Fingerprint Scanner Hack

[Shivani]

You know, I checked the date on the file for this and it's back in mid-July.  I downloaded it a couple of days ago and chucked it in the game, mainly because the scanner always frosted my cookies by poofing into ether at the slightest opportunity, so I always avoided using it.

The point... earlier today a sim was Skillinating his little tush off with it, and lo and behold, he scanned the repair lady's truck (and my, wasn't she attractive with that dashing electrocuted look she was sporting), which promptly pulled off the lot.  He ended up by the mailbox, hat off, gun magically reappearing off by one of the portals.  The scanner ended up corrupted and had to be deleted and replaced with a new one.

Am I the only one seeing this?  Or is there something this fix isn't always catching (as it should according to the docs)?  If it makes any kind of a difference, this is a sim who was upgraded to Uni (made in CAS in a Uni game, and upgraded after he was moved into the household) using the, er, Lot Debugger(?).

Should I have attempted to force an error on the gun at that point?

[RainbowTigress]

This happens to me sometimes when the sim attemps to scan something that no longer exists by the time he finishes, such as the carpool.  Since I always run debug mode, I get an error message when this happens, and I usually have to hit reset, as cancel does nothing.  Usually I have him start skilling again, and he puts the hat on and picks up the scanner and continues on his merry way with no further problems, until a similar situation happens.  What do you mean by the scanner getting corrupted?  Does it not work anymore?  I had a scanner disappear right before my eyes in one house, which I had never actually seen happen.  In the beginning, I would discover it was gone after trying to find it, but with JM's fixes it has been so much better.  It was this same house that I had an interesting bug with the opposite effect.  Jennifer Burb was scanning with it, and I forget what happened.  It seems the carpool arrived and something else was happening at the same time.  She was pregnant around this time, so I don't know if that affected it, but when I canceled her queue to go to work, she put the scanner on the bedroom floor, and when I looked, there were two scanners!  How ironic.  I don't know if that caused the problem with it vanishing later when her daughter put it down, but at least they had a backup.  (It wasn't a big deal though since I have the career rewards collection, but it was still interesting.)

Anyway, I hope maybe some of this info might be of help.  It does seem that there are some other bugs with the scanner that haven't been addressed.

[J. M. Pescado]

I thought I told it not to scan trucks, but I guess I'll have to be more fascist about it. It also has a tendency to scan the candies on the candy machine, too.

[Ness]

I've also seen it go out and scan trucks/cars with the hack in - fortunately, I haven't had it vanish.  One time it was the maid, and there was plenty of time, the other time, I cancelled the scanning, and it all went back where it should.

Ness

[Shivani]

What do you mean by the scanner getting corrupted?  Does it not work anymore?

Corrupted in the sense that if I start the macro again, the sim will put on a cap (as applicable), pick up the gun, then just stand there frozen.  Canceling the queue does bupkis. They become breathing statuary.  If I do the delete/save/enter thing, then start the macro again, the sim will find the scanner (so far), but freeze again as soon as they pick it up.

Other than forcing errors on a couple of items one day out of sheer boredom, I've never bothered with it, so I had wondered if doing that would "fix" the gun or not.

[RainbowTigress]

I thought I told it not to scan trucks, but I guess I'll have to be more fascist about it. It also has a tendency to scan the candies on the candy machine, too.

Yes, I've had this happen too.  I canceled the error message and paused at precisely the right moment before the error came up again so I could switch to the sim doing the scanning, and they would have the chocolates in their thought bubble.  This happened mostly on one lot where I was having a guest instruct one sim in cleaning and another visitor instruct another sim on the candy machine, so it happened rather often and became quite annoying.  I haven't seen it quite as much in other homes where I'm not simultaneously training.

On a related note, is there any way that the Skillinator can recognize guests in the home such as those brought home from work to ask for lessons?  I have several sims now that are well skilled now that I'm getting into the skilling game and the third generation, but they will only ask those that live in the house who are designated as instructors.  I thought it would be great if they could, but I don't know if it's possible.