Problems with Beyond the Sword on Vista (Korean)

[RenartRegal]

Hello,

I have something of an odd question. I just got this new laptop in Korea, though Vista came loaded in Korean (not much I could do about that, unfortunately), and I loaded up Civ 4 and Bts on it (no Warlords, I don't own that one). However, after patching both to the latest patches (Bts 3.13 and all that jazz), I loaded it up and got a few messages saying something about XML load errors. And now in some parts of the game, it shows up as txt_key something or other. MOSTLY all the text shows up fine; the issues are with one specialist (the great general super specialist to be exact), some options entries, and the civilization and leader names for a few civs (such as Carthage, and ironically, Korea >_>). It's a lot worse if I try to load up, say, the Rhye's and Fall of Civilizations, since for example ALL the civics entries are blotted out by txt_key, description included (whereas in BtS, the descriptions are for the most part fine).

Because this is Premium K for Vista, I can't change regional settings (I dont' think I can at least), so the parser option I saw on the forums isn't one I can take. While I can play the original game (I can just grin and bear it with the txt_key as long as it doesn't completely hamstring me), I'm not as sure about the mods. Does anyone have any words of wisdom for me?

Thanks in advance!

 

[ddrekins]

Since it is only a small number of problems in the normal game, it wouldn't take too long to manually figure out what is wrong (objects pointing to non-existent pieces of text, no doubt) and manually fix it.

Sadly, It'd take me a while to track down the possible XML files that are at fault. But, it is possible if you feel like wading through some code.

 

[RenartRegal]

Could you point me towards what file I need to edit, and how to? I've got no problems correcting the main game text, though I think if the mods are available by download, I'm going to have to redownload them (no real loss there). The options I can live with, and the wonders, buildings, units, and civ names I have no problems just correcting the names if I knew how (though for a non-programmer like myself, how much of a headache will this cause?).

Thanks again!

 

[GVBN]

I loaded it up and got a few messages saying something about XML load errors.

Did it say which XML files are causing these errors?

 

[RenartRegal]

Something about round translation or something or other, I honestly don't rememer which ones, though. And now after the first time that's happened, BtS doesn't really bug me about it anymore aside from taunting me with teh txt_key names.

It DOES, however, yell at me if I try to load up a mod. For example, trying to load up Fall of Heaven (the one packaged with the original game) keeps giving me a few error messages (I forget which exactly), and there I can only access the main screen (it doesn't show the city screens or even the civilopedia there).

I would try and reinstall the game entirely, but this doesn't really help. The original game doesn't have any of these issues, and I've tried running BtS on about three discs now, my own and two other friends', all with the txt_key. This latest one has produce the LEAST amount of txt_key issues, but they're still there. Is it Vista? (I just upgraded from xp two weeks ago, and if it weren't for my inability to find the drivers online due to my still illiterate Korean I'd have downgraded at the first opportunity)

 

[RenartRegal]

Just reinstalled BtS (left original Civ4 alone), and all the errors are occurring when the loading screen hits XML Init (uncached). Any suggestions?

 

[ddrekins]

Did this work when you were using just XP?

I think the issue might not be Vista but the fact that the OS is in Korean. I don't think BTS has support for the Korean language. . . it almost sounds like it is trying to load a language that isn't available.

I'd think that mods would have more issues if they didn't have support for any language other than English. (Which I think many don't) Can you tell if anything is fishy in your Civ4GameText_Objects_BTS.xml file? It is located in your assets folder, in the xml folder and then in the text folder.

 

[RenartRegal]

I'm thinking it's my OS language, yeah. Originally I had XP Office in English, and I never had any problems there, so I'm assuming the Korean's throwing it off. I've since uninstalled BtS for awhile in favor of just running some of the mods Civ 4 has available to it; for some reason, I'm having NO problems running the original game.

Next time I reinstall BtS, though, I'll check the assets folder; right now, I just don't want my hairs going gray over this issue. You can't kill the dragon every day...

On that note, thanks a bunch for the advice. Now I know where to start next time I try!

 

[RenartRegal]

Well, managed to fix the problem, and it was MUCH simpler than I thought it'd be (the Korean text didn't help either). I had to change my unicode to American English. >_> Well, s'pose that'll work for anyone else trying to run BtS on a foreign Windows.

 

[Hamburglar]

Well, managed to fix the problem, and it was MUCH simpler than I thought it'd be (the Korean text didn't help either). I had to change my unicode to American English. >_> Well, s'pose that'll work for anyone else trying to run BtS on a foreign Windows.

How do I do this? I have the same problem....

 

[neumann]

Hello, I have been having the same problem using Japanese windows (both vista and xp). Japanese, Korean, Chinese and a bunch of other languages are 2-byte-languages, that cannot deal with "normal" single-byte Alphabet except for Ascii-English. Now most Civ XML files contain not only English but also German, French, Spanish translations and they, in return have non-Ascii characters like ü,ß etc., which causes the problem. I have been deleting German, French etc. manually from the XML-files for years, but this is very tedious, and stupid, as I now understand, after finding the ultimate solution here!

Renart Regal's solution is easy and great, but the explanation is a bit lazy.
Here is a bit more detailed how to do it (the word "unicode" is misleading):
- Start-ControlPanel-Regional/LanguageSettings-Format (the exact wording might be different in your language and your windows). choose "Format", not keyboard/language, or administrator.
- the "current format" will probably be set to Korean, Japanese, Chinese etc. Choose "American English" instead and click ok. You are done!

In case, some other program now causes problems with not displaying characters correctly, you will have to set the format back to the original language after playing civ, but this is a minor effort compared to the xml-tag-free gameplay!