[not a bug] Homelands Set Cards Missing; 50% Ice Age; More?

[Transient]

Hi. This being my first post, I would like to begin by saying thank you to everyone who has ever worked on developing or otherwise contributed to improving and keeping this game alive all these years. Truly an incredible effort and such a pleasure to enjoy. One love.

Now, I have been playing with the early sets from the '90s since I never got to experience those and have always been curious to see the origins of magic.

I got to Homelands and I happened to look at wikipedia's entry just for general context and info, where I noticed mention of Irina Sengir and Veldrane of Sengir, but these cards are missing from the Homelands set in Manalink 3.0 (the most recent 30/7/2017 installation for new users posted by Aswan jaguar). However, there is card art for them in the CardArtManalink folder (at least after applying drool66's July 2018 Art Patch - I didn't check earlier).

I only noticed this by chance; since I never played with these sets before, I don't know what cards to expect and am worried that there are other cards missing from other sets that I would not realize. I don't know of any easy/automated way to check the cards in the game against any official card set lists that may exist to find out.

EDIT:

Ok so I manually checked the set list (at gatherer) against the cards that appear in Deck Builder - select tournament formats/expansion - Homelands - enable filter.

It seems that most (73/115) of the set is missing. This is the full list of missing cards from Homelands:

Abbey Matron
Æther Storm
Aliban's Tower
Ambush
Anaba Ancestor
Anaba Bodyguard
An-Havva Constable
An-Havva Inn
An-Havva Township
An-Zerrin Ruins
Apocalypse Chime
Aysen Abbey
Aysen Bureaucrats
Aysen Highway
Baki's Curse
Beast Walkers
Black Carriage
Broken Visage
Carapace
Castle Sengir
Chain Stasis
Clockwork Gnomes
Coral Reef
Dark Maze
Daughter of Autumn
Dwarven Sea Clan
Dwarven Trader
Ebony Rhino
Evaporate
Feast of the Unicorn
Feroz's Ban
Folk of An-Havva
Forget
Funeral March
Ghost Hounds
Giant Albatross
Giant Oyster
Hazduhr the Abbot
Headstone
Hungry Mist
Irini Sengir
Ironclaw Curse
Jinx
Joven's Tools
Koskun Falls
Koskun Keep
Labyrinth Minotaur
Leaping Lizard
Leeches
Mammoth Harness
Marjhan
Mesa Falcon
Mystic Decree
Orcish Mine
Prophecy
Rashka the Slayer
Renewal
Reveka, Wizard Savant
Root Spider
Roots
Roterothopter
Rysorian Badger
Samite Alchemist
Sea Troll
Serra Aviary
Serra Bestiary
Serra Inquisitors
Serra Paladin
Timmerian Fiends
Truce
Veldrane of Sengir
Winter Sky
Wizards' School


Have I misunderstood the purpose of Manalink 3.0? Is it intentional to exclude so many cards?


EDIT 2:

Took a cursory look at Ice Age, which officially has 383 cards, but only ~200 in Manalink 3.0. Same for Fallen Empires (~110/187).

I'm guessing that this is the case for other sets as well...

???

EDIT 3:

Legends missing -

Adventurers' Guildhouse
Cathedral of Serra
Divine Intervention
Equinox
Land's Edge
Lord Magnus
Mountain Stronghold
Seafarer's Quay
Unholy Citadel
Wall of Caltrops


EDIT 4:

Ok, so I've noticed that most of these cards were added in the subsequent Battle For Zendikar v2 patch, which is unfortunately no longer available.

Disappointing.

Well, I would delete this now, but instead I want to ask is there any way for me to add these cards one by one myself (taking into account I have no coding knowledge or experience)?

Finally, if not, what is the best alternative for playing with 90s cards against AI? Forge, Xmage, Cockatrice, Untap.in?

Thank you for any help.

[Aswan jaguar]

The current list of Manalink coded cards are:
Homelands 106 out of 115.
Ice Age 282 +10 extra basic lands (as we don't count extra basic lands) = 292 out of 373.
Legends 302 out of 310.

Is it intentional to exclude so many cards?

Some years ago it was intentional not to code all cards especially cards that did exactly the same thing as others already coded as we had a card limit of only 2000 cards per magic.exe. Of course there are some cards that this engine can't handle so they can't be coded and some other cards that nobody got around to code or couldn't be coded at the time.

Unfortunately it is difficult to get the correct coding environment and more challenging to code the remaining cards some of which are impossible to code.
Unfortunately I can't say when we will have a new update so you can get at least those already coded.
Forge has the more cards coded and has an AI even though some cards are disabled for the AI as can't handle them at all. I expect Xmage to have less cards from those sets and maybe worse AI than forge I don't know about the rest.
If you are interested for sets completion in Manalink check the attachment.

[travolter]

@Transient

Hi!! Nice to see here old school players looking for the classic cards. I play these sets and I enjoy a lot my games with manalink. Not all cards are codec but in exchange you have fastest and lowest resource mtg game engine available.
If you want more cards--> forge, but the program consume too much resources in comparison with manalink, also the gui is even more complicated to play, because the way that manalink present the info while playing is more "visual" (Example.- you cast a disenchant with manalinka the disenchant pic is shown on the scree, in forge you need to read a log and you lose time reading instead centering on the game and speed) (at least this is my point of view to choose one game or other-->speed, low resources-> fast response-> + playability)

Also there is a really big point to manalink. You can play multiplayer with old versions (manalink2.0), and cause resources are low, the internet gaming experience is amazing, playing with a real human instead AI (I just finished playing some games with my brother with mtg 93/94 archetypes, and even using a limited set is enough to enjoy a lot the game).
I really hope that someday manalink3 will enable again the TCP/IP internet connection, so we can use more cards for online games.

If you like the game, you can contribute making decks and reporting bugs

@Aswan

Thanks a lot for the stats file!! I always wanted to know what amount of cards are codec for each set.

Question:

I see Land´s Edge from legends not codec. Could not be possible to reuse the code of Seismic Assault?. It´s almost the same card, just change enchantment to enchant world and add "you can discard any card", not only land (I bet that this will be the hard part to code)

[Transient]

Thank you both for the thoughtful replies.

Aswan jaguar, so when you say "current" you mean the last two patches which have been taken down (so not exactly current for anyone who did not get the chance to get them), and the attachment is a record of the cards included after those patches, correct? Is there a list for the available installation for new users that you put up?

travolter, I'm really only interested in playing against the AI right now and taking my time enjoying getting to know these older cards. However, your comments comparing the gui's lead me to conclude that I'm best off sticking with Manalink and joining the lurking souls that must exist checking in every so often to see if this project will someday be revived. If it isn't, it would be sad and a real shame, but even so I remain grateful for having what we do, which is already pretty special.

[Aswan jaguar]

Yes, by current I meant that. You can grab the playdeck analyser in link below and do it yourself.
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6244

[Transient]

So I found the time to take a look at that playdeck analyzer you linked.

After going through the read me, downloaded, extracted, put the folder with the analyzer in the folder containing the cards.dat, ran the analyzer.

Got the result "Found Manalink 3.0 DAT\CSV with 14984 entries."

Next I export DAT as CSV, then selected the CSV, got the result same as above but additionally "Coded Cards: 11048 | Total Pics: 14076."

Then I attempted to export CSV as expansions to try to get the kind of expansion rarity text file that you provided earlier for the current but unavailable patches, and I got and Error "File or path not found at line 2758."

So what did I do wrong and how can I generate the expansion rarity info?