Shandalar GemcuttersGuild1 Alpha+Shandalar O.G

[Wasti]

Hello, I have been enjoying Shandalar on PCem for quite some time, but I became tired of the often tedious waiting times for the AI to finish their post-combat phase. Some duels took half an hour. Additionally I get graphical glitches (inverted colours) and the game has serious bugs as more and more villages appear to be empty with no icon to click, the game is stuck there. But thats not important for this thread.

I found a thread on Reddit and tried Shandalar 2012 revisited (didnt try CCGHQ MtG 2010 Custom Installer ISO). While Shandalar 2012 revisited runs noticeably faster, it still requires a lot of patience during duels. However, one that is incomparably faster to both the Shandalar @PCem and Shandalar 2012 revisited is Shandalar GemcuttersGuild1 Alpha. The opponent's turn takes one second, if at all. As you might guess, I have no experience with mods and I am aware of a program called "ManaLink."

To get to the question: Could you please show me a way to play using only the original 1997 Shandalar cards and the Duels of the Planeswalkers cards but with the speed of the Shandalar GemcuttersGuild1 Alpha? I wasn’t able to find out how to exclude cards from other sets for the Shandalar campaign, so I wouldn’t have to play with cards from 2015, for example.

Thank you very much!

Edit: With further searching I found that you can edit the processing time for AI. Could it be that this mod is only that much quicker because this time is set to a bare minimum (resulting in dumber AI decisions)?

[Paingouin]

Hi,

With this version of shandalar, we first have to modify the "Shandalar.ini" file to adjust the card back to original. We can do it either way.

First , in the "[Sets]" section , we can only "activate" the cards we want manually, one by one (it's a chore , but it's the best way to do it).
Or , we can enable/disable sets (but this will add also things like promo cards etc...). There's tons of post on this forum and reddit /r/Shandalar that explain the process. The comment of the section is also well written.
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We also have to adjust the [DungeonTreasure] to give what treasure what they gave originally.
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Take the time to look at the other sections of the "Shandalar.ini" file. Theses are greatly commented and it's quite fun to see all the possibilities.

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Now, we have to modify the ennemies deck back to original. This one is easy : take a look at the deck folder , open one of the file, you will understand easly the structure.
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Here you have it.
This is the Shandalar.ini and decks directory I use to made the GG1 version of Shandalar "back" to original.

Replace the deck directory and the Shandalar.ini with the provided file from the zip.

I may have made some mistakes, half of it is what I have aggregated from this forum and reddit (thanks A LOT to the original contributors, but I can't remember where and who...) . But hey, it's a great basis, feel free to adjust/correct stuff and share it

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For your question about the AI time, the modder have made some adjustment that made the AI still stable, and "like original" while using like half a second of thinking time.
For my playstyle I like to give it around 5 seconds. It's long but it seems that letting the AI time to think reduces the chance of crash when playing with WINE on linux.
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[Wasti]

Hello,
I had a quick look into it and so far the available cards seem to be in accordance with the original releases of Shandalar.
However I couldn't find an option to edit the style of the duel screen (back to the original one for example) and the adventure screen is in a boxed window of the original size 800*600.
Furthermore some of the cards in the duel screen are cropped, I don't know if its because of the customized duel screen.

With the Shandalar 2012 game I have a shandalar where I can edit a bit.

[JarvisWard]

thanks