Need some help with Deck Editor, please
Posted: 23 Feb 2011, 14:22Over the last three weeks, I've done tons of downloading of different versions of the deck builder, manalink patches, etc. and seemingly tried every combo of installations that I can think of, including testing on virtual machines running XP (i'm running win7ult). Of course, the wiki installation was the first thing I tried. I have no problem using the Constructed or Limited versions of the game.
What I'm trying to do is to use the Custom version and bring in my old favorites and make my old decks playable again.
I've searched ALOT and read a lot of threads and history (all I'm getting at here is that I didn't try things once and when it didn't work for me, scream "HELP!"
)
Here's what I've narrowed things down to:
2 problems:
Problem#1: Using DeckEditorWrapper.exe dated 8/6/2010 and located in latest update (20110208.zip) leads to the problem that has been documented before where card A is replaced by card B, then card B is replaced by card C, card C replaced by card D, and so on and so on. This happens for me in Win7 or XP, regardless of admin rights/compatibility settings/etc.
Replacing DeckEditorWrapper.exe with a version from 7/28/2010 that I found in an older update fixes this problem. This file can be found in the complete game directory linked/uploaded by Cognis (thanks!) and in a zip file previously linked by Stassy, and then re-linked by COgnis. (thanks again!)
I do not know the implications of using an older version of DeckEditorWrapper.exe as opposed to the 8/6/10 version. It seems to work. However, possibly it is contributing to the next problem?
Problem#2: I have had success using all the latest updates + DeckEditorWrapper dated 7/28/10 when making "small" updates. For example, adding a deck that triggers the addition of 5 or 10 cards is USUALLY successful. If I dump all of my decks (which, of course, is what I want to do), this leads to the addition of approx 400 cards. During the process of addition, things seem to go well. Of course, this takes hours. At the end of the run, I have discovered that while the manalinkc.csv gets updated with every card addition, the cardC.dat does not get created because the csv2dat will give an "error at offset 0x#####". Since the cardC.dat doesn't get updated, the cards do not show up when magiccustom.exe is executed.
This leads to a few questions:
1. Can I get some tips to trouble shoot the offset?
2. Potentially, there is one (or many) particular cards that are getting written incorrectly to the manalinkc.csv?
3. When I open manalinkc.csv in a text editor to troubleshoot, I can usually find an entry or two that has what looks like a carriage return that causes the line to complete on the next line. Usually this involves a quotation in the flavor text. When I "fix" these extra carriage returns, I still cannot successfully use the CSV2DAT.exe to update the cardc.dat. It will error at a different offset, though. Any ideas?
My final question: Is it just me? Has ANYONE been able to use the latest downloads from the wiki pages and been successful in switching out cards?
Sorry for the long email! Any help/pointers would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Chris
What I'm trying to do is to use the Custom version and bring in my old favorites and make my old decks playable again.
I've searched ALOT and read a lot of threads and history (all I'm getting at here is that I didn't try things once and when it didn't work for me, scream "HELP!"
)Here's what I've narrowed things down to:
2 problems:
Problem#1: Using DeckEditorWrapper.exe dated 8/6/2010 and located in latest update (20110208.zip) leads to the problem that has been documented before where card A is replaced by card B, then card B is replaced by card C, card C replaced by card D, and so on and so on. This happens for me in Win7 or XP, regardless of admin rights/compatibility settings/etc.
Replacing DeckEditorWrapper.exe with a version from 7/28/2010 that I found in an older update fixes this problem. This file can be found in the complete game directory linked/uploaded by Cognis (thanks!) and in a zip file previously linked by Stassy, and then re-linked by COgnis. (thanks again!)
I do not know the implications of using an older version of DeckEditorWrapper.exe as opposed to the 8/6/10 version. It seems to work. However, possibly it is contributing to the next problem?
Problem#2: I have had success using all the latest updates + DeckEditorWrapper dated 7/28/10 when making "small" updates. For example, adding a deck that triggers the addition of 5 or 10 cards is USUALLY successful. If I dump all of my decks (which, of course, is what I want to do), this leads to the addition of approx 400 cards. During the process of addition, things seem to go well. Of course, this takes hours. At the end of the run, I have discovered that while the manalinkc.csv gets updated with every card addition, the cardC.dat does not get created because the csv2dat will give an "error at offset 0x#####". Since the cardC.dat doesn't get updated, the cards do not show up when magiccustom.exe is executed.
This leads to a few questions:
1. Can I get some tips to trouble shoot the offset?
2. Potentially, there is one (or many) particular cards that are getting written incorrectly to the manalinkc.csv?
3. When I open manalinkc.csv in a text editor to troubleshoot, I can usually find an entry or two that has what looks like a carriage return that causes the line to complete on the next line. Usually this involves a quotation in the flavor text. When I "fix" these extra carriage returns, I still cannot successfully use the CSV2DAT.exe to update the cardc.dat. It will error at a different offset, though. Any ideas?
My final question: Is it just me? Has ANYONE been able to use the latest downloads from the wiki pages and been successful in switching out cards?
Sorry for the long email! Any help/pointers would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Chris