The new patch has broken the string tables for many mods. It was quickly found by roBurky that the issue occurs with any mods which use group 0x80000000 for their string tables. Setting the group number for those strings to 0x00000000 resolves the issue.
1
Comments
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/958413/custom-text-affected-by-the-4-16-update/
We have counseled people to wait for direction from EA on this issue. Now EA is telling people to ignore the best practices tool makers were told to use. It's more than a bit confusing. Is EA suggesting that this fix is going to take so long that we should update Sims 4 Studio to use the 0x00000000 group number? We could also issue a batch fix to change all the broken group numbers and all other instances of the high bit for that matter. Is that what we should do? Are we going with the high bit and the problem will be fixed promptly or are we going with 0x00000000 embedded in a lot of custom content? What is the plan here?
It's probably not advisable to change a tool like Sims 4 Studio to use 00000000 since so many modders rely on it, but a few individual modders using 00000000 in cases where they have 80000000 is probably not going to be a big deal.
Personally, I've been doing 00000000 on most of my string files for the entirety of my time modding and didn't even know better about the 80000000 group thing. I've never heard of any string issues with my mods relating to that and I don't think it's likely there would be. It's more a thing of reducing odds of issues over a long period of time, with lots of Maxis content and lots of custom content. As I understand it, naming (the string used to generate the hash) also makes a big difference in reducing the odds of collision.
Just spitballing here, but perhaps Sims 4 Studio could make a batch fix for changing strings to the 80000000 format and release it after the fix is out. That way when the fix is out, if people who jumped at a temporary workaround wish to switch back to best practices, they can do so easily and those who weren't using best practices before will have an easy way to switch to them. In the long-term, this issue could be to the advantage of best practices in the modding community, if we use it as a way to make people more aware of what is best practice for strings (like myself).
Our strong recommendation remains to use 0x80000000 and above for group id, and I sincerely hope the update hits soon enough to make any changes targeting this string table issue a waste of Sims 4 Studio development time.
While it would be great if mass breakage did not occur, any reasonable person understands that unintended consequences can occur in the process of updating a huge mass of code like the Sims 4. The fact that it happened isn't as important as how soon it is fixed. In the past, incidents like this were resolved promptly, and we're hoping the same is true this time.
If EA's recommendation is to use 0x80000000 and above for the group id, we will not make changes to Studio targeting this issue. I hope that the problem can be prioritized on your end so that players do not have long to wait before things are working smoothly again. I know that the company and the community have the same goal - a game that runs well.
The five-second rule does not apply when you have a two-second dog.
Ooops...someone suggested in another forum that it was for the modders/creators....we'll get ours Friday? I'm closing down for the evening and reading. This idiocy is a bit too much for the kind of week I've had already.
The five-second rule does not apply when you have a two-second dog.
Why you guys are assuming that everybody‘s using Twitter??? *SMH*
orangemittens is right, why having a forum if you are not posting the needed infos here at first anymore?? I‘m getting really tired of EA/MAXIS assuming that everybody of all ages is technically connected to the whole world. Some of your older customers and others who do not want to use all those chat hype Apps just use the forums. It makes me really sad to see how care less the Sims team became.
I’m going to ask you to remember what this thread is about, and keep your comments on topic. If you have constructive feedback about the forums that you would like to share that’s great and very welcomed - but please, use the proper category for it, keep it polite and don’t derail other topics.
Thank you
For more details: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/958547/april-19th-2019-patch-notes