My enemy deck randomizing batch script

[Enzi]

Hello fellow Shandalar players!

I made a batch script which changes your enemies decks from time to time while you play Shandalar. This should make the fights less boring since every enemy has 5-6 decks which they switch through.

The decks in the "decks" folder are only with original cards from the Duel of the Planeswalker expansion. I included the original decks, the decks of the SotA update, three sets of decks posted on this forum and 10 additional decks I made myself.


HOW TO USE IT:
First download the DeckRandomizer archive.
Unpack it into your Mtg folder. If you have custom edited decks inside your decks folder, better make a backup copy of them first in case I included a bug.

IMPORTANT: Then open randalar.bat and at the second line change the path to the Mtg folder used on your computer and save it again.
To run Shandalar now always run randalar.bat. It will start shandalar.exe and stay open in the background to switch the decks after a bit more than 3 minutes.

The script runs in a loop and just copies all files called *.dc1 to *.dck, then *.dc2,etc.., up to *.dc999 or whenever there are no deck files with this number in which case it restarts with *.dc1.
You although don't need to have a deck for each enemy, because then it just keeps the previous one and only changes the other ones.
At the moment it has decks named *.dc1 to *.dc6. To add another list rename your decks from *.dck to *.dc7 then copy the files into the "decks" folder.

And to spare you the hassle of getting original Shandalar (with DotP expansion) to run on a modern PC or on linux, I made virtual disk images for Qemu and Virtual Box which load into Windows 95 and autostart Shandalar and my deck randomizer.
Edit: Forgot to mention I didn't get sound to working with Qemu

Link:

https://gofile.io/d/QrHct5

I used the following command to run it at decent speed with qemu:

Code: Select all

qemu-system-i386    -drive file=~/Downloads/Randalar.raw,format=raw,cache=unsafe             -cpu pentium3       -vga std        -m 768  -boot c -enable-kvm

Please feel free to leave your comments or if you have your own custom enemy deck lists I would be happy to include them.

Edit: Batch script updated, following the suggestion from the post below.

[Aswan jaguar]

just copies all files called *.dc1 to *.dck, then *.dc2,etc..,

So if you run some duels, the original decks existing to .dck will be overwritten for good, right? they are not saved somewhere are they? So possibly those decks should be in another number lets say *.dc7 if you have already 6 packs so they don't get lost.

[Enzi]

Hello,
I now added a check and everytime a *.dck file is different from all *.dc1,2,... files it should copy them first to *.dc7,... So creating a new set of decks everytime it detects a edited or otherwise different *.dck file.

Although I removed the *.dck files from the "decks" folder in my archive since everone should have them already in their folder and it would be stupid if they would be overwritten while extracting the archive.

[Enzi]

Oops,
the file I uploaded didn't actually work. But now it should be fixed. Sorry for that.
See first post for downloads.