Updates on the way.

[Muh Control Deck]

If you want to try another install since you still have problems try these steps here:
viewtopic.php?f=76&t=17003&start=150#p180478

However in last 4th step get the newer version of Shandalar instead of the old one I mention there either the bit unstable Thieves Hideout 2:
download/file.php?id=23127
or the more stable Loremaster's Tower 4:
download/file.php?id=23164

I recently tried to do this myself and start with a fresh install of Shandalar and manalink and the last step, using Thieves Hideout 2 rendered the program unusable. It wouldn't even open. I then tried to uninstall it and start fresh and could not. Eventually I went and manually deleted the MagicTG folder from Program Files(x86) but it still shows up as an entry in programs and features. Neither Windows itself or the M:TG autorun/installer consistently recognize the program as deleted. The installer only gives me the options to modify, repair or remove the program with each immediately giving the error 1605: This action is only available for products that are currently installed. Using the uninstall option on windows gives "1628: Failed to complete installation"

This is all especially frustrating in light of the process going well up until using the contents of Thieves' Hideout 2 to overwrite the installed programs which began this whole process. I'd love to do a fresh install and start from scratch but cannot get the installer to recognize that there isn't a Magic: The Gathering installation left to work with. Doesn't appear to be one in the registry either but I am perhaps not looking in the right place. Any help or workarounds would be much appreciated.

[gmzombie]

rawky the most recent manalink is fate reforged patch not journey to nyx.

[Rawky]

rawky the most recent manalink is fate reforged patch not journey to nyx.

Yes, that was in step 3.

[BlueTemplar]

Hi.

This is so great! For years I thought : "The only thing preventing Shandalar from being the best Magic game ever is the lack of card variety..." and you went and done the seemingly impossible!
(what has changed? I heard about decompilers?)

I recently tried to do this myself and start with a fresh install of Shandalar and manalink and the last step, using Thieves Hideout 2 rendered the program unusable. It wouldn't even open. I then tried to uninstall it and start fresh and could not. Eventually I went and manually deleted the MagicTG folder from Program Files(x86) but it still shows up as an entry in programs and features. Neither Windows itself or the M:TG autorun/installer consistently recognize the program as deleted. The installer only gives me the options to modify, repair or remove the program with each immediately giving the error 1605: This action is only available for products that are currently installed. Using the uninstall option on windows gives "1628: Failed to complete installation"

Seems you have User Account Control related issues.
Don't use an installer, and especially, don't install the game in the Program Files folder. Not putting them in Program Files goes for games in general, and software released for pre-Vista (2009) versions of Windows.

[Korath]

Seems you have User Account Control related issues.
Don't use an installer, and especially, don't install the game in the Program Files folder. Same goes for games in general, and software released for pre-Vista (2009) versions of Windows.

What BlueTemplar said. This game in particular has had an absolutely terrible history with installers.

(what has changed? I heard about decompilers?)

Mostly it just took someone stubborn enough to do the grunt work. Some background, as best I've been able to piece it together:

Manalink and the duel subsystem of Shandalar were compiled from a shared source tree, with somewhat different settings. Both were almost completely unoptimized, which, though it's made analyzing them much, much easier, is kind of appalling, considering how big an issue the game's performance was when it was first released. Shandalar was slightly more optimized - most likely it was all compiled in C++ mode, since most of the difference I see is that more functions are inlined into their callers, and, while Shandalar's adventure mode was clearly written in C++, duel was just as plainly written in pure C. Manalink may also have been built from a slightly more up-to-date version of the software, though it's difficult to tell through the hacks upon hacks people have layered on it over the years.

The main difference, though, is that a crucial array, what we refer to these days as cards_data[] and build from ct_all.csv, was sized to 2000 entries in Manalink but only to 722 in Shandalar. Once you subtract out the entries reserved for effect cards and dynamically-created cards (like lands or artifacts animated by Kormus Bell or Titania's Song), there was room to add roughly 1275 cards to Manalink, but only two to Shandalar. Increasing the size of that array is fairly difficult, especially if you're working in pure assembly; you have to add a new segment to the executable to place a new, larger array, exhaustively track down every last reference to the data in the old one, update them to point to the right place in the new array, and analyze the surroundings to make sure nothing's artificially limiting its size to an arbitrary maximum, rather than just looking for the end of the array.

(Digression: We mostly dodged a bullet on the last part - the only noteworthy limit on cards_data[]'s size was that indices into cards_data[] were truncated to twelve bits - enough to hold values up to 4095 - when stored in the deck[] array. deck[] plays a very minor role in Manalink, mostly during duel startup and communicating with the deckbuilder, but a huge one in Shandalar: it stores the list of cards that the player owns. Fortunately, nothing touched the next two bits in each value of deck[], so it can be coerced into holding values up to 16383, which is the next major limit on the number of cards in the game. Unfortunately, the next higher bit is used a heck of a lot, and - since cards_data[] has to hold not only every card in the game, but every token type, every flipped or transformed version of Kamigawa/Innistrad block cards, and (for now, at least) the alternate type version of every card that can change from noncreature to creature (like manlands) or vice-versa (like Tempest block licids and Theros block god and bestow cards) - we're going to run out of space very quickly once we catch up to what WOTC's been printing.) 

Anyway, expanding cards_data[] was enough of a hassle that it didn't get done in Manalink until the end of 2011. You can get an initial idea of the scope by looking at src/shandalar/replace_data.cpp in the Shandalar source code distribution; that contains what was necessary for the original cards. I wasn't around for the Manalink expansion, but I'd have to guess it was on the order of four to six times as difficult; there were not only the original six hundred and fifty-mumble cards and fifty-something effect cards to deal with, but all the cards folks had put into the game - well over the 1275 free card limit, since there multiple executables floating around and tools to let people customize which cards got put into the 2000 available cards_data[] slots - plus all the ancillary code to support them. Plus, you know, analyzing it all to find out what's necessary in the first place.

So! For many, many years, there was a fairly low barrier to adding cards to Manalink, and a quite high one to adding them to Shandalar: instead of immediately being able to run and add simple but exciting cards like Maze of Ith or Pillage or Hymn to Tourach to the game, you'd have had the long, difficult, boring, and (most importantly) low-short-term-payoff job of expanding cards_data[] first. So everyone reverse-engineering duel put all their effort into Manalink and none into Shandalar. (There's a very little analysis of the internals of adventure mode, mostly born of hacking the savegame files, but none at all that I could find of Shandalar's duel mode.)

And, since Manalink and Shandalar were compiled separately instead of neatly segregating duel into a shared dll like with the deckbuilder and card display and sound subsystems, every single function and piece of data in Shandalar.exe is at a different address than its equivalent in Magic.exe. Combine that with the slow but steady mutation Magic.exe had gone through over the years, and it took me the better part of six months working on and off to match them all up.

Oh, and yes, the analysis tools have gotten better in the meantime.

[Muh Control Deck]

Lesson learned, I suppose. But what should I do?

[BlueTemplar]

Use the (latest) recommended installation method?
viewtopic.php?p=183809#p183809

[gmzombie]

On a side note Korath while I'm not sure if anyone has ever looked at it or not the original pre Mok game might have been more optimized than what Mok had it as if I recall Mok himself decompiled and rewrote the game so that he could understand it better. I don't know if that gives anybit of insight on why Manalink is not as optimized as shandalar or not but I thought it should be noted. For what it's worth the original game wasn't even split into 2 exe's until after the first expansion if I recall. Would it be something to explore checking out the original unedited magic.exe from the last official update to see if it is more optimized and therefore maybe easier for things to be updated in? Just thinking outloud though.

[BlueTemplar]

What BlueTemplar said. This game in particular has had an absolutely terrible history with installers.

Oh yeah, last time I wanted to install the game from the original media, I had to jump through the hoop of installing Windows XP (and IIRC then Win98, because something with XP didn't work?) in a Virtual Machine, because while the game itself is 32-bit, the installer they used is 16-bit, and 64-bit versions of Windows (and/or CPU?) don't seem to have 16-bit support!

Ah yes, I remember the hassle of having to basically rebuild the Manalink card list each time you wanted to play (against) a deck with different cards involved...

A solution to the 16383 card limit might be to remove the less flavorful/reprinted cards : we don't really need all the Grizzly Bears variations, do we?

Thank you by the way for your very informative post, as well as the other ones in this thread!

[Muh Control Deck]

Use the (latest) recommended installation method?
viewtopic.php?p=183809#p183809

So far that works and gives me a stable Thieves Hideout 1 but attempting to install any more recent updates gives me crashes during duels within the first 4 turns (I can't tell why)

[Aswan jaguar]

So far that works and gives me a stable Thieves Hideout 1 but attempting to install any more recent updates gives me crashes during duels within the first 4 turns (I can't tell why)

You have installed Thieves Hideout 1 SO you can ONLY install Thieves Hideout 2 it seems that you tried to install Loremaster's Tower 3 over Thieves Hideout 1 which is an update ONLY for Loremaster's Tower 2.I guess that is what breaks your game.

[Korath]

I'm arbitrarily calling the Nomad's Bazaar release feature-complete. I'm not remotely close to putting in all the cards that I can currently program idiomatically, which is how I decided when to make the first releases of all the previous series - I'd work on engine infrastructure until I thought I'd made a good dent in it, then search for all the cards I'd just made possible and program them.

This time, though, the backlog is too large. I went through the Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight block as an experiment; there's 396 cards in Manalink that were first printed in this block, and I've gotten through 214 of them. And - besides skipping everything with phasing, everything with counters besides plain vanilla +1/+1 or -1/-1, everything that prevents or redirects damage, anything with additional or alternative costs, etc. etc. etc. - I also skipped plenty of cards that I have the infrastructure to fully do for the human player, but lack even minimal confidence in the AI (like Amber Prison or Doomsday); plenty that I have the proper tools for but look like they'd take more the four or five minutes maximum I'm willing to devote to an individual, non-iconic card at this time (like Acidic Dagger or Natural Balance); and plenty I don't even have an excuse like that for (like Armorer Guildmage or Forbidden Crypt). As a very rough guess, I probably could have done at least half of the remainder.

Now, a fair number of these were already in Thieves Hideout, and Manalink's coverage of the Mirage block is fairly spotty and probably biased towards the easy cards, and there's plenty of mechanics in later sets that are significantly harder to handle in this engine than the Mirage ones. If I assume that ratio to be representative of the remaining Manalink cards, though, I'm looking at something like another three thousand that I could program right now without putting too much more effort into the engine. It's just too many.

It's also been long enough since I've added some of these mechanics that I've already gone back and made nontrivial updates to them. In particular, I'm thinking of cards that have either replacement effects or triggers when they get put into a graveyard from anywhere, like Darksteel Colossus or Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre respectively. In Manalink and in their first implementation in Shandalar, they were checked very late in the process of putting them into a graveyard, after e.g. discard and normal when-something-dies triggers have run; this, for example, prevents you from choosing whether one of the Eldrazi legends should be put in your hand or shuffled into your library with the rest of your graveyard when you have an Enduring Renewal out, and causes the Colossus to trigger other cards' when-something-is-put-into-your-graveyard-from-the-battlefield triggers even though it's supposed to go directly to your library instead. So I merged them into the discard and death and stack-to-graveyard trigger and replacement checks, leaving the last-resort low-level checks from before to run only when they're put in a graveyard from somewhere unusual like exile or ante, or being put directly into a graveyard from a player's hand without being discarded.

I tend to test whole mechanics when I first put them in; individual cards and updates to existing mechanics, not so much: I don't have that kind of discipline when I'm programming on my own time. But it somewhat defeats the purpose of maintaining a separate stable release branch if the relatively well-tested version doesn't make it into a release at all, only the one where I only tested it for the particular bug I changed it for.

Plus, beside just the Heap O' Cards, there's plenty of features added (new sounds!) and old Shandalar annoyances fixed (nonsensical bonus cards at lairs) that I alone have had access to for more than a month now. High time to share the wealth.

So I'm moving into pure bugfix mode until the next release (still at least a week or two away). There's a fair number that are fixed only in the NB branch but need to be backported to TH - conspicuous among these is a rewrite for Clone, which has been crashing the Shapeshifter deck for Quite Long Enough Now, thank you - and plenty more that look either relatively easy or relatively severe. I may still program a handful more cards for the upcoming release, but only as a brief change of pace rather than a deliberate effort.

So these should be substantially all of the remaining new cards | Open

Academy Rector
Adarkar Wastes
Advent of the Wurm
Aegis of the Meek
AErathi Berserker
Afiya Grove
Agonizing Memories
Altar of the Brood
Anaba Spirit Crafter
Anarchy
Aquastrand Spider
Arcbound Crusher
Arcbound Hybrid
Arcbound Overseer
Arcbound Ravager
Arcbound Reclaimer
Arcbound Slith
Arcbound Stinger
Arcbound Wanderer
Arcbound Worker
Arctic Foxes
Army Ants
Ashen-Skin Zubera
Asmira, Holy Avenger
Aspect of Mongoose
Augur of Skulls
Balduvian War-Makers
Baton of Morale
Batterskull
Battlefield Forge
Bearscape
Blessed Wine
Blightspeaker
Blood Crypt
Body Double
Body Snatcher
Boros Guildmage
Bound in Silence
Breeding Pool
Brilliant Halo
Brushland
Bull Elephant
Caldera Lake
Call of the Conclave
Cateran Overlord
Caves of Koilos
Celestial Sword
Chandler
Chariot of the Sun
Charisma
Chromium
Chub Toad
Cinder Wall
Clairvoyance
Clever Impersonator
Common Bond
Compulsive Research
Conch Horn
Copy Enchantment
Cosmic Larva
Coursers' Accord
Covetous Dragon
Cranial Plating
Crash Landing
Craw Giant
Creepy Doll
Cytoplast Manipulator
Cytoplast Root-Kin
Cytospawn Shambler
Dance of Many
Dark Deal
Darkling Stalker
Death's Duet
Delirium Skeins
Demonspine Whip
Deploy to the Front
Despondency
Despotic Scepter
Disciple of Tevesh Szat
Discordant Spirit
Divine Retribution
Downdraft
Draconian Cylix
Dragon Broodmother
Dragonmaster Outcast
Drekavac
Dripping-Tongue Zubera
Drowned Rusalka
Drudge Spell
Dutiful Return
Dwarven Berserker
Dwarven Lieutenant
Early Harvest
Eater of Hope
Elemental Augury
Elven Fortress
Ember-Fist Zubera
Endless Wurm
Enduring Renewal
Etched Oracle
Eureka
Exhume
Exile
Eye of Ramos
Fable of Wolf and Owl
Faerie Impostor
Faerie Noble
Fallow Wurm
Fiery Mantle
Fire Ants
Fire Dragon
Flagstones of Trokair
Flight Spellbomb
Floating-Dream Zubera
Floodgate
Followed Footsteps
Font of Return
Fortress Cyclops
Fresh Meat
Freyalise Supplicant
Frost Giant
Gauntlet of Power
Giant Trap Door Spider
Glint Hawk
Glistening Oil
Goblin Boom Keg
Goblin Chirurgeon
Goblin Elite Infantry
Goblin Shrine
Goblin Soothsayer
Goblin Tinkerer
Goblin Warrens
Godless Shrine
Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai
Grand Coliseum
Grim Lavamancer
Guiding Spirit
Hallowed Fountain
Harbinger of Night
Harmattan Efreet
Hatching Plans
Heart of Ramos
Helium Squirter
Hellfire
Hellkite Overlord
Helm of Kaldra
Hivis of the Scale
Homarid Spawning Bed
Horizon Spellbomb
Horn of Ramos
Horned Helm
Horror of Horrors
Hunding Gjornersen
Hunger of the Howlpack
Icatian Lieutenant
Icatian Skirmishers
Ichorclaw Myr
Ill-Gotten Gains
Infantry Veteran
Jareth, Leonine Titan
Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
Joven
Junk Diver
Jwari Shapeshifter
Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet
Karn, Silver Golem
Karplusan Forest
Keeper of Kookus
King's Assassin
Kookus
Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
Lat-Nam's Legacy
Launch
Lifespinner
Living Tsunami
Llanowar Reborn
Llanowar Wastes
Locust Swarm
Lotleth Troll
Lowland Basilisk
Macabre Waltz
Magus of the Mirror
March of the Returned
Marhault Elsdragon
Masterwork of Ingenuity
Masticore
Mending Touch (reusing the MicroProse implementation of Death Ward)
Mephitic Ooze
Mercenary Knight
Mind Slash
Mindless Automaton
Minion of Leshrac
Mirri the Cursed
Mirror Universe
Misers' Cage
Moldgraf Monstrosity
Molten Hydra
Molten Psyche
Molten-Tail Masticore
Morbid Plunder
Moriok Replica
Muraganda Petroglyphs (a non-Manalink card; permissible to put in Shandalar because it's impractical to add to Manalink)
Murmuring Bosk
Myr Retriever
Nested Ghoul
Neurok Stealthsuit
Niall Silvain
Nihil Spellbomb
Oath of Lim-Dul
Obzedat's Aid
Open the Vaults
Origin Spellbomb
Overgrown Tomb
Painful Quandary
Panic Spellbomb
Parapet
Paupers' Cage
Peek
Phyrexian Rebirth
Phyrexian War Beast
Pine Barrens
Pit Spawn
Plaxcaster Frogling
Possessed Portal
Primal Order
Psychic Transfer
Quicksilver Gargantuan
Ragnar
Rainbow Vale
Rakshasa Deathdealer
Ramosian Revivalist
Rancor
Rapid Fire
Rashida Scalebane
Razor Pendulum
Remove Enchantments
Replenish
Restock
Retraced Image
Rhys the Redeemed
Riku of Two Reflections
Ring of Evos Isle
Ring of Xathrid
River Merfolk
Rock Slide
Rolling Thunder
Sacred Foundry
Salt Flats
Scabland
Scarwood Hag
Sculpting Steel
Seeds of Innocence
Seismic Strike
Sengir Autocrat
Serene Heart
Serrated Biskelion
Sewer Rats
Shattered Crypt
Shivan Reef
Show and Tell
Sigil Blessing
Silent Sentinel
Silent-Chant Zubera
Simic Initiate
Simoon
Skeletal Vampire
Skeleton Ship
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
Skull of Ramos
Skyreach Manta
Skyshroud Forest
Smogsteed Rider
Sol Grail
Solarion
Soldier of Fortune
Soratami Seer
Soraya the Falconer
Soulshriek
Sparring Collar
Spear of Heliod
Spectral Guardian
Spike Breeder
Spike Colony
Spike Drone
Spike Feeder
Spike Hatcher
Spike Soldier
Spike Weaver
Spike Worker
Spine of Ish Sah
Spiritmonger
Spoils of Blood
Sporeback Troll
Spreading Algae
Stampede
Stangg
Steam Vents
Stigma Lasher
Stomping Ground
Stunted Growth
Sulfurous Springs
Sun Titan
Suncrusher
Suntouched Myr
Sword of Kaldra
Sword of the Paruns
Synod Centurion
Tainted Field
Tainted Isle
Tainted Peak
Tainted Wood
Talisman of Dominance
Talisman of Impulse
Talisman of Indulgence
Talisman of Progress
Talisman of Unity
Teeka's Dragon
Teleport
Temple Garden
Tempting Wurm
Tethered Griffin
Thelonite Monk
Thirst for Knowledge
Thopter Assembly
Thragtusk
Thran Golem
Thrull Champion
Thrull Retainer
Thrull Surgeon
Tilling Treefolk
Tooth of Ramos
Torture
Tranquil Domain
Tranquil Grove
Underground River
Urborg Justice
Urborg Stalker
Urborg Uprising
Urza's Bauble
Urza's Guilt
Vernal Bloom
Vesuva
Vigean Graftmage
Vigean Hydropon
Village Elder
Vision Skeins
Vital Splicer
Voracious Cobra
Warden of the Eye
Wargate
Warped Devotion
Waterspout Djinn
Watery Grave
Whalebone Glider
Whip Sergeant
Willow Satyr
Wind Shear
Wolverine Pack
Wrench Mind
Yavimaya Coast
Zedruu the Greathearted
Zirilan of the Claw

Rewritten MicroProse cards:
Backfire
Badlands
Bayou
Blight
Blood Lust (with modern Oracle text)
Bottle of Suleiman
Clone
Copy Artifact
Dwarven Demolition Team
Elven Riders
Forest/Tree of Tales (no, really - without a rewrite, it couldn't work right with Magical Hack, or as-yet-unimplemented cards like Prismatic Omen)
Giant Badger
Glasses of Urza
Island/Seat of the Synod
Jovial Evil
Juggernaut
Juzam Djinn/Fledgling Djinn/Nettletooth Djinn/Serendib Efreet
Khabal Ghoul
King Suleiman
Mountain/Great Furnace
Orcish Mechanics
Plains/Ancient Den
Plateau
Psionic Entity
Radjan Spirit
Sandstorm/Rain of Blades
Savannah
Scrubland
Swamp/Vault of Whispers
Taiga
Tropical Island
Tundra
Typhoon
Underground Sea
Urza's Mine
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Tower
Volcanic Island
Winds of Change

Total cards in NB at this time: 5776. (Thieves Hideout 2 had 4612, though I'm going to have to withdraw Chord of Calling in TH3; I somehow managed to miss that it has convoke.) Manalink has 11048 normal (non-Plane/Vanguard/Scheme/etc) cards, so I'm just over halfway caught-up by that measure. There's a disproportionate number of easy cards in Shandalar, of course, and hard ones left to do.

By another metric, I've rewritten 503 of the original 649 cards in Shandalar, which feels like more of an accomplishment. Once I've gotten through the remainder, I'll be able to start tinkering with trying to get Deflection working.

[Huggybaby]

Unbelievable. Too bad I can only hit the thank button one time!

[lujo]

Wow. You are incredible!

As for particular "hit the spot" random cards my brain managed to process, Goblin Chirurgeon - holy hell, am I gonna play some red when this update hits. Then I scrolled down and saw Homarid Spawning Bed also got in. I've been around a few playgroups where that was banned! O.O' (Goes off sifting the lists for available Faeries in preparation for the Shrimp Apocalypse!).

[Muh Control Deck]

So far that works and gives me a stable Thieves Hideout 1 but attempting to install any more recent updates gives me crashes during duels within the first 4 turns (I can't tell why)

You have installed Thieves Hideout 1 SO you can ONLY install Thieves Hideout 2 it seems that you tried to install Loremaster's Tower 3 over Thieves Hideout 1 which is an update ONLY for Loremaster's Tower 2.I guess that is what breaks your game.

Actually it was upgrading to Thieves Hideout 2 that gave me my most recent spat of crashes. Even with installing everything to the desktop, I can't seem to get a stable Shandalar beyond TH1