With the patch yesterday (and all of the future ones), I'd like to be able to search for differences in all of the files in the old vs current XML directory, including all subdirectories. I'm on WinXP and use Notepad++ for my text editing needs, which only seems to have a plugin for file comparison (not multi-file).

Can anyone recommend a good tool or plugin for that? I'm not married to NP++, can switch editors if that would make sense (ideally I'd like to have all the search fu that e.g. BBEdit has to offer, but that is OS X only).

Tips appreciated!

WinMerge can check multiple files. I was testing it out myself, but I found several difference checker tools to look into besides that one.

I've written a little utility in VB that lets you select all the XML files that you have in your mod (hopefully you have those all organized in neat separate folders), and the folders with the old and new extracts. It will then launch WinMerge for each of the files so you don't have to look for each individual file in the extracts folders.

If anyone's interested, I'd be glad to share it. It's going to save me a ton of time.

I wouldn't mind trying it out. Right now I have DropIt setup to search for the new version of my files and put a copy of them in a separate folder, but it is a little on the slow side. (I think it took it an hour.)

That looks handy - we even have a downloads category for those : http://www.modthesims.info/browse.p...=139&showType=1 - its empty right now, but you could start it You also get this rather cute achievement

@leefish since this is purely a modding tool (not stuff like LotExpander, CC management etc) I'd be in favor of a post in Create > Tools instead =). I believe the average downloader has no idea what to do with this .. and the actual target audience may not see it in Downloads. (We can still hand out achievements manually, can't we?)

@scumbumbo that sounds very useful! =)

Both work for me pbox; we have all the milkshape plugins that Wes made in threads and not in Programs and Utilities, while CatOfEvilGenius uploaded all her milkshape plugins to Programs and Utilities.

I just thought that scumbumbo might want to upload as a boost towards bypass privileges (no queue wait time with bypass). Of course the achievement can be added manually

I should get the chance to upload this after work tonight, although I have an idea for some changes that I might make it is already useful as is I think. At least it was for me

I agree with pbox, I'll just put it on the create forum. No sense in confusing the utils section with stuff that's only for a modder - especially as I only have VS Express, which doesn't support making installers. Doesn't really need one, I just dropped the EXE into the same folder with velocitygrass's XML extractor.

Uploaded the util to Modding Tools. Hope it's useful for at least (to pick an arbitrary number) four people.

Thank you! This will surely be useful once the next patch arrives =)

Uploaded an improved version tonight which searches subfolders, so if you have XML files in the mod in multiple categories you can just select the top level extract folders.