Fishy
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If your 8.60 Tibia.dat/Tibia.spr just refuses to load in Remere's even though the files are sitting right there, this is probably your issue. Took me a full night to work out and every thread I found was either dead or ended with "just download a different client", so posting what actually fixes it.
This isn't the "Unsupported client version" thing btw, that's something else. RME knows what 8.60 is here, it just doesn't know your 8.60.
Before anything else - back up your .otbm. If RME ends up on the wrong item list it will delete items it doesn't recognise when you save. No warning, no prompt, just gone. If you're getting a big list of "Unknown item id" when the map opens then it's already happening to you. Learned that one the hard way.
What it looks like
Depending on what you tried you'll get one of these:
All the same problem underneath.
What's going on
There isn't just one 8.60 client. A few different builds went out under that version number and each one has a different signature - that's the first 4 bytes of the file, basically a build stamp. RME only ships knowing two of them.
The bit that took me ages to figure out is that RME uses that signature to decide which parser to read your .dat with. So it's not just a "do I accept this file" check, it's how it picks the format. Your signature isn't in the list, it gets nothing back, and then tries to read the file with no format at all. Hence the garbage optbyte error, or it just sits there frozen.
So your dat is almost certainly fine. Mine was - I went and checked it against the format RME expects and it read clean the whole way through, all 11,703 items. RME just didn't recognise the build.
What'll waste your time
Unticking "Check file signatures" in Preferences. Doesn't help. I tried it about four times convinced I'd done it wrong.
All that checkbox does is skip the check that decides whether to accept the folder. Picking the parser happens somewhere else entirely and still runs, still fails.
The fix
You need to tell RME your signature is an 8.6 file. Two minutes.
1. Find your signature
Easiest with Python. If you don't have it, python.org, and tick "Add python.exe to PATH" during install or the command won't work.
Make a file called
Open a cmd window in that folder (type
Those are mine. Yours will be different, use your own.
Don't want to install Python for this - fair enough, any hex editor does it. Open Tibia.dat, look at the first 4 bytes, read them backwards.
2. Add it to clients.xml
In your RME folder, open
Look for the block starting
Those two
Leave
If Windows won't let you save it, copy the file to your desktop, edit there, copy it back.
3. Point RME at the folder
Close RME properly first, then reopen. File > Preferences > Client Version, find the "Version 8.60 search path" row, Browse, and pick the folder your Tibia.dat and Tibia.spr are in. The folder, not the files - I got that wrong the first time.
Apply, OK, open your map.
If it's still not having it
Check Map Properties first. RME decides which client to load based on what the map claims it is, so if your map thinks it's 8.40 it'll go looking for an 8.40 client no matter what you set in Preferences. Map > Properties, look at the Client Version dropdown. More on that below if it's wrong.
Other thing worth checking - if you've got more than one RME lying around (portable copy, old install, whatever) make sure you edited the clients.xml belonging to the one you're actually launching. Easy to do and very annoying.
And copy your server's
Why your map says the wrong version anyway
Bit of a tangent but this is where a lot of us get caught, so.
Plenty of 8.6 servers aren't running a map that was actually made for 8.6. It's an old map that got dragged along - some 7.x download that got edited for years, opened in whatever editor existed at the time, bits pasted in from other maps. Mine had been through SimOne's Map Editor at some point which tells you roughly how ancient it was.
The problem is that version number in the header never updates itself. Mine had been saved in RME 2.1, then RME 3.7, the header even says "Saved with Remere's Map Editor 2.1" right there - and it was still claiming 8.40 through every one of those saves. RME rewrites the description line and doesn't touch the version.
So it just sits there forever pointing RME at the wrong client and the wrong item list. And TFS completely ignores that field, so your server boots fine and you never get so much as a warning about it.
Have a look at your own map's description in Map Properties sometime, it'll often still name whatever editor it was originally made in.
Actually fixing the version is a separate job (it's a 4 byte edit in the header, different thread), but the thing to know is it won't sort itself out no matter how many times you save.
Anyway, hope this helps someone.
This isn't the "Unsupported client version" thing btw, that's something else. RME knows what 8.60 is here, it just doesn't know your 8.60.
Before anything else - back up your .otbm. If RME ends up on the wrong item list it will delete items it doesn't recognise when you save. No warning, no prompt, just gone. If you're getting a big list of "Unknown item id" when the map opens then it's already happening to you. Learned that one the hard way.
What it looks like
Depending on what you tried you'll get one of these:
- "Could not locate Tibia.dat and/or Tibia.spr" - even though you literally just picked the folder they're in
Tibia.dat: Unknown optbyte '136' after '1'- It freezes on "Loading metadata file... (0%)" and goes Not Responding
All the same problem underneath.
What's going on
There isn't just one 8.60 client. A few different builds went out under that version number and each one has a different signature - that's the first 4 bytes of the file, basically a build stamp. RME only ships knowing two of them.
The bit that took me ages to figure out is that RME uses that signature to decide which parser to read your .dat with. So it's not just a "do I accept this file" check, it's how it picks the format. Your signature isn't in the list, it gets nothing back, and then tries to read the file with no format at all. Hence the garbage optbyte error, or it just sits there frozen.
So your dat is almost certainly fine. Mine was - I went and checked it against the format RME expects and it read clean the whole way through, all 11,703 items. RME just didn't recognise the build.
What'll waste your time
Unticking "Check file signatures" in Preferences. Doesn't help. I tried it about four times convinced I'd done it wrong.
All that checkbox does is skip the check that decides whether to accept the folder. Picking the parser happens somewhere else entirely and still runs, still fails.
The fix
You need to tell RME your signature is an 8.6 file. Two minutes.
1. Find your signature
Easiest with Python. If you don't have it, python.org, and tick "Add python.exe to PATH" during install or the command won't work.
Make a file called
sig.py next to your Tibia.dat with this in it:
Python:
import struct
print("dat:", "0x%08X" % struct.unpack("<I", open("Tibia.dat", "rb").read(4))[0])
print("spr:", "0x%08X" % struct.unpack("<I", open("Tibia.spr", "rb").read(4))[0])Open a cmd window in that folder (type
cmd into the folder's address bar, hit enter) and run python sig.py. You get something like:
Code:
dat: 0x4C28B721
spr: 0x4C220594Those are mine. Yours will be different, use your own.
Don't want to install Python for this - fair enough, any hex editor does it. Open Tibia.dat, look at the first 4 bytes, read them backwards.
21 B7 28 4C is 0x4C28B721. It's stored little-endian, that's all that's going on there.2. Add it to clients.xml
In your RME folder, open
data\clients.xml. Notepad is fine.Look for the block starting
<client name="8.60":
XML:
<client name="8.60" otb="8.60" visible="true" data_directory="860">
<otbm version="3"/>
<extensions from="8.20 - 8.31" to="8.60"/>
<data format="8.6" dat="0x4C2C7993" spr="0x4C220594"/>
<data format="8.6" dat="0x4C6A4CBC" spr="0x4C63F145"/>
</client>Those two
<data> lines are the only two clients it knows about. Stick a third one on with your own numbers:
XML:
<data format="8.6" dat="0x4C28B721" spr="0x4C220594"/>Leave
format="8.6" alone, that's the part doing the actual work - it's what tells RME which parser to use. Only change the dat and spr values.If Windows won't let you save it, copy the file to your desktop, edit there, copy it back.
3. Point RME at the folder
Close RME properly first, then reopen. File > Preferences > Client Version, find the "Version 8.60 search path" row, Browse, and pick the folder your Tibia.dat and Tibia.spr are in. The folder, not the files - I got that wrong the first time.
Apply, OK, open your map.
If it's still not having it
Check Map Properties first. RME decides which client to load based on what the map claims it is, so if your map thinks it's 8.40 it'll go looking for an 8.40 client no matter what you set in Preferences. Map > Properties, look at the Client Version dropdown. More on that below if it's wrong.
Other thing worth checking - if you've got more than one RME lying around (portable copy, old install, whatever) make sure you edited the clients.xml belonging to the one you're actually launching. Easy to do and very annoying.
And copy your server's
data\items\items.otb into RME's data\860\ folder so they match. Different otb files give you problems that look near identical to this and you'll waste time chasing the wrong thing.Why your map says the wrong version anyway
Bit of a tangent but this is where a lot of us get caught, so.
Plenty of 8.6 servers aren't running a map that was actually made for 8.6. It's an old map that got dragged along - some 7.x download that got edited for years, opened in whatever editor existed at the time, bits pasted in from other maps. Mine had been through SimOne's Map Editor at some point which tells you roughly how ancient it was.
The problem is that version number in the header never updates itself. Mine had been saved in RME 2.1, then RME 3.7, the header even says "Saved with Remere's Map Editor 2.1" right there - and it was still claiming 8.40 through every one of those saves. RME rewrites the description line and doesn't touch the version.
So it just sits there forever pointing RME at the wrong client and the wrong item list. And TFS completely ignores that field, so your server boots fine and you never get so much as a warning about it.
Have a look at your own map's description in Map Properties sometime, it'll often still name whatever editor it was originally made in.
Actually fixing the version is a separate job (it's a 4 byte edit in the header, different thread), but the thing to know is it won't sort itself out no matter how many times you save.
Anyway, hope this helps someone.