Complete Guide to Career Modding for Beginners! - Q & A Page
 

Welcome to the Question & Answers Page.

The Career Tutorial has been moved to the Sims Wiki found here: Career Modding Guide Link

If you have an questions about the Complete Guide to Career Modding for Beginners!, then please ask away! Im sure someone if not myself can help you find the solution. Also and comments, bugs or suggestions for improvements etc, are always welcome!



(Could an admin please link the tutorial from the wiki to the tutorial page on this site, Thanks)

Nice Tutorial
 

It really got to try this modding! I hope I don’t miss things up! :D

Holy pickles, thank you so much!

You even added pictures to make it clear to understand. Thank you so much!

Can I just point out you no longer need to open the Grid to export and import dlls? You can right-click on them and use Export DLL and Import DLL . I should have updated the help lol!

Still reading through this, but may I suggest that you write this in the wiki rather than in the forum? You have more formatting options in the wiki, and you can upload your images directly rather than using imageshack (this becomes a problem for the tutorial if imageshack removes the images). You can then just link to the wiki tutorial and have this forum thread for QA (see other tutorials in Modding for examples).

Ok thanks for the comments, I'll have a look at the wiki format + the dll file stuff

Edit:
Yes you are right, you can just right click and import DLL silly me! Ill change the guide.

Pretty.

Thank you for producing this in-depth and user friendly guide and filling in the gap with the MTS tutorials on this topic for the Sims 3. I have an idea for a custom career in the upcoming Showtime expansion pack and this guide will be very helpful in attempting to create that custom career.

Bookmarked.

Update: Moved tutorial to its own Wiki page, changed the guide to include DLL import, and made this post a Q & A page instead.

Thanks Creon for the tutorial, I appreciate the attention to detail! One question I have is in regards to metrics. I have the Late Night expansion pack and was planning on integrating fame/star ratings into my custom career. I was wondering if you knew what the coding would look like for that or how I should go about finding that code?

Nice one. How hard would it be to use a new item that doesn't have the EA careers attached to it?
For example, a religious career would be unlikely to share a career with an existing building.

Ah, fantastic - this is a much-needed tutorial. I'm not sure what your request regarding linking is, though - could you explain?

First of all, thank you so much for this tutorial - it's very concise and easy to follow

I've tried it several times, being as careful as possible to follow the steps exactly but every time my custom career continues to show up as JoinCareer[numbers] even after I've updated the STBL list with the numbers listed. Also, the career works in terms of correct hours/pay etc. but none of the text is showing up. I'm guessing this is a problem with my STBL file... any ideas on what I might be doing wrong?

How exactly do you make a promotion level 10 like Level 10 for the Music Career Rock Branch/Rock Star with no set hours, being able to attend any day and has no metrics so you are able to perform/attend the rabbithole location at any time you wish and perform the career role like perform concerts answering to no one and supporting yourself (see attached image)?

Great tutorial, it's really clear and easy to follow.
I've got a problem. I've followed the instructions to the letter but I can't get my career to show up at all It won't show on any rabbithole at all. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

I'm presently stuck on the <KEY> Lines section of the tutorial. With the <KEY> Lines section, it's not clear in the tutorial whether you have to HASH anything in that second STBL file or not like you do with the 1st STBL. I looked at the Tennis career and it seems to indicate that you DO NEED to hash some of the lines given that in the Tennis mod, the instance numbers for the English strings (2nd STBL file) are different to the instance numbers under unhashed strings (1st STBL file).

Tennis Career
 

I tried to download the Tennis Career for some reference of what I'm going to do and I put it in my Mods folder but it doesn't work. Is there an explanation for this?

Have you got Twallan's Career mod in your Mods folder? That's needed for the careers to show up
I solved my problem (no idea how, it just started working itself) but now I've got exactly the same issue as LilaLipstick. Does anyone else know what might be going wrong?

For those who are having trouble with the STBL part of the tutorial. I had the same problems a lot of you are having (missing text, numbers still being there, etc.) so I did things a little different and got everything to work properly. This is only if you have no intention of converting to other languages because while you could probably do it this way the other method is faster if you can get your head around it.

First of all go to resource - add in S3pe.

We're going to add a new STBL so set you new resource like this.

Type: STBL 0x220557DA
Group: 0x00000000

Check use resource name and name it something like MyCareerName.STBL and hit FNV64 and your instance should be filled out.

DO NOT hit OK just yet.

Go to your instance in my case was 0xB02D2720ADB57DB9 and chance the first two numbers after the x to match your language code. 00 is English. So 0xB02D2720ADB57DB9 becomes 0x002D2720ADB57DB9.

Now hit OK.

Now right click on your resource and choose edit STBL to bring up the STBL resource editor.

In the little box above where it says add change delete paste your first string from the tutorial. The section called The string resources.

So the firsts line is

<STR>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:BLANK</STR> '''- Should be your career tile: e.g. “CareerList:Tennis”'''

You want the part between the <STR></STR> so past Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:BLANK into the box and replace BLANK with the name of your career and hit add. A new hash will be added on the left and you would type the name of your career on the right. I'd skip over the second string Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareerNoCareer just because you have to change it later on. So skip over that and continue with Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:BLANKOffer Do this for the rest of the tutorial...

It's pretty self explanatory once you get past the tone and skill part. Just remember this once you reach Gameplay/Excel/Careers/BLANK:BLANK it's pretty much the name of your career followed by the level you're on for example BLANK:BLANK would be MyCareerName:Level

Gameplay/Excel/Careers/BLANK:EntryLevel - BLANK would be MyCareerName the text would be a description of the job at that level.

Gameplay/Excel/Careers/BLANK:EntryLevel_Female - BLANK would be MyCareerName, the text on the left would be the female description of the job at level. This is usually the same as the male description unless you use gender identifiers in the description. Ie Ball Boy, Ball Girl.

Save the STBL by hitting Save and save your package. It's good to do this occasionally anyways just in case you have a power outage or something. It's kinda time consuming either way you make your STBL so it would suck to lose your progress.

Once you write down your numbers from in the game add another string at the end. This is the one we skipped over. If you didn't you can simply delete it by highlight the hash and hitting delete. For this string put
Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareer[YourNumbers] Your Numbers would be the ones you got in the game. Since the STBL editor will make the same hash as FNV Hash when you enter the string it's not necessary to do that part. Your text on the right would be Join MyCareer Career for example Join Tennis Career.

Save Your STBL.

Delete the two other STBL files from the package.

Save your package and your text should now hopefully be correct in the game.

Creon's tutorial isn't overly bad. It's just that one section gets a little confusing for a lot of people. I followed it better than any other career tutorial I've read right up until the STBL. Now I'm only a matter of filling out the job descriptions away from having a fully working career. Another tip for those of you editing the STBL the way I did. If you don't have your job description ready at the time you're editing just put *job name description male* and *job name description female* for those lines so you don't forget what those strings are or get confused.

Hopefully, this will help some of you.

I believe you should then be able to enable your career for other languages by running it through STBL duplicator, though I haven't tested this on careers specifically - you would set the default language to be whichever one you've already made STBLs for, then just drag and drop the file over the duplicator exe.

Question about job descriptions in custom career mod
 

So right now I'm following the guide here: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorial:_Complete_Guide_to_Career_Modding_for_Beginners!

And I've gotten stuck on the section for doing string resources. I'm trying to figure out exactly where and how I put the description in. For instance on one line it says to put the first tone title with desciption added and gives the example of "MeetFellowAthletesDescription", so my question is do I put that and then just copy and paste my description in so that it's like "MeetFellowAthletesDesciption: Meet up with fellow athletes to discuss tennis" or what? I'm confused at this point. Please help.

You'd add that during the <KEY> Lines part of the tutorial.

<KEY>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:BLANKDescription</KEY> ~ BLANK is MeetFellowAthletes with Desciption on the end MeetFellowAthletesDesciption
<STR>BLANK</STR> ~ BLANK would be the text you want to appear as the description "Meet fellow athletes and talk about tennis" without the quotes.

A lot of people are getting confused in that section. Perhaps something like CAREERTITLE:JOBLEVEL1 would be easier than BLANK this and BLANK that. It might also save a little time when editing in notepad since you could use find and replace to do most of the work since you know CAREERTITLE should always be Tennis so you can replace all occurrences of CAREERTITLE with Tennis instead of doing it one at a time since BLANK will not always equal CAREERTITLE.

Since I've started to understand a little more about how this works I'll try making a career following the tutorial completely later today since I have one that's being difficult and not showing in the game for some reason and I can't determine why exactly since I've followed the changing of the resources part to a t and it never shows up for me to get the numbers for the join career part so I'm not sure if the problem is how I did the STBL, in the XML or if it's just a problem with Showtime in general since the other career was made before installing Showtime and while the STBL was goofy due to confusion with the tutorial at least it did work in game, so if it's the STBL I know how to fix it if it goes screwy again but it shouldn't since I'm starting to grasp what Creon is talking about with all that stuff. I couldn't grasp it when using Twallan's career tutorial either so it's a bit to get your head around.

Edit. I was having the same problem as missyhissy and could not for the life of me figure out what the hell was going wrong and causing it not to show up in the game. I actually woke up this morning at 2am because I was having nightmares about how much the fact that it wasn't working and I had no clue why was pissing me off. If you're having this problem download Error Trap and it should give you a little bit of an idea. Turns out when I made my first career I actually screwed up in just the right place to make it work <TableName> Should be your career title with Offer added: ie: “TennisOffer” should actually just be your career name. My Grocery career I put just Grocery and that's the one that works. When I went to do my Professional Wrestling career I put ProfessionalWrestlingOffer and it would not show up in the game at all. Error Trap told me I had no table name which I know I put so I had a look at the Grocery career to see what I did different and noticed the lack of Offer on the end. What the hell it's not working so let's take Offer off an leave just ProfessionalWrestling tried it in the game and there we go join career long ass number right where it belongs. Now I can go back to bed.

Hopefully this will help some of you who are getting confused. You can use find and replace in Notepad or Notepad++ to do most of your editing on the string lines. Instead of copy and pasting the string resources posted in the tutorial use the following part between the CODE tags.

CAREERNAME = the name of your career "Tennis"
COWORKERTITLE = the name you gave your coworkers "FellowTennisPlayers"
COWORKERMETRIC = what you put as your coworker metric title "TennisPlayers"
TONE1 = your meet coworkers tone "MeetFellowTennisPlayers"
TONE2 = your hang with coworkers tone "HangWithFellowTennisPlayers"
SKILLBOOSTING1 = any custom skill boosting tone you might have added "WorkOnSkill"
SKILLBOOSTING2 = if you added a second skill boosting tone it would go here if you've added no tones you can just delete these lines. I didn't put tone because find and replace will get it with TONE1 and TONE2 so it became a problem.
JOBLEVEL1 = the first level of your career. You can just keep replacing the digit from 1 to A for each level of your career. A would be level 10 because find and replace doesn't distinguish between 1 and 10 so when you do level1 it will replace level10 except for the 0.

Remove the spaces from between the lines otherwise it might not work. It's not posted that way but the code tags seem to have made it space between lines.



Now when you get to your Keys you copy and past each line into FNVHash and get the hash for FNV64 when you calculate your text. That would go in your <KEY></KEY> BLANK for each STR you hash.

When you go to do the Key to tell it which text to display you simply copy and paste the string text from your unhashed keys document.

<KEY>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:Tennis</KEY>
<STR>BLANK</STR> ~ the blank would be the text you wish to be displayed instead of Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:Tennis which would be Tennis.

<KEY>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:TennisOffer</KEY>
<STR>BLANK</STR> ~ Blank would be what appears in the newspaper or on the computer when the job comes up "So you think you want a career in Tennis? Well grab you balls and your racket and give it a go!"

PromotionLevel# and PromotionLevel#_Female are the description of the job "Working as a Racket Cleaner may be hard work, etc." You can use the male job description for both in most cases unless you use a gender identifier in the text ie ball boy/ball girl.

Hopefully, that'll clear some of the confusion up a little. Personally, I prefer the way I described for the STBL since I find it faster and have no intention of ever converting to a different language so but the other method does work it's just getting past the confusion of what should be wear. You can actually use the posted template for both methods of doing the STBL file which saves a little more time either way.

Thanks Thomas, but I'm still a little confused on the Strings Resources English part. I'm good with the <KEY> part for the actual job, but still confused about the actual tones I'm supposed to be putting in. Primarily where it says to put <KEY>GameplayBLANK:BLANK<KEY> or stuff like that. Do I just replace the entire line with the hash number (ex. <KEY>0x794447343</KEY>) or do I put something like <KEY>Gameplay0x794447343</KEY> in it's place?

The key in the first part is the hashed version of the text you put in for the string.

<KEY>0xD330291AEDEA5A43</KEY>
<STR>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:CAREERNAME</STR>

Where 0xD330291AEDEA5A43 is the FNV64 hash of the text string Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:CAREERNAME that's what you would save as your Strings [YourCareerTile] UnhashedKeys

When it comes to the second part Strings [YourCareerTitle] English the string in your unhashed keys document becomes the <KEY> in the second document so you would copy over each line replacing <KEY>BLANK</KEY> with the <STR></STR> from the other document. The <STR>BLANK</STR> line would now be what you want the text to display whenever the game brings up Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:CAREERNAME

<KEY>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:CAREERNAME</KEY>
<STR>My Career</STR>

If you leave the <STR> blank it won't show up or will show up as Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:CAREERNAME and if you leave the BLANK in there it will just say BLANK when it appears in game. It's confusing I know. I've been around and was part of the first attempts to add custom text to the game and I still kinda look at all that STBL stuff and go huh. It's like trying to read Greek upside down and backwards.

That actually made alot of sense, haha. Thanks for the response.

Glad I could help.

I need help. The career shows up fine in game, but it's called JoinCareer16648 and so forth, even after I did the last step of the tutorial. None of the descriptions work either, it's all blank. Anyone have any advice on what might be wrong?

Sounds like you might have made an error when translating your keys. In S3pe right click on your STBL and choose edit STBL. Do you have any blanks next to the numbers? If so that is most likely your missing text in game. A lot of people are getting confused in that section of the tutorial and end up with the text being blank or mixed up.

It could also be that you didn't change the first two digits of your STBL's instance to match your game language. I'm assuming it's English so your instance should be whatever FNV64 generated with the first four digits being 0x00 followed by the rest of your instance number except for the first 2 digits which you replaced with 00.

Now I can't get the career to show up in game. I've done everything right, including renaming the <table> thing or whatever. And still it won't show up.

When you renamed your career did you name it .career or .careers? And did you change it in your dll xml file? Although it shouldn't be that because you said it was working so unless you made changes that should be correct. I've had a career go missing because I used .career instead of .careers but like I said unless you renamed it that shouldn't be the problem if it was working. I'm not sure what it could be but if you run Error Trap it should give you a text file in the Sims 3 folder in My Documents that might hold some clues. Look for the lines that contain the name of your careers and tones xmls and whatever comes after them is usually the error. For example you might see something like this





Errors will also appear with [E] in front of them but not always since when my career had errors I don't believe it did have the [E] in front of it but someone else's that I'm using gives me an error in the game at load and shows up as [E] because it's out of date and is in need of updating.

If you can't figure it out from looking at it you can post the contents of the script error file and maybe I or someone more knowledgeable that I can tell you what's wrong.

This is what I got, but no idea what it means.

Found CareerFile = 1 [E]Royal_Court.Careers: Unknown Careers File 35849411900969

Found ToneFile = 1 [E]Royal_Court.Tones: Unknown Tones File 35849411900969: No BookFile Table 18201735987147: No BookFile Table 35849411900969: No SocializingFile Table

Have a look in your numbers.dll.xml which is probably named 35849411900969.dll xml at the lines and <Tones></Tones>, <Careers></Careers> should contain the name of your careers xml which in your case looks like it should be <Careers>Royal_Court.Careers</Careers> and your <Tones></Tones> should be <Tones>Royal_Court.Tones</Tones>, you might have made a typo when editing it. The best way is to just take the text from both your careers and tones xml and paste it in notepad so you can copy it back over without mistakes when you add it to the dll xml. I get the same error for ElliotDX's Gamer career and just having a quick look at it I can see he put career and not careers which is most likely the problem there. I'll be back after I try and fix his career and hopefully I'll have more information to help figure out what's going wrong with yours.

Edit. Well, that was unproductive. I still can't figure out why his isn't working even when it should be. Actually, the more I look the more baffled I become because I have other careers in my game that work perfectly fine even though everything I've experienced in creating my own tells me they shouldn't because mine wouldn't work when I did it that way. I wouldn't be surprised if your problem is something so mind boggling stupid that it shouldn't even be an issue yet is. These things usually are.

I did everything correctly but I can't even join my career ingame...I set rabbit hole as Theatre and there's nothing there, I changed it to Stadium and same thing.

Did you try running error trap? That might give you some clue where the problem lies.

I need some more help. I figured I'd give errortrap a shot but it doesn't give me a readout, even though I have the right patch and everything. I was wondering if anyone who is a better man than me could have a look at my career file, see what I'm doing wrong?

Sure. Just upload it somewhere and send me a private message and I'll look into it tomorrow. Odd that error trap doesn't give you a log though. Usually it ends up in My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 with a title like ScriptError_UserName__04-07-2012__16-03-47__97C79190.xml

I'm having the same problem as 86caprice had. My career is still showing as a number and all of the text is blanked. I changed the English String ID to have the two 00's and I don't see any blank lines in that or the string ID. Tone for the career are there but don't have any text either (except for Business As Usual).
Is there anything else I can check for that may be causing my problem?

Everything else seems to be working fine. The metrics and wages are showing and the technicalities seem to be in order.

It seems everyone has the same problem when doing the STBL part of the tutorial. They get confused as to what goes where when filling in the keys and strings and thus end up with missing strings or the wrong string in the wrong place. I've made a clarified version of that file in post 23 so you could try that or when all else fails (or if you're like me just do it that way to begin with) you can add the strings manually as I described in post 19..

Whoops...using that method did work. Sorry for not trying that first. Thanks for the help!

What do I need to do to make my sims have uniforms to work? Suits like your sims wear in the Business career?

The first thing you need is CmarNYC's Sim Outfitter to make the custom outfit which I assume is what you want to do. You extract the CASP 0x034AEECB for each part of the outfit using S3PE then add it to Sim Outfitter. Save your outfit with a name ie BusinessCareerMaleLevel1 and import the SIMO into your career file. Then in your career.xml add the following lines to each level or any level you want to use the outfits.

<OutfitMale></OutfitMale>
<OutfitFemale></OutfitFemale>
<OutfitMaleElder></OutfitMaleElder>
<OutfitFemaleElder></OutfitFemaleElder>

Obviously, if you don't have outfits for an age/gender and just want them to use their everyday clothing you don't need to add the lines for that. Once you have those lines added put the name of your new outfit between them.

<OutfitMale>BusinessCareerMaleLevel1</OutfitMale>
<OutfitFemale>BusinessCareerFemaleLevel1</OutfitFemale>
<OutfitMaleElder>BusinessCareerElderMaleLevel1</OutfitMaleElder>
<OutfitFemaleElder>BusinessCareerElderFemaleLevel1</OutfitFemaleElder>

Save your changes and your outfit should be used when you go to work. However, you may have to leave and rejoin the career if you already have a Sim in that career. If you have any problem with where things go you can have a look at my professional wrestling career which uses a custom outfit all the way thru.

A little warning about Sim Outfitter. Sometimes you may have to start over or rely on voodoo to get it to save.

First of all, thank you so much ThomasRiordan - I was able to get my careers working perfectly using your method!

I was wondering if anyone knows how to add fame star metrics like the ones in Late Night? I'd like to make a career that would require Sims to become famous as they progress.

ETA: Never mind, I opened up the GameplayData and found it. If anyone's interested it's

<Metric1>CelebrityLevel</Metric1>
<Mappings1>0,0,0</Mappings1>

Alright, so I have a problem with the "Join Career[Random Numbers] thing. I swear I've done everything correctly to try and get the right career name to show up, but it's still showing me the numbers. I've also tried ThomasRiordan's method to fix that, but nothing about it changed. All the text and the metrics of my career work perfectly fine except for the fact that the actual career name isn't showing up.
The only problem I had with Creon's instructions was the last part that says, "Go back to S3PE and “Right click” on your UnhashedKeys string file, then go to “Edit STBL” this brings up the “STBL Resource Editor” window. Click on the second file in the left list, this should show: Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareerNoCareer in the right window and the value in the bottom box."
That would be well and dandy if there were a second file in the left list. The only thing I'm seeing is "0x[Random Numbers]: Gameplay/Excel/Careers/Tribute:PromotionLevel10_Female" and in the right box it says the same thing but without the 0x[Random Numbers].
Have I done something wrong with my UnhashedKeys file?

Are you putting Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareerNoCareer as your unhashed string? If so it should be Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareer with the numbers you get from the in game string when you click join career so instead of Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareerNoCareer or JoinCareerNoCareerNumbers it would be Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareer345678910092356434 or whatever number shows up in the game for your career. S3PE doesn't actually show Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareerNoCareer it'll show a number. I've hashed that twice and it comes up as 0x2F81C7C27817D161 for me so that might be what it is in the list. If you post the text from your unhashed key list I might be able to spot what you're doing wrong. If all else fails you can upload the file somewhere like MediaFire, send me a PM and I'll have a look at it when I get a chance.

(I've got several versions of my career where I've used the different techniques just to see if any of them work!)
For the version where I strictly followed Creon's instructions, the only thing showing up in the STBL Resource Editor is as follows:
"0xA9397804052A9815: Gameplay/Excel/Careers/Tribute:PromotionLevel10_Female" shows in the box on the left while "Gameplay/Excel/Careers/Tribute:PromotionLevel10_Female" shows in the box on the right. I do not know what to do with this. (My random numbers from the game are 16957055448146386482, if that helps any.)
Then, for the version where I used your (ThomasRiordan) instructions to make the single STBL, I was a bit confused as to what I was doing exactly, as well. I basically took everything from the <STR> lines in my previous UnhashedKeys text file and pasted them in order into the little box above the "Add", "Change", and "Delete" buttons (excluding the actual <STR> parts like you said to do) where I had them hashed into the lines of random numbers. Then the next few parts of instructions confused me on what to put in the righthand box. I just kind of typed in whatever I had in the <STR> lines for my "Strings [Career] English" text (the corresponding descriptions for each of the <STR> lines in the UnhashedKeys text) because that's what I could best figure out what I was being told to do. Then, at the very end, I typed in "Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareer16957055448146386482" and had the little box hash it for me to get another set of random numbers and then in the righthand box, I typed "Join Tribute Career". (Tribute is the name of my career.)
Am I completely screwing with everything the totally wrong way? Because I have a feeling that's what's happening...

It's early so forgive me if I'm getting confused on what you're saying. What it sounds like to me is you're seeing something like this in the STBL.



What you would do is highlight the Gameplay/Excel/Careers/Tribute:PromotionLevel10_Female and delete that replacing it with the name for the highest level of your career. Here's how I did mine...



If I'm totally confused and everything is right except for the numbers part there's a few things you could try. The first is checking to see if you changed the instance of your STBL to match your language if English the first four digits of the instance should be 0x00. If that's correct you can try deleting your cache files; CASPartCache, compositorCache, scriptCache, simCompositorCache and seeing if that works. You said there is no second line in your STBL where the original Gameplay/Careers/GetJobInRabbitHole:JoinCareerNoCareer would be so you shouldn't have to delete that if it's not there. The other thing you can try is running Error Trap and seeing if the career has errors any where else that might be causing it not to work properly. A handy little text file will be placed in your My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3 folder which could provide some clues.

I'll try to make a video tutorial for careers over the weekend. Maybe, visual aid will help a lot of people since everyone seems to get messed up on the STBL part.

How do you have titles for each gender? For example, the Acting/Directing career with Late Night has Best Boy for males and Best Girl for females. I see how you change the descriptions, but I can't work out how to do the titles. Any help would be appreciated

To be honest I have no idea. Perhaps Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerName:JobName_female from looking thru the careers.xml it doesn't seem EA defines the titles thru that. Unfortunately, I have no clue how to open the STBL where it would tell me what the actual hash is for the careers would be in order to tell you exactly how to do it.

Okay, thanks anyway for responding! I'll have a fiddle sometime and see if I can work something out :D

ETA: Another question. Two of my careers are based at the Business and Journalism rabbithole. Am I able to add another rabbithole for them to be added to? Or can I only put one there?

Thanks!

The Unhashed Keys STBL
 

I have a question regarding the unhashed keys. Is the stbl supposed to remain in the file? I ask this question because I've opened several other custom career packages that have been shared online and I see no unhashed keys file. I was wondering if that particular stbl disappears after game play or if you are supposed to manually delete it. Or am I just clueless. lol.

Mine all seem to stay, so I'd leave them in

I followed all the steps and my career isn't showing up in game at all. I'm about to use errortrap and will edit this with the results. I was just going to send ThomasRiorden a pm with my file but I couldn't figure out how to attach files via pm, so I'm attaching it here.

EDIT: I have no idea how to make ErrorTrap work - I put it in my Mods folder but I have no script error xml document from today. (I have a ton from yesterday because my game kept crashing from some bad cc)

EDIT 2: I managed to make my career appear and now the numbers won't go away, and all my text is missing. Also, does anyone know if my career should appear on the set career on the mailbox?

So I got my career to work and it all worked perfectly until my sim reached level 4 in the career track. Now the job performance bar won't move at all, it's completely frozen, even with the "Work Hard" setting enabled. Any ideas what might be causing this? Edit: It seems it was just a temporary bug, it worked properly the next time my sim went to work.

Also, if I want my skill tone to first appear at level 3, how do I do this? Currently, it exists from the beginning at level 1.

I'd like to be able to include the Lectures metric that the Education career has from Ambitions. Does anyone know how/where I can find the coding for it?
Many thanks

Level 6 in the Education career has this coding:

<Metric4>GiveLectures</Metric4>
<Mappings4>-1,0,4</Mappings4>

Go to Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin\Gameplay and open GameplayData.package with S3PE. The careers are located in Careers.xml

Ahh, that's perfect, thanks!

Help?
 

I don't know what it is, but I can't get my career to load in-game. I'm also not sure how to use ErrorTrap, so I can't check my problem. Any advice?

Do you have Twallan's Careers mod installed? Other than that, you might have missed a BLANK somewhere.

Does anyone know how we do a split career, such as the Law Enforcement or Music careers?

I went looking through my files and filled out all the blanks and still nothing. I also checked and I have Twallan's Career mod installed, so I can't figure out what's wrong. Would someone like take a look at it and help me? If so, I'll attach a link in the next post I make or this one.

Sure, I'll have a look for you

Thanks a lot!
 

Thanks a ton! If you need any other files, please ask.

From a look at the file, I see a few things
1. In your Tones file, there is a BLANK: <Skill1>BLANK</Skill1>
2. I think the spaces in you Careers file could be causing an issue.
3. There doesn't seem to be anything in the UnhashedKeys file
4. Neither the UnhashedKeys nor the English file have been renamed and FNV hashed to make them unique.

Did you follow ThomasRiordan's way of doing the English file?

Has anyone worked out how to make the part time jobs available for teens?

Can someone please clarify how you complete the final step (where you copy down the number and stuff).

I've done everything up to the end and it still doesn't work. When I go to the rabbit hole it just says "Join Career [RANDOM NUMBER HERE]".

I copied the number down, put the STR into the FNV and hit calculate and I got the hash. I replace the "NoCareer" with the "JoinCareer[Numbers]. Then I replaced the hash with the one that I calculated, saved and put the package (with the loader) in the folder.

When I go in game it just comes up with the "JoinCareer[Numbers] crap and the only thing that comes up is the picture with no description or job title.

Can anyone help me?

Have you also put the Numbers in your English STBL? You need to make sure the numbers are in the English STBL too, or it will stay as the numbers. That should do it

Thanks, I made the corrections but still nothing. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, so I'll keep checking and working on it. Thanks for the help! ♥

If you want to send me the file again, I can take a look for you, if you want?

Did anyone ever work out how to make gender-specific job titles?

I haven't done yet. It's the next thing on my list to test after custom opportunities

I worked for hours perfecting my career and followed all the steps, but whenever I go in game to the rabbit hole, my career comes up as "JoinCareer[mynumber]" and the text refuses to show up. It said there was a script error with Nraas Career, so i know it's my job. could someone please help? :/

Did you follow ThomasRiordan's method of creating the English STBL strings? I had the same problem as you until I used his method and that worked

Oh, how is that going? I'm at a loss as to how you make the careers more complex than just having the basic frame as described in the tutorial

And yeah, I find making custom careers is pretty hit and miss for me. My first one took several attempts starting from scratch because I just couldn't work out where it was going wrong. I think I tend to get impatient in the more arduous sections and try to speed it up, only to make a mistake somewhere.

I've been looking for an in depth tutorial! Thank you~
Is there any way to have the career branch out? Like how the law enforcement career branches out to forensics and super spy or how the music career has rock and classical?
Thanks for such an awesome tutorial!

LeFey: It's been a bit of hit and miss at the moment. More script errors than I can count!
gumi18: Yes, there is. I haven't tested it out myself just yet, but when you want to add the levels for the branches, you add to the levels:
<BranchName></BranchName>
<BranchSource></BranchSource>

From what I can gather, you put Base in the BranchSource and the name of your branch in BranchName, for example Rock or Symphonic.
In the point in the tutorial where you begin to edit the careers file, add this in beneath the <Text_JobOffer> :
<Text_BranchOffer>CAREERNAMEBranchOffer</Text_BranchOffer>
<Text_BranchName1>CAREERNAMEbranchname1</Text_BranchName1>
<Text_BranchName2>CAREERNAMEbranchname2</Text_BranchName2>

So to use the Music career as an example again:
<Text_BranchOffer>MusicBranchOffer</Text_BranchOffer>
<Text_BranchName1>MusicRock</Text_BranchName1>
<Text_BranchName2>MusicSymphonic</Text_BranchName2>

Like I said, I haven't tested this myself yet, but from peaking at Twallan's Mobster career, that's what it seems to need.

I've got it!

In the Unhashed Keys file, you put in your male title, then underneath, you add the same title and add _Female.
For example:
<STR>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/Film:BestBoy</STR>
<STR>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/Film:BestBoy_Female</STR>

Then, input that into your English Strings like this:

<KEY>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/Film:BestBoy</KEY>
<STR>Best Boy</STR.
<KEY>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/Film:BestBoy_Female</KEY>
<STR>Best Girl</STR>

I'm making my first custom career, and my question is probably quite simplistic, but this is also my first real attempt at modding. Here goes:

I'm not sure where spaces are ok and where they are not. My career, my tones, and most of my career titles are made up of several words and some of the examples are less than clear, especially since the example career is Tennis. Any guidance would be appreciated.

No spaces anywhere, except for the English Strings. Then you put spaces in.
Using the career I'm currently working on as an example:

<KEY>Gameplay/Excel/Careers/CareerList:FuneralDirector</KEY>
<STR>Funeral Director</STR>

In all the other files, such as in the Careers XML file, the Tones XML file and the UnhashedKeys file, there are no spaces. The language Strings are the only files to have spaces Hope that helps

Thanks, missyhissy!

And that is so funny that you are doing a funeral director career, cause that was going to be my next one, but now I don't have to, lol!

Okay, I almost have everything working, only my career title and the text strings aren't showing up. Instead, JoinCareer842901641372242208 (not these numbers, though, this is an example) shows up at the rabbithole. And yes, I did what Creon's tutorial said to do about copying down the number and going back into S3PE and changing the STBL file.

So my Sim was able to join the career, but I saw no text stating what career it was, nor the entry level text, nor the offer text. However, within a few minutes my sim had 3 co-workers and boss, and the icons were showing up fine, as were the metrics of what was needed for a promotion. Moreover, ErrorTrap isn't showing any errors related to my career.

I'm totally baffled.

I compared my career-guts to MissyHissy's Pharmacist career, and to Lily_XD's Psychology career (which is constructed differently, so it wasn't much help); I read everything on Twallen's site, and I followed Creon's tutorial (and found several errors in it, too), and I still don't get what I'm doing wrong. I even switched around the rabbithole, from business to theatre, and now to criminal hideout, with no joy.

I've read back through this thread, and ThomasRiordan had some interesting stuff but I wasn't entirely sure what he meant.

Any ideas, anyone?

You've done everything I did when I hit this problem with my first career!
Check out Post #19 in this thread, where ThomasRiordan gives instructions on how to get around this issue. You'll need to create a new English Strings file because there's a problem with the one in the blank career

Thomas' instructions are very confusing to me. I found some of the problems in the Eng Strings file already and corrected them, I thought. But maybe not, lol. I'm too tired to try again now, it's 4 am here. I'll try tomorrow.

Grrr. Hate getting so close, without figuring it out before I go to bed, haha.

Thanks for answering so quickly.

MissyHissy, what did you mean by this? (It's from post 66 of this thread).

I didn't put the JoinCareer1234567890-long-azz number into my English STBL, only into the unhashed...Where do you put it in the English STBL file? Creon's tutorial says nothing about this, and I can't find it in your Pharmacist career English STBL file... <scratches head>

Also, in reading through ThomasRiordans post #19 of this thread, he seems to be saying, more or less, combine the two STBL files into one? If not that, what is he saying? I honestly can't follow his instructions, they are too vague....

I'm about to pull all my hair out, I'm so frustrated.

Edit: EUREKA! The little light bulb just went off in my head, probably from all that banging against my desk! I was able to get the the correct text to show up at the rabbithole, but the rest still doesn't show up, but I believe I know how to make it show up now! So I'm off to try out my idea, and see if it works...I will report back, and I will post on how I solved the problem, in detail, with pictures (if I indeed did solve the problem that is). :D

I am so excited! Thank you missyhissy, between various of your posts and hints I was able to decipher what ThomasRiordan was saying and managed to fix my career so that all of the English text shows up in game now

<faints>

I really like the idea of creating custom careers. In early August, I started working on a career I call Army Enlisted (being an Army veteran, I wasn't thrilled with EA's Air Force theme in their base Military career. ). I finally got it working properly, thanks to all of the guidance and tips from Creon's tutorial, ThomasRiordan, MissyHissy, and the rest of you amazing modders who have posted in this and other threads! I am, however, having some difficulty getting custom outfits to show up properly in the game. I've been working with CTU and CmarNYC's Outfitter tool (see posts #36-39 here ). Although I'm using existing EA outfits (the Air Force uniforms), I've made modifications to the colors and patterns to fit the Army theme. My problem appears to be getting those redesigns out of CTU and through the Outfitter tool properly to create the SIMO files. I keep getting bizarre combinations of outfits when switching to the Career outfit (see images here and here).

Could someone please provide some guidance? I appreciate any insights you may have.

Have you been able to get standard EA uniforms to show up?

I have a question: I've probably deconstructed every single custom career uploaded to MTS at this point. I've noticed that many do not have the unhashed strings file in the package. Can these be deleted after hashing the strings? Or where have they gone in Lily XD and himarawara's careers, for example?

Edit:

Thought I'd asked this too, but I guess I didn't: What unhashed strings are used for retirement? Can't get retirement option to show up in my pie chart for phone or rabbithole, nor can I get the retirement information to show on the career info tab in the Sim Panels (bottom of GUI). I was able to force retirement by going to city hall, but it is odd when the text doesn't show, lol. Anyone have any help for me?

Help
 

Ive followed the tutorial to the t, but I cannot get my Career to show up. Please help

Sorry for the late responses guys, Real life got a little mad with school starting up again!

mflaha55: I'm still battling with that, too. I'd love to get custom designs in there but I haven't gotten that to work yet. If I suss it, I'll let you know!
Kithri: Yes, I have gotten the standard EA uniforms to show up. A list of the standard ones can be found Here. You add these lines of coding:
<OutfitMale></OutfitMale>
<OutfitFemale></OutfitFemale>
<OutfitMaleElder></OutfitMaleElder>
<OutfitFemaleElder></OutfitFemaleElder>
and put them underneath your last Metric. In the spaces, insert the code for your chosen uniform. So for example,

<OutfitMale>career_businesscasual_male</OutfitMale>
<OutfitFemale>career_businesscasual_female</OutfitFemale>
<OutfitMaleElder>career_businesscasual_maleelder</OutfitMaleElder>
<OutfitFemaleElder>career_businesscasual_femaleelder</OutfitFemaleElder>

Make sense?
I've never deleted the Unhashed Strings, I leave them in. They don't appear to cause a problem for me, but I have no idea why they're not in some careers.
I've also got problem trying to get retirement to show up. You've just reminded me I was testing this about 2 weeks ago and forgot about it! LOL
Iamthewalruskookookachoo: Make sure you have the right version of Twallan's Careers Mod to suit your patch level installed. Otherwise, the career won't show. If you have got it installed, then you may have misspelt the rabbithole name (Trust me, I do this all the time, especially with the Hospital! LOL). If there isn't a problem there, I don't mind looking over your career to see if I can spot the problem, if you'd like

Thanks, missyhissy!

I'd actually already been able to show the EA careers, was wondering if the previous poster had.

I think I figured out why some careers don't seem to show the unhashed strings: If you use the STBL Duplicator by digitalchaos then it eats the unhashed strings and poops them out as language files. Well, something like that, anyway. When I used it on my career, the unhashed strings file seemed to disappear.

I also have some guesses as to why retirement might not be showing up. The folks who are able to hook into it use the NRaas Omnicareer as their base career, instead of music, as in Creon's tutorial. I'm guessing somewhere along the line, coding changed either in Twallans main Career mod or in EA's libraries. Very recently rspn99 uploaded the Monarch Career, and in the overview thanked Twallan for his Mobster Career, the one career I hadn't deconstructed because I didn't have it in my game. So I downloaded it, and it also uses the Omnicareer for the base career. Looking at Mobster and Monarch, rspn99 used Twallan's career as a template and didn't use Creon's template/tutorial.

So next time around I'm going to experiment and do the same.

Ahh, well it's handy to have the information there

Mm, I've been poking with Twallan's Mobster to find the Retirement strings, I just haven't had the time to poke properly yet! Let me know if you find anything, feyrin's been trying to fathom the retirement bit too!

My last career is in the moderation queue and I'm working on a second, and this time I'm going to try using the Omnicareer. I'll post results.

thanks ThomasRiordan, for your help. Im having some trouble with getting my career to show up in the game. I have gone through all the steps TWICE and it still wont work. Please help me!

Thankyou so much. I will defs try this!

So I took MissyHissy's advice and i thought you guys might want to see this page if you are having trouble getting your career to show up http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Careers :p

Did that solve the problem?

I looked for the version that I would need but I either Im not looking for the right version, Ive screwed something up on the actual mod, or the version that I need is no longer available. But everytime I try to update the game it says it's fully updated. Here's a copy of my file. Please look at it.

If you're fully patched (and it sounds like you are), this is the version of Twallan's Career Mod you'll need: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Careers+Phase+Eleven

Anyway, I've taken a look at the career and so far, the only thing I can see is that you haven't renamed one of your pic files. It still says Blank_pic.
Make sure you've got the right version of Twallan's mod and if the game generates a script error, that should tell you why it's generated and where the problem is. So checking the script errors in your Sims 3 folder might be a good idea

Thanks!

No problem!
If it's still not co-operating, give me a shout!