Community Wad

by **Xander9009** » 09 Oct 2014, 16:13

Thank you to everyone who gave me permission to incorporate your mods.
Thank you migookman for porting the mods over (even with the tools to do much of the tedious work, it still must have taken quite awhile; I appreciate it).
Thank you to everyone who made cards for the CW.

You do not need Riiak's functions unless they have changed. The only exception to this is the Manual Mana Functions if you want the basic land to have the manual mana abilities. You do need the DLL to enable using custom decks in-game. See the Requirements section.

At migookman's prompting, and with his and Splinterverse's help with impossible cards, there's now a Community Wad Contents spreadsheet on Google Drive containing information about what is and what isn't included in the Community Wad.

Table of Contents
This post has several sections:
Summary - What is the CW?
Contents and Credits - What's in the CW and who do we have to thank for it?
To-Do - What is left to do for the CW?
Instructions - How do users include it in their game?
Multiplayer - How do you play against other people with it?
Requirements - What do you need in order to use the CW?
Automatic Updating - How can you make sure you CW copy is always up-to-date?
Card Creation Tools - Various tools to help those creating cards.
Version - What version of the CW do you have?
Backup - How can you get older versions of the CW if the newer ones break?

Summary
What is the CW?
This is the Community Wad. Throughout its first year, it came to be the mod for DotP 2014. It wasn't entirely my own work; I just made the framework that allowed it to grow. It was, as the name suggests, a community effort. It was made after most of the prominent modders stopped modding 2014, leaving their mods for everyone to use. With their permission (except kevlahnota, whose mod was incorporated without my knowledge at the time), we compiled it all into a single resource, and then that resource grew until it was several times the size of those original mods. It now contains over 13,000 cards. Of those cards, nearly none are duplicates, with only special cases being exceptions. This was made possible by many modders long before I ever discovered the game, let alone began modding it: RiiakShiNal, thefiremind, sumomole, NeoAnderson, and many others. It grew as much as it did thanks to the tireless card-creation efforts of migookman, who single-handedly coded a huge portion of all of the cards available, and he also helped a lot by taking over the tedium of incorporating the mods I'd gotten permission for. I made the tools to make it easier, but he deserves the credit for actually doing the work needed to make them available. Now, it's a single mod capable of allowing you to build nearly any deck you can think of. And we're not done yet. It continues to grow, and one day (probably relatively soon, given that migookman actually has a list of all missing cards), I expect it will contain every single card that's not impossible to code.

If you've never used mods for DotP 2014 before, the installation instructions below should see you through the process. You can skip there, but consider reading through the credits. There are a lot of people (many I've probably not named) that made this all possible. If you have any questions, feel free to post here or to make your own thread. PMing is possible, but public posts are preferred so others can help as well as allowing others to benefit from the answers. Bugs can be reported here or via the link in my signature, which is currently here.

Contents and Credits
What's in the CW and who do we have to thank for it?
This mod contains all cards found in all mods for which I was able to obtain permission. No one refused permission, but there were a few who weren't able to respond. Of special note, kevlahnota did not respond. At some point, his mod was incorporated without my knowledge. I was only made aware of it afterword. Given the openness of the community and the general nature of modding the game, I've left them included, however. I feel kind of bad about that because I come from Skyrim modding. Nonetheless, I honestly don't think he'd care. (If you see this and you do, feel free to let me know.). For the list below, if there's no link next to the card count, then the cards are only available here.
Authors whose cards are in this file include:

migookman - 5256 cards
NeoAnderson - 1486 cards (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
Xander9009 - 1088 cards (plus 404 tokens and 25,000 art files and all the scripts)
sumomole - 946 cards (Here)
thefiremind - 730 cards (Here)
thefiremind and Xander9009 - 413 cards (Simple, fully auto-coded)
Wizards of the Coast LLC (ported by Armodeus from previous DotP games) - 340
Chakan - 269
SweetLu - 247 cards (Here and here.)
volrathxp - 216 cards (Here)
RiiakShiNal - 189 cards (Here)
Zambooo - 175
Armodeus - 166
Tejahn - 155 cards (Here)
Rockenchick - 148
ShoGUN - 147
jacque - 129 cards (Here)
GrovyleXShinyCelebi - 114
Hacker85 - 108
drleg3nd - 73 cards (Here)
NivMizzet1 - 66
LBN - 60
fallenangle - 59 cards (Here)
thefiremind and gorem2k - 58 cards (Here)
Gorem2K - 44
cenarius - 43
zhupiter - 33
kevlahnota - 29
mr friendly guy - 24 cards
Scion of Darkness - 19
mamoul - 15 cards
drovil - 10
Misplay - 7
SirReco - 1
Unknown - 203

Note that this sums to 49 more than the actual count due to some cards having multiple creators listed.

To Do
What is left to do for the CW?
Some bits need polished. Those bits are:

Functions need renamed to use a standard naming scheme.
Investigate ways to eliminate the need for two copies of mana cards. A way that might work has been found, but it'll need tested and implemented.
The tokens mostly only have English text for their names which need translated into the other languages (abilities should appear properly).

Instructions
How do users include it in their game?
This file has very few requirements.

The core.
The art.
The DLL.

All of these can be downloaded from here. In that link, you'll find two folders. Within the "Community Wad Core" folder, you'll find the "DATA_DLC_COMMUNITY_CORE.WAD" and "d3dx9_43.dll". These are absolutely required. Download them and place them both in your game folder. Grab the version txt file, too, just for the sake of easy updating later.

In the other folder, "Community Wad Art", you'll find several .wad files and three .txt version files. Download them all and put them in your game folder as well. Technically, the CW can be used without these files, and they're quite large altogether. So, if you have a slow, unreliable, or metered internet connection, you can put this set off until later without making the CW unusable. You'll obviously be using cards with no art, though.

Now, you have access to 13,000+ cards. To use those cards, they'll need to be put into decks. This can be done in two ways. If you just want to use decks others have made, head to the Community Wad Decks thread. There are instructions there for how to use others' decks. This is the easier option.

If you want to make your own decks (which is the more fun option, in my opinion), you'll need a program to make decks. There are several on the forums, but the best is RiiakShiNal's Deck Builder. RiiakShiNal made a guide for using the Deck Builder, but the basics are simple. Download the version for your computer (if you don't know, then try 64-bit version first). Extract the folder anywhere on your computer and run "DotP 2014 Deck Builder.exe". It'll guide you through the setup. Then, click "File->Create new deck...". Click "Set Filters". Add whatever cards you want to your deck (but please keep in mind that you cannor save in-game changes you make to the deck, so the unlocks/sideboard stuff still not work how you expect; it'll only work for that session until the game closes, at which point your in-game changes are forgotten). Lands are colorless, and basics do not need to be added manually unless you have a deck larger than 60 including lands (at which point you need to click "Deck Information..." and change the "-1" to "0"). Once you've got the deck how you want it, click "File->Export to ...->Wad". Open your game and find and use the deck.

Also part of the CW, but not exactly part of the base are several tools. They can be found in the Public Tools folder. Most are not mentioned in the readme, but some are. If one's name interests you, ask and I'll explain what it does.

Multiplayer
How do you play against other people with it?
For multiplayer, you and everyone else you're with must have 100% identical wad files. Wad files include both packed wad files that end with ".wad" and loose wad directories with proper header files (which if you're using the CW and decks normally, you won't have to worry about). Decks usable in multiplayer can be found here (which is just the CW decks thread). You will still need to make sure your opponents have the same decks before you can play together.

Requirements
What do you need in order to use the CW?
In the Instructions section, I listed all of the requirements, however, this section will discuss them a bit more.

For starters, the DLL. It's available at that link, and was only added to the CW a long while after the CW was created. This file is included with the CW alongside the Core wad at this point. If you copied everything over from both folders as I suggested, you have the file. Nothing else is required. Everything else needed for the cards to work is included.

However, some function wads may be updated at their source while not being updated here. If this is the case, you may need to download these function wads. (Unless Riiak updates these, you do NOT need them; each one is the current version as of 16-04-16.)

RSN's ObjectDC Functions
RSN's Core Fixes
RSN's Characteristics Mod
RSN's Manual Mana Functions

Many cards have filenames marked with _MM_. These cards produce mana manually. Manual Mana is a workaround for the game's inherent lack of a mana pool. This workaround means you can activate its ability to produce mana, get the mana, and then pay for things with that mana. Please note that cards which do this may not work as expected if your basic lands aren't also MM lands. The game may choose to tap your basic lands despite having just produced mana (which will disappear at the end of the phase causing it to be wasted). The fix for this is to also install Riiak's MM wad. I personally play without it and don't generally have any trouble. The functionality of the Manual Mana mod has been incorporated into the CW itself, and that functionality is the main gift RiiakShiNal gave us with his mod. The ONLY change you will make by installing the MM mod is to grant basic lands MM abilities. It is entirely your choice. Note, however, that like any other wad, all opponents online much have it as well or must also not have it, depending on your choice.

All of these can be found on his website.

Playing with other mods is not advised. While it shouldn't cause any problems, there have been several encountered, nonetheless. It shouldn't be necessary, anyway, since I'm pretty sure that at this point, every card that has been coded for the game by any modder has been included in the CW. While a few modders didn't give persmission (they never even got the request), the cards they made have been recoded from scratch.

Automatic Updating
How can you make sure you CW copy is always up-to-date?
There is another way to use this mod. You can make it automatically update as new cards are added to the list. For that, you'll need a specific program I created and you'll also need Google Drive installed.

Once you have Google Drive installed, head to this folder, and add it to your drive so that Google Drive will download it to your computer and keep it updated.

Now, download the utility named Community Wad Sync from this folder, put it somewhere it can run long-term (your game folder will work well), and run it. It'll ask you to specify certain paths, and then will run in the background. You may have to wait until Google Drive has successfully downloaded at least one art wad before the tool will accept the path.

In order to make this run when you log on so you don't have to remember it, put a shortcut to the utility in your startup folder. Your startup folder will be in a different place depending on your version of Windows. Google your version of Windows to find the correct path, and put a shortcut into that folder. (A shortcut can be made easily by holding alt and then dragging the utility somewhere, even the same folder. Then you can move the created shortcut.)

Once this is done, here's the flow of events.
-The CW is updated and automatically uploaded to Google Drive.
-Your computer's Google Drive program downloads the latest version to your Google Drive folder on your computer.
-The tool I made which you have and is running in the background will see this update and copy the update to your game folder.
No input is needed by you to keep it up to date. If you antivirus says it's dangerous, then the best reassurance I can give is that it would be complained about here, but it's not. I made the utility from scratch myself.

Extra Information | Open: Card Creation Tools
Various tools to help those creating cards.
In addition to the above, there are various tools contained here which you may find useful as a card creator. Most notable is the card validity checker. I'll polish it a bit if anyone is interested in using it, but it's what allowed me to make sure I didn't miss any tokens needed by cards (if a card calls for a token, it makes sure the token exists), makes sure manual mana functions that have a start have an end, makes sure cards that produce manual mana (or sumo's auto mana) will display the mana pool with sumo's function, as well as a couple other things (issues which cropped up in porting the cards). Riiak's Deck Builder will already check any XML issues and possibly some others (I don't know if it checks for missing function definitions), but this can help cover some other issues. I'll be expanding this tool, and creating others, as necessary.

Version
What version of the CW do you have?
Alongside the wad files you download, there are version files as well. Each time a wad is updated, the version is incremented. This entire process is automated. The version file also exists inside the wad, meaning if you didn't download it originally (or you suspect the external one you have is incorrect), you can unpack the wad with Gibbed Tools and find the version file inside. If you have an issue, please check if you have the latest version. Do this by opening the page where you would download the wad and open the version file. It's packed once every 24 hours. I can also force it to repack immediately.

Backups
How can you get older versions of the CW if the newer ones break?
There are backups available. If you explore this folder, you'll see everything related to the community wad. The backups are named according to their version and the date when that version was created.

If you create cards or want to create cards, please consider adding them to this. To do so, send me a PM, and I'll walk you through it. There are multiple ways to do so.