Could someone do a sticky on advancing Shandalar development

[Haytrid]

Hi, before you ask I just spent a couple hours digging through the forums here regarding Shandalar development before posting this.

I want to say thank you to those who have committed so much of their time and energy keeping this development active. I was so thrilled to find an updated copy of this game on the web, thank you!

I am, of course, a huge fan of the Shandalar game and have been playing it weekly ever since I found the update a year ago. I occasionally see people ask how to further development of shandalar but the primary response is simply "need an assembly programmer". My question is, could someone actually put a sticky topic together outlining the actual tasks that need to be accomplished, approx hours to accomplish, and what skill-sets would be required to further those tasks?

About the only thing I was able to glean was the fact that the source code is really needed? An assembly programmer could somehow reverse-engineer the magic and shandalar executable's? Is that why an assembly programmer is needed?

Would it be worth it to take up donations in a trust specifically to pay an assembly programmer to do this? Does anyone have a notion of approximately the hours required to accomplish what primarily needs to be done to further the project?

I'm also curious, has anyone ran through the credits and tried contacting the original developers to ask them if the source is "floating" around out there and if it could "accidentally" fall into the right hands?

Thanks for your time!

[gmzombie]

I occasionally see people ask how to further development of shandalar but the primary response is simply "need an assembly programmer". My question is, could someone actually put a sticky topic together outlining the actual tasks that need to be accomplished, approx hours to accomplish, and what skill-sets would be required to further those tasks?

here is what i know from Snacko anyways

The file has currently 10000 card spaces.
The first card starts at virtual address 0x991000.
The card count is at virtual address 0xA40C7F.
This says how many cards from the last one won't be given
(ex. Dummies, Tokens, Special FX cards, etc) or used in the
events.
0057EB75 2D 87240000 SUB EAX,2487
All the special cards have to be added at the back.
Once you add a normal playable card you need to modify the
above value ex. 1 card added
0057EB75 2D 87240000 SUB EAX,2486

The extra space is non executable and can be used for variables
only (there are some tables which depend on the number of cards
which I haven't remapped to the new memory region yet, still it
doesn't crash yet!)
New cards should most likely be added via a dll, however the
functions addresses can and most likely are different between
Magic.exe and Shandalar.exe.
If the new cards are written with yasm this could be easily
fixable via remapping once macro and not touching the card
logic ex.
%define Phase [0xFFFFF]
%define TapCard 0xFF00FF

cmp Phase, Upkeep
push CardID
call TapCard
to
%define Phase [0xAAAAA]
%define TapCard 0xAA00AA

cmp Phase, Upkeep
push CardID
call TapCard

Now i dont think anybody has even given thought to the amount of work that would need to be done to fix up shandalar to the point of where manalink is right now. As for the source from the original programmer already tried that. original company was bought and sold a few times since then. no luck there. The biggest thing i would believe is taking what is new from magic.exe and transplanting it into shandalar since they were at one point about the same exe. no idea how long that would take since im not a coder. I assume the first thing would be to get a dll wrote for shandalar much like the manalinkeh.dll so more cards can be written into the game. With that said i hope that someday that is resolved so we can see new cards in shandalar cause that game is fun.

[gmzombie]

after second thinking this one could go through this exe just like the magic.exe should be gone through and all functions labeled and all card codes addressed. then much like with what mok said we move first the current card code from the exe to a shandalar dll. maybe first and formost we could get snacko to implement a code dll fir this into the latest exe?

[Gargaroz]

An error report : on my old PC with WinXP the updated Shandalar works greatly, but on my new laptop with Win/ I got some serious problems.
I was running it with WinXP compatibility mode and I disabled Visual Themes and Desktop Composition, still there are some annoying graphic problems (stuff disappearing and reappearing), but the worst problem is that the program freezes any time the AI play a fast effect.
Has anyone experienced this too ?
Mok,your opinion ?

[gmzombie]

i think the windows 7 fix is the same as for the duel that someone else has done..but im not sure i still run xp too..

[Mok]

I was running it with WinXP compatibility mode and I disabled Visual Themes and Desktop Composition, still there are some annoying graphic problems (stuff disappearing and reappearing), but the worst problem is that the program freezes any time the AI play a fast effect.
Has anyone experienced this too ?
Mok,your opinion ?

Sorry, I rarely visit the forum recently and don't read all threads, so I might no answer questions that I fail to notice. To be honest, I don't see much that can be done to shandalar to increase compatibility even more. It works here on XP and Vista 64-bit without any compatibility settings but similar to magic.exe the code uses some "tricks" that aren't really legal, like the custom window messages in 0x4xx range (and below) which are reserved for system applications. That means that it can randomly interact with other running tasks with undefined results specific for hard/software configuration of the system. If you can specify the address of the crash when it plays an instant, I can take a look, but can't promise anything.

[Gargaroz]

Too bad the program simply freeze without any error popping up, probably because that hack about error messages you mention...

[Enchanteur]

Hello again !

Even there is a challenge mode, what is missing to manalink is an adventure/rpg mode.
I think this is possible to do something far better than shandalar, and to incorpore specials duels like in the challenge mode in the story.
Reworking on shandalar seem to be impossible.

So my question is :
- Is it possible to create a entirely new game, and use Manalink to launch duels and transmit results to that game ? Manalink should be like a external component to that game. The game just send to manalink the decks that must be used for the duel, and all "specials" rules for that duel (like for challenge).
And it's more easy for programmers to work on something new, that can entirely be masterised.

The game could be something more like "heroes of might and magic". So, a turn by turn game. Something easy to code. With a tiles system.
In this game, there would be encounters you can choose, and random encounters. Some place are hiddens and you need to get some information to discover it (like dungeons in shandalar).
I've a lot of ideas. I've writed it on paper because I was thinking made a magic roleplaying game some month ago.

And this game shouldn't permit errors like a deck with 5 contract from below ! Curve of progression should be slowed, and give opportunity to use all the new card pool of manalink3.