More Awesome Than You!

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/green.gif)

Call Private School Phone Plug-in v1.40 for TS2PETS v1.0p0
Made by: syberspunk

This hack adds new options to the phone regarding private school. Basically, I wanted a non-cheaty hack in my game which allowed my sims to switch between private and public school. With that in mind, this hack will allow you to select students who are already in private school, and make them quit private school and go back to public school. You can probably do this if they get kicked out somehow (I'm not even sure if the game does that). I wanted a way to do it without having my sims get kicked out.

Additionally, if a sim has quit private school and you change your mind, you can also call back and re-enroll them. You can only re-enroll public school students who have already been accepted into private school previously (i.e. have the 'Got into Private School' memory). I added this option so that you can easily switch back, without necessarily having to do the whole Headmaster scenario again.

This hack does not preclude the Headmaster Scenario. In otherwords, you still need to have successfully completed the headmaster scenario at least once and have your sims accepted to private school in the first place for either of these options to show up.

As requested/suggested by twojeffs, I have added a new feature, called "Enroll Legacy" to allow enrollment of siblings or children of sims who have already been accepted or previously attended private school.

In this way, as your build "legacies" for different households, you can have sims continue this "legacy" at private school. It simply just saves time if you've already done the headmaster scenario once, and don't really want to do again for the same house when your sims had more babies. Or, for roleplaying purposes, it kind of makes sense that your parents sort of have "connections" with their former alma maters.

Note: 11/6/2006

Due to significant code changes in the way the game handles phones, the phone call options have now moved to the sim pie menu i.e. you must click on the sim in order for the Call... options to show up. These options will show up on the sim regardless of whether they have a cellphone or not. If they do not have a cell phone, they will attempt to use a landline.

Edit: 4/27/2006
New version available. I currently do not have a very large neighborhood. In my testing so far, I have personally not experienced the 'too many iterations' error. However, that does not mean it won't happen for you. As such, this still requires testing. Please report any errors with log included if possible.

Edit: 4/11/2006
Another bug has cropped up. Please download and test the new version. Report back if bugs persist.

Edit: 4/7/2006 Update Available - Fix has been confirmed. Thanks again to csigirl27 and Thanhlienh for testing.

Note: 3/29/2006

I hard coded the availbility hours, so now you have a 2 hour window before the school bus arrives and 3 hours after 2:00 PM.

So these options are only available between 6-8 AM and 2-4 PM. I thought this would be slightly more realistic. So that you can only change their school type when they are actually not at school. Since to me, it wouldn't make much sense for them to switch school types while they are at school, just from a role-playing persepctive.

:new: 4/25/2006

Added cousins to the list of family members who can be in private school already. Previously only looked for parents, siblings, grandparents, and aunts and uncles.

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

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


Compatibility:
Nightlife tested and approved. This should also work in Uni and the Base Game, as essentially, it is a stand-alone separate object, and does not override anything else in the game. It should simply add new options. Let me know if you have any problems, and as always, feedback is appreciated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, my Thank Yous go to:

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

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

Version History:
v1.1 - Added new feature as requested/suggested by twojeffs to allow enrollment siblings or children of sims already accepted into private school.
v1.2 - Fixed Bug for college lots - options probably will not appear unless there are valid children capable of attending private school (most likely you would need some hack or cheat to enable or transport children to a Uni lot)
v1.3 - Fixed Bug (hopefully :P) for options not appearing, causing 'jump' bugs due to undefined transition
v1.31- Fixed Bug (crosses fingers :P) for options not appearing, causing 'jump' bugs due to undefined transition on Verify ID
v1.32- Cleaned up code. Compressed data. Hopefully addresses 'too many iterations' error.
v1.33- More code clean up. minor bug fixes. 'too many iterations' error still needs testing.
v1.40- Pets Version Available

Here are some pics:

(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool12edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool14edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool15edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool2edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool3edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool4edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool5edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool6edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool7edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool8edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool9edit.jpg)
(http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c237/syberspunk/TS2%20mods/callprivateschool/callprivateschool10edit.jpg)

This is pretty cool.  This will be very useful if JM actually writes a mod to increase the fees to attend private school.  Otherwise I'm not sure why you'd want to quit private school?

That was pretty much the reason I wanted it for myself. If anyone else finds it useful, that's great. I figured, it might also be used for role-playing/storytelling purposes.

/me shrugs.

For myself, I just wanted an option that allowed my sims to quit, if I wanted them to, without having to wait for them to get kicked out. Plus, it was a helpful project that let me learn a bit about the phone and how to make my own standalone phone plug-in. :)

I originally cloned the Work phone plug-in, which had options for calling in sick, retiring, and quitting. So, I was considering possibly adding with a call in sick to school option(s) as well. I probably won't because I'm too lazy, but if I'm really bored, I might come back to it. :P

Ste

Hey! I want the call in sick from school plugin!  :-[

I like this option.  It probably won't be used a lot, but it's great to have the option. Especially for stories.

I had a slight problem with this. Some of my sims couldn't use the phone at all when I had it installed. Everytime I tried and moved the cursor over the phone they jumped and all of their actions fell out of the queue. I uninstalled it and everything worked fine again.

Can you zip up an error log and post it here so I can take a look?

Also... do you have Uni and NL? Or just Uni or just the base game?

I'd appreciate a bit more information, otherwise I really can't help you. :)

Ste

I have both Uni and NL, and I'll be more than willing to give you an error log. If you just tell me how to do it...

I've was going to do something similar to this, but what I wanted was the option to enroll the younger siblings if they were too young (or not born) when their brothers/sisters got accepted or if their parent married into a family that had kids in private school. I always thought it was stupid that you had to redo the headmaster scenario for them. I just cheat them in, but you shouldn't have to do that in my opinion. I've had the private school tuition on my list forever as well. Oh well, one of these days one of us will get around to it.  :P

Oh, I actually have that sorta-done, it's still sitting in my private test collection. I should finish packaging it up.

@twojeffs:
Ahhh... good idea! I'm glad I thought of it. ;) Oh wait... I'm not Pescado. I keep forgetting how unawesome I am. Lol. But that's a really neat idea. It really is kinda dumb to have to repeat the scenario if you didn't want to go through it again. I'll see about adding this feature, probably tomorrow.

What I'll do is, for students who have not yet received the 'Got into Private School' memory, And their parent has a memory of one of their kids getting into private school, then another option to 'Enroll New Students' or something like that will pop up on the phone. Should that be sufficient to cover all cases? Does it make sense to limit this to siblings? Or... maybe... should I also open it up to children of sims who have previously attended private school themselves? In this case, the parent either has a memory of getting into private school themself, OR a memory of one of their children getting into private school. That seems about right. Anything else I should think of?

Maybe, to add a slight difference, for those who have a "legacy" in the case that their parent has been to private school, their grades won't matter. However, for those who only have siblings in private school, their grade has to at least be a C. In this way, 'legacy' sims have a slight, unfair advantage. :P As I have it now, for students who are being re-enrolled, I still have the minimum grade check. I might keep that, since you quit for were kicked out for some reason... so the 2nd time around will have more strict requirements.


@LilAbner:
1) You said this happened for some of your sims? Does that mean the option appears for other sims i.e. does it work okay for other sims? Or is it totally broken for all sims?

2) In your The Sims 2 folder, under My Documents (assuming you have it installed with default directories) there is a Logs folder. The next time you play your game, turn on the 'boolprop testingcheastenabled true' cheat. Then, when you hover over the phone plug-in, and your sim experiences the 'jump bug' a dialog box should pop up. This dialog box should give you three options: Delete, Reset, and Cancel (or something like that) as well as give you the directory path of where an Object error log was created. Browse to the Logs directory and you will find the .txt object error log. Find whatever program you can (WinZip, WinRar, 7zip, etc.) and zip or rar the file (personally, I'd prefer .zip). Then, post your .zip file here as an attachment. When I get the chance, I'll take a look at it, and see if I can figure out the problem.


@Gwill:

I'll consider it. It will take a bit more work, since the original code had some stuff about "random" chance for your boss believing whether you were sick or not, and whether or not you got lost vacation days or were fired. I'll have to think about that and whether I would actually try to incorporate vacation days (if they had a teen job) or just have the student lose a grade? The latter would probably make more sense... but there are probably other routines that already cause a grade to drop. I'd have to find those and figure out how to hack them as well to prevent grade loss if they successfully play sick or actually are sick, and otherwise cause grade loss or possibly have a sim kicked out of school for abusing it. Since I'm lazy and this would require a bit more work, I'll probably hold off on it for now. :P



Hehe. Woohoo. Finally. This will go well with these bunch of school related hacks. :P

Ste

Bu-uump. :P

Ok... added the new feature as twojeffs requested/suggested. Let me know if anybody has any problems. :)

Hopefully we'll see this more expensive private school hack sometime soon. *nudge*nudge* ;) ;)

Ste

Bu-uuuuuuuump. :P :P

Fixed a bug that was occurring on Uni lots. Hrm... wonder why no one here reported it. Probably because everyone hates Uni. ;)

Anyhew, get the latest and overwrite. It should work for all EPs and the base game as well. Let me know if you run into any problems. :)

Ste

Or probably because everyone's busy opening for business. ;D

I added this recently, and one of my sims, Jennifer Burb, suddenly could call everyone and anyone across Pleasantview and all of its sub-hoods. Beyond that too, Grim Reaper and all. I think I even saw Mrs Crumplebottom listed in the phone book. No error logs, and I haven't checked in other families. Jennifer is the only one in the Burb family with this problem though.

This mod is the only one that has to do with phones amongst those I added recently (JMP's 'noplayableshoppers' before that), I thought this problem might have something to do with this plug-in. Just thought you should know. :)

Edit: 3/18/2006
Ok, whew, just tested it out in my hack testing account. I tested it both with just this hack alone and with all of my regular gamehacks. I used my Pleasant guinea pigs, who I've used to test out the private school functions to begin with. I even went so far as to move the Burbs in and test it out on Jennifer, just in case for some odd reason it might be Jennifer Burb/Sim specific problem, since some Maxis made sims are known to have wonky data. In all cases, I was not able to reproduce the errors that you mention below. I have updated versions of Pescado's hacks, including nolamehires from 5/15/2006 as well as the latest noplayableshoppers and phonehack from the most recent Director's Cut.

So right now, I don't know what could be the problem. ??? Other than what I've already mentioned regarding other possible hacks or cheats. The only other thing I would suggest is to make sure you have the latest versions of Pescado's hacks? Does removing my plug-in make the problem go away? I would check a number of things, maybe turning off all hacks to even see if it is hack related in the first place. If it isn't, then check your friends panel, and if your sim(s) happen to know everyone in the neighborhood, then that's most likely your "problem." As far as I know, my hack wouldn't enable this. I even tried to see if using any of my options would alter this, checking what sims I could call before and after using a private school call, and I did not see any problems. Unfortunately, if somehow your sim(s) met all the other sims in the 'hood, either through some hack or cheat, the only thing I can think of to "fix" this, is to use SimPE to edit relationships and make it as if they never met. The only hack that I know of, that lets you call people without knowing them is dizzy's call anyone hack. Also, I know the college directory in Uni lets you call other students without knowing them, but I don't think it would enable this for all sims from all 'hoods.


Ack. Ok, I'll take a look at this later. :P How odd. I don't know how or why this would happen. I would think that the BHAVs should be local, and so they shouldn't affect other options...

Are these extra options showing up under the Call... Sim, or under some other option?

Do you happen to have any other hacks, like maybe dizzy's hack that actually let's people call everyone?

Does Jennifer happen to know all the sims in your game? I know there's like a cheat that let's you do this.

Admittedly, when I tested, I didn't have all my other hacks in my testing account. It's quite possible there could be some odd conflict... but there really shouldn't be.

Anyways, I'll try and check this out sometime later/tomorrow and see if I could figure out what might be happening.

Ste

I went back to check, and these new sims (YAs, townies, downtownies, NPCs like drivers etc, anyone who's alive) are showing up in Call Sim and Manage Groups. Earlier mention about Mrs CrumpleBottom and Grim Reaper, I remembered wrong - they don't show up in Call Sim, but they are available in Manage Groups, together with '*NPC - Robot' (I don't know what/who that is, it doesn't have a picture) and the Therapist. The problem didn't fix itself even after removing all my hacks and mods out of the Downloads folder.

The thing is, Jennifer Burb doesn't really know these people. I checked in SimPE and none of the new sims were even in her Relations, they weren't marked 'known' and they all are still in the Sim Pool/NPC/Townie part. I looked in her memories and she doesn't have any memory of meeting these sims either. I've heard about dizzy's hack, but I've never owned it. I didn't use any cheats (TOL&D or the mailbox, is it?) to make her know everyone in the neighbourhood either, I don't know how they got into her phone book  :-\.

I have nolamehires dated 03/13/2006, phonehack dated 03/11/2006 and noplayableshoppers dated 03/07/2006.

The only thing special about Jennifer is that she owns a home business while holding down a regular job (former Mad Scientist, now Junior Executive in the Business career track with harderjobs). I have a feeling Mary-sue Pleasant is also affected as she also owns a home business and is employed (same as Jennifer, formerly in Science career and now in Business career), so I loaded the Pleasant's lot and confirmed that she's also affected. I then checked in a lot that doesn't own a home business, no problem there. Jennifer and Mary-sue are the only ones in the entire game who own a business, and it seems they are the only ones with the phonebook problem.
 
Right now, it's more of an annoyance (I have 2 male servos, they look the same it's like trying to call Buffy and Buffy-bot) because I can't remember who they've met but are not friends with, but I'm afraid this might lead up to a BFBVFOS if I leave it like this. If even you are at a loss, I have no chance.... *groans* Well, at least I'm not soooo far ahead I'll have wasted a lot of time and effort if I have to restore the game to a backup. :(

Hehe. Silly CuriousSpurious. I just mentioned this to Pescado in chat, and he explained to me that this is actually one of the new "features" in the OFB EP. It is actually one of the 'business perks' that allows business owners to call anyone in the neighborhood. It must be under the networking track or whatever. I guess the idea is that you can call anyone up and invite them over to either be an employee or a shopper.

Whew. I'm glad to find out it isn't a hack problem, or related to my hacks. On the other hand... I did find an issue with my Less Autonomous College Assignment hack, which I am currently investigating. It may be a result of installing a new EP and you might be forced to delete all college assignments. I'm checking this out now and I'll update if necessary. Hopefully it isn't a conflict or it might be that the hack needs updating.

Ste

Oh my, LMAO :D. I haven't used the phone up until that point. I worried that something had gone wrong, seeing *Robot, the GR, Mrs C and Therapist in Manage Groups. So it's a 'feature'. I'm so sorry I sent you on a wild goose chase. :-[

'nopartyassignment' is still in my Downloads although I haven't been back to Uni (had gotten rid of the fugly professors and didn't want to spawn any NPCs without the new SimPE) since OFB :P. Thanks for the heads-up.

Hehe. No problem. I'm just glad we could figure out what was going on. However... *Robot, the GR, Mrs. C, and the Therapist showing up in your list is probably a bad thing. I would mention this to Pescado. It probably would be a bad idea to try and call them up. Having them in your relationship panel will probably lead to a BFBVFS.

As for the nopartyassignment hack, I've posted a notice in the respective threads here and on MTS2. I don't think an actual update is needed, just a work around solution which I've explained. :)

And no worries. I actually appreciate people coming back and providing feedback. I can't always catch all problems that might happen. And if I can actually help someone in the long run, resolve a problem that may or may not be hack related, I feel like it's worth it. It's better to get the right information out, so maybe other people who experience the same problems will find the solution as well. :)

Ste

:-[

I figured as much, that's why it didn't occur to me that it might be a feature that came with the EP. Those special sims aren't in the relationship panel though, they only show up in Manage Groups. "I have connections to the underworld, get beaten repeatedly by a big purse, suffer an electric shock, buy or die! Take your pick!" :D

Thank you for yet another quality product. ;D

Lol. Well... I mentioned this to Pescado in chat, and he has no plans for making any hacks to prevent these sims from showing up. His policy is, those of us who actually download his hacks should be fully aware of his warnings regarding the game such and things you should NOT do i.e. trying to socialize, move in, or do things that would result in these special NPCs ending up in your relationship panel as they can lead to a BFBVFS. So... even though they show up in the panel, it probably is a bad idea to call them up, socialize with them, or invite them to your business. :P Those who aren't wise enough to be using his hacks most likely deserve to have their game turn into a BFBVFS. Well, he didn't say this explicitly, but that's my interpretation. Lol. ;D



Hehe. Quality? You must have low standards. j/k And thank you for your patronage. ;)

Ste

Ok, now I think I found the problem. :P But since it was working for me, I am not absolutely sure. So this definitely still needs testing!!!

I went back and looked at the code (thanks csigirl27 for the log, it was Really helpful! It was exactly what I needed! :) ) and I am pretty sure I know what the error is. The thing that confuses me is that, according to the log, and the code, it theoretically should NOT have worked for me. :screwy: This would probably cause similar problems in other peoples games. So how it managed to work in mine is somewhat of a mystery.

An in depth explanation, for those who care:

I had a line setting the Stack Object to Param 0. I was then trying to Verify ID (neighbor in Stack Object). This throws an error because, according to the log provided, the NID that was passed is actually the Object ID of some other object in that lot. I guess in my game, I must have gotten lucky, and the NID getting passed did not match anything else on the lot? :confused:

Anyways... this is hard for me to test in my game, since it has always been working for me. I made the changes to what I think is causing the problem in everyone else's game. What I need now is for those of you who have it, to test the new version and let me know if you are still having problems.

Please download the new version, test in debug mode, and report back whether it works or you still have problems (and if so, please try and include an error log). Also... if you see someone else has posted an error log, I don't mind if you post another one. The more info I get, the more likely I will be able to track down the problem or problems as there might be more than one that are unrelated. Hopefully there are none... any more. :P

Ste

I think I have encountered a little conflict or problem with this hack.
In my game it causes a jump bug when sims want to use the phone.
It might be a conflict, I´m clueless, but maybe the you can find out something
from the error log.


[attachment deleted by admin]

It probably is not a conflict. I'm going to look into this... but I was wondering if you have the latest version from 4/7/2006?

I did update this to fix other problems... but the too many iterations is a different problem, so this might be new. Please check and reply again to let me know that this is a problem with the latest version. Thanks! I'm sorry that people seem to be running into problems that I haven't come across myself. ???

Ste

Well, the file said it´s been changed April 3rd which means it should probably be the new version.
I´ll re-download anyway and test it. May take some time though, I haven´t tried to reproduce an error before  :)
Thanks for your quick answer by the way.

Edited: I tried again and the error still occurs. This has happened in 3 different CAS-Families after their first children transitioned from toddler to children.

I haven't tested this mod in its entirety (lost everything in a hard disk crash last year, play families in rotations and I'm a slow player still trying to get my game near to where it was before :-[) but I had this problem recently with the Bachelor family; I had brought back all the dead, given them memories including getting into private school, which of course isn't true, and Michael Bachelor was one of the formerly dead.

So Michael's been aged down to an adult and re-married Dina, they got their own house and had 2 babies - made it twins so the gameplay goes kinda faster without playing through extra days of pregnancy and waiting for the kids to grow up if you know what I mean :P - everything was fine until the toddlers grew up. After the kids transitioned, I tried clicking on Michael and Dina to get them back on socialising the guests, but got an error message everytime, and I knew just mousing over the phone would cause an error too, which it did. I presumed that's because of the fake memories, so I saved, quit the game, disabled the mod, went back to the lot and everything was ok again.

I was kinda expecting this problem but left the mod enabled because I wanted to know if cousins count :P (I know, I know, I could've just asked, but it's no biggie and I'll get the answer soon enough) and hey, at least I can be sure this only happens in a family that hadn't gone through the whole HM scenario at least once prior to gowing up new family members to school going age. ;)

Edit: Well, I was expecting a problem because the readme already said "still need to have successfully completed the headmaster scenario at least once", but I wanted to know about the cousin thing. :-X

Ok. I'm in the midst of testing a fix for this. It turns out that I misterpreted the use of a certain type of check, and this may be contributing to the TMI errors.

Again, I will need other people to test it with debug mode on so that you can post error logs for me.

@CuriousSpurious:

As for cousins, yes other fairly immediate relatives were supposed to count. So... if a valid student is found, but they have no siblings or no parents that are/have been in private school, it will then use the parents of that student, and check the following:

1) If the parent's brothers, sisters, or parents are/were in private school

2) If the parent has met that brother, sister, or parent

3) If the student in question has met that brother, sister, or parent.



Ok. Yet another attempt at a bug fix, this time for the one reported in FroggySim's error log.

I've cleaned up the code and hopefully this will lessen the number of iterations and prevent it. This kind of error is a bit tough to track down, but I think what I've done should fix the problem. I had a couple of extra checks, just to verify things, but they probably weren't really necessary and just overkill on my part. Again, I'm not getting this kind of error, most likely because my testing 'hood and even my regular game 'hood do not have a lot of sims yet. If you have a lot of sims, you are prone to getting 'too many iterations' because the code has to search through your 'hood when looking for sims. Therefore, the more sims you have, the more likely you might get this error.

:sorry: again for all the constant updating. However, once again, I have tried this in several different households, but my 'hoods just don't have the proper testing environment, with effects due to long term play. Since I personally am not getting these errors, I must rely on users to test and report back any further errors.

Thanks so much for your patience and cooperation. :)

Ste

Oh. Well, the Bachelor kids hadn't met their cousin Catherine (Bella and Mortimer's 3rd and youngest child) who's still at the child life stage. I didn't manage to throw the birthday party in time so she left because of curfew, and I didn't get the chance to let her meet the then-newly transitioned toddlers. They met only after the Bachelor kids transitioned into children. Dang! I should've kept the error logs :P. I could still probably re-produce this error in the Caliente family though, since their babies are cousins to the Bachelor offsprings. Will report back.

I did a short test with this version and so far it seems like the error is gone.
Thank you for updating!

Hey syberspunk, sorry it took me so long. I've tested both the old and new versions, the good news is, I couldn't re-produce the error I mentioned above and the bad news is... er, there's no bad news. Well, that's what people always say, "I've got good news and bad news" ;D :P.

To make it a fair test, I added the 'got into private school' memory for Nina Caliente before I played, but nada, no errors and nothing bad happened. And I was so sure it was because I had included that fake memory for Michael Bachelor when I gave him memories that I put it down to just user error and so didn't think much of it. :-[

The cousins part though, whether they were met or not, don't seem to count when it comes to the "Enroll Legacy" eligibility, but that's okay, I can do the HM scenario fairly well. All in all, students on other lots could quit and re-enrol without incident and the lastest version appears to be working fine too, so, no complaints at all. :)

Heheh. I'll take that bad news anyday ;) However I am still working on another possible update. Someone else over at MTS2 is still having issues with it. It's a tad frustrating, but I really want to make the mod as friendly and compatible as possible. I've had them testing a few other versions, since so far, they seem to be the last hold out as far as any reported problems. I'm sure it's been annoying and confusing with all the constant updating. :P So I decided to have them test it until I finally stomp that bug out for them, and then post a final update.


Actually adding the memory artificially shouldn't pose a problem. The mod won't be able to tell whether it was added 'in-game' or if you did it by some other means, with a mod or SimPE, for example. What I did in my mod was to make sure it checks for that memory. That way, you can't 'cheat' in the sense of using a mod to just set a sim in private school without the memory. For example, if you use the InSimenator, you can set a sim to private school, but it does not add the memory. Besides, this is pretty much the only way (that I could think of at least) to check if someone has a legacy.


I misunderstood what you meant by cousins. I thought you meant a cousin of the parent (which would therefore actually be the uncle or aunt of the sim in question). What I did was iterate through siblings first, parents next, and then siblings or parents of the parent (i.e. aunts/uncles or grandparents). I could theoretically include cousins, but I thought that might be stretching it. Also, iterating through too many sims ends up causing those 'too many iterations' problems.

But now that you mention it, I might think about going back and including relatives, but only requiring that they have met if the relative does not live in the same house. As soon as I find out whether the latest version in testing definitely stomps that other bug, then I'll look into the expanded relatives thing. The only reason why I didn't do this from the get-go was because I was having trouble with it earlier. When I finally got it to work, I ended up breaking it up to tests for siblings and parents. But now that I understand things better, I should be able to do this for immediate relatives at least (ones that are in the current or only one generation apart).

Ste

I don't know about others, but I don't mind the "constant updating" nor find it "annoying and confusing". In any case, at least it shows you are commited to making sure it works and works well. Plus, I do like what this mod does (well, duh, why else would I download it in the first place) and don't want it yanked.

Um, to be honest, I don't really care about the cousins part, I was just being... lazy and "cheaty". I thought the time windows could be better though. Say, perhaps in your next update, maybe from 8am (the time the school bus comes) to 3pm (when the school bus brings the little sims home) the option is not available but any timeline outside that we could have the option to switch. I found myself hovering the pointer over the phone almost every hour, afraid to miss it or remembering it wrong (which I did, so I just concentrated on the window before the school bus came :P) and having to wait another day... ok, that's really just me being lazy and "cheaty" again :P. I'll still be happy with the way it is though. :)

SYBERSPUNK! Explain this please. Im getting object errors whenever I highlight the phone with a teen between 6-8 AM and 2-4 PM. Check out the log.

Edit: And yes, im using the most recent version.

[attachment deleted by admin]

MIKE! Ack!  :o Well... I was hoping to hold off on releasing an update since I have a person who is still sorta testing it for me. I didn't want to bother releasing it since other people may still experience the 'too many iterations' problem.

Basically, at least from my limited understanding, the problem may possibly be due to neighborhoods with a significant number of sims. The error comes from the Test BHAV which checks to see if these phone options should be available to you. The game dynamically builds the options when you hover over the phone, and makes them appear when you click on it. The reason why it happens only during those times is because I made the options only available during those times. My reasoning was that you should be able to switch on a school day, but only before or after the school day is over.

Anyway, the error comes from 'too many iterations.' The Test needs to first find out if there are any sims on the lot who are eligible for private school. They must be a teen or child, who is currently in public school, has a grade of C or higher, and does NOT have a memory of having gotten into private school already. This probably eats up a few iterations already. Then, after that, the code iterates through 'neighbors' or other sims who have a non-zero relationship with the sim in question. Once it finds a sim, it should check if they are a parent or sibling. Then it checks if that sim has a memory of having gotten into private school. This eats up a lot more interations. If it fails to find a parent, it searches for a sibling, and if it fails to find a sibling, it then searches for the parents and siblings (grandparents or aunts and uncles) instead, with the requirement that the potential student has met them (or at least their parent has met them). As a result, these are even more iterations.  :-\ Oh... incidentally, I also added cousins to that list.

However... I did find some other bugs that I never noticed before. I'm hoping that these fixes will solve the problem, but again I don't have a 'proper' testing environment. My current testing environment is pretty much a clean/fresh install of the game. My current 'game' environment hasn't been played much (surprise, surprise  ::) ) and I chucked my old 'hood in favor of starting over from scratch. So... even in my real 'game' I don't have a lot of sims, and I don't have any huge families to really test this out. In my 'test' environment, it has worked with the Goth and Pleasant family, but obviously those families are very small.

Also, I was initially using Sims Age checks that use Verify calls, which I assume adds to the iterations. Now I'm just using direct persondata checks, so hopefully this should reduce the number of iterations that the game runs through. I tried to strip down the code as much as possible, replacing any checks that redundantly verify the data. The odd thing is, when I tried to collapse the search into one BHAV rather than breaking them up into a couple of calls based on parameters, I ended up getting the TMI errors with 0 iterations. And when I tried sticking an Idle call, I got a check tree blocked error instead. ??? So I had to stick with the original code with a few changes that I hope does the trick.

Probably a much longer (and long-windyier :P ) than you wanted, but you did ask for an explanation. So... since I still need testing, please get the newer version and let me know if you still have the same problems. I've changed a lot of the code to be a bit cleaner. If people are still having problems, I still have an idea of something else I could try. But for now, give this a test and let me know if it works.

Ste

OK, I hear ya. I will test the newer version out now to see if I am still getting errors.



Yeah, I did ask for an explaination, which I regret. About half way through the post I had brain failure.  :D Just kidding, it wasn't too long for me.  ;)

any idea if this is second patch compatible or not? I have to admit to being lazy with this question. I didn't do much more than have a teen currently enrolled in private school check to see if I had the option to call the school and quit. I didn't seem to have that choice but I may have just missed it.

Syberspunk posted a complete compatibility list here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3325.0).

ha. silly me not looking for a thread like that and going to the specific hack I was interested in.

I seem to be having a problem with this mod (which I love btw)

I have all EPs and I'm patched up to date (also, Christmas/Holiday Pack).

I'm getting random teens and children dropping out of private school (seems to be teens more often than children). The said children or teens always have the option to re-enroll on the phone, so it's not a massive problem, but their grade always drops to a C.

The only vague link I can make (amongst the teens) is romantically interacting with adults, but even that's probably coincidental. Also, this only happens when I re-enter a lot.

I play with *testingCheatsEnabled* and I'm getting no error logs.

Most of the hacks I use are Awesome. The other hacks that COULD be a problem (but are probably not): Kitten Killer, Insim and Moniques homeworkfasterfun.

sometimeshomeworkfasterfun (or something like that) I think was done by JenFlower. At least that's what I have, and that definitely does not conflict with my phone plug-in. Unless Monique has a similar hack? I think there is an auto-do homework, but I don't know much about her other hacks. In either case, I don't imagine that they would conflict, unless it does something to force sims to drop out.

Have you read the RTFM for the Kitten Killer? I think that, for sims that are close to the end stage of teen, they are 'graduated' from high school while they are on the verge of either becoming an adult or going to Uni. I'm fairly certain this is a feature of InTeen.

When they 'dropping out' do they end up in public school or are they not in school at all? If they are not in school at all... then it is probably InTeen. I think there is a flavorpak to change this.

However... if you find that your sims are 'dropping out' and end up in public school, this might be due to Pescado's private school bill fix, or whatever it's called. It makes private school more expensive, and if you can't afford it, then your sim gets booted.

These are the only things I can imagine that might be causing your issue, especially since you aren't getting error logs.

Ste

They drop back into public school, and their grade is ruduced to a C. Also, I do have that flavor pak installed. I think it's called No Adult Teens.


I don't use Pescasdo's private school bill fix 'cos it conflicts with something (inteen?) .

I spent a few hours yesterday trying to find a link as to why it's happening, anyway, here's a scenario (bare with me, I'm useless at explaining things):

I Enter Uncle Leo's lot. Leo's brother, Clive has 3 children Tom(teen), Dick(child) and Harry(child) in private school. Leo calls Harry on the phone and invites him over. Once there Leo feeds him some delicious mac&cheese and then says bye-bye. Leo then calls Tom on the phone, to chat for an hour or so. Now I exit Uncle Leo lot and enter Clive' lot. Harry and Tom have both dropped into public school and dropped to a C grade, while Dick, who doesn't care for Uncle Leo and has had no contact with him is still in private school.

Also, It doesn't seem to matter if the sim, a child/teen interacts with is a relative. I should also add, as my neighbourhood is new and pretty puny in size it's hard to test this extensively, as I only have about 10 children or teens in private school. But the ones who are, seemingly drop down whenever they are called or invited over by an adult (only if I'm playing the adults lot).

I hope that makes some sense :)

Hrm. That is a very strange issue. I will try to look into this when I have some time and see if I can reproduce this.

Some questions:

1) Just to be sure I understand what you are saying, your scenario is as follows:

Child/Teen A is in public school
Child/Teen A is invited to adult sim B as visitor
After exiting lot of sim B, when you go to lot for Child/Teen A, they drop back into public school

I hope I understood that correctly.

I assume the child/teen had a grade better than a C.

2) Does the problem still happen if you remove the private school plug in?

3) Does this problem only happen when you invite the child/teen to a lot?

4) Does this only happen when the inviter is an adult? Or no matter what, if they ever visit someone else's lot, when you go back to their lot, they always drop back to public school?

You also said it happens when they talk to someone on the phone, but it only happens when that person is an adult? In other words, can they talk to children or other teens and nothing bad happens?


To be honest, I haven't looked at the code in a long while... but I can't imagine what would cause a change just from having children/teens talking to an adult. And I don't know yet why entering the lot of the child/teen causes them to reset to public school... I could be wrong... but the bhavs in this hack should theoretically be run when you actually click on a phone. If that is right... then I am still not sure why they would be reset, or why this hack would cause the reseting...

Do you notice if this is time dependent? Or it doesnt matter what time the lot is. No matter what time it is, or what the sims are doing on the lot, when you check their school panel, it shows up as public school? Does the child/teen that is changed seemed reset? Meaning, are they not doing the same thing they were when you last saved that lot? For example, maybe you saved the lot when they were sleeping, and when you come back to it, they are standing up next to the bed, or possibly standing by the mailbox as if they had been deleted?

Just hoping to acquire as much info as possible so I try and set up a similar scenario to try and reproduce the error and know what exactly to look for.

Ste

Yep, it does. It's also still happening atfer I removed  all my hacks & CC . So it looks like it's just my game.

I'm thinking it's either the second OFB patch or the fact that my base game and the first 2 EPs are the UK versions and that my OFB is the US version. Other than that, It might be re-install time.

Cheers for listening, anyway. :)

I have made a compatible version. It's lurking around somewhere.

Jordi, you want to upload that/share a link because I really want that and would really appreciate it.

Should be this one: http://members.chello.nl/b.kroonspecker/games/mod-privateschoolbillfix.zip (http://members.chello.nl/b.kroonspecker/games/mod-privateschoolbillfix.zip)

Make sure it loads after the inteen: I suggest placing it in the same folder.

Thanks!

I've been wanting that hack for a long time but I just couldn't part with the kitten killer. :)

Thanks Jordi, It works great. Finally, my Sims are being charged for the privilege of private school. I, like moonluck, have wanted this for a long time but couldn't part with the kitten killer. :)

Due to significant code changes in the way the game handles phones, the phone call options have now moved to the sim pie menu i.e. you must click on the sim in order for the Call... options to show up. These options will show up on the sim regardless of whether they have a cellphone or not. If they do not have a cell phone, they will attempt to use a landline.

The ZOMGPETS!!!111oneoneone version should theoretically be backwards compatible as well. You don't have to update if you have OFB or older, but it should theoretically work regardless of what EP(s) you have. Still, just to be safe, I am keeping the older version available.

Please test it out. And let me know if you have any problems. :)

Ste

Since y'all were talking about this up-thread anyway...does the privateschoolbillfix need updating or should it (Pescado's and/or Jordi's versions) work just fine in Pets? And is there any reason either version wouldn't play nicely with this plug-in?

Ooops. Just noticed that privateschoolbillfix has been rolled into the new Pets Director's Cut. Stoopid me.

Since installing Free Time, I am no longer getting the option for enrolling  younger siblings. I know it has been a while, are you still supporting this hack?

I recently have installed Ikea, and I'm no longer getting the option for parents to enroll their children.

It worked okay yesterday (before Ikea).  The sim in question is Cassandra Goth, who has the "Got into Private School" memory.  She's trying to call the headmaster via cell phone to enroll her son Mortimer.  The option doesn't appear.

The only recent things I've done is install LordDarcy's fixes for Ikea stuff, and Arr'ed versions of The Sims 2 Store clothes, objects, and hair.

I've had trouble with this hack for a while, too. Even calling during proper days/times, the option just never appears on the sim pie menu. Sadly, I can't date the trouble to a specific installation, but it may have been Ikea.

I am very disappointed that this does not work in my game anymore, either. I am officially poking Ste about this... if someone is closer to him than I am then please add your poking stick to mine.