2009 - A Manalink Year in Review

[jatill]

2009 has come and gone, and my 1-year anniversary of working on this project is coming up in a couple days. In that period of time the state of Manalink has changed vastly. Here’s a short retrospective for those that may not have been here the whole way through.

As of January 1st 2009, a programmer called Mok had already come and gone. As the first person to mod this game, he contributed enormously. He added almost all of the 8th edition cards, and included countless other improvements . Sadly, he did not leave behind any source code.

The next batch of improvements came when it was discovered that Magic.exe (after being decompressed) could be hex-edited to modify some new cards. The modifications were limited to data-entry changes only, so no new abilities could be added to the game that did not already exist. Furthermore, every card added came at the expense of removing another card. While it was exciting to add new cards like Woolly Thoctar, the options were limited and development was relatively stagnant. At this point, there were about 1000 cards programmed into the game. Which finally brings us to 2009.

In January 2009, a new community member called SkyMarshall made 2 major breakthroughs. First, he moved the location of the card code so that some new cards could be added without replacing old cards. Second, he discovered how to modify the code for cards using ASM, a primitive programming language. Using this technology SkyMarshall was able to add new and complex cards like Ravenous Baloth and Buyback. Around the same time, HarryPitfall created the SkyMagicEditor to help with the data-entry aspect of creating new cards.

At the end of January, I rejoined the project (having previously been active back in the Woolly Thoctar days). For the next few months, I continued adding new cards (2 or 3 at a time) on a regular basis, with occasional patches from many other developers. The space limit for new cards was again reached, but HarryPitfall figured out a way to enable unlimited space for code for cards. There was still a limit on the total number of cards, at 2000, a limit which we are still stuck with today

In Mach 2009, Lonefox contributed a patch that had the surprise feature of having the source for the cards written in C, and modern generation programming language. With help from Snacko, the process for adding cards written in C was established. Lonefox contributed a handful of new cards, and helped write the API for C coding.

An Aside:
It is difficult to explain to non-programmers the difference between programming in ASM and in C. Hopefully this example will illustrate it. One of the last cards I wrote in ASM was Sensei’s Divining Top. It took roughly 10 frustrating hours. To write it now in C would take about 10 minutes. A vastly more complicated card, such as Chandra Ablaze, might take as long as an hour in C. It would have been impossible in ASM.

For the next 9 months or so, I was the only programmer on the project. The C API was expanded, making cards easier and easier to write. As a result, card patches went from 2 or 3 at a time, to 10, to 50, to entire sets! As I became much more familiar with the internal original code, I was able to add features like Draft, Momir, Vanguard, and Challenge Mode. And with help from the artistic abilities of Mathusalem, the entire look of the game was reengineered.

In December 2009, two new developers (joemuz and gargaroz) joined the project, and have each contributed a substantial number of cards. They continue to work on adding new cards presently. We are still stuck at the 2000 card limit, but we have exceeded the number of cards coded (2345 as of 1/7/10) by breaking them into separate modules. Soon an application will be released that will let each user choose their own set of 2000 cards to play with.

All in all, it has been an excellent year for Manalink.

[Bog Wraith]

Yes it has and I thank all of the folks you mentioned for their incredible talent, effort and dedication to this unbelievable game that is ancient by any computer game standards. This is the game that will not die! Remarkable, really when you think about it!

I also want to thank Goblin Hero & Huggy for providing us with a new home for ManaLink. It's also nearing 1 year since Gunter's site that hosted ManaLink for a number of years went offline. CCGHQ has been a tremendous gathering place for our members and after some initial break in time, the transition here was flawless.

I want to give a special shout out & thank you to Fran Avalon, one of a small few who were part of our original Alpha testers led by Mok. He helped me in those first few hours after the old site went down to contact as many folks as we could and get them here, registered and keep the community active. It was a hectic few days, but it is something I am very proud of being part of and folks like Fran & Mathy, another original member, were key in this initial phase.

And if I may, I want to thank jatill for his tireless enthusiasm in all of the work he has done. He has benefited, as he stated above, from folks like Harry, Snacko etc., but it has been through his infectious spirit in driving things forward that has swept all of us along in this tidal wave of progress that has taken this game and it's now varied ways of playing it to places none of us could have ever imagined!

Thank you my friend!

[Gargaroz]

The 2009 was superb (I discovered this amazing community, then I learned how to code cards and improve the whole game in a very short time), and the 2010 looks even more promising, with the Custom Set Editors almost ready.
While I'm currently a bit dissatisfied with current state of Magic as a trading card game (more money = less fun, to sum up the actual Wizard policy), I really enjoying working to improve this program.
As the good ol' Duke Nukem would say, "LET'S ROCK !"

[Professor]

As a player who first discovered MtG from the commercials on South Park 15 years ago, to the original 14MB demo download, through all the MicroProse iterations, and in paper from TeStEx through IPA block, I am so happy and thankful that there are still talented folks who care about keeping this game going in all its incarnations.

After I quit MTGO for lack of broadband, I was reborn when I stumbled across Mok's version that made it all workable again, and with expansion!

Dormant again on my desktop after OS upgrades, I again found a surge of MtG interest with this amazing upgrade.

Basically, a great game is a great game, and its timelessness continues to interest new generations. You guys are the Keepers Of The Flame (i just know that's going to get auto-highlighted ) and I speak for a large group when I say I admire all that you have done.

Happy 2010!

[gmzombie]

the only 2 things that could be changed in here was the last update we got from Mok was in 2005 and that was version 8.3 of his beta. he was off and on for the next year but mostly off and then nothing. At the time i had his email and tried desperately to get his source but he wouldn't give it up unless someone knew how to do fix it up as it was in pieces so he said. the next mod was done by franavalon i believe as he got the uncompressed version of magic.exe from mok. I would like to say thanks to all the peeps that have kept this game alive with updates and everything. Im excited everytime i can help like with the new deckbuilder. Ya know come to think of it where did lonefox go? anybody talk with him still?

[Incantus]

[conspiracy theory]
What if lonefox was one of the original Shandalar developers?!?
[/conspiracy theory]

[jatill]

Lonefox hasn't checked the site in months. I did a google search once and there is a result for a "lonefox" video games programmer who graduated from MIT. Sounds like our man, probably.

[Stroggoii]

You're my heroes of the year

[mathusalem]

Well a great thanks to Jatill for bringing back this project from the dead and making it what it is today. Thanks for you dedication and relentless, unstoppable enthusiasm.

A Big thank you to Wraith for gathering the troops after the second cataclysm and finding us a new home, and for being the most gentle Moderator I know.

and a kind thought for Mok wherever he could be.

yeah it'sd been a great year !

[0rion79]

Yes, I'm also very thankful to all of you for adding so much new flavor to this old, great game. Also, it is very nice to spend some time here on the forum and to deal with different or similar people at once: the variety of contributes to this project are what make "our" game great.

[EviL_CLonE]

Wow, I remember when I made my first vanilla card to my copy of the game, in December 2008. It was Jungle Lion, and then Frozen AEther, thanks to the tutorials written by Orion and then Jatill. I was very happy! I also remember the problems about having more than one person coding cards... we clobbered each other versions! xD We were so enthusiast about coding cards. All of us wanted to create "our" cards.
Then the old Manalink.de forum went down, I thought I could never enjoy again new updates of the game. I googled the names from users I could remember (Bog Wraith, Jatill, Orion, Skymarshall -that could never be contacted again-...) And somebody started an MSN group, to try to revive the forum. We speculated about an evil conspiration from WotC to bring down the constant updates.
A few weeks later Bog Wraith mailed us... A new forum was available! So we started all over again.

Nice memories from this game and the people that made it possible.

[FranAvalon]

Nice work guys. I left this project a couple of years ago(another one takes all my effords now ), but I am very glad to see the actual development of it.

Thanks to BogWraith and gmzombie for remember me. I was who uncompress the lastest mok release and open it to Hex edit. Long time past since it, and a lot of things change on ML2. Now Hex edit is useless for well.

I hope that this new year brings a lot of new improves to manalink.

Best wishes for all comunity.

Regards

Fran

[BVDM]

I'm new to these forums, but I'd like to thank the people who did all that work. I can imagine some of you had a lot of headaches in 2009 and all I can do is thank you for resurrecting the game I've played the most since 1997. I hope you guys will continue this project in 2010. My only regret is that I stumbled upon it in January and I would have liked to have known about it earlier!

[Enchanteur]

First thank for this great work.
I buyed the original micropose game as soon as it was sell in the 90's

Now a question :

Code: Select all

We are still stuck at the 2000 card limit

Why is there this limit ?
It's look like a limit of an array. Is not possible to redim this array with a bigger value ?

[aww1979]

It's theoretically possible, but you would have to then change all the pointers and stuff that referred to that array. I was asking my brother about this, who is a professional programmer and plays manalink, too, and he said that he had all the skills to do the job, but that it would take a ridiculous amount of time to go through and find all the references to the array, so he doesn't want to do it :p