Sims 3:Key table

Key Table and Resource References

Many resources in Sims 3 packages refer to other resources. Resources are identified by a 16 byte value made up of:

DWORD Resource type  // T
DWORD Resource group // G
QWORD Instance       // I

These are known as the resource key. Generally they appear in the order shown above and the canonical reference format you may see is "TGI" or a string of numbers like 00000000-00000000-0000000000000000.

Where one resource contains many references to others, there is frequently a table listing the TGI values. Within the resource, the location of this table is given by a value known as the key table:

DWORD offset // from after reading offset
DWORD length // 4 + entries * 16

At offset will be the list of resources.

DWORD count1
--repetition count1:
   {entry}

where {entry} is the resource reference as TGI, consuming 16 bytes.

Lists of resource references in other formats (TIG, ITG, etc) do occur but these are not key tables per se.