You may want to try .net reflector.
First you will need .net such as 3.5
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...&displaylang=en

Then you will need .net Reflector
http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/

In addition get the "add-in" called "Reflexil"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/reflexil/

And of course you will need Peter L. Jones Tools:
http://www.simlogical.com/Sims3Tool...x.php?board=6.0

In addition you will need to examine THIS:
http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?...ms_3:0x073FAA07

Sorry mate, but every time I try to use that program, I get the good old "Sims3PackageExporter has stopped working" message.

I'm hoping not to have to download a bunch of other apps just to get a main one to work. If I can get this "TheSims3PackageExporter" to stop giving me error messages, I'll stick with that. Otherwise I'll consider the .net reflector

Also, love the 40K sig winter :P

Hmm that's too bad, it works for me. Tell you what, if you want you can pm me with your email, and I can mail ya the careers.xml file, you can edit it however you want, send it to me, and I'll package it up for ya.

You do have .net right?

No I don't. For some reason .net won't install. I downloaded it but the installation never started

I'll pass you my email, as it seems that Techno-Jeebus hates me right now :P

So Nanite was nice enough to send the careers.XML to me, and package it after I was finished. It was easy enough to change job titles, it was just a matter of finding that career in the alphabetical list, then spotting each rank.

However, after I got the .package file from him and used InstallHelperMonkey to install it to TS3, the game stopped functioning. If I try to place a new family, it loads and then suddenly I'm stuck in Neighborhood view with no UI and only the cursor and camera functions working.

If I load an existing family, several of the occupational lots become non-functional. Even ones that I didn't modify. My sims are reduced to a choice of about 2 or 3 careers. If anyone could shed some light on this, I'd be very thankful.

Ah, I tried changing the names in the XML too, and it scrambled all the text in game.

Basically, it's not that easy... Here's what I've worked out.

There's two moddable components to the careers: the job attributes, and the text. They're stored separately so that the text can be translated into different languages. When the game needs to display a job name, it looks first to the XML to find the appropriate key (e.g. "Receptionist1"). This key is used to look up the corresponding value in the STBL (String Table), in the form of "Gameplay/Careers/Career:Receptionist1". The STBL will spit out the appropriate string for the language: "Beverage Consultant", which is what gets displayed.

About 90% of the XML names are identical to the game text, as you've probably seen. Some of the XML names are different (like the example above).

What's the point of this explanation? When the name in the XML is changed, it causes errors because the new name is missing from the game's STBL.

In short, the XML can't be used to change names and descriptions. Only replacing the names in the STBL will, and unfortunately there aren't any editors capable of this yet. The XML can be used to change uniforms, wages and hours, because those are numerical values and do not depend on the STBL.

Well there's Echo's STBL editor, but it had no save function according to him. Or am I behind on the times and the state of the missing save function has changed, Echo?

Also, where would I look to find said STBL?

FullBuild0.package

You can use Postal to find it easily, Go to File > Search Filepath and paste 0x220557DA in the Type box. You'll get about 15 results. The English STBL should be the bottom one.

So... let me get this straight... in order to get a career mod to function wthout destroying my UI, I have to edit a file that I can't edit without screwing up the game...

...Where was the modability again? If Fullbuild can't be edited without damaging the game, and a career mod won't work without editing it, isn't that... you know... kind of a loophole?

Anyway, I seem to be missing said code entirely. Or at least, I can look it up on Postal, (There are 3 results for that code btw. Not 15) but I can't see it on S3PE. And that's after sorting it by numerical order. And I can't tell which is English. Plus the text is all encrypted anyway, so I'm not exactly capable of reading it after extracting a copy of it

It's perfectly moddable,the STBL can be extracted into its own .package like the other resources.

Even better, Karybdis mentioned earlier in this thread that you don't have to overwrite the entire STBL to make changes. Just the strings that you want to change. That makes compatability much less of a problem.



Maybe it's a filepath problem? In S3PI, tick "Display Resource Names" and "Sort", sort by name and look for this name:

Strings_ENG_US_0x000f16b00ba8342f

It's easy to miss amidst the thousands of resources I admit

I'll have a look for it when I get home from work. In the meantime, so to clarify...

I find 'Strings_ENG_US_0x000f16b00ba8342f' using S3PE (S3PI? Isn't it called Sims3PackageExplorer? That's what the link goes to)

I extract it to my desktop or some other location that's easy to find, edit it using, say, notepad, then use Postal to package it? Then install it with TS3InstallHelperMonkey?

Am I right, or did I butcher things? I remind you I have a child's aptitude for things like scripts, strings, codes, and technical procedures.

Okay, found it, now what do I do to edit this so that I can get my changes to work properly?

You'll have to use a hex editor. The problem is the way the text is stored, and finding the right string in the first place it gets really fiddly...that's why I'm waiting for a proper editor to come out.

sorry to be asking what may seem to be overly basic questions, but I'm absolutely clueless on the matter >.< So what's the difference between the editors already listed and the "hex" editor I guess we're waiting on?

Hoi. Let me try to clear things out for you.

There are a couple of hex-editors out there, so no need to wait. A hex editor is just convenient for editing bigger files because it doesn't load the whole file at once, it just load portions of it when you scroll down in the file. And he shows the binary code (since everything on a computer is binary... even this letters were truly numbers) in hex (thats why is called so) and in the "normal" view like this letters here.

You'd probably want to use a hex editor when the file size extends a given size (loading and saving can take some time with a normal editor) but you mustn't. Just use the S3PIDemoFE tool mentioned here somewhere, extract that 'Strings_ENG_US_0x000f16b00ba8342f' thingy and open it with the standart windows editor.

I did extract that string but it's all coded. It's impossible to read, being that it's in symbols rather than letters or numbers. I'm wondering how I would open it after extracting it so as to edit the file.

Hmm...are you sure you have extracted the right file? I've tested it before posting and I could read the content. I exportet the String thingy and it gave me a file called "S3_220557DA_00000000_000F16B00BA8342F_Strings_ENG_US_0x000f16b00ba8342f%%+STBL.stbl"

(haven't changed the name ). If you right-click that file you can chose to "open with" or something under windows and then look for the plain editor. The file should be around 4 MB.

If you got stuff like this :
";;à¶ì˜J/##àéá4C///à^%ç)###àŽB)³S4[4—4g;àDÉé…4—;/X[3÷™tñàï¾*Þ`³à ' ‰H*  àS_ADdÔ$[ˆ kˆ $_ˆ " ( I hope it is shown)
you've opened the wrong file.

That's exactly what I exported (it's the only "Strings_ENG_US" file in Fullbuild0 so it's hard to get wrong :P) and when I opened it with notepad, it was coded as you show above.

EDIT: Alright, tried again... ...Sort of worked this time. What I mean by 'sort of' is... well... take a look:

STBL ï‰ l¬ÓÇC¬I * * * * OÀIÉZ
¨ë S l e e p i n g i n i s a t h i n g o f t h e p a s t w h e n t h i s m e c h a n i c a l m o n s t r o s i t y e n t e r s y o u r l i f e . P u t t h o u g h t s o f s m a s h i n g o u t o f y o u r m i n d , b e c a u s e t h i s t e m p e r a m e n t a l t i m e p i e c e c o m e s...

etc...

So you can see how this just isn't working out at all


Also, if the job descriptions for careers are hidden in here, then that's going to be impossible to edit without -some- kind of tool.

You can't do this atm without dipping into techie stuff at least a little Including using a hex editor. Here's what a hex editor is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_editor

It's not all that complex, if you spend a little time reading on how data is stored on computers.

There are lots of free or shareware hex editors available on the Internet. I've used this one: http://www.x-ways.net/winhex/index-m.html

So... in other words... I'm completly SoL on doing this myself...

Trust me, I've TRIED to understand computer language (Computish?) but I fail. Miserably. It's hard to learn when the thing you're studying gives you splitting headaches of frustration only seconds into reading it. That and I retain little to nothing when it comes to technical stuff. Give me an engine, okay, I can do that. Give me a computer and I can put parts into it. But programming and all that... you might as well be putting a monkey or ape in front of the computer

Well I guess then if there's anyone that could do the whole "Getting it to work" part for my changes, let me know. I'll send you the modified careers.package for your use. I've only changed the ranks in the Police and Military careers at the time. Just need to get them running. This civvy ranking system is driving me crazy.

Don't give up ! ... it's just 1 / 0 ... Hex is nothing different, just another interpretation.

See the Matrix ...
(sorry for that )

The Matrix wasn't even 1's and 0's... They were wierd bunged up symbols most of the time :P

Redguard is right, it's just another interpretation. Binary is just 0 and 1, a single Bit. So a decimal '3' is '10' in binary, a '4' would be '11' and so on. Hex is another interpretation, consisting of 4 Bits, so a decimal 3 would be a 3 in hex too. In hex you can "store" numbers from 0 up to 15 which can get a bit confusing because we're used to the decimal system and that can only store 0-9 in one number, so hex stores the ten as an 'A', 11 as a 'B' up to 'F'.
Since a plain symbol in any computer consists of 8 Bits (a Byte) a hex-represantation consits of 2 hex numbers like 'FF' for 255 or '00' for zero. See the range? From 0-255. One Byte can store numbers from 0-255. It's completely meaningless if I write '11111111' in binary or 'FF' in hex, but you can read it better in hex, that's why hex-editors do exists.
Let's go a little bit farer. Since the computer works with at least one Byte every letter must be coded so the compuet knows what he should display. He can't understand that I now write the letter 'a', for him it's just the code '01100001'. Or '61' in hex

Ahh... shame on me and on my brabbling, sorry for that.

Okay. You have opened the right file and you can try to edit it. Lets check it out. You can see that there is one space between every letter, right? It's somewhat creepy, can't say why. The whole file gives me a bad feeling to be honest, so I can't promise that it'll work... but hey, what can go wrong?

If you have opened the file press CTRL+F to search fo a string and type "P o d i u m P o l i s h e r" for example (do not forget the space between the letters. Now search until you'll find something like "_\¥8ø]- P o d i u m P o l i s h e r .Ê欅þ". After that there should stand another P o d i u m P o l i s h e r, the first is for the male one, the second for the female (it has something to do with other languages. In german for example its "...Putzer" and "...Putzerin".
Now try to replace the P of the Podium with, say B in both namens and save the file.

After that open the S3PIDemoFe tool thingy and chose "File->New", then "File->Import" and import your changed Strings_ENG_US. Save it under your "SimRoot\Mods\Packages" folder and do a little praying while starting the Sims. Get your Sim a new job in the City Hall, hopefully as a Bodium Polisher.

Like I said, I do not know if it'll work, but I do wish you luck. After you checked it and it works you can try to change the names to whatever you like (but remember the space between the letters) and try if that'll work too.

P.S.: All the steps mentioned here have nothing to do with programming. But you're right, programming can give you a headache... but no pain - no gain Don't give up, it's just logic, pure and simple. And it's trainable like your sim gets better while playing chess.

P.P.S.: The search string should be "P_o_d_i_u_m___P_o_l_i_s_h_e_r" whereas every _ is a space. It's not correctly displayed in the post.