velocitygrass, another useful thing to mention in your FAQ (which looks great!) would be this: Making better use of the unpackedmod folder where DarkWalker explains how to subfolder that folder. Which is actually extremely obvious once you know *that* it works (same way as /Mods, duh!) but I guess many people wouldn't expect it to work and thus never bother to try.

I think I have a bug with the version I just downloaded: when trying to point it at SimulationDeltaBuild0.package it only sees the FullBuild0.package -- it also says in the "Files of Type" dropdown: "Combined tuning file or SimulationFullBuild0.package" and won't let me change that.

Workaround is simply to navigate to the right folder, then paste "SimulationDeltaBuild0.package" into Filename, but it's still irritating because it makes it look like that file were suddenly gone =).

You weren't kidding On behalf of all current and future tuning tweakers, thanks for the in-depth writeup!

@plasticbox: Argh. First, I just had *.package as the filter, then I thought I'd make it easier by only allowing the actual file with the updated tuning. Obviously it helps to actually use the name of that file and not the unpatched one. *head desk* It's fixed now. Thanks for reporting this! Also thank you for the link to the tutorial. I've added it to the FAQ.

@Zach & @rebecah: You're both very welcome.

I downloaded all the files and the tool isn't working for me. How does it need to be installed in order to work? It's saying I'm missing a bunch of dll files.

Did you download the one where it says "Download this when in doubt"? If not, try that.

I seem to have an issue with this tool not properly releasing the handle (or whatever this is called in windows techspeak) on the folder it's exporting to. Long after it's done exporting and closed, I still cannot rename that folder ("Access is denied"), as if it were in use. I've had this before with an older version too, was gone after the next reboot.

Windows XP SP3 here, and I'm still using 0.0.0.4. (Is there a workaround for this maybe, like enforcing the permissions on a folder? Similar to chown? I wouldn't know, not really being a Windows user)

Can you check if the attached version makes a difference? It closes the files explicitly, though this should happen automatically anyway, so it might not change anything for you. I recall having far more problems in general with files remaining in use on my old XP system. I had a program (Unlocker) back then that helped resolve that issue at least some of the time. (It's available here; be aware that the latest version seems to come bundled with some toolbar that you have to opt out of during installation.)

Thank you! Yeah I know XP is really antique by now (I only still have it because of licensing complicatedness with dual boot machines -- will upgrade to something contemporary once I have a new thing to run it on). That could very well be part of the issue. Thanks for the tip re. Unlocker, I'll try that if I have the problem again =) Downloaded the explicitclose version too, thanks for that.


Edit: I just checked (as in, re-exported with the "explicitclose" one) and this time around I WAS able to rename the folder afterwards. So either the explicitclose thing solved that, or XP just decided to not be so stubborn for once, or .. whatever else =). Thanks!

Can you direct me to that download? I've looked all over and can't find it. Thanks! =)

It is the 4th one in the list in the top message. The description says Full Program With All Dependencies, you know? You do not want the other files there, you install only this one file, don't attempt to install all of those files at the same time, lol.

@velocitygrass I posted a short walkthrough on XML tuning here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=537976 -- maybe list that in your FAQ? Also, let me know if you have any additions/corrections/suggestions.

@plasticbox: Thanks! I added the link. (My name is misspelled when you link to the extractor, but that's not a problem for following the tutorial ) One thing you could add is a note that in some cases changes to the corresponding DATA file have to be made (specifically if there are fields in the tdesc marked as client_binary and/or server_binary).

Thank you! Added and typo fixed =).

How do I get a extracted STBL file? I can't find any information on that anywhere...

@Myke776: It's the resource of type 0x220557DA in Strings_[language code].package (e.g. Strings_ENG_US.package), which can be found in the Data/Client subfolder of the Sims 4 installation. It can be exported e.g. with S4PE. I've also added this info to the FAQ.

@velocitygrass: Thanks! I've been searching for a while now.

One bug report: when the STBL ID starts with 0 your program fails to correctly add the corresponding comment, since in the tunings leading zeros are dropped. One example is the _tooltip tag close to the end of the Whim_MakeOnlineFollowers_10 file (0x00000000!0x000000000000808d.0x598f28e7).

Also, any chance of adding such comments to the reward tag inside loot files? A CSV list of object IDs to names, to serve as the source of such comments, can be easily constructed (see attached python script and text file, though the script takes OBJD files named according to the Maxis unpacked file format).

(BTW, thank you a lot for the program, it's a true lifesaver.)

@DarkWalker: Thanks for the bug report! It'll be fixed in the new version (I'll try to post it tomorrow). I've looked into the object references and am still not certain how to go about it. I'm not sure how slow it would be to retrieve the object info from the package, but the advantage would be that it wouldn't require a CSV that will be outdated with the next patch and especially with new expansions.

One thing I've been wondering is where the display name for the objects is stored. I've randomly checked the loot_Bonsai_Shape_twigs reward gardenTwigsGEN_01. Neither the 0xC0DB5AE7 nor the object tuning linked in it nor the 0x319E4F1D seem to contain the display name hash, which I suspect is 0xDEDC16DE: Bunch of Twigs. Do you happen to know where this might be stored?

In any case, thanks for the suggestion and information!

It's in the COBJ file (0x319E4F1D). The 4 bytes starting at 08 are the STBL ID of the name, and the following 4 bytes starting at 0C are the STBL ID of the description. Little endian both.
(Incidentally, that one is simply called "Twigs", 0xD38A22E5. Might be what threw you off.)

Ah, yes, I must have missed that. Thank you.

I've tested support for extracting the name and description of all objects (where available) as a first step. My test was semi-successful. I implemented it so that if finding a related tuning fails for decimal values, it will look up the object. It did exactly that, but actually looking into the files in more detail, it reveals how flawed that approach was and is with normal numbers with a comment for the object, objects with a comment for an unrelated tuning...

The only way to properly handle these references would be to look up information based on the type of the reference which can be found in the tdesc files, but that would add a whole other level of complexity...

I can still add the functionality as it works so far as a "better than nothing" solution for now. I should be able to release that (and the STBL fix) within the next few days.

ETA: @DarkWalker: I've uploaded the new version now. After looking at the changes the object references can be narrowed down quite well with only a handful of keywords to look for (including the "reward" that you mentioned). It's still not perfect, but it should be a definite improvement over how it was. The retrieval of the objects takes relatively long, so I'll probably change that to doing it on demand, but I wanted to get this version out for now. Thanks again for the bug report and suggestion and help with the game object info.

Probably not the right place for this, but when I tried to run the Sims4XMLExtractor.exe it tells me Qt5Core.dll is missing. I'm guessing I need to install Qt?
I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to actually making mods for The Sims 4, and just get redirected to this page on every basic tutorial. Because XML extraction.

You likely downloaded the update archive. Download instead the full one, currently Sims4XmlExtractor0006.7z . It's the one a bit larger than 6MB.

Thanks for making this! I've found it to be super useful. I do seem to be having a problem when attempting to extract Outdoor Retreat XML files, though. Do we still extract /Data/Simulation/SimulationDeltaBuild0.package in order to access the OR-specific XML files?

EDIT: I loaded up the source for this project, and the tool was failing to extract from GP01/SimulationFullBuild0.package. I edited the source to add only_match_type = true when calling p.extractResource, and the new XML files were extracted successfully.

When you install OR, you will find a new folder called GP01. In there is a file called SimulationFullBuild0 which has the OR combined XML file. This thread is useful to read concerning the OR tuning file:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=545916