DOWNLOAD LINK

So I'm getting ready to finish up my latest string table editor Stubble (Props to Williham for the clever name). However while I'm finishing up the last little touches, I figured I'd put it out there for some testing, and also for a little community help.

See, the feature that spurred the creation of this to begin with was the idea of using string keys (As in the textual name, such as "Gameplay/Objects/RabbitHoles/MilitaryBase:VisitWithInteractionName") rather than the ID (Such as "0x7F4484E8F69E3123") to make a more pleasant experience for people making casual modifications. Sure, there are string table editors/compilers/importers that will read a key name and hash it for you, but as far as I know there are none that go the other way.

So that is where I need everyone's help. I have a healthy list of strings at this point, however it is far from complete. Very far. But completing it is as easy as playing The Sims 3. Included in the package is a tool which will monitor the game as you play it and record any localization that is done, saving any string key names it does not already know.

To use this, simply download it and unzip it wherever you like. Once you launch it you will be presented with the main view, where you can browse strings. To help with the effort of gathering key names, under the Tools menu choose "Locate Keys". You will see the key collection dialog come up. Click the start button, and if The Sims 3 is not already running, it will prompt you to start it. Most likely it will give you the correct directory and you just need to click OK to launch the game.

That's it! Play TS3 for as long as you like, and it will happily run in the background monitoring what is going on. There should be little if any noticeable effect on the game performance. Once you are finished playing, you can click the Stop button, then Done. Stubble will write a file called "STBLUser.txt" to the directory it was unzipped to. Simply zip this file and email it to stubblekeys at tyger dot org. That's it!

Update 8/29: New version to handle non-English versions of the game. Also I've included all contributions so far to the string key database, which now tops out at around 20,000 keys. That's about 2/3rd of the game's total keys.

WARNING
In the interest of full disclosure, this tool WILL likely trigger monitoring software for doing a "dll injection" or something similar when you use the "Locate Keys" tool. While Stubble does do DLL injection, it is specifically targeted at TS3 solely for the purpose of gathering information on string localization. However, if you have used tools like Fraps, Stubble uses the same technique to monitor processes.

If you have any concerns with exactly what it is doing, feel free to PM me about it. I know people can get nervous when those things pop up.

Now that's an ingenious solution! Well done...I feel a bit stupid for asking but is there a download link for it?

OMG, no, I feel stupid for not including the download link LOL. I'll go edit that now.

Downloading now Tiger. Haven't been playing much lately, but will put in a few hours over the weekend.

New version fixes a couple bugs. In the UI, fixed the display not updating when File->New was selected, and the modified/added mark not being removed right away when saving. In the key name database, every time it went to write a new key it would write all the keys it had found since it started up rather than just the new ones.

Also added quite a number of strings to the key name database, which is now close to the 2/3rds mark of all keys defined in the base game.

There are still quite a few large holes in the key name database, however. Most notable is probably the key names missing from careers and books.

I could not open the Program because i get this error.



The Path the Tool is looking for would be C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\Havelock\Eigene Dateien\Electronic Arts\Die Sims 3\DCCache

I play the German Version.

Thanks, you actually answered a question I'd just asked someone else earlier today and was waiting for the answer. (I'd asked if the path in My Documents was localized.)

I've updated it to look in the correct location now, as well as not crashing if it doesn't find it.

Surely, you mean that this was updated 8/29 (August 29th), not 9/29 (September 29th)?

Picky picky! How do you know I don't have a time machine and came back from a month in the future to post an update? :P

Are you making the mod so my sims can do this too?

Here is my UserSTBL.txt `s content~

Hope the above data can help someone.

I'm gonna download it.

I am however hoping for one thing to be added that I do not think you can get from casual play. (Disregard if this is already there, i haven't run it yet, doing so shortly.) Name Strings. Last, Male, and Female (Separated, so I can put the right text in and not guess if this is a first or last name. x_x)

And I open it! And it's there! Hooray!!!!! :D

Using Stubble and I like it a lot. Some suggestions: if possible, a find/replace function would be useful. And a possibility to copy several rows at once and paste them in excel or other programs. Maybe a search function to show all strings with a certain word in (ex. "career") for easier finding of the strings.

Very clever idea, Tiger

Well I simply love this, but I'm concerned about how to extract a single set of keys and strings, how would you go about doing that? or do you have to package as the whole entire in game texts?

Yes!
This is what I need you!
Thanks :lovestruc


But I have a problem, I tried to translate from English into Arabic
It happened to me so
I think because the game does not support the Arabic language
So. If you know how to display the words in Arabic without (___ _ _)
Please tell me.
Thank you again.

Stubble (or the game itself, which uses UTF-8) might have an encoding issue with Arabic script. Unfortunately the creator of this tool hasn't logged into MTS for a while. There is a newer tool out called s3translate - perhaps you could try that one.

Thank you for your reply
But the program does not work with me
I mean, not to show the data for I translated

Thanks a ton for this! Really saved me time from creating a completely new .STBL file for my needs.

Please tell me what should I do

Shatha, for this to work, you need to actually know what you want to edit.

For example, let's say I make this TV Channel called "Family Fun Time". The ChannelName that the code references is called "FFT".

I would have to go under Gameplay>Excel>TVChannels and in the empty grid in the first coloumn I would enter in "FFT" and the next coloum I would enter in what I want the Pie menu to say, witch is "Family Fun Time".

You should take a look at my custom tv channel's tutorial at Chapter 3 since it tells you how to use Stubble.

I made a mod with the help of this tool changing about EVERY string in the game. But with Ambitions installed, it is no longer working, probably because of the new gameplay.package?
Is there any way to copy the edited strings from my .package into a new file extracted from the ambitions' gameplay-package, or to get my file work in the expansion?

(Sorry if my english is bad, I am not a native speaker)

@dear dori:
TigerM hasn't been online here since (Last Activity: 18th Sep 2009 03:37 AM)
Unfortunately...so this might not get updated.

Shame, it is so useful for text editing and it worked with World Adventures.
If I find a way to get my imported strings from existing text mods work with Ambitions, I will tell.

ITS ON THE TOP BEFORE THE WRITING