UI Inspector for The Sims 2

S2UI Inspector is a homegrown tool to visually inspect and preview The Sims 2 user interface elements. Written in Python and PyQt6.

What's This?

The Sims 2 UI is made up of "UI Script" files inside packages like ui.package. These modified XML files define the layout and parameters of the game's user interface.

This tool should make it easier to explore the UI, figure out how things work, as well as to enable modders to visually test their changes outside of the game.

At the moment, it only reads, and there could be some bugs with how elements are interpreted. Future versions may allow editing and saving changes!

This tool spun off from the Sims 2 4K UI Patcher project.

Download

Windows

1. Download the latest release.
2. Extract the folder and run the program. No need to install!

macOS

We don't have a build yet. See Development for a guide to run directly from the repository.

Linux

While we do offer builds to download under the latest release, running from from the repository will be more efficient disk space wise and provide better theme integration.

Open the terminal and run these commands.

For Arch-based distros, install these dependencies:

sudo pacman -S --asdeps python-pyqt6 python-pyqt6-webengine python-pillow python-requests python-setproctitle git

For Ubuntu-based distros, install these dependencies:

sudo apt install python3-pyqt6 python3-pyqt6.qtwebengine python3-pil python3-requests python3-setproctitle git

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (or newer) is recommended. Older versions may not be supported due to distributing older Python versions.

Then, change directory (cd) into a folder to store the code. We will also need to download modules from another repository for this program to work.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/lah7/sims2-ui-inspector.git

Ready to start!

python3 ./s2ui_inspector.py

To update both repositories for the latest changes:

cd sims2-ui-inspector
git pull --recurse-submodules --rebase origin master

Development

See above for Linux instructions. For Windows/macOS:

Prerequisites

• Install Python 3.12 (or later)
• Install Git

Initial Setup

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/lah7/sims2-ui-inspector.git

Windows

Create your virtual environment, activate it, and install the dependencies:

python -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt

macOS/Linux

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt

Running

python ./s2ui_inspector.py

Updating

git pull --rebase --recurse-submodules origin master

What about other Maxis games?

This tool was designed for The Sims 2's UI format. While it might work for other Maxis games such as SimCity 4, this isn't tested or supported at this time.

License

GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3)