Cell Phone Teleport

[Orikes]

I had a weird thing start happening today. So far I've only seen it happen on this one lot.

Basically, when one of the sims is talking to someone on their cell phone, that person is suddenly on the lot. These are people that have called my sims rather than the reverse, and I haven't heard their cell phones ringing. Just at some point I realize they're talking on the phone and then a few moments later the person they're talking to is in the middle of the lot.

The first time it happened, I thought the wife just happened to be on the phone with the same sim that her husband brought home from work.

I do have the phone hack, but this is the first time I've ever seen this happen. Doesn't seem to be causing any problems, it's just a little odd.

[Hegelian]

I seem to have had this happen a couple times in recent days, but I didn't notice the cause-and-effect of talking on the phone, perhaps I was busy with other sims on the lot.

[Tina G]

It has happened to me a few times lately too.

[jsalemi]

I've seen it happen on and off since I first got the game last year, even before I discovered this place and all the hacks/mods here.  It's a very random maxis-bug-type-thing. 

[ThyGuy]

Another weird glitch about cell phones. More than once in the base game back when I had no expansions; I got the option to call when I had no phone in the house. Baffled by this, I went ahead and told the sim to call someone, to have them use the cellphone animations, even though I didn't have university even! I'm pretty sure the first time it happened was back when sims 2 just came out, and I still catch them using a none existant cellphone on occassion.

[J. M. Pescado]

Arr? I don't get it. You mean you could call someone in the base game with no phone? I don't think that's even possible, unless you have a non-awesome hack at work.

[Emma]

Were there even cell phones in the base game? I don't think so....

[Ancient Sim]

This teleport thing happens to me all the time, especially when the 4pm calls come in.  I have the DMA Teleporter thing, which tells you who's calling, and more often than not when my Sim answers their mobile, it will be someone different on the phone.  Sometimes they have to go through half-a-dozen or more to get to the one who originally rang.  So, whenever I can still hear the phone ringing, I get them to cut the call they're on and take the next, which results in the person they were talking to appearing on the lot.  The last person to call never appears.  IIn other words, it seems to happen in my game when the call is cut short to take another one.  From what JM is saying, it's not caused by the phone hack, so it's obviously just a Maxis thing (like most problems).

[Marvelleaux]

This happens in my game too.  I noticed it after I installed the latest patch.  There are Awesome-only hacks in my game.

[baratron]

I hope this doesn't count as necromancy, but I'm wondering if you guys have checked to see if you have duplicate hacks in the game? I had the phone (cell phone & ordinary phone) causing teleportation when I had multiple copies of the Phone Hack installed at the same time. (One of them was the up-to-date version of the Phone Hack in my Pescado Fixes directory, the other was called something like fgiourtoistgjhaiowruw34ojgsjdg.package and had come along with an installed house.) Removing the duplicate Phone Hack cured the problem.

[Orikes]

Hmmm. I don't think I have a dupe hack, but I'll check.

I don't know if it counts as thread necromancy, but I'd actually forgotten about this since I've only had it happen on one lot. I've been playing other lots recently and haven't seen anything like this happening elsewhere.

[seelindarun]

I don't think hacks are the only cause of this bug.  It has happened on all my lots at one time or another, starting right after I first installed NL when I had no hacks or mods at all.  In my game, it isn't the 4pm calls; it happens about 50% of the time when someone invites one of the controllable sims on the lot on an outing.  If they choose to stay at home, the sim who called teleports to the lot.  Both townies and playable sims have been teleported.

I don't get any error logs, and there doesn't seem to be any other problems associated with this bug. 

[ThyGuy]

Arr? I don't get it. You mean you could call someone in the base game with no phone? I don't think that's even possible, unless you have a non-awesome hack at work.

Yes, this was back before ANY of the expansions and the only solution I could figure out AFTER I saw the cellphones in university was that the cellphone code must have been present in the base game. It makes sense as the grim reaper has always used a cellphone; it just wasn't added so everyone could use them until later.

[J. M. Pescado]

The cellphone in the original game is simply a prop used by the Reaper's animations, and has no functionality.

[MxxPwr]

I don't think hacks are the only cause of this bug.  It has happened on all my lots at one time or another, starting right after I first installed NL when I had no hacks or mods at all.  In my game, it isn't the 4pm calls; it happens about 50% of the time when someone invites one of the controllable sims on the lot on an outing.  If they choose to stay at home, the sim who called teleports to the lot.  Both townies and playable sims have been teleported.

I don't get any error logs, and there doesn't seem to be any other problems associated with this bug. 

Yep. That's my experience. Blondie with the brown jacket calls my sim wanting to go downtown; I tell her to get lost and, boop! she's at the house. And this is using my no-hack user account, so it's definitely a Maxis bug.

[Frankenbeasley]

I've had this happen five or six times in the last few days. I have no hacks and no downloaded content. What I have noticed is that it usually seems to happen when the original phone call is autonomously answered but I cancel the action. Poof! As if by magic, I've got visitors on the lot.