Item Description Gibberish

[oldinroplayer]

Hey Folks, I'm trying to get a rather ancient (406aSakexe) client working, but have run into the following problem: the text from "idnum2itemdesctable.txt" is not displayed in the client, even though it picks up the item name and icon/picture correctly. This problem exists for all items, including default stuff such as "Apple":

 

The first thing I checked were "idnum2itemdesctable.txt" and "idnum2itemdisplaynametable.txt" -- these files are normal and have the correct descriptions in readable English. I've also verified that the item numbers are correct across both the files such that there's no mixup in title/description:

 

I also tried a few things such as:

• saving the files in different editors and running them thru dos2unix and iconv (to make sure this is not a char encoding issue)
• repacking/rebuilding the GRF with different tools (GRFBuilder, Gryff and AGRFTool)
• changing the "<servicetype>" to "korea,america and japan" (and "<langtype>" to "0,1 and 2" respectively) in sclientinfo.xml
• different client EXEs "sakexe0628a" and "sakexe0911a"

but could not solve this problem and the text shows up as gibberish. Would really appreciate any pointers on how to solve this problem.

Edited November 26, 2022 by oldinroplayer
typos edited

[oldinroplayer]

Found the answer on this post:

Quote

3. use RagTXTPR

The tool itself is available on RMS in the RO Tools page. The text in "idnum2itemdesctable.txt" needs to be pre-encoded so that it comes out right when in-game. An old info doc from the RO Translation Project files also mention this (was able to find it be searching for "RagTXTPR" after I found the tool):

Quote

If you hex your own sakexe using the diff patcher then make sure you select "[Data](7) Use Plain Text Descriptions" when making your exe or your item descriptions will appear as gibberish in the game! If you can't change your sakexe for whatever reason and these descriptions still show up as gibberish then grab a copy of ragtxtpr from http://eamirror.skamfroj.net. Use ragtxtpr to encode num2itemdesctable.txt and idnum2itemdesctable.txt and it should fix the problem.

... and after the change, the text is all fine (but the file in data folder is gibberish -- and that's expected since it was run thru the tool):

This topic can be marked as closed. Thank you.

Edited November 30, 2022 by oldinroplayer