Failed to start.

[stassy]

Do you have an antivirus or firewall active?

[RumbleBBU]

Yup. As I said, I had done everything suggested in this thread, also checked the av/fw settings.

However...

Turns out that there's a "Clickme!.bat" that I'm supposed to run. I run it...and the game starts! Oh.

Interestingly, the installation FAQs on this site made no mention of that little detail. Or if they did, I missed it.

Anyway, the game runs now. (Apparently, I need to run it as an admin or it crashes silently in various places...possibly tries to write to the registry and fails? Oh well, I'll just make a shortcut for the game to always run it as admin.)

And I've already started my first Sealed Deck tournament, 4th Ed with The Dark and Legends booster packs. It's going pretty nicely. I got Vaevictis Asmadi, so built a 3-color aggro beatdown deck around him/her. Basically (given how the AI plays) the game goes like this: either I quickly beat down my opponent with fast aggro creatures, or the game goes into a stalemate...until I get Vaevictis out and win.

One surprising detail though. I'm seeing cards that are definitely NOT supposed to be in 4th Ed, The Dark or Legends, like Allies. I assume this is because of the 2000 card limit?

I'm not complaining, this Sealed tournament is full of fun and surprises, but if I wanted to play a *real* 4th Ed/The Dark/Legends Sealed tournament, I would need to...click World->Limited, is that right?

And if I do, how do I get the current selection of "active" 2000 cards back?

Also, is there any way to *choose* which expansions are available in the first 2000 cards for Sealed Deck? (Sealed Deck is my favorite format in the Microprose adaptation of the game.)

[CirothUngol]

Just wanted to mention that I've updated the Manalink 3.0 Full Download on MediaFire to the 20120715_v3 update. I've removed all (hopefully) superfluous files from the install... that means no more Shandalar (go check out Shandalar 2012).
I've added some stuff, including all of the currently available Classic Rouges (79 of 'em), the few PlayFaces I did for forum members, freshly cleaned\converted PlayDecks (over 2700 from original sources), additional Adversary comments (added to Text.res file), and a few auto-extracting Art and Sound Mods.
The install is a bit different, it includes a tiny batch installer:

*Extract the two-part .RAR archive
*Click the ClickMe!.bat file to auto-extract the default Art and Sound Mods
*To apply other Mods; exit the game, click the Mod, re-start the game
*If Windoze asks about the Mods installing correctly, click "Yes"

Please post if you find any problems.

Sorry... that was posted over in this thread, but you're right. A little more organization could only be a good thing. ^_^
Incidently, my version of the Full Manalink Install isn't officially sanctioned by anyone... I'm just a Rogue User who has played Manalink so much, that I now spend most of my time investigating and attempting to define the GameFiles, FileFormats, etc.
In an attempt to seperate what is necessary from what isn't necessary, I've recently removed what I believe to be all extraneous files from the Manalink Program Folder... so if it starts acting funny, please speak up.

As for your questions regarding Tournament Modes; neither Sealded Deck or Draft are officially considered to be "working". Foolosopher started this thread shortly after Manalink 3.0 was released while attempting to fix Draft, but there's been no new activity for months. I haven't confirmed this yet, but I heavily suspect that all of the cards you'll find in Draft or Sealed Deck come from the first 2000 cards in the Manalink.csv.
If you're familiar with the cards available in Manalink 3.0's current Sealed Deck, please go grab the latest Official Update and check the .CSV to test that assumption. If there's even a single card in Draft or Sealed Deck with a CardID# higher than 1999, then I'm wrong.

...but if I wanted to play a *real* 4th Ed/The Dark/Legends Sealed tournament, I would need to...click World->Limited, is that right?

Nope. Those switches were used to launch the Limited and Custom versions of Magic.exe, which are hold-overs from Manalink 2.0, are no longer used, and have been removed from the Full MediaFire Download... there's a lot of stuff in the game still lingering from Manalink 2.0. Gargaroz and Sonic do all of the grunt-work for the updates (ya gotta love 'em!), but as of yet no developer has performed any work on the Interface. In fact, the GUI for v3.0 is still exactly the same as v2.0. None of the Buttons, Selections, Menus or Widgets have changed... but people tend not to notice because of Sarlack's uber-spiffy ArtMod.
Virtually all current development is on new cards and bugfixes for cards... everything else will have to wait.

Also, is there any way to *choose* which expansions are available in the first 2000 cards for Sealed Deck?

Actually, I think the answer would be "Yes"... but it would be kinda difficult. Even with Manalink 2.0's old CustomSetEditor it was a real hassle, but now you'd have to edit the Manalink.csv by hand, and then run it through the Magic_updater.bat to create the new .DATs and executables. Again, I haven't tried it, but I did something similar when creating the new .DATs for Shandalar 2012, so it might work... of course, those .DATs and .EXEs would only work for Draft and Sealed Deck. In short, the answer might be "Yes", but in practice, the answer is probably "No".

Hopefully sometime soon a developer will come along who wishes to attempt solving the issues with Tournament Mode... 'cause it's also my favorite way to play! ^_^

[RumbleBBU]

If you're familiar with the cards available in Manalink 3.0's current Sealed Deck, please go grab the latest Official Update and check the .CSV to test that assumption. If there's even a single card in Draft or Sealed Deck with a CardID# higher than 1999, then I'm wrong.

That would seem to be the case. I just did that, i.e. downloaded the official version with the updater/manalink.csv, and looked up a few cards. One 'out-of-place' card that frequently pops up in the current Sealed Deck mode is Kazuul Warlord, whose index is #10581 and who is not supposed to appear in any of the listed sets. Another one is Kitchen Finks, #9579.

This does lead to some interesting questions, though...

1) How easy would it be to move around cards and create a custom combination of cards available in Sealed Deck? I'm guessing you would need to swap the index#'s of two cards (one you want to have, and another you want to 'phase out' to make room for it) and move the lines accordingly (for better readability and future editing, if nothing else), then run the magic_updater.bat. Is it as simple as that, or is there a catch? Do I need to do something extra too?
I mean, if it really is as simple as that, I could build several modified variants of the csv, and then use the bat to activate whichever modified version I want to use this time in the Sealed Deck mode.

However...

2) It would really help to know how those precoded Sealed Deck 'sets' (Unlimited, Revised, 4th Ed, etc. etc.) decide which cards belong in them. Otherwise I won't know which cards to replace! (Except through trial and error.)
There is a bit field in the csv indicating the expansion, would it be as simple as editing this field? (I don't think so, though. The default hex value for most cards seems to be 0x0008, which means they are only in the 'Astral' expansion and shouldn't pop up in the Sealed Deck. But they do, anyway.)

3) The csv structure definition, http://www.slightlymagic.net/wiki/Manal ... Definition
This is for ML 2.0, is it still valid for 3.0?

Thank you again for your time and patience!