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Better Crank Calls!

SCREENSHOTS
1,585 Downloads 94 Thanks  Thanks 26 Favourited 6,436 Views
Created by LimeyYoshi
Uploaded: 30th Jan 2023 at 9:03 AM
Updated: 30th Mar 2024 at 7:56 PM
Updates!
  • 2024-03-30:
    (1) Updated the Russian translation with the two new lines. Thanks again, Anitne!
    (2) I changed the logic of the Prank Call eligibility a bit. Previously, the game used its own "Niceness for availability" constant just for Prank Calls. I got rid of that and am instead now using the global "Max Bad" and "Max Good" constants that the game already uses for autonomous interactions like mumbling for Shy Sims, or juggling for Playful Sims. I did the same for the Playfulness criterion, which means that by default, Sims with 0 or 1 Nice, or 9 or 10 Playful can set off Prank Calls. You can change this if you get dreadpirate's Personality Please, upping the limits to 2 and 8 respectively.


The Simming Yoshi is back, and this time not with a fix against an annoyance, but an overhaul of a tiny aspect of gameplay!
My fiancée, who got me into Sims 2 in the first place (thanks for that! <3), suggested that she felt like Crank Calls could use a little more... pep. We gathered ideas together and this mod is the result of that.

In the vanilla game, a Crank Call can be set off by any Sim with 0 or 1 Niceness points. They place a short, panicky call towards any Sim they know, at any possible time of day (even 2-7 AM where normal phone calls would get rejected!). There is a 50% chance for the called Sim to then visit, with a slight drop in the short-term relationship (STR; effect is -10), and a 50% chance for them not to show up at all, without an effect on the STR. The Sims Wiki overdramatises the consequences of a Crank Call a little; the Sim visits just like any other Sim would, the way they greet and interact with one another is only slightly changed due to the small drop in STR. For Best Friends going from +100 STR to +90 STR, however, the effect is negligible.

Upon regarding all of this, we decided to bring the Crank Call interaction closer to what the Sims Wiki actually suggests, and make it a little more exciting at the same time.

At first I was even going to make Crank Calls autonomous, but this endeavour failed and I might be doing this another time...
But that's okay, as the mod is still big enough of a change to Crank Calls as it is.

Put this mod in your Downloads folder now and make Crank Calls great again!

So what does the mod change?
  • No longer is it called a Crank Call. Instead, Prank Call is what you want to pick on the phone menu.
  • The reason for this name change: No longer can just cranky Sims set these pranks off, but also very playful Sims (9 or 10 Playful points). This makes so much more sense to me anyway.
  • I also made it so then the mod gets affected by dreadpirate's Personality Please to enable Prank Calls for 2 Nice or 8 Playful point Sims, too.
  • Instead of just two outcomes (1. STR dips a bit and Sim visits, or 2. nothing happens at all), there are now four outcomes to a Prank Call:
    1. The STR doesn't dip and the Sim visits (I refer to this as "Neutral 1"),
    2. The STR doesn't dip but the Sim doesn't visit either ("Neutral 2"),
    3. The STR goes down a significant amount (-50) and the Reputation by a bit (-5) and the Sim doesn't visit ("Negative"),
    4. The STR is set to the minimum of -100, the reputation is lowered significantly (-30), and the Sim comes over ("Extreme"). This outcome is almost guaranteed to have the visiting Sim irritate or fight the prank caller upon greeting.
  • The main interaction itself plays out just like before. However, in the background, a lot more data is gathered than before, to then be used for the responses you get from the call recipient. Each of the four outcomes has their own, unique dialogues to offer.
    Some of the messages are even dynamic. Names of neighbours that the called Sim talks about are randomised.
    As a gimmick, I have added additional unique dialogue for the rare case that the randomised neighbour is the very person the Sim is talking about, and some more for the even rarer case that a Sim only knows one other Sim outside their family. Play and see!

Translations
Any included lines from other mods are also translated into all these languages! (See the Conflicts section below for details.)
LanguageAvailable?Creator
English (US/UK)✅Me (LimeyYoshi)
German✅Me (LimeyYoshi)
Spanish✅bothersomecryptid
Russian✅Anitne
French✅Nostural, Monsieur_Oshima, xmathyx
Polish✅Meduza
Chinese (traditional)✅tokoshietowa

If you know your way around SimPE and would like to translate into your own language, feel free to contribute! You shall be given due credit.
The text resources are found in the resource "Dialog prim string set" within my mod file, starting at number 0x002B (43).

Even if it's tempting here and there, please keep your translations free of slurs or insults. This mod was made with fun in mind and not for children to expand their bad word vocabulary.

Tuning
You can tune the mod to your own preferences! Everything is found inside the BCON "Tuning - Crank Call" within the package file.

Prank Call outcomes:
The default odds for the different outcomes of a Prank Call are: 15% for "Neutral 1", 15% for "Neutral 2", 65% for "Negative", and 5% for "Extreme", respectively.
Lines 0xB through 0xD can be freely tuned to set the chance to get Neutral 1, Neutral 2 and Negative outcomes. The difference of the sum of these three to 100% will be the Extreme outcome chance; setting the value of the first three outcomes too high will effectively disable the Extreme outcome, if you do not wish to play with the extreme STR drop.

Reputation loss:
Note this is only relevant if you have Apartment Life or Mansion & Garden Stuff installed.
Lines 0xF and 0x10 can be freely tuned to set the reputation lost from getting a Negative or an Extreme outcome. The defaults are -5 points and -30 points, respectively.

Requirements
No requirements! This mod is base game compatible!

Overrides
Resource nameType nameTypeGroupInstanceInstance (high)
Phone - Crank CallBHAV0x424841560x7FE2205A0x000010060x00000000
Tuning - Crank CallBCON0x42434F4E0x7FE2205A0x000010070x00000000
Tuning - Crank CallTRCN0x5452434E0x7FE2205A0x000010070x00000000
Phone - Crank Call - TESTBHAV0x424841560x7FE2205A0x0000100D0x00000000
Dialog prim string setSTR#0x535452230x7FE2205A0x0000012D0x00000000
MakeActionString prim string setSTR#0x535452230x7FE2205A0x0000012E0x00000000


New resources
The mod introduces a completely new private BHAV for the group 0x7FE2205A which contains all the data for Sim2Sim phone calls.
Phone - Find and Print Crank Call Dialogue has the instance 0x00001030.
In any configuration of the vanilla game up to M&G, this BHAV does not exist, thus doesn't override anything.
If any mod, however, contains a BHAV of the same group and instance, it will automatically conflict with my mod, so be careful!

Notes
This mod is not to be confused with LazyDuchess' 1t2 Prank Call mod, which adds prank calls for you to receive. My mod instead overhauls the prank calls that you can bother others with. Still a great recommendation for fun gameplay though, in my opinion!

Conflicts
Anything that also modifies the above resources will conflict with my mods.
  • The following mods are compatible as the only conflict lies in the Dialogue strings. I have incorporated all the changed and new lines from these mods into my mod so you can use them together. In all cases, my mod must load last.
    - kestrellyn's Can My Friend Come Too
    - Pick'N'Mix's No Driving Without A Licence, more precisely its Risky Sneak Out plugin
    - Pescado's phonehack at MATY.
  • If you use dreadpirate's Phone Cleanup Mod, make that mod load after mine, and you'll be all good. The only gripe is that "Prank Call" will be back to "Crank Call", but this does not affect the functionality of my mod at all.

Please let me know if there are any other conflicts with mods you use, and I will see if something can be done about them by load order or through plug-ins.

Credits
Maxis and EA for creating Sims 2 in the first place
The Creators of SimPE and especially the BHAV, BCON and STR# plugins
My fiancée for the idea to this mod, and providing almost all of the English dialogues
bothersomecryptid for the Spanish translation
Anitne for the Russian translation
Nostural, Monsieur_Oshima and xmathyx for the French translation
Meduza for the Polish translation
tokoshietowa for the Traditional Chinese translation

Have fun and happy Simming!
~ LimeyYoshi
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