Finding SBC

HomeModdingTutorialsSBCFinding SBC

It can be tricky to find a block/item/etc by their visual name because their internal names are often very different, for example Action Relay is a TransponderBlock type.

If you're here to find documentation on SBC, see the Modding Reference - SBC page instead.

Find by block or item's display name

You'll first need a program that can find text inside files and ideally with a file name pattern filter, such as Notepad++.

1. Open MyTexts.resx

Go in the game folder's \Content\Data\Localization and open MyTexts.resx, this contains the visual names in English.

If you're used to a different language then open the file that has the country/language suffix.

2. Find the visual name and copy the name key

Search for the exact name until you find a value that contains it entirely, not a description that mentions it in passing or anything like that.

Ideally don't use case-sensitive search (turn off "Match case" in Notepad++) to not be required to enter exact letter case.

Then copy the value of the name="this here" which is the identifier that points to that string in all languages.

For example, searching for custom turret controller will find:

  <data name="DisplayName_TurretControlBlock" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>Custom Turret Controller</value>
  </data>

Then the name being the DisplayName_TurretControlBlock which is to be copied.

3. Find the copied name in all .sbc files

Using Notepad++ as an example, Ctrl+Shift+F takes you straight to the find-in-files tab.

In there what to enter for each label:

• Find what: paste the name here (e.g. DisplayName_TurretControlBlock)
• Filters: enter *.sbc to only care about sbc files, otherwise you'll get spammed with all the localization files too.
• Directory: enter SE's folder and then Content\Data, e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SpaceEngineers\Content\Data

You can easily reach the game's install folder from Steam's library, then rightclick the game and Properties, then at the Installed Files tab press Browse.

• Match case off
• Match whole world off
• Search Mode set to Normal

Finally, click search and it'll give you all the SBC files which reference that visual name.

You should see at the bottom something like:

Search "DisplayName_TurretControlBlock" (3 hits in 2 files of 701 searched) [Normal]
  (...)\SpaceEngineers\Content\Data\BlockVariantGroups.sbc (1 hit)
	Line 2002:             <DisplayName>DisplayName_TurretControlBlock</DisplayName>
  (...)\SpaceEngineers\Content\Data\CubeBlocks\CubeBlocks_Automation.sbc (2 hits)
	Line  906:             <DisplayName>DisplayName_TurretControlBlock</DisplayName>
	Line  984:             <DisplayName>DisplayName_TurretControlBlock</DisplayName>

You can double-click the lines to open the file and go straight at that line.

Once done all that, you've reached the block's definition which has the SubtypeId as well as the model file path, which will be the same as the .fbx file path in the mod SDK if you wish to import the model to blender.