Phone Hack v6.8: SHINY EDITION! (07/29/05)

[J. M. Pescado]

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


UNI: phonehack.zip

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

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

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

[reggikko]

New Phone Hack update, adds improved headmaster invite (can now call headmaster if toddler will make autotransition to childhood at 1800 during headmaster scenario, instead of waiting until next day - no longer necessary to only try for babies on Thursday).

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

[Katze]

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

[fff]

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

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

[themaltesebippy]

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

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[lakota]

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

[veilchen]

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

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

G.

[J. M. Pescado]

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

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

[SJActress]

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

[veilchen]

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

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

G.

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[nectere]

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

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

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[Ancient Sim]

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

[MsMaria]

Thank you, JM. Perfection.

[ZephyrZodiac]

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

[vecki]

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

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

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

[dizzy]

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

[ZephyrZodiac]

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

[DuckSpeak]

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

[ZephyrZodiac]

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

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[ZephyrZodiac]

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

[sara_dippity]

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