Extract and Replace a File in a Pack

This tutorial uses IOP Manager. The web version never changes the pack in your game folder. Your edits go into a copy in the tab, and Download pack gives you the new pack as a file. If you have not opened a client yet, do First steps first.

1. Find the entry

1. Click IOP Manager in the sidebar. The pack selector at the top right has two groups: Game folder (your client’s packs) and Opened files (packs you opened yourself).
2. Choose the pack. Configs and scripts are normally in rs.iop; many textures, models and maps are in map.iop.
3. Browse by folder: double-click a folder to open it, Backspace goes up, and the breadcrumb above the list jumps back to any level.
4. Or search: type in Search the whole pack. * and ? work as wildcards, for example *.ini or uiimageset*. The results show each file with its folder under the name.

The tags at the end of a row tell you more: new (added or changed in this session), +1 (an older copy of the same name is also in the pack; the newest copy is the one the game loads), xor (an .ini whose content is scrambled the way the client expects) and plain (not encrypted).

If the pack shows Unknown: no known password opens this pack, you can look but not read or add anything. Add the password as described in First steps.

2. Preview it

Click the file. The Preview tab shows:

• Text with an Encoding selector. Auto guesses; if Korean or Chinese text looks like garbage, try Korean (CP949), Chinese Trad. (Big5), Chinese Simpl. (GBK), Thai (CP874) or Japanese (Shift-JIS). Only the first 512 KB of a big text file is shown. An .ini with the xor tag is shown already decoded.
• Pictures (.dds, .tga and others) with their size.
• Hex for anything binary (first 16 KB).

Details (next to the file name) shows the full path, size, CRC32, date, flags and the entry comment. The comment matters: comment 1 on an .ini means its content is scrambled.

3. Extract it

• One file: click Extract (or double-click the file). It downloads under its own name. For an .ini with comment 1 you get the readable text, not the scrambled bytes.
• Several files or folders: select with Ctrl and Shift (or Ctrl+A in the list) and click Extract. You get one zip with the folders kept. A zip is built in memory, so for very large folders take a few at a time.
• Everything: Pack info, then Extract all.

If some entries cannot be read, a message names the first one.

4. Replace a file

1. Edit the extracted file outside the browser (for configs read Edit an INI config first; encoding matters).
2. Select the entry in IOP Manager and click Replace… in the preview header. Pick your edited file.
3. The entry now carries the new tag, and Pack info lists “1 replaced” under Changes. The entry keeps its name and its comment, and an .ini with comment 1 is scrambled again for you. The new data is encrypted with the pack’s own password.

Preview the entry again to check the result. You can replace several entries before you download once.

5. Add a file or a folder

1. Open the folder of the pack where the file belongs and click Add files….
2. In the dialog, Choose files… or Choose folder…. For a folder, the names inside it become paths; the folder’s own name is left out.
3. Folder inside the pack is filled with the folder you had open (for example config/sp2_item/). Change it if needed.
4. Entry comment: keep the default. A file that replaces an entry copies that entry’s comment; a new file gets none. Choose Comment 1 only for an .ini that must be scrambled like the client’s other .ini files.
5. Click Add.

A file with the same path as an existing entry replaces it. Names are stored in lower case. You can also drop files on the page; if the file is not a pack, the same dialog opens.

Rename (one file) and Delete (files or folders, with a confirmation) change only your copy as well.

6. Download the new pack

1. Optional: open Pack info and press Verify. It reads every entry the way the client does and reports any that fail.
2. Optional: Optimize leaves old copies and unused space out of the downloaded pack, which makes it smaller. It asks before it turns on; the button then reads Optimize: on. If unsure, leave it off for your first replacement.
3. Click Download pack. The browser saves a file with the same name as the pack (for example rs.iop). If a file of that name is already in your Downloads folder the browser may call it rs (1).iop; rename it back.

Plan for free disk space: the download is a full copy, and packs of a big client run from hundreds of MB to over 1 GB.

Revert changes (in Pack info) drops everything you changed in the tab. Reloading or closing the tab does the same.

7. Put it into the client

Do this on a client copy first.

1. Close the game (and any tool that has the pack open).
2. Keep a backup of the original pack file: copy it next to itself or into a backup folder.
3. Copy the downloaded pack over the original, same name.
4. Start the client and look at the changed content.

If the client misbehaves, put the backup back. A pack that is not changed back by the tools is the only way to undo, because the tools never touch your folder.

The tools read your game folder, not the downloaded file. To look at your edit in another tool, put the new pack into a copy of the client and open that copy (Game Folder, Open another folder). Or open the downloaded file again with Open pack…; that works for IOP Manager only.

Things to know

• The same path can exist in more than one pack, for example in rs.iop and map.iop. Search each pack with the selector. The client searches the packs in the order it opens them, rs.iop first and then map.iop, so the copy in rs.iop wins and the one in map.iop is never read. Inside one pack, the last entry with a name wins. Change the copy the client really reads.
• Some tools have a Save menu entry such as “Save into the pack”. It is not available in the web version and answers “Saving into packs is not available yet”. Use the tool’s “Save as file…” or export, then do the replacement here.
• Open pack… (or dropping .iop files on the page) opens any pack file from your PC, whatever its name or extension. Files that are not packs are refused.