New to manalink beyond 2.0 (questions and info for players)

[Tower_Mazer]

This is a topic I'm making in hopes that new players like myself (not modders or programmers) can make a collection of questions. I'm unable to find some simple answers to some simple questions. I hope this will help expand the community as well.

A few questions...

1) Where do I find a link to manalink 2.01 ?
2) Do I need anything besides a base Duels of the Plains Walkers base install and the manalink 2.0 2007 release to use manalink 2.01 and manalink updates like Orion79 and Jatill releases ? Thought I was needing MWS.

[Huggybaby]

1) In the downloads topic.
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=898
2) You don't need manalink 2.0. 2.01 is obviously a newer version. MWS has nothing to do with this program.

[Tower_Mazer]

OK Huggybaby hooked us up with the download info. Now myself I know what a few people here have done with Manalink and I really appreciate the work they have done. I was wondering if some of the people here would know some more history about Manalink after the break through Mok did. For starters does anyone know Mok or ever talked to him or are we all like myself and was just blessed to find the update when it came out in 2007? What happened to Mok did he just walk away? I figured I'd ask here and make this an Info/History post instead of making a new post. Who made SkyEditor? I'm guessing SkyMarshal. Your input would be appreciated.

[Bog Wraith]

Mok left years ago and hasn't been heard from since. His departure was sudden and swift with no explanation that I was aware of. I think one of our original group, which I was part of, heard something about his situation a bit after he left, but I'm not sure.

Everything else was done by folks like jatill, HarryPitfall and others. The old website went offline in late February and we've been here since.

That's about it!

[jatill]

A History of Manalink. Others with more complete knowledge are free to post corrections.

In the beginning there was Microprose
Microprose created the game, and then released a couple expansions of new cards and then stopped forever. There were about 800 cards in the original game.

In 2007, Mok did the following:
-added about 350 new cards, including a large portion of 8th edition
-updated the mulligan rule
-updated a couple other minor rules (tapped artifacts still work)
-added 8th edition to otions for sealed deck
-reverse compiled Magic.exe to make it editable by a hex editor.
-changed the image format for cads to jpg so new cards could be easily added
Mok disappears without leaving any docs or source behind.

Later in 2007, FranAvalon determined how to use a hex editor to update cards. This enabled people to add new cards to the game, as long as they had the exact ability of an existing card. Each new card added had to replace an existing card, though, since there was a hard limit on the number of cards in the game. Various contributers (notably Orion79 and jatill) replaced about 60 cards with newer cards. The data structure for cards in Magic.exe was decoded and documented.

In January 2009, SkyMarshall made 2 major breakthroughs. First, he moved the location of the card code so that some new cards could be added without replacing old cards. Second, he discovered that since Magic.exe was decompiled, the code of the cards themselves could be inspected and modified. Coding in ASM,a primitive language, SkyMarshall was able to add new and complex cards like Ravenous Baloth and Buyback.

Around the same time, HarryPitfall created the SkyMagicEditor to help with the addition of new cards.

At the end of January, jatill rejoined the project. He gathered up all the information about adding cards in ASM, and turned them into a tutorial. For the next few months, jatill continued adding new cards on a regular basis, with occasional patches from many other developers. The legend rule was also revised to match the current rule. The space limit for new cards was again reached, but HarryPitfall figured out a way to enable unlimited space for code for cards. There was still a limit on the number of cards, at 2000, but this was at least 500 cards away.

In Mach 2009, Lonefox contributed a patch that had the surprise feature of having the source for the cards written in C. With help from Snacko, the process for adding cards written in C was established. Lonefox contributed a handful of new cards, and helped write the API for C coding. With the ease of coding reduced by a factor of 10, jatill took on the bulk of the development and added about 500 cards total. He also added the Momir format, as well as basic drafting functionality.

And that's where we are today, I believe

[Bog Wraith]

Very well written and accurate from my viewpoint.

Well done!

[Tower_Mazer]

Thanks Jatill, I know I'd never see this on the History Channel. I enjoy the history on projects like this. Almost everyone I've seen like this has several people come and go doing their parts. It's nice to know who they are so credit can be given. Heck maybe someday your words will be on Wiki's Manalink page.

[Edit]
Didn't Mok also enable TCP/IP gameplay?

[gmzombie]

yes he did. and i believe it was around 2005 that mok started redoing the game...just for reference but other than that good history.

[FranAvalon]

some story fixes

Mok releases his manalink 2.0 in 2004 summer-fall (more or less). He worked on it until february on Ml2.0 and then he dissapear.

Before than mok releases its ML2.0 i was tinkering with ML1.3.2 and found how i could modify cards using a hex editor. I stoped to do that when we started to be ML2.0 playtesters (the old playtesters group: bog wraith, gmzombie, mathusalem and me are the only members left, i think). After MOK discontinued his work, i tried to do the some tinkering with a HEX editor, but the exe was compressed. After a search for a lot of info and try with several app, i could uncompress the exe and start to use the HEX editor again.

Rest of the story, is as Jatill told

[Huggybaby]

Mok said why he quit in the 1.32 readme.

History
-------

Changes in version 1.3.2 - Second release
(and probably the last one - I failed to get MtG source code from
MPS for more enhancements so I lost interest in the whole project).

- All: hopefully finally fixed to work on Windows ME. Previous patch
worked only in rare cases (my machine for example

- All: experimental patch for Windows 2000. I didn't test it much,
so please report any problems. Anyone willing to test it on Win XP?

- Shandalar: slowed down even more for the 1GHz+ machines.

- Shandalar: fixed crash when trying to sell Mana Crypt.

- Shandalar: fixed displaying wrong amulet color when offered
by your opponent.

Changes in version 1.3.1 - First release

- Manalink: replaced serial connection with Internet TCP/IP connection.

- Magic: randomizing routines replaced. But it will NOT give you more mana
in manalink. Not enough mana in manalink is only a myth. Actually, the game
cheats and gives you MORE mana sources when playing against the computer
and that's why you might get an impression that you are receiving not enough
mana in manalink.

- All: fixed to run in Windows Millennium Edition. But if you are thinking
about moving from Win 98 to ME, think again. ME is piece of s**t.

- All: enabled all the cards regardless of which expansions you have installed.

- All: CD check removed.

- Shandalar: slowed down to work on very fast computers at reasonable speed.

- Magic: debug menu removed.

- Deckbuilder: fixed "stats" of several cards (mana sources):
- Badlands (black and red)
- Mana Batteries (their appropriate colors)
- Celestial Prism (all colors)
- Sunglasses of Urza (no longer mana source)
- Channel (colorless)
- Drain Power (colorless)
- Energy Tap (colorless)
- Fastbond (colorless)
- Reset (colorless)
- Untamed Wilds (colorless)
- Land Tax (no longer mana source)
- Mana Flare (colorless)
- Apprentice Wizard (colorless)
- Coal Golem (red)
- Elves of Deep Shadow (black)
- Fire Sprites (red)
- Ley Druid (colorless)
- Gauntlet of Might (red)

[Bog Wraith]

It still never answered why he just disappeared and never spoke to or posted anything in regards to why he just came to that conclusion.

I can't speak for the rest of the original testers, but I had quite a bit of back and forth correspondence with Mok via email and PM's. We discussed many things. In fact Mok would bounce allot of ideas and thoughts he had in regard to ManaLink with me. We did this quite a bit. Then it just stopped with no further communication between us. There were times where he posted that his job would take him away from the project for awhile and indeed, near the end, one of his last posts had said that he wouldn't be able to spend much time at all in the near future on it because of his work load. Not long after that, he was gone, like a whisper!

So, yes, the readme file lists only the a partial reason for what happened but not the full story of why and where he went!

I think that is something all of us who were on the original team have, and will always wonder what really happened and why he just completely stopped any communication with all of us. He was a nice guy with a very dry sense of humor and I liked him.

I miss those days allot!

[gmzombie]

i agree but the 1.32 readme was far before he ever did the 2.0 release. I remember talking with him once after he left and he said that if we had someone capable of asm...at the time nobody was there for that, that he would release all of what he had. He reversed the game to begin with and basically rewrote it in the language he knew. asm. He was a very nice guy and i wish i wouold have been able to get that stuff from him but we managed.

[Incantus]

He reversed the game to begin with and basically rewrote it in the language he knew. asm.

Just a quick correction, despite knowing nothing about this project (can't even run it since I have a mac). ASM is the language that the computer executes, and all exe files are basically assembly language files. So he might have figured out the structure of the program from reading the asm, but Mok couldn't have rewrote it in assembly since the file (once decompressed) was already in assembly (and also the reason I can't run it except in an emulator - assembly is processor specific, and sometimes even specific to the model of the processor; ie 486 machines versus pentium machines).

[Professor]

The history lesson could easily be added to the Wiki. It's worth it IMHO.

[Svalbard]

So, yes, the readme file lists only the a partial reason for what happened but not the full story of why and where he went!

As a former coder for another game that lost its lead programmer under mysterious circumstances like what you describe here, I can say that if you are as good as MoK and people in the industry find out...they will tell you to come work for them for a pretty big chunk of change. Maybe even Hasbro did it just to get him to stop giving us for free what they'd like us to pay for pack by pack with MTG:Online.

Shandalar and the Sealed Deck tournament aspects of Manalink are two of my top five gaming experiences. Every time I upgrade my computer, I hope and pray that I can somehow find a way to make the game work. I know eventually all the glue, tape, bailing wire, and spit that hold this masterpiece together will eventually fall to computer progress, but I have been damn impressed by the work people have done here and elsewhere to keep it alive.

I'll be putting up a donation as soon as I do my taxes, hopefully it'll be enough to keep people going.