Manalink Update 2016/01/14: Battle For Zendikar v2

[Gargaroz]

Cool! A new patch! I was just checking the repository and saw there were developments in the main branch! Downloading now, perhaps I could do some bugfix later.

[gmzombie]

If you liked that then you will also like what Korath has done to shandalar. So much is in there now it's great. Good to see you back Gargaroz

[foolosopher]

Speaking of Shandalar, it can start, I can create a new game, I can even save a game, BUT when I try to
1.use the deck editor
2.Enter a card market
3. try to duel a creature
Shandalar crashes and doesn't ever restore graphics analysis. In general it crashes when it tries to display a card.
Another thing, Manalink works, but takes a bit to load, or to change menu.

And when Korath says that we shouldn't need the
Playdeck Analyzer anymore, does this get triggered automatically, or do we need to press a button?

All in all, thanks for everything and it's good to not have to maintain two installation folders for Manalink and Shandalar.

[stassy]

Unfortunately, you do need 2 separates folders if you want to play both ML3 BFZv2 and Shandalar Abandoned Shrine v1, because even if AS1 is based on BFZv2, installing it over will mess up the former, and vice versa.

The good thing is now you no longer need 2 separates cardart folder, only one is shared between the 2 games (which still need to be duplicated for each of the games).

[Korath]

Shandalar-2016 should share an installation with Manalink just fine. That was most of the reason the BFZ install is so large.

(The old version of Shandalar isn't compatible with the current Drawcardlib.dll or CardArtLib.dll, though, and that's what it sounds like foolosopher's trying to use.)

[Korath]

And when Korath says that we shouldn't need the
Playdeck Analyzer anymore, does this get triggered automatically, or do we need to press a button?

I only realized now that I never answered this part.

The reason that Playdeck Analyzer was required before is that Vanguard cards and the game-format cards like Draft and Handicap and particularly Elder Dragon Highlander were assigned ids among the token cards and the various orange effect cards. Those ids change whenever we add new cards. When you save a deck, it includes both the id and name of each card, but that's only to make them sort of human-readable - when decks are read back in, only the id is looked at, and the card names are ignored.

Starting in BFZv1, all the cards that appear in the deckbuilder screen were assigned permanent ids, just like actual cards. So you don't need to run PDA anymore to update your decks, and it's not even run automatically; the deck files should remain valid forever just as they are. (I was in fact able to use the temporary ids they got in FRF as their permanent BFZ-and-later ones, but if you're upgrading from earlier than that, you'll still need to run Playdeck Analyzer or manually update your decks one last time.)

[fidoraguy]

Im sorry, maybe im a newb (i am), but the readme inside the Manalink-3.0-PortalsToTheros folder says to find the file "Install_Me_First!.cmd" and there is no such file i can find. So i am not sure how to even get started. my end goal is to get Shandalar running for single player. Any help that anyone can offer would be awesome.

Is there another way now to make the install? step by step instructions on which files to click or open or run whatever would be cool.

Thanks!

[Korath]

Ignore it. There's a line in the readme lower down that says, "No one ever reads the ReadMe..."; that's for good reason: the information there varies from harmless to wrong to outright dangerous. It was written for a prior package that was distributed in a half-installed state, with batch files to customize and complete the installation. That was a good idea in principle, but poor in execution since the batch files were fragile and failed to run properly on many computers. Including that version of the readme in the newer package was an oversight.

All that should be necessary these days is to unzip the packages in the proper order, move art files around (since those packages tend to put them in spurious subdirectories - all the [card name].jpg files should be in CardArtManalink/ directly, not "CardManalink/Card Art Update/Wu Spy.jpg" or whatever), and maybe reboot (if text doesn't work).