The near future of Manalink 2.0 (or 3.0)

[Gargaroz]

Orion, the only thing we could actually do is made several different version of the same files, with different names, and a .bat files that automatically renames them and let you play whatever version you need.
It's the same thing I did for my Golden Years mod.

[0rion79]

oh, what a shame: it looks like I've misunderstood your words. It was too beautiful to be true!

[foolosopher]

Gargaroz I 'm willing to edit magic.exe if necessary. So far I have used ollydbg to browse and spent a few hours with it, but didn't really become proficient using it, so if you could give some instructions on a tool on how to find the specific areas to edit, it would be really helpfull. This way from time to time someone else can take the weight off your shoulders, even for an update or a single mod.

[foolosopher]

Oh and to put things right snacko has done all the work so far on drawcard.dll. I'm trying to catch up but it'll take some time

[Gargaroz]

I've wrote a small guide for Magic.exe editing.
You could find it here : http://www.slightlymagic.net/wiki/Guide ... xe_editing
Feel free to ask me anything you need, Foolosopher

[0rion79]

Gargaroz, sorry if I make a dumb question but, even if I've misunderstood your workds, have you ever tried to assign more CSV/Dat files to a single Magic.exe? I mean, if the problem is in the max quantity of cards storeable in a single dat.file, what about splitting the job among more files? The 2nd one should start from ID 2000 to 3999 and the 3rd from 4000 to 5999.

Also, even if this is not possible, I think you could deal with GMZombie to use his special DLL to improve Deck Editor icons accordingly with the version of magic that is currently running. Just to add some more flavor.

[Gargaroz]

You don't get the point, Orion : the 2000 limit is hardcoded in Magic.exe, so even if you make a 6000 card CSV file, the game will never accept it. Otherwise, everything will be a lot more easy.

[0rion79]

well, it is a bit more complicated than that. Since I'm here from a long time i remembr that the magic.exe has been modified to hold much more cards io the .exe than its original quantity but the limit that We are facing now is strictly connected to the quantity of cards that the .exe accepts from the dat file. So i was wondering if splitting the quantiti of cards among several files way help to avoid the problem. It is like if a box is full and you use another box stored nearby uninsu the same kind of items. Sorry for mistakes, writing from mobile.

[Gargaroz]

The real problem is still the same : if we could have in our hand the resources that Mok and the other original developers had, that limit will be broken in a limited span of time.
My forbidden dream is a Manalink32, as the great people in the Eduke32 did for Duke Nukem 3D (bow down to the Duke !). But, again, they had access to the source code.

[foolosopher]

From what I 've seen while I scanned the disassembled magic.exe there were a few occurences of 2000-7D0 but didn't point to a table (check this thread viewtopic.php?f=56&t=973 ). From a few experiments that I made where I assigned 2000 to an ID and changed the .dat etc accordingly the game would hang while trying to load. When I searched using ollydbg I found that 7D0 was loaded on the stack just before crashing, but haven't managed to see where it was stored or been able to change it. I wanted to execute step by step, but haven't figured out how to do it yet (didn't look much into it, but anyway...). So what Orion is saying might be true, but to do it one would have to make magic.exe look into many different .dat files I suppose, but I don't know how to do that. There are however a few people who know how the address spacing goes, so if this hypothesis is true, we might be able to exploit it.

Another idea I had was to use another deck editor (I like magic Album and snacko's) to produce deck files (.dck), then check the cards of the deck (or set of decks) one wants to play and load them onto one set of csv, magic.exe, dat and... play. To do this we would have to automate somehow (not completely necessary, but probably through a script) the process of editing the csv through the skymagic editor, csv2dat etc. It's similar to what jatil did with the custom editor, but on a deck(s) basis. Then we could circulate a number of csvs based on the mods/sets we want to play and update the engine when necessary. I think it's doable but I would like your opinion on this however.

[foolosopher]

One more thing I just remembered, which might be important
In the disassembled code, each card's name was loaded with a series of db commands, letter by letter. But there was a sequence of dummies, like when the csv was not full. sequence is :
db 40h; '@'
db FFh; 'ï'
db 0Fh;
db 01h;
db E8h; '¨'
db 44h; 'D'
db 75h; 'u'
db 6Dh; 'm'
db 6Dh; 'm'
db 79h; 'y'
db 94h; '"'
db 03h;
db 42h; 'B'
db FFh; 'ï'
db 01h;
db 01h;
db 01h;
db 10h;

and in skymarhals version it appears 28908 times (while in Mok2's only 261), so what Orion says might be true. Haven't checked a current version of magic.exe though.

[foolosopher]

Gargaroz, I also read the guide that you posted.Seems straightforward and that a non-developer can do it, but here are a few version development procedural questions.

The person acting as csv editor gets the values for the fields from the card developers, or does he have to figure them out by himself?

I guess we agree first on which cards are to be excluded?

Once the csv-exe is ready, the version goes for testing?

I suppose I can do it occasionally, if you need help (or are too bored to do it .

[gmzombie]

the reason skymarshalls has so many dummys in it is because he extended the card code to i think 30000 card codes in the exe..but never actually fixed the area that loads up the csv and whatnot for the 2k limit.

[0rion79]

GMZombie, thanx for explaining everything better than be: you've really made the point!

[Gargaroz]

@ Gmzombie : Ah, that's interesting ! I wish we still have Skymarshall with us, the Skymagic needs an update too

@ Foolosopher : I think that you could esasily figure out the values for the CSV by yourself, using the guide and checking already coded cards. But as I already state, feel free to ask me if you need.

As for the cards to include, it's a delicate matter, as everyone has their own favorites. The main guide I follow is this :
1) The card is heavily played is one of the "main" formats.
2) If I found out a deck that I like / think is worth, I insert everythin is needed to play it (like I did for the mono-green from Time Spiral block).
3) The cards is useful / funny for EDH.
4) the main developer of each project has right to the "final cut".

As for testing, we have a nice bunch of bug-hunters, plus I create the Random Singleton card mainly for the first debugging of New Limited and worked great.

In these last days I had a change of plans : as soon as I finished coding New Limited, I'll probably put my hand on another mod, that will be thought to "fill the gaps" for Modern, so we'll have the Modern Years, from original Mirrodin to Time Spiral.