alright this may take a bit of explaining but Ill try to keep it brief
I was attempting to figure out the packageID naming convention in .sims3.pack files. this is the id

0xda44b7b4eb15139a43f959e11ba96151

found by opening a house I exported in word pad



after a bit of examining I noticed something "0xda is a hex fixed length indicator and having played the post in binary /hex/dec game on other forums I recognized 44 as "D" and thought hey the file name is Dans 1st so I started playing with it and came up with this

44b7b4eb15139a43f959e11ba96151 = DÀ¦Ù 9C§× ª

well that was a dead end but I wasnt ready to give up
after droping the 2nd b it became
44b74eb113943f59e1ba6151 = DÀN_ ö?YߦaQ

at this point I thought perhaps I was grasping straws and decided to move on and see if I could find a pattern elsewhere and moved down to dependency and that was when the truth issue of this post came out

0x050cffe800000000050cffe800000000
drop 0x050
cffe800000000050cffe800000000
split on cffe...
cffe800000000050 cffe800000000
drop remaining 0050 to make two equal parts of the pattern
cffe80000000 cffe800000000

and I find

cffe80000000 cffe800000000 = ¤_Ç ¤_Ç

Is this not EA saying "QQ more please"

I think you're looking way too hard to find something that isn't there.

Whats the point of the topic title?

It has the right number of bits to be a GUID/UUID written out as just hex digits, GUIDs are designed to be unrepeating globally. Thus, they have no pattern.

Does ¤_Ç ¤_Ç mean something?

It looks like two faces wearing monocles.

you are correct they should have no pattern within themselves however to maintain a unique id across all items in the world there must be a system used to generate them

Im assuming its generated based on so set of variables IE converting file name date and time into a set variable

so Ill make something up for this example.
Dans 1st was created on 06/07/09 at 12:45:22
so lets make a unique identifier by combining that information and toss in a random set of 4 digits from the registration code used to activate the game

so we could have something like D679124522Q3WY

that pattern would most certainly guarantee a unique identifier across the world unless EXTREME coincidences happened, and to avoid them lets convert it to hex and toss in an extra charactor or two and drop the instructions as to where to drop them out at the beginning
and get something like

0xda4436373931323435323251335759

.... its a theory not sure if Im going to get anywhere with it but I like trying to figure stuff like that out and thus far Im coming up empty handed

PackageIDs / names do NOT have to be in the form 0x0000000000000000 etc. They basically just have to be a *unique* name that isn't used elsewhere.

As an example, my Pattern Packager just adds the current date and time in seconds to the end of the filename, prefixed by DPP_CreatorName. So even if the same creator created the exact same pattern twice in a row, they'd have different packageids.

The other way is to just do a crc64 or something like that of the file contents. But, honestly, I think you are thinking WAY too hard about this.

Does QQ mean anything?

I believe, in vi, it means quit without prompting.
Maybe they stole a Unix text editor to create their package files.

It certainly means a lot of things -- how about "non-NMDA-type ionotropic transmembrane receptor for glutamate that mediates fast synaptic transmission in the central nervous system"?

Whether that fact, in turn, means anything is another question though ..

*dons tin foil hat, just in case*

I think they just called the Windows .net function to generate a GUID, and converted the it to ascii hex values. UUIds are theoretically unique, at least to some enormous number greater than the google itself.

Google GUID, paying attention to the Microsoft .net implementation. The number is built from the network adapter ID and system time, one unique per computer and the other a constantly changing value.

<* Wes *>

In gamer slang, "QQ" (representing a pair of crying eyes) means "cry".

"QQ more please" and its variants ("cry more noob", "QQ moar n00b" etc) are ways of telling somebody that they're complaining too much

Am I the only person here who has spent too much time playing games like WoW and actually understands this lingo?

No I do play to. I got it then got lost with all the tec talk.

Nope... I've (sadly) been playing for 3.5 years, and can completely keep up with the lingo...

Thankfully I have the Sims 3 now and my delusion of a real life (lolol pre-med majors don't have lives when their free time is spent kicking back beers and playing wow or modding sims. )

/pat, my dear friend, /pat. (This forum has a smiley to resemble QQing, and animated for drama! ) lol


I do agree that the originator of this post is just looking for things that don't exist.

<3 Anja

omg lol I can TOTALLY believe it!
I swear, they want us to suffer!