An Opportunity and a THX

[Junger Roemer]

Ok first of all i want to say thanks to all people on this forum who did made custom mods,deckmanager,..... and all this wonderful stuff happen for dotp 2013.
So the awards are going to them


Now on to my idea....having bought Magic 2014 yesterday and tested the sealed mode,something came to my mind....

1.We can already do custom campaigns!
2.Dotp 2014 is already "Wad unlocked" (thx again btw)
3.Most Custom decks for 2013 store there custom cards
in so called Core files which contain no deck at all,
so just storing cards is possible and the engine will read them

So why dont mod the SEALED MODE?!?
It could get a custom deck builder ingame with an updateable core!
Imagagine taking away the booster opening and beeing able to always take cards from this fixed pool which could be gigantic it also comes with an build in sort function already implanted also this would give us one official "core-pool" which would make easier to multiplay for example.Thx for reading i would like some feedback pls.

Greetz from Germany Junger Roemer

[Xander9009]

I found the sealed deck within the WAD file (not that it was difficult) and I replaced Xathrid Demon with Rune-Scarred Demon (just to see if it would work) and the Xathrid Demon that I'd originally drawn did indeed change to become a Rune-Scarred Demon. I don't know how difficult it would be to modify it from within the game. But, at the very least, using a macro program such as AutoHotKey (which I'm planning to attempt this week) is definitely doable.

[Xander9009]

Alright. So I managed to get it done much faster than I expected. Here's the file, and here's what to do with it. It's far too basic to do anything fancy like unpack and pack the wad files. Instead, you'll have to do that on your own. Inside the wad's unpacked folder, in the decks folder, place the file there. Then, whenever you run the file, it will overwrite the sealed deck file you have (so you should definitely back it up!) with a new one with different random cards.

Now for a couple of notes.

1: The only cards I removed were the lands and the tokens. If any others need removed that I didn't realize, then you'll have to let me know.

2: It uses a hard-coded list of cards. Those cards include all cards shipped with the game and none that weren't. The good news about the hard-coded bit is that it means you don't even have to have it in the right folder. You can have it anywhere at all, it'll make the file, and ten you can do whatever you want with it. The bad news, of course, is that if there are cards you really don't like or ones new ones you've added, you can't remove or add them to the potential pool.

3: The number of cards I had by rarity were 61 C, 51 U, 28 R, 11 M. I used these numbers, so that's how many of each should end up being available.

4: Like I said, if it's going to be in the folder with the deck, then it will overwrite that deck and so you should definitely back it up. It won't touch any other files, though, so don't worry about that.

5: Because of the way the decks seem to work, this will replace the cards that you currently have chosen for your sealed deck. More importantly, it will change BOTH sealed decks. They appear to draw from the same pool.

Obviously, once you have your new deck, you'll need to repack the wad for it to be usable. It would be awesome if someone else who knows how to program with AHK would take a look at it and see if I missed anything. Use the EXE if you don't have AutoHotKey.

TL;DR
1: Unpack your WAD. (Below)
2: Find and back up D14_Sealed_Pool.xml
3: Place program into that folder and run it.
4: Pack your WAD.
5: Make new decks from a new sealed deck pool.

Edit: Updated the executables so they should hopefully work on x32 systems.
Edit2: To do this, you'll need Gibbed Tools. http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=10463#p119100

It's simple, just drop the "DATA_DECKS_D14.wad" file onto "Gibbed.Duels.Unpack.exe" from Gibbed Tools. It creates a folder called "DATA_DECKS_D14_unpacked" in your game folder where the wad was. Rename that to get rid of "_unpacked". Continue with the steps above. Then, repack, drop the folder onto "Gibbed.Duels.Pack.exe". Go play.

[Junger Roemer]

Ok thx thats a good base to work from lets call it beta cause it already got some features we want^^
Now to the things that have to be done...
1.eliminate booster drawing (should be easy i guess,just find the value that says
how much boosters are left to open and make it zero)
2.find out whats the cardlimit in numbers of the pool,if its unlimited we
are already good to go
3.Get the others like firemind,darkscion and so on intresseted in this,so we once
build a corepool together


Edit:ok i can manipulate the booster drawing with the help of a ahexeditor making the draw endless,the pool number stops at 999 in pool!!!! where on to something!!!

[Junger Roemer]

i have got the feeling that i need to say that:"This Project is NOT made,so that people can cheat with there sealed pool,it is made to replace it with a ingame deckbuilder,so no more booster drawing,u will be able to take cards from a fixed cardpool like u would from ur boosters but except this pool is gigantic like 2000 cards with custom cards(it got a already inbuilt search function) and make ur very own decks from it,INGAME!!! working in multiplayer as long as ur on the same core patch.As Xander showed (thx) this is possible it just needs us to work togehter.

[Xander9009]

I just tried making a list with all the cards available (didn't think it would work, but if by chance it did, then it would be a very easy solution), but alas only a few were available for use. The game itself likely only reads specific lines from the file. It wouldn't read any more than it did originally. I don't know how to go about changing that so more cards are available. That would require a hex editor or something similar. Since you mentioned you've already had some success with that, that would be up to you. I'm afraid my experience begins and ends with AHK.

[Junger Roemer]

The think is to do this with a hexeditor,the editor has to be running all the time while playing,this only doesnt lead to some serouios errors its also just a "non comfort" version. To do this we have to do this part by part.you did mention that not all cards did work by just placing a list in,did u use one list of 2013? Cause the way cards are coded is different to the one in 2013 not just only the headers,so it would be no wonder not all worked,also the "randomness" from draft has to be fixed,the pool must be a fixed one to make this work.From what i gathered original cardlists are dependet to username and this element has to be removed to make my little idea work.im looking further into it when im back home.maybe a discription what exactly happend when u placed ur custom list in,like how many cards are in the pool? Greetz Junger Roemer

[Xander9009]

The sealed decks seem to work like this:

The pool consists of a limited set of 150 cards chosen seemingly at random, but are in fact dependent on something unique to each player: a,b,c,d,e,f,g (there are actually 150). Each sealed deck has a set number of slots:1,2,3,4 (actually seems to be around 100-125) and each slot is tied to a certain slot from the pool:1-c,2-b,3-g,4-a. The different decks are tied to different slots, so the other deck will draw from the same pool but will have different cards: 1-f,2-b,3-e,4-a. Each deck seems to use 100 or so cards from the pool and a few of its slots are duplicated. So, if it was the first slot for deck one that was duplicated, then whatever card is linked to slot 1 (c) will appear twice. You can change which cards appear, but not how many.

When I said I made a list with all the cards available, I meant all the cards which are initially available in DOTP 2014, so it's not something wrong with their headers.

To make it make a bit more sense, the pool file is literally a file with 150 seemingly random cards listed. If I change those 150 cards to different cards, then the cards that appear in both sealed decks change to the new ones. But which ones change from which deck also seems random. If I add more so there are more than 150, neither deck seems to make use of any of those extra cards. I'll go try something real quick so I can be 100% sure about that.

[Junger Roemer]

Thats what i wanted to know,so the pools cap at 150 cards,but this cap has to be changeable,cause it already is by using hexedit,just need to find where this info is stored manually,thx for the discription also for saving me time to find the sealed decks in the wad btw,now we have a base to work this.

If u want to replicate a cardpool of 999 just get hexedit,start magic 2014 and reset ur sealed decks so have new boosters again,then search in the hexeditor for the numbers of the boosters u have left,open one and do again,till u got the right value to mess around with (i got it when i was down to 1),now change it to like 5 for example and u have always 5 booster to open,no matter how much u opened before(u will get more than 4 replicas of the most cards btw,also it will crash often,cause runtime manipulation isnt the right way to go)

[Junger Roemer]

also the limit of 999 seems just to be there cause the engine cant count further in this value

[thefiremind]

If I add more so there are more than 150, neither deck seems to make use of any of those extra cards.

There have always been limits on lists of any type in all DotP games, they are connected to which variable type is used as index and how the lists are handled internally. I'm afraid that your project would require modifications on the executable, which nobody here is able to do.

I'm not saying that you should quit trying, I'm just saying that we can't achieve everything we want just by editing XML files.

[Junger Roemer]

Thx for the advice firemind,so were are basicly NOW limited to change the 150 cards in the pool to cards the engine already knows,also with some exceptions i cant rly replicate,some do work and are replacing the standart ones and some just dont appear (maybe i missed something),but basicly it works!


also got to make fast cosmetic change:the button "Sealed" is now replaced with "Deckbuilder"


I would like u people not give this up so fast,cause it could not only lead to unified core,it could also give us the feature i thin everyone is missing "The ingame deckbuilder"

[Junger Roemer]

Update:If the value for card limit isnt present in a xml file or such,it could still be done per dll infusion like the wad unlocker does,decompiling that one and having a look into it right now (im not very used to that maybe,maybe the creator could help?!?)

[Alexanderwii]

Hi, I started the exe file and tells me that the version of the file is not compatible with my version of windows even if I have windows 7 32bit. What's the problem?

[Xander9009]

Editing the executable does seem like the only way to raise the limit without a program having to constantly run in the background. A DLL might be able, honestly, I have no idea what DLLs are and are not capable of. I have no idea how they work. However, I'm fairly good at working with what I have. With that in mind, a less than perfect but still better than vanilla way to go about it could be to use the program I made, beef it up a bit so it handles packing and unpacking, and then add in options for which colors to have available. It could still be random, but only within the colors we want. It would give us a pool with a larger number of usable cards while still being randomized. Of course, it could just as easily be non-random and simply have a preset list of specific cards to change it to. It's not nearly as good as simply having all the cards available, but it's better than what it's at now.



As for the limitations based on which variable type is being used, that's what I'd assumed.

I've used Cheat Engine some. I can find the numbers I'm looking for and set them how I want, but I don't understand it well enough to make anything useful from that. And, as you mentioned, making something through Cheat Engine isn't a great way to go about it. That doesn't mean it won't be interesting to see how it reacts with that limit raised and with extra cards in the pool file.