Couple Qs on STBL editing

[Laxley]

Howdy!

Inspired by Uglydemon's Nectar renaming mod (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=480356), I've developed a want to make a similar mod myself. But I'm a little confused about editing the STBLs.

Namethief's STBL editor seems really easy to use, but is old, likely outdated, and I can't get it to open any STBLs that were extracted from any expansion (which is what I'm interested in editing, unfortunately). Only the basegame STBL.

S3PE's built-in STBL editing feature seems to work fine, and is likely to be kept up-to-date. But it seems so clumsy. Is there a way to search for words, like Namethief's editor allows? Or do I really have to wade through each and every string to find the strings I'm after? If so, it's certainly usable, just time-consuming and tedious. :/

Finally, I've been reading that deleting the strings you aren't changing in your edited STBL can really mess up your game. With such a mod being released so recently (and after looking inside, it definitely only contains relevant strings), it certainly seems that doing it safely is possible. Is the game-breaking a no-longer-relevant issue of the past, or is it simply the result of a common error on the creator's part?

Phew. Longer post than I'd planned for. Thanks in advance.

[uglydemon]

The way I do it, while easy, is VERY tedious and annoying if you intend to change many words;

1- Get the program "STBLizer"
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=360093

2- open the file deltabuild0.package located at GameData\Shared\Packages using the latest s3pe

3- export the stbl with the instance 0x000f16b00ba8342f . this is where the majority of the core stbl stuff you'd want to change is (for base game and all ep's)

4- open the exported stbl using STBLizer, convert into an excel csv file

5- open the csv file in excel (or similar program) in stick the window to one side of your screen

6- open up s3pe and stick it to the other side of the screen (on windows 7 you simply drag into the edge).

7- create a new stbl, give it an instance that is less than the original stbl's instance, for example, the original instance is 0x000f16b00ba8342f , the one you'll create would be 0x000f16b00ba8342b or anything else less than f (my mod uses c). you may also change other characters in the stbl of course.

6- back to the excel window, use the search/search all tool in excel to locate the words/sentence you want to change

7- in the first cell of the row where the words/sentence to be changed is the instance, copy it

8- right click on the newly created stbl in s3pe and click edit

9- paste the copied instance, then write down (or copy/paste) the new words/sentence you want for that instance in the blank space to the right.

10- repeat for all other wanted changes

[Inge Jones]

This is the most recent STBL tool. It's Tiger's one updated by Misukisu. http://www.den.simlogical.com/denforum/index.php?topic=993.0

[Laxley]

Thanks, both!

Uglydemon's method suited me just fine, and worked almost flawlessly. It turns out that using the instance 0x000f16b00ba8342b breaks Showtime in the face, which I thought was pretty funny, for some reason. I just used d instead and it seems to be working just fine so far.

Is there a more concrete way of finding out if an instance is already being used, or is it just a matter of throwing it into your game and seeing if anything explodes? If it's just trial and error, I don't know how anybody gets confident enough that their mod doesn't break something to upload it. :lol: