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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 10th Aug 2015 at 11:04 PM Last edited by Hughie : 11th Aug 2015 at 1:35 PM.
Guide please.
Hello folks!

I'm trying to replace the political career in the Sims 3 with a British version of it (Using different positions in HMs Government instead of an American system) but I'm having some difficulty implementing it. It's just a simple re-naming of job titles and descriptions. I've done modding before for other games but using the tools for TS3 is pretty alien to me. I was wondering if somebody could either make this mini-mod a reality for me (I've got the edits, I just need it put into game) or give me an easy to read and up to date tutorial on how to do it. I've tried using the existing tutorials on MTS but they were out of date and caused some issues in-game.

Thanks in advance.
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1978 gallons of pancake batter
#2 Old 11th Aug 2015 at 6:53 AM
Moved to Modding Discussion. @Hughie, I'd suggest to upload what you currently have and also describe what issues you had or what didn't work.

Also let's pretend the request part of your post doesn't exist, ok? We do not allow requests on MTS.

If gotcha is all you’ve got, then you’ve got nothing. - Paul Krugman
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 11th Aug 2015 at 1:39 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Buzzler
Moved to Modding Discussion. @Hughie, I'd suggest to upload what you currently have and also describe what issues you had or what didn't work.

Also let's pretend the request part of your post doesn't exist, ok? We do not allow requests on MTS.


Ah, thanks mate. Somebody on another Sims forum said that people do requests here. I apologize.

The main issue I had was that when I applied my edits into the game most of the in-game text had vanished (Mainly things that had been introduced to the game via patches and updates).
1978 gallons of pancake batter
#4 Old 11th Aug 2015 at 2:09 PM
Sounds like your STBL resource shared an instance ID with one of the game's resources. You can override single entries from STBL resources, but your custom STBL needs to have a unique ID. Also IIRC (this is off the top of my head) the ID needs to be lower than the one of the original STBL containing the entries you're overriding.

If gotcha is all you’ve got, then you’ve got nothing. - Paul Krugman
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 11th Aug 2015 at 3:27 PM
Thank you...I think. I'm not going to lie this doesn't make a lot of sense to me :p. I'll find some time to experiment around with it.
1978 gallons of pancake batter
#6 Old 13th Aug 2015 at 7:41 AM
Sorry, I didn't want to confuse things even more.

You are using S3PE, right? When you open a package in S3PE, you see an overview of the resources it contains. For each resource you see (among other things), the so-called TGI. TGI stands for Type, Group and Instance. Resources that contain string for the game are of type STBL (string table), the group of game STBLs is usually zero and the instance is a 64 bit number shown in hex format.

For the game the TGI is the unique identifier. If you have two resources that have the exact same TGI - same type, group and instance - they will conflict and only one will be loaded. If one of the resources is a game resource (like an ITUN resource from gameplaydata.package) and the other a custom one in your mods folder, the latter one will be loaded - making it an override. If both are custom ones, you can't tell which one will be loaded (oversimplification, but it'll do).

So. The mod you made caused most in-game text to vanish. That's almost definitely because your mod overrides the original STBL resource containing those strings, i.e. it contains a resource with the same TGI as the one of the game. To fix that, you need to change the TGI of the STBL resource in your mod package by changing its instance number. Then both STBL resources will be recognized by the game.

There is also a specialty when it comes to STBL resources. STBLs contain key value pairs with the key being a number and the value a string. The game uses the key to fetch a string to show. If you have two STBL resources containing a key value pair with the same key, those pairs will conflict, i.e. only one will be recognized by the game. The speciality is that the instance of the STBL basically defines a priority, i.e. the lower the instance the higher the priority. You can use that to override single STBL entries without having to override the whole resource.

So if the game STBL has an instance of e.g. 0x10 and you want to change a string entry with the key 0x15, you make your own STBL and add a key value pair with key 0x15 and whatever string value you want. For the entry to actually override the original one, you need to give your STBL an instance lower than 0x10, so everything between 0x01 and 0x0F would be ok, although there's always a slight danger of overriding something else.

HTH

Disclaimer: This is all off the top of my head, but I can guarantee that the basic idea is correct.

If gotcha is all you’ve got, then you’ve got nothing. - Paul Krugman
Test Subject
Original Poster
#7 Old 24th Aug 2015 at 6:06 PM
Okay, back again! Sorry about the VERY late reply. I've made the mod again, but I've got two issues. I done fouled up again and the text is gone and the text changes I made don't even appear in game, I've still got the original career names. I've got and STBL editor and S3PE. Could you explain to me how to use what I've got to make this work?
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