Updates on the way.

[stassy]

The new Shandalar.ini contain lot of customization options (UI & dungeons)

Also, I can't seems to stack filters on Deck.exe (for example, I want Shandalar and Theros block only but still get others results like Abbey Gargoyles)

[CirothUngol]

Thanks for the info, Korath. I was able to cut over 50 nonessential files from my Shandalar AddOn, so I created an updated archive and placed a simple how-to in the update patches thread.

[dingbat1]

So, I think I finally found a way in which I can help/contribute. I want to create shandalar.ini files for each block set, such that playing a game of Shandalar for a specific block will be as simple as renaming the ini files to match.
However, being technically less than brilliant, I was wondering if someone could please review the first one I created (Khans of Tarkir block) to tell me if I did it right?

http://www.mediafire.com/view/ds6dnyrwuav85rx/Shandalar_%28Khans_of_Tarkir%29.ini

Right now, my intent is to only select cards by block, but, if someone wants to recommend which cards from each block to use for special situations, I will gladly incorporate this too.

Special Situations:
- Castle Advantage (cards that the AI starts duels with in castles; preferably for each difficulty level)
- Dungeon Advantage (cards that the AI starts with in dungeons)
- Duel Advantage (cards that the AI sometimes stars with in duels - 3 per color)
- No Sale (cards not available for in towns and villages)
- No Choose* (cards that cannot be chosen in the cardpicker)
- Dungeon Treasure

*Note: I think cards that were banned or restricted at the time the block was in play should be in the No Choose list. These should probably also constitute the Dungeon Treasure cards. (should we future-proof it by including cards that are not yet incorporated into Shandalar, or would that cause problems?)

Additionally, if someone can tell me when the Mana Burn rule changed, I'd be happy to incorporate that too.

The only problem I foresee is that we will need to create block-specific enemy decks. One possible solution, in my opinion, is to recreate the pre-constructed decks that came out for each block and use those as the enemy decks for those blocks.

[Curonian]

Greetings from Latvia, everyone! Just wanted to say that I did everything that CirothUngol said in his thread, also removed the read-only, also, restarted the PC, ran as administrator, applied Thieve's Den update from another source, rather than Ungol's sig, and Shandalar STILL doesn't work - tosses out the BIX error. When I run the troubleshooter, it says that it can't find the necessary .dat files, although they are all in the /program/ directory...the game is installed in D:/Shandalar/Manalink3, I'm running Win 7 and Manalink works perfectly.

And this is the only site on the web that I know of, that deals with these issues. (Maybe I should start over from an older version, say, Shandalar 2012 installation? I'm pretty sure that there are torrents for it somewhere.)

Otherwise, thank you for your awesome and great work - I used to play a lot of Shandalarar, back in the day, and you, adding new cards to it, is just marvelous.

[gmzombie]

what is the BIX error. can we get a screenshot of the error?

Hmm..are you running shandalar in admin? Also did you copy the newest update to the right folder..i ask cause i have done this alot lol. You say magic.exe will work when you load it up and you can play a game?

[Curonian]

My error

Here's my screenshot. This happens when I run the game from Shandalar.exe. Also, one thing struck me: do I still need to get and install the base game? From what I read on the Ungol's thread, just Manalink and the Shandalar update is enough. (At least, that's what I understood from that.)

[gmzombie]

So, I think I finally found a way in which I can help/contribute. I want to create shandalar.ini files for each block set, such that playing a game of Shandalar for a specific block will be as simple as renaming the ini files to match.
However, being technically less than brilliant, I was wondering if someone could please review the first one I created (Khans of Tarkir block) to tell me if I did it right?

http://www.mediafire.com/view/ds6dnyrwuav85rx/Shandalar_%28Khans_of_Tarkir%29.ini

Right now, my intent is to only select cards by block, but, if someone wants to recommend which cards from each block to use for special situations, I will gladly incorporate this too.

Special Situations:
- Castle Advantage (cards that the AI starts duels with in castles; preferably for each difficulty level)
- Dungeon Advantage (cards that the AI starts with in dungeons)
- Duel Advantage (cards that the AI sometimes stars with in duels - 3 per color)
- No Sale (cards not available for in towns and villages)
- No Choose* (cards that cannot be chosen in the cardpicker)
- Dungeon Treasure

*Note: I think cards that were banned or restricted at the time the block was in play should be in the No Choose list. These should probably also constitute the Dungeon Treasure cards. (should we future-proof it by including cards that are not yet incorporated into Shandalar, or would that cause problems?)

Additionally, if someone can tell me when the Mana Burn rule changed, I'd be happy to incorporate that too.

The only problem I foresee is that we will need to create block-specific enemy decks. One possible solution, in my opinion, is to recreate the pre-constructed decks that came out for each block and use those as the enemy decks for those blocks.

I think this is a great idea but i know we dont have anywhere near the cards to fill up a block yet for shandalar. Also i would suggest if your running a higer than 1024x768 to take advantage of Koraths recent addition of card size change. it is under smallcardsize and i have it currently at 120. you may need it smaller or larger depending on your situation. but if you start there you can go up or down to make the cards larger or smaller. Also manaburn changed when magic 2010 came out. there was a few rules changes then also with mulligans being taken now at same time, manaburn eliminated, combat damage not using the stack, and lifelink/deathtouch became a static ability.

[stassy]

I was about to say the same, though as Korath said there are a lot of Theros block cards already in Shandalar now so it might be the 1st block available for a first mod.

I did try to use primer deck in order to make a coherent mod, but we are still missing key cards or some of them are bugged (I recently tried to make a Black Summer 96' deck for Azaar, the Lichlord, but Necropotence is currently bugged (an alternative would be Greed but the AI still has isssue with it)

[Korath]

The BEX crash popup is (typically of Microsoft) completely unhelpful. Googling suggests it might be caused by having data execution prevention on (which would definitely break Shandalar).

[Curonian]

Thank you Korath! Removing DEP solved the issue and shandalar is running! I think that you should include this in a "how to" install guide, though - as I wouldn't have solved it otherwise. (I'm a historian, not a programmer)

But it doesn't matter now, as I can now enjoy your awesome work! ^^

[gmzombie]

So, I tinkered for a while yesterday and today trying to get higher resolution working.

The good:
Almost everything works, with hardly any effort. Almost all draws to the screen are scaled by current window size, so I mostly only had to disable the resolution change at program start and end, and force all graphics to load from the 1024x768 versions.

1080p-montage1.jpg

(Uncompressed images: upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right)

The bad:
It crashes hard, in the middle of a very opaque function, at any aspect ratio except 4x3, and some blt destinations are hardcoded by resolution (only 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768) instead of being computed by the real current resolution. Hence the corruption in the bottom two screenshots in the first image below and in the top screenshot in the second. That can be dealt with, though, without too much effort; I already had to do the same for the outer frame.

1080p-montage2.jpg

(Uncompressed images: upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right)

1080p-montage3.jpg

(Uncompressed images: top, bottom. The deckbuilder works just fine at full width, since it's external.)

The ugly:
The landscape graphics don't work at all. It seems to be a problem at the point where they're loaded, rather than when they're displayed; even increasing the horizontal resolution by 1 pixel to 1025x768 gets me this same corruption. I can't figure out how to fix them, and they're kind of a dealbreaker.

1080p-montage4.jpg

(Uncompressed images: top, bottom)

At least one of the versions of Shandalar floating around here doesn't change resolution, either, but runs in a 1024x768 frameless window; if I just disable resolution changes myself, though, the game still sees my full screen resolution and tries to scale to that. Anyone have a link to that version handy, so I can see what I'm missing? Even being able to run in a normal window without having my dev environment shrunk would be an improvement.

[edit: fix link to last uncompressed img]

So I got to thinking about this a bit and just really an observationish question would the corruption Mabye be due to the sprites in the game are for those 3 sizes 1024,800,640 and even the map is generated in what looks to be the same
Sprite graphics. Could it be that maybe we need to do an update on the sprites in the game to allow this to go further in resolution? Of course I'm just pondering

[Danatar]

Thank you, Korath and CirothUngol, for making Shandalar playable on a modern computer. If I remember correctly, I last played it about 8-10 years ago on my old Win98 machine and I now and again fondly thought back to it. Three weeks ago I found this forum.
The installation following Korath's short instruction was only partially successful: The character art at character creation was just a blur of colors and the proposed character name a meaningless string of characters. The game ran fine though, both adventure mode and the duels. The next day, I uninstalled everything, then tried CirothUngol's spoon-feed version (with the art updates, and everything as an administrator). This time even character creation worked and I've been playing happily since. So thank you again for all the great work you're doing.

If you're interested, this was my first try at installing, I guess the problem was either not being logged in as an administrator or the overwrite-vs-install approach:
I downloaded, burned to CD and installed to c:\Program Files (x86) the Shandalar 2010 ISO; then I overwrote the folder with the files from the Manalink_3.0-Update_2014-05-06 archive (the installation directions said "install", but I didn't find a fitting install file, so I overwrote); then I did the same with the Fate Reforged Patch; then came the art updates, I had some problems with copying, perhaps because I wasn't logged in as an administrator; lastly I updated to Loremaster's Tower 3.

[Korath]

Just a reminder, since I've been seeing a lot of bug reports for them: I'm generally not going to fix bugs with cards that use the original MicroProse versions piecemeal. They'll be rewritten in a future version. Only exceptions are if the bug's caused by something I did to the underlying engine; if it's caused by an incompatibility with the Manalink data (as with Clone and Blight); or if the card's so broken as to be unuseable (like Animate Dead) and it's an easy rewrite (unlike Animate Dead).

Cards still using the MicroProse version as of Thieves Hideout | Open

Abomination
Abu Ja'far
Alabaster Potion
Aladdin's Lamp
Alchor's Tomb
Ali from Cairo
Amulet of Kroog
Animate Dead
Apprentice Wizard
Arena
Argivian Archaeologist
Argivian Blacksmith
Argothian Pixies
Argothian Treefolk
Armageddon Clock
Artifact Possession
Ashnod's Altar
Ashnod's Battle Gear
Ashnod's Transmogrant
Backfire
Badlands
Balance
Banshee
Basalt Monolith
Bayou
Bazaar of Baghdad/Magus of the Bazaar
Berserk
Black Mana Battery
Blaze of Glory
Blight
Blood Lust
Blue Mana Battery
Bottle of Suleiman
Brainwash
Bronze Tablet
Brothers of Fire
Call from the Grave
Camel
Cave People
Celestial Prism
Channel
Circle of Protection: Artifacts
Circle of Protection: Black
Circle of Protection: Blue
Circle of Protection: Green
Circle of Protection: Red
Circle of Protection: White
Clockwork Avian
Clockwork Beast
Clone
Coal Golem
Cockatrice
Conservator
Copy Artifact
Cosmic Horror
Creature Bond
Cuombajj Witches
Cyclone
Cyclopean Mummy
Cyclopean Tomb
Damping Field
Darkpact
Death Ward
Demonic Attorney
Demonic Hordes
Desert
Desert Nomads
Detonate
Dingus Egg
Disintegrate
Drafna's Restoration
Dragon Whelp
Drain Power
Drop of Honey/Porphyry Nodes
Dwarven Demolition Team
Dwarven Weaponsmith
Ebony Horse
Elder Land Wurm
Elephant Graveyard
Elven Riders
Energy Tap
Erhnam Djinn
Erosion
Eye for an Eye
Faerie Dragon
Farmstead
Fire Sprites
Forcefield
Force of Nature
Forest/Tree of Tales
Fungusaur
Gate to Phyrexia
Gem Bazaar
Ghazban Ogre
Giant Badger
Giant Turtle
Glasses of Urza
Goblin Artisans
Goblin Polka Band
Goblin Rock Sled
Greater Realm of Preservation
Green Mana Battery
Guardian Angel
Guardian Beast
Hasran Ogress
Haunting Wind
Healing Salve/Healing Leaves
Helm of Chatzuk
Hurr Jackal
Ifh-Biff Efreet
Infernal Medusa
Island/Seat of the Synod
Island Sanctuary
Jade Monolith
Jade Statue
Jandor's Ring
Jandor's Saddlebags
Jeweled Bird
Jovial Evil
Juggernaut
Junun Efreet
Juzam Djinn/Fledgling Djinn/Nettletooth Djinn
Khabal Ghoul
King Suleiman
Kudzu
Library of Alexandria/Magus of the Library
Lich
Life Chisel
Lightning Bolt/Fire Ambush/Ghostfire/Lightning Strike/Searing Spear/Volcanic Hammer (and functionality for Puncture Blast)
Living Artifact
Lord of the Pit
Lure (and functionality for Gift of the Deity)
Mana Clash
Mana Crypt
Mana Short
Mana Vault
Martyr's Cry
Martyrs of Korlis
Merchant Ship
Mijae Djinn
Mind Bomb
Mind Twist/Mind Shatter
Mishra's Factory/Assembly-Worker
Mishra's War Machine
Mountain/Great Furnace
Murk Dwellers
Nalathni Dragon
Natural Selection
Necropolis of Azar
Nettling Imp
Oasis
Onulet/Highland Game
Orcish Catapult
Orcish Mechanics
Osai Vultures
Oubliette
Pandora's Box
Personal Incarnation
Phantasmal Forces
Phyrexian Gremlins
Plains/Ancient Den
Plateau
Powerleech
Power Leak
Power Struggle
Power Surge
Priest of Yawgmoth
Prismatic Dragon
Psionic Blast/Char
Psionic Entity
Pyramids
Radjan Spirit
Raging River
Rainbow Knights
Raise Dead/Disentomb/Wildwood Rebirth
Rakalite
Rebirth
Reconstruction/Ritual of Restoration
Red Mana Battery
Regrowth/Recollect
Relic Bind
Resurrection/Breath of Life/False Defeat/Zombify
Ring of Ma'ruf
Rocket Launcher
Samite Healer/Alabaster Wall/Clergy en-Vec
Sandals of Abdallah
Sandstorm/Rain of Blades
Savannah
Scavenging Ghoul
Scrubland
Sengir Vampire/Sengir Bats (and functionality for Blood Cultist, Predator Ooze, Vampiric Dragon, Vein Drinker, Zurgo Helmsmasher)
Serendib Efreet
Sewers of Estark
Shapeshifter
Siren's Call
Smoke
Soul Net
Spirit Shackle
Staff of Zegon
Stasis
Stoic Angel
Stone Giant
Strip Mine
Su-Chi
Swamp/Vault of Whispers
Swords to Plowshares
Sylvan Library
Tablet of Epityr
Taiga
Tawnos's Coffin
Tawnos's Weaponry
Tempest Efreet
Thicket Basilisk
Time Elemental
Titania's Song
Tracker
Tropical Island
Tundra
Two-Headed Giant of Foriys/Foriysian Brigade/Foriysian Interceptor/Selesnya Sagittars
Typhoon
Uncle Istvan
Underground Sea
Urza's Avenger
Urza's Mine
Urza's Miter
Urza's Power Plant
Urza's Tower
Venom
Vesuvan Doppelganger
Veteran Bodyguard
Visions
Volcanic Island
Wall of Dust
War Barge
Wheel of Fortune
Whimsy
White Mana Battery
Winds of Change
Winter Orb
Witch Hunter
Wormwood Treefolk
Xenic Poltergeist
Yawgmoth Demon
Ydwen Efreet

I've been very busy lately, which is why there hasn't been a Thieves Hideout 2 release yet. I'll try to find time this weekend. I probably won't release an update for Loremaster's Tower, or at least not yet, since there's only been four commits on that branch since LT3 - fixes for #674: a rare crash bug with Glare of Subdual and Opposition (and much more common one with Thieves Hideout cards), #675: Angry Mob's P/T gets pumped by Swamps at the wrong player's turn, #699: Harbor Serpent could not attack even when there were 5 Islands on the battlefield, and an untracked fix for Crown of Empires (which didn't require control of Scepter of Empires to gain control of its target).

I haven't gotten hardly anything done on the next major release yet, either. I've worked primarily on snow-covered basic lands, and it's been frustrating - dealing with them inside duel was almost trivial, but integrating them into the rest of the game has been painful. Some of the more memorable hurdles:

• Getting the deckbuilder to allow you to put more than four in a deck. The deckbuilder functions were moved out of the main executable into Deckdll.dll some years ago; it currently consists of partially-analyzed assembly code that can only be built with an obsolete assembler, which makes an object file that - unlike Shandalar.exe itself - most of my tools can't deal with. So I've had to mostly analyze it manually. Fixing it for snow-covered lands let me add Relentless Rats and Shadowborn Apostle too, at least. Plus, the same function that I had to replace to get those seven cards in also has the bug for Tome of Enlightenment (which lets you put up to 103 copies of a card in your deck instead of just 5 if your deck is 59 cards or larger) so that's fixable now too. Unless you consider that a feature, which I'm sure some people do, in which case it should be changed to allow any number of copies at 60+ instead of 103 at 59+.
• The deckbuilder also kept its own copy of the cards_ptr[] array (which contains most of the data in Manalink.csv), so when I tried to remove the "( : Add to your mana pool.)" reminder text from snow-covered lands, it only worked in duel, not the deckbuilder. (Same story as with Beasts of Bogardan, whose rules text I changed to fix this all the way back in Ruined Tower 3 but never noticed was still broken in the deckbuilder.) Getting the deckbuilder to use the same array as Shandalar.exe and Shandalar.dll took four lines of code and about two hours of analysis. And, even so, it still wastes time reading cards.dat into its own array (prior to ignoring it), which is probably close to a second of delay during startup.
• The deckbuilder also has its own copy of is_valid_card(), which reports that non-Manalink cards don't exist; so even though I could find snow-covered lands in Shandalar adventure mode, they wouldn't show up when I went to the deckbuilder. That was another two-line fix that took upwards of three hours to do.
• I still haven't found where the Deckdll.dll internally stores the deckbuilder-specific values, so non-Manalink cards won't work quite right with the various filters. It's not much of a problem for snow-covered lands, which will only work improperly for the (probably very-rarely-used) right-click menu for lands that lets you distinguish between mana-producing and non-mana-producing ones; but it will be for cards which should be filterable by subtype or ability. I don't plan on wasting any more time looking for it, either, though maybe I'll stumble onto it by accident when I figure out why the deckbuilder treats Shandalar different from Manalink and the standalone Deck.exe when filtering subtypes.
• Deckdll.dll allocates and populates several arrays, purpose unknown, whose size is based on the number of cards in ct_all.csv. So that puts a hard limit on the number of new, non-Manalink cards I can add at runtime of about 60 - the new cards will harmlessly overwrite the deckbuilder's copies of the orange effect cards and 16 dynamically-created cards (animated artifacts and lands in the original game, and also modified tokens in my expansion of it), which the deckbuilder doesn't access anyway. More than that, though, and it'll start overwriting other random data. On the other hand, I can add disabled lines in ct_all.csv, so the cards are still disabled in Manalink but don't need to be added from scratch at runtime in Shandalar, so there shouldn't ever need to be more than a few cards hacked in like this at a time; on yet a third hand, that depends on Manalink releases starting up again.
• Shandalar doesn't let either you or opponents ante basic lands, so it makes sense to disallow snow-covered basics too. Instead of sanely having one function for "pick an ante-able card from this deck", it does it inline, five times, in various start-of-duel functions - once each for picking your and your opponent's ante during a wilderness encounter, once each for picking your and your opponent's ante when trying to free a town, and once for picking your ante in a dungeon - and they're all slightly different. You can ante dungeon treasures, for example, while your opponents cannot; and which cards you ante when attacking a town is deterministic (based on the town's map coordinates) instead of random.
• An attempt at hacking lairs to sometimes give you snow-covered basics instead of normal basics proved randomly unstable, so I eventually had to move the entire main lair function into shandalar.dll; which was, again, more effort than I'd expected. But that'll at least let me more easily fix some other problems with them - how they sometimes give you a bonus card of the wrong color; how Loremaster's Tower and Pyramids of Aska-Tet sometimes give you the reward card even if you answer the quiz wrong; make the Gemcutter's Guild redisplay your gold and number of amulets owned after each purchase; fix the King Suleiman bug; maybe make the Gemcutter's Guild, Nomad's Bazaar, and Diamond Mine increase their prices with each purchase at the same lair; and add more lair types, assuming someone (else) does the game design for them.

[Tyrael]

Hi Korath,

thanks for the heads-up and the information on cards which bugs should be reported for and for which not (because I was going to report a bug for Balance and some other cards ).

I am almost done with my first playthrough of Shandalar in version Thief's Hideout (only the pesky red wizard is left, I am running a black/white life gain/life pay deck with Archangel of Thune as killer and of course good old Contract from Below). I can say already that it is tons of fun having new cards in Shandalar, even existing bugs do not bother me lots So far I have not changed enemy decks with updates from the overhaul thread, but that is the next thing I would like to try after finishing this playthrough.

One thing I noticed is that without knowledge of the MtG developments from recent years it is kind of hard to know which cards to look for. So a limitation of available cards is meaningful. And as WotC organizes MtG around blocks it makes sense that Shandalar's card set can be restricted to certain blocks as well (and very fortunately we have this feature already! - though I have not tried that yet, as there are still too few cards right now). A good thing would then be to have a different enemy deck selection for each block. Well, still lots of work left I guess.

I have spent quite a few hours over the last weeks in playing Shandalar every other night and it was great fun, so many thanks again to Korath and all other contributers, your work is highly appreciated.

[Stealthygolem]

I really appreciate your work, Korath. I'm a new member here, but I grew up playing Shandalar. Picking up Magic again after a while, it has rekindled my love for Shandalar. After I heard about your work (and this website) I've been checking back ever since. I'm very eager to your future releases. I hope everything goes well for you