Updates on the way.

[Haytrid]

I installed this and it seems to be running great. I can not begin to tell you how stoked I am about Shandalar getting some love.

I seem to be missing many pics however, are those not in there or did I maybe overwrite some card art inadvertently that I should not have?

Thank you very, very much for all of your hard work. Simply awesome stuff!

[stassy]

Which card image can you see and which one can't you see?

[Aswan jaguar]

Korath I saw all that you submitted on bug tracker on feature requests section and those are great ideas but if you want more people to see those and participate then a feature request topic would be more appropriate.

Also there you have a lot of development wise topics which would attract a lot more attention if you ask for a separate development forum for shandalar (like the one in Manalink)which would be a lot better to my experience.Even with a separate forum in Manalink which can be viewed with a glance we didn't attract so much attention and even devs forgot to check it regularly! so I fear that many will not check all that stuff you posted there or help you for stuff you ask for.Keep in mind that most people fail to see the wiki pages where many things are explained for each program.
Of course you may like less attention for the time being.

[Korath]

Sure - a bugtracker and forum are different tools, designed for different tasks, and have different strengths and weaknesses. The first is an evolution of a to-do list: it makes it easy to tell at a glance how complete a task is, what steps still need to be taken to complete it, and makes it almost impossible for a task to get lost or forgotten about, for example. Essentially all of the bugs and feature requests I posted there were already mentioned either in this thread or in the bug reports thread, even where I haven't explicitly provided a link. (And I still have close to a dozen tabs open for issues that need to be migrated there.)

It's spectacularly unsuited for extended discussion, though. That sort of thing still belongs on the forum.

[Haytrid]

I ended up grabbing an already installed version from a mediafire link and then just updating the shandalar.dll with the newest ruined tower download and everything appears to be working alright now. I most certainly installed in the wrong order or overwrote something I should not have.

Thank you for your time.

Which card image can you see and which one can't you see?

[Korath]

I've taken my accidental inclusion of Radiant's Dragoons (see here and #542) and run with it. (I hadn't intended to put any cards with echo in until I had a chance to properly rewrite summoning sickness - currently, it gets removed forever if a card even momentarily has haste, e.g. from Uncanny Speed, and it can't cleanly support the partial exceptions dictated by Instill Energy or Thousand-Year Elixir.)

One wrinkle I hadn't expected are the cards from the Time Spiral block that have a higher echo cost than casting cost. I was surprised to find out that Manalink doesn't even attempt to deal with them for the AI; it'll happily churn out a turn 1 Uktabi Drake, decline to attack because you have a Scryb Sprites or whatever out to block it, and then be forced to sac it during its next upkeep.

I've made the AI reluctant to cast such cards unless it currently has enough mana available to pay the difference between the casting and echo costs, but that doesn't really work either. Given a hand of infinite Forest's and Uktabi Drake's, it acts like:

1. Play Forest (correct)
2. Play Forest (correct)
3. Play Forest; tap one Forest; cast Uktabi Drake (correct)
4. Upkeep: tap three Forest to pay Uktabi Drake echo; play Forest (correct); don't play another Uktabi Drake (incorrect)
5. Play Forest (the fifth), play three Uktabi Drake (oh no)
6. Upkeep: tap three Forest to pay Uktabi Drake echo; sacrifice the other two new Uktabi Drake

So clearly it needs to be smarter, even before considering cards like Stingscourger or Hammerheim Deadeye that might be worth playing as pseudo-sorceries-and-blockers-for-a-turn.

There isn't any standard interface to find out "How much mana will I have after the next untap step?"; but we'll eventually need that for the Future Sight play-now, pay-later-or-lose cards like Pact of Negation anyway. If I recall correctly, Manalink just counts the number of lands in play. I suspect the proper way to go is, just after running the end-of-turn evaluation function (which I talk about here) and just before restoring the game state, running the normal function for the untap step, and then either doing the same for the upkeep step or dispatching a simplified version that just charges upkeep costs.

New cards so far in the next non-bugfix release | Open

Acridian
Aeolipile
Albino Troll
Angelic Edict
Avalanche Riders
Avenger en-Dal
Bone Shredder
Celestial Purge
Crackling Triton
Cradle Guard
Crater Hellion
Deranged Hermit
Destructive Flow
Eiganjo Free-Riders
Enter the Infinite
Excoriate
Fade into Antiquity
Fire Bowman
Ghitu Slinger
Gild
Glare of Heresy
Goblin Bombardment
Goblin Firestarter
Goblin Guide
Goblin Patrol
Goblin War Buggy
Hammerheim Deadeye
Herald of Serra
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
Keldon Champion
Keldon Vandals
Last Breath
Lieutenant Kirtar
Lightning Dragon
Minamo Scrollkeeper
Mogg Fanatic
Moonglove Extract
Multani's Acolyte
Oni of Wild Places
Pillar of Light
Pouncing Jaguar
Praetor's Counsel
Price of Knowledge
Reach of Shadows
Revoke Existence
Ring of Gix
Scaldkin
Seal of Fire
Shauku, Endbringer
Shivan Raptor
Shock Troops
Silverchase Fox
Simian Grunts
Skull Collector
Stampeding Serow
Stampeding Wildebeests
Stingscourger
Thought Devourer
Thought Eater
Thought Nibbler
Thran War Machine
Ticking Gnomes
Timbermare
Trusted Advisor
Uktabi Drake
Undead Slayer
Urza's Blueprints
Utter End
Venser's Journal
Yavimaya Granger

I had to implement selection of multiple targets for a bugfix rewrite of Tetravus, so cards like Dust to Dust and Plow Under and Bogardan Hellkite and Hex are probably next.

If the folks who've been reporting bugs have particular favorite cards they'd like to see, I'll entertain requests. There's still many, many seemingly-simple things I don't have the proper infrastructure in place to do cleanly yet, though, and those won't be obvious or easy to articulate; so probably a wishlist thread like the one for Manalink is the way to go. Even for things where there is proper infrastructure, cards not already in the current version of Manalink are at least ten times harder, so even straightforward-looking cards like Myr Matrix or Ashen Monstrosity or even Femeref Scouts aren't going to happen.

[edit: +missing word]

[quatrocentos-e-vinte]

Excelent post and amazing work, Korath I don't think anyone can thank you enough for your hard work in (very carefully) adding new cards and fixing bugs in Shandalar (and Manalink in general). Also, I think it's awesome that you're willing to share with us your "adventures" of trying to get the cryptic Manalink AI play the cards correctly.

Thanks, once again

[gmzombie]

agreed excellent post Korath very informative. im loving this new old game

[Enark]

Therefore, I would like to know, if you can give me the good topic to follow all the set up I have to do?

Hi Enark,

I also run windows 7, and all I had to do to make it work was to download the big zip file in the mediafire link in this post, extract it to c:\\program(x86), then just go directly in to the Program folder and run Shandalar.exe (which I made a shortcut to after I saw that it was working).

If you get it to work, you can go down to the end of that same post and download a few files that hold the most updated version.

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.

I had erased all file and try like you tell me and it works ; SO HAPPY !!!!

But one problem I got in game, I can't by cards with gold in city...
Is there anyone who now how to fix this?

gonna try like this waiting for answers

[Aswan jaguar]

Echo ability is tricky or gamble even for human as generally you don't know what you will draw next and if it is better not to pay mana for echo to cast something better or even not to pay knowing your hand and sometimes you decide to pay the echo although you can have better use of mana.For draft games,random singleton and such usually it is better to pay the echo cost.However usually decks that are themed around echo will exploit the advantage of usually lower casting cost+etb ability then exploit death/sacrifice maybe to boost creatures or trigger cards when a card goes to graveyard or use a card like Eon Hub not to pay echo costs so either way it is better to use the card right away although you don't have mana for it's echo cost or use them as pseudo-sorceries/blockers as you mention.

Uktabi Drake is even more tricky for AI because of the haste part as that is what you try to exploit and don't forget with perfect hand = Black Lotus,Forest,Uktabi Drake,Giant Growth,Berserk,Berserk and any other filler card you can have 1turn win.Although Jatill if I am not wrong said that AI is forbidden to win in first turn.
The big problems IMHO are:
1- that AI is reluctant to trade creatures to attack unless AI has vastly superior numbers of creatures to trade or when as usual AI makes a critical last attack winning the game.If we (you in fact) could only find and lower that code attacking/trading ratio from let's say 7/1 creature advantage for AI to a 4/1 or 3/1 in AI's favour.
2- AI doesn't value damage made to opponent or doesn't value that so much this is more clear with number 1 above and with Ball of Lightning.

I run some tests in Manalink where testing is easier to try to figure out what is the ratio AI will attack despite loosing a creature.I used a deck with only instants and sorceries that produce 1/1 tokens and both players using that.I tested with me having only 1, 1/1 token and AI making lots.AI didn't attack even with:
a- 17 ready to attack tokens vs 1 token.
b- 18 tokens (16 ready to attack) vs 1 token.
c- 20 tokens (15 ready to attack) vs 1 token.

I wanted to try with 19,20 and 21 ready to attack vs 1 token.But every time I got near there AI crashed probably calculating attack and the file attachment produced is this if it helps.

edit: I tested with 1/1 Merfolk of the Perl Trident against my 1/1 merfolk and:
as soon as AI had enough to make a kill attack 20(with me at 19 life),or 21 vs 1 game crashed like above with the tokens.

[Korath]

I vaguely recall, from back when I first started to try to unravel the combat AI in Manalink, that there's a handful of arrays it uses that limit it to only analyzing 16 creatures. (I don't remember if that's 16 creatures total, or 16 creatures controlled by each player, or 16 total creatures in combat, or 16 attacking creatures and 16 blocking creatures; though I think it's the last.) Crashes when there's more creatures than that don't surprise me; if anything, I'm more surprised that it doesn't crash more consistently, and only tends to slow way down.

[Teraunce]

Therefore, I would like to know, if you can give me the good topic to follow all the set up I have to do?

Hi Enark,

I also run windows 7, and all I had to do to make it work was to download the big zip file in the mediafire link in this post, extract it to c:\\program(x86), then just go directly in to the Program folder and run Shandalar.exe (which I made a shortcut to after I saw that it was working).

If you get it to work, you can go down to the end of that same post and download a few files that hold the most updated version.

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.

I had erased all file and try like you tell me and it works ; SO HAPPY !!!!

But one problem I got in game, I can't by cards with gold in city...
Is there anyone who now how to fix this?

gonna try like this waiting for answers

Hello. first time poster here. I just attempted that and Shandalar.exe won't start up on my system running Windows 7 64-bit.

[stassy]

Hello. first time poster here. I just attempted that and Shandalar.exe won't start up on my system running Windows 7 64-bit.

Try to move the folder in another space-free folder, like C:\temp\, and remove all read only protections of all the files in the game folder

[Teraunce]

Hello. first time poster here. I just attempted that and Shandalar.exe won't start up on my system running Windows 7 64-bit.

Try to move the folder in another space-free folder, like C:\temp\, and remove all read only protections of all the files in the game folder

It's failing due to a space?! I thought it twas more fixed up for windows 7 than that, but I'll try it.

Edit: I moved it to C:/games/ and removed the read-only protection and it still won't start.

[Korath]

A space in the directory name shouldn't make any difference; I develop it in such a directory.

Is it just not doing anything at all when you try to start it, or is it giving you any error messages?