Mod The Sims - S3PI - Code Snippets

zoe22

Senior Moderator

staff: senior moderator

Original Poster

#1

16th Feb 2026 at 3:57 PM

S3PI - Code Snippets

Like the Code Snippet Jar thread for Sims 3 modding, here is a thread for information and code snippets for those working with S3PI for Sims 3 tools.

You can read more about and download S3PI from here.

It's also hosted on GitHub here.

[to be continued...!]

Destrospean

Lab Assistant

#2

16th Feb 2026 at 4:54 PM Last edited by Destrospean : 12th Apr 2026 at 9:00 PM.

Alright, so I guess the first thing that should be mentioned is that Windows like to "block" downloads, and the wrappers for S3PI don't work unless they're unblocked. Many users use the default Windows archive extractor, which extracts all the contents of a blocked archive as blocked, and many of them come complaining, so I found a technical solution to this which is to unblock the contents of the folder of your program.

Below I have a class for platform-specific things, which is needed to determine whether a user is on Windows, so as to only unblock on Windows, as it'll throw a fatal exception on other platforms:

Code:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

public static class Platform
{
    public static bool IsLinux
    {
        get
        {
            return (OS & OSFlags.Linux) != 0;
        }
    }

    public static bool IsMacOS
    {
        get
        {
            return (OS & OSFlags.Darwin) != 0;
        }
    }

    public static bool IsRunningUnderWine
    {
        get
        {
            return IsWindows && WineDetector.IsRunningUnderWine;
        }
    }

    public static bool IsUnix
    {
        get
        {
            return (OS & OSFlags.Unix) != 0;
        }
    }

    public static bool IsWindows
    {
        get
        {
            return (OS & OSFlags.Windows) != 0;
        }
    }

    public static OSFlags OS
    {
        get
        {
            switch ((int)Environment.OSVersion.Platform)
            {
                case 4:
                case 128:
                    var os = OSFlags.Unix;
                    var uname = GetCommandOutput("uname").TrimEnd('\n');
                    switch (uname)
                    {
                        case "Darwin":
                        case "Linux":
                            os |= (OSFlags)Enum.Parse(typeof(OSFlags), uname);
                            break;
                    }
                    return os;
                default:
                    return OSFlags.Windows;
            }
        }
    }

    [Flags]
    public enum OSFlags
    {
        Windows = 1,
        Unix,
        Linux = 4,
        Darwin = 8
    }

    static class FileUnblocker
    {
        [DllImport("kernel32", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode, SetLastError = true)]
        [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
        static extern bool DeleteFile(string name);

        public static bool Unblock(string filename)
        {
            return DeleteFile(filename + ":Zone.Identifier");
        }
    }

    static class WineDetector
    {
        [DllImport("ntdll.dll", EntryPoint = "wine_get_version")]
        static extern IntPtr WineGetVersion();

        public static bool IsRunningUnderWine
        {
            get
            {
                try
                {
                    return WineGetVersion() != IntPtr.Zero;
                }
                catch (EntryPointNotFoundException)
                {
                    return false;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    public static string GetCommandOutput(string command, string arguments = "")
    {
        using (var process = new Process
            {
                StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo
                    {
                        Arguments = arguments,
                        CreateNoWindow = true,
                        FileName = command,
                        RedirectStandardError = true,
                        RedirectStandardOutput = true,
                        UseShellExecute = false
                    }
            })
        {
            process.Start();
            string error = process.StandardError.ReadToEnd(),
            output = process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
            process.WaitForExit();
            return string.IsNullOrEmpty(error) ? output : string.Format("Error: {0}\nOutput: {1}", error, output);
        }
    }

    public static bool UnblockFile(string filename)
    {
        return FileUnblocker.Unblock(filename);
    }
}

Notice in the above snippet the "FileUnblocker" subclass.
This should be called for everything within the program's folder when the program first launches, as follows:

Code:

if (Platform.IsWindows)
{
    foreach (var filename in System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory))
    {
        Platform.UnblockFile(filename);
    }
}

Destrospean

Lab Assistant

#3

12th Apr 2026 at 8:28 PM Last edited by Destrospean : 12th Apr 2026 at 9:31 PM.

Alright, I haven't been contributing to this thread like I promised @zoe22 I would, so allow me to add some things:

Destrospean

Lab Assistant

#4

12th Apr 2026 at 8:55 PM Last edited by Destrospean : 13th Apr 2026 at 5:52 PM.

If you ever need to reference the game packages, I have found this to be a convenient way to do so (make sure GameFolders.xml is in your compiled application's folder):

Code:

static Dictionary<PackageTag, IPackage> sGameContentPackages, sGameImageResourcePackages, sGameThumbnailResourcePackages;

static object sLock = new object();

public static Dictionary<PackageTag, IPackage> GameContentPackages
{
    get
    {
        if (sGameContentPackages == null)
        {
            lock (sLock)
            {
                sGameContentPackages = new Dictionary<PackageTag, IPackage>();
                foreach (var game in GameFolders.Games)
                {
                    var enumerator = game.GameContent.GetEnumerator();
                    while (enumerator.MoveNext())
                    {
                        sGameContentPackages.Add(enumerator.Current, s3pi.Package.Package.OpenPackage(0, enumerator.Current.Path));
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return sGameContentPackages;
    }
}

public static Dictionary<PackageTag, IPackage> GameImageResourcePackages
{
    get
    {
        if (sGameImageResourcePackages == null)
        {
            lock (sLock)
            {
                sGameImageResourcePackages = new Dictionary<PackageTag, IPackage>();
                foreach (var game in GameFolders.Games)
                {
                    var enumerator = game.DDSImages.GetEnumerator();
                    while (enumerator.MoveNext())
                    {
                        sGameImageResourcePackages.Add(enumerator.Current, s3pi.Package.Package.OpenPackage(0, enumerator.Current.Path));
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return sGameImageResourcePackages;
    }
}

public static Dictionary<PackageTag, IPackage> GameThumbnailResourcePackages
{
    get
    {
        if (sGameThumbnailResourcePackages == null)
        {
            lock (sLock)
            {
                sGameThumbnailResourcePackages = new Dictionary<PackageTag, IPackage>();
                foreach (var game in GameFolders.Games)
                {
                    var enumerator = game.Thumbnails.GetEnumerator();
                    while (enumerator.MoveNext())
                    {
                        sGameThumbnailResourcePackages.Add(enumerator.Current, s3pi.Package.Package.OpenPackage(0, enumerator.Current.Path));
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return sGameThumbnailResourcePackages;
    }
}

Below is an example of finding a resource in the game files by its instance ID from the packages of the specified dictionary:

Code:

public static Tuple<IPackage, IResourceIndexEntry> FindResourceByInstance(Dictionary<PackageTag, IPackage> gamePackages, ulong instance)
{
    foreach (var gamePackage in gamePackages.Values)
    {
        var found = gamePackage.FindAll(x => x.Instance == instance);
        if (found.Count > 0)
        {
            return new Tuple<IPackage, IResourceIndexEntry>(gamePackage, found[0]);
        }
    }
    return null;
}

I also recommend using the attached modified version of GameFolders.xml for support by case-sensitive filesystems and by games that have been decompressed with TurboTravel.

Attached files:

GameFolders.zip (2.3 KB, 2 downloads)

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