This is an encoding issue: Nonstandard characters have a pile of odd encodings that appears to differ between the 8-bit representations stored in NOTEPAD and the 16-bit representations used in-game. As most of the programmers here use standard keyboards and simply do not have keys for such characters, we cannot reproduce them easily. I can hack them into stblc if you could tell me where they appear in the game normally, but otherwise I have no idea how to even produce such a letter: No such button exists on my keyboard!

Yeah, I thought it would be something like this. When I travelled to German, in business, for a while, I had to use alt + the ASCII Dec code punched in on the numeric keypad, to be able to use them. I have no idea if this helps but the Dec ASCII code for the letters are as follows:

Å: 143
å: 134
Ä: 142
ä: 132
Ö: 153
ö: 148

So, keeping the alt key down and punching these numbers on the numpad should generate these letters.

I'm wondering if there's a way of replacing these letters with their ASCII code (in the correct ASCII format, whichever that might be here, of course) in the csv files, or something like that. I might be totally off here, but, as I said, I am a bit clueless when it comes to this.

Try setting the Encoding to UTF-8 in Notepad's Save As dialog.

I thought I did that, but as I fiddled about with missing quote marks quite a bit, somewhere along the line I must have missed it. Duh! It looks perfectly fine in s3pe now, so I'm sure it will in the game as well.

Thanks a bunch! I feel like such an idiot... *laughs*

Awesome work man. I reverse-engineered your updated mod, I see how you did it. But still looking forward to the completed tool.

New version uploaded.

Okay, clearly I am doing something wrong here but I opened the default string table, saved it to csv, opened the csv, changed what I want, yanked everything else out, saved it under a new name, now when I try to compile that csv to a stbl I get:

Loaded. Adding to STBL...
ERROR! An item with the same key has already been added.

Added to what? It didn't even save my file to a STBL yet.

That was my noob mistake. I've uploaded a new version that probably fixes it - now it checks whether the STBL already contains the key it's trying to add.

Ah okay. Works fine now. Thanks!

I can't really change the THOUSANDS of STBL entries, but I managed to change the opening text (for example, "Texture compositing teddy bears..." to "Getting ""BeatWave"" by Sidewinder because it rocks!" (Supposed to look like in-game: "Getting "BeatWave" by Sidewinder because it rocks!", but looked like this in-game: "Getting ""BeatWave"" by Sidewinder because it rocks_" Does Sims 3 not support exclamation marks with this tool's help? )

It is still pretty cool, and next time, I'll be using once again, Excel, to get a more advanced STBL using your tool. Thanks! ( Should be a thanks thread, rrgh! )

As I said above it's important that the character encoding is set to UTF-8. Excel mangles the files and doesn't let you set the right encoding. I found out the hard way too :\

You might be interested in trying Stubble. It's a self contained STBL editor (unlike this tool which only converts text files to a STBL format). I'm sure that it is much easier to use, especially if you only want to make a few small changes.

-trying Out...-
 

I'm already on trying it out...

And, it's SUCESSFULLY DOWNLOADED! I believe it might do its job... I can edit them directly in it. Thanks for the reference to it, channTL!

It is so easy to use! I don't know if it works, but I am trying to make my custom book be linked to a real phrase and NOT


Anyways,IT WORKED! It changed Gameplay/Excel into the book's actual title! This is so awesome! (screenshot shows how easy it is to use and change)

Ok, I'm trying to create my own name lists for my own personal use, and I was wondering if I could get a little noob help. I edited the csv files with my own names and created a new stbl from the csv files. Ok, I'm on track right? But now I'm not sure what to do?

I read your other comment, it sounds like you haven't created a new package yet (so yeah, File > New).

There is an FNV generator under Tools > FNV Hash so plug some unique text into that (like your name followed by "name list mod" or something) and copy the "FNV64" value to the clipboard. Then import the STBL, and set its type to "STBL 0x220557DA" and for the instance paste in the generated one.

Finally, change the first 2 bytes of the instance to 00 for English. Select the last 8 bytes of the instance, change the first two of those to 00 (to ensure your STBL is not overwritten by the original one when it loads; the last 8 bytes have to be a lower value than the game's) and save the package in your Mods\Packages\ folder.

ok, I followed your instructions but when I go to change the bytes of the instance, the "ok" button grays out and my only option is to "cancel"? Am I missing a step, or is the instance not right or something?

I'm not sure why it would do that except if the instance was too short. Do you have the latest s3pe?

If you're using s3pe, you need the 0x on the start - those aren't the first two digits. It's the two digits after the x.

Ah, I am so dumb. haha I was replacing the 0x. That was the problem. I saved the package in my mods/packages folder, so hopefully everything works. Thanks so much for the help. Sorry I'm programming illiterate.

How do I unpack the STBL files?

Look in Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\GameData\Shared\Packages. If you have a DeltaBuild0.package, open that in s3pe. Otherwise open FullBuild0.package.

The English STBL is named "Strings_ENG_US_0x...". You can click the Name column to sort the list alphabetically; just look for that name.

Then it's just a matter of exporting it to a file (not a package) and saving it somewhere.

I've uploaded a new version with string-key support, along with some career templates.

Very nice STBL utility Chann, it's much handier for many things than that simple editor that you may recall I made and posted in the Custom Sims forum.

Anyway, one small problem seems to have reappeared, the "ERROR! An item with the same key has already been added" message when attempting to export the US English STBL extracted from the DeltaBuild0.package .

I've successfully exported to CSV the English STBL extracted from the original FullBuild0.package and even the FullBuildEP1.package for the WA stuff, but the one extracted from DeltaBuild0.package is causing the error message.

Thanks again for a very useful tool, it's much appreciated. Keep up the good work!

I hate that error. I think it cropped up in a version of the s3pi library after the patch/EP came out. I've uploaded a new version to the original post which should fix it the problem with DeltaBuild0.package.

Cheers for the compliments

The new version works just fine for me too. Interesting that the STBL in DeltaBuild0.package contains so many strings from the WA EP, I would have thought they would all be located in the FullBuildEP1.package, but they're split between the two.

Anyway, thanks very much for the quick update!

Just in case channTL is still watching this threat and maintaining this very usefull tool:
Really nice work and very helpful. In fact it's the best tool I could find for my needs.
It would be perfect, if one could just drag one (or even better a list of) stbl/cvs file and get a cvs/stbl file with the same name back.
Could this feature be implemented?