cannot 'call friends' from home. I can do it while on community lots, but not from home (and, yes, I have considered the time differences, but it's everybody and all times so I don't think they're impinging).

I guess this mod is not compartible with FT bonus of "3way- calling"
I have a jump bug when sims use this bonus.
actually I have no other phone-related mods.  ::)

Hmm, no - not unless something got broken in Pescado's last update. It was definately working for me a couple of weeks ago with FT.

Oh, and further to my previous claims of not being able to phone from home - other things are buggy too. Looks like a case of tight pants.

Popping in to note that as of the latest versions available (downloaded this morning 7/8/08) autoyak is still not working. No "call"--"friends/targets" options available.


There also seems to be some strangeness happening with those calls that would normally be some strange sim calling your playables to ask them to go downtown. Playable will answer the phone, chat for approximately 1 sim minute and then hang up. I believe it is the invite downtown call only because of the particular sim making the phone call (that is, she's the one who always seems to make those invite calls in this hood of mine and the 2nd time she called, the sim who chatted with her before hanging up had never met her before).

I was playing with the new versions last night, and had no problems with either the call friends or call targets interactions.  You either have tight pants or have an old version of the hack laying around somewhere.

I hate to jinx it, but everything works fine for me now! Yay!

Downloaded, again, and replaced. Then removed every hack/mod I use *except* ACR and the FFS DC. Dumped all caches and even the freaking thumbnails.

Still no auto-yakyak.

Anyone else using the mose recent ACR with this and ok? I know that IKEA borked the booty call and TJ updated on the 5th.

I have recently updated ACR, and the new autoyak, and it is working. Did you replace the phones?

Indeed, tried replacing the phones.
Also, just now, tried with *only* my Pescado hacks in. Still no auto-yak.

Can not figure out what the heck is borked about my game and no one else's regarding this hack. I've checked and double checked the versions. Tried pulling out that hack and putting it back in (which has solved problems with other hacks before), tried pulling out all hacks and putting just FFS DC back in (checked and double checked all versions of all those hacks as well).

No idea.

myskaal, are you sure that your sims have friends at a STR/LTR level that autoyak will detect them as requiring routine maintenance? Because autoyak won't call friends if those friends are in an 'LTR cooking' phase. It'll harass the 98 STR/100 LTR friends, but ignore the 75/35 friends.

Also, only certain situations seem to trigger 'targets': job friends required, greek house not at level 6. I don't know them all, but I know that 'targets' just doesn't always appear. Even meeting someone new won't always trigger it.

(Sorry if you know all this already. These are just common misunderstandings about this mod, from what I've seen.)

Maybe try with *just* autoyak? What about regenerating your The Sims 2 folder and testing in a fresh neighborhood?

<- Pants were too tight.

Thanks, Roux. Started a new hood to test it out and, in fact, that was the case with my other hoods. Friends are above the level and no need for target calls.

You're welcome! Glad it wasn't a more serious problem, like a FUBAR neighborhood...

You might need to update your macrotastics as well. Also, you may need to replace the phones.

I have ep's only to seasons no stuff packs, and im trying to get autoyakyak to work in my game. I downloaded the seasons.zip from above. and moved macrotistic's, phonehack and autoyakyak into my game and it don't seem to be working at all. Bought new phone to check that and that didn't work. Is there a way to tell other than relationship meters if its working? I do have other hacks/mods i ran Hack conflict program from Palidins Place and nothing.

Any Help would be great

Do you have your sims on Power Idle?

No i do not. When Ive used this b4 it didn't need to be? I used to be able just pick up phone and call my firends ect.

Thanks for reply

AutoYak works when your sim is on Power Idle. You can also click on your sim for the call>friends/family/targets options if you let your sim have free will w/o Power Idle enabled.

Haha ok it works then.. Just forgot how to use it :(

Thanks!

Have you tweaked the calling order or am I really cracking up? (Ok I know I am..)  Looked to me like it was consistently alternating top and bottom of the target list when Alana was calling around the other day and some BF relationships had gotten lowish.  Alana's my popularity sim from base game. She has 210 sims in her address book now and she's close to 50 BF.  She's rich single and single minded, she pretty much always wants to throw a party, meet someone new & then make friends with them plus make BF with a sim she met ages ago.   I'm indulging her - wouldn't do it without autoyak. Thank you 

The calling algorithm is now based on STR-LTR gap. It tries to keep relationships from being lost, and LTR cooking. If LTR is presently cooking comfortably, even sub-100 sims will not be called until the gap closes, unless your sim needs the social. Just let it do its thing: It is smarter than a mere Cwykes.

I was using this mod before but had to pull out
Now I wonder is it compartible with 3-way calling benefit?
With what phoem hacks does it conflict now?
please

It SHOULD be, considering that it is a totally unrelated nonglobal hack that adds a new type of phone call without altering any existing phone functionality.

I don't understand what is going on with my game and phone-related hacks. For some reason, the call family/friends/enemies/target options don't come up at all for anyone, no matter what. The only time the game seems to recognize autoyak is when I put a maxis sim on Power Idle - then they usually autonomously call a friend (though it says "Interaction - Call" in the queue). But when a CAS (who have fewer friends) is on Power Idle, the Call /targets option shows up at the top but then they just go find somewhere to sit down. No errors are thrown and this was tested in a clean, new, hack-free game with the exception of this hack and macrotastics.

Are you clicking on the sim, or the phone?  The call submenu shows up as a self-interaction, not as a phone interaction, and if there is no available phone it simply won't work.  And from what I can tell, there is no automatic interaction for Call->Targets - it and Call->Family are just phone calls that bring up a list of appropriate sims you might want to call, whereas Call->Friends actually directs the sim to call all of its friends in succession.  I don't believe there is actually any functionality in autoyak to make your sim systematically befriend the entire neighborhood without any help from you.

I'm clicking on the Sims - nothing. No call submenu. The only time I see it working is when I put maxis sims in Power Idle when they make a call to a friend autonomously.

Vague memory here: have you tried deleting and repurchasing phones?

Yup, tried that and I just tried it again. Also deleted cache. Didn't work.

Nevermind. Apparently installing FT made it work for whatever reason.