Shandalar Haxxer v1.1 Portable DosBox

[CirothUngol]

I've assembled a Portable DosBox version of Per Jorner's 16bit Shandalar utilities Haxxer and Splicer. Just extract to your Shandalar folder and click the Haxxer.bat file. If desired, it'll try to automatically copy your .SVE files before jumping to the DosBox Menu. From there you can run the utilities and view the ReadMe.

Haxxer1.1_DosBox.zip

Portable DosBox Install for the 16bit Shandalar Utilities
Haxxer v1.1 and Splicer v1.0 by Per Jorner

(1.36 MiB) Downloaded 1530 times

These are great little apps, and now they're easy to use. Thanx Per!

Haxxer v1.1 ReadMe:

Code: Select all

------------------
 Shandalar Haxxer
------------------
 By Per Jorner
 v1.0 (May 2008)
 v1.1 (July 2009)

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 MicroProse's Magic: the Gathering is a great game, but did you ever feel
 that constantly averting sieges in Shandalar was more like a chore than a
 challenge? Or does it bother you that the non-resetting of your life counter
 in dungeons rewards certain decks unreasonably while punishing others
 equally unreasonably? Or does the idea of dungeons with Power Struggle
 in effect make your eye twitch? If so, this is the utility for you.
 It will rescue your game if you have that bothersome Spell of Dominion
 hanging over your head, and it will do your dirty work if you can't be
 bothered to hunt down world magics.

 The program does all this by altering bits and bytes in an existing save
 file of yours. When it asks which save you want to edit, press a key from
 1 to 0, corresponding to the order on your in-game list of saves, or A for
 the auto-save. Then just press Y or N at the prompts and input stuff where
 appropriate. (For anyone who's interested, the haxxer edits the .sve part
 of a Shandalar save. Magic3.sve is the auto-save, while those ranging from
 4 to D are your regular saves in order.)

 There should be no way for the program to mess up a save, but I cannot
 absolutely guarantee that it won't do so at some time in some corner of
 the universe, so if you want to be entirely safe, back up your save
 beforehand. For that matter, you may want to back it up in case you press
 the wrong key or have second thoughts about something.

 The utility is written for Manalink 1.3 saves, meaning it will also work
 with saves from a Manalink 2.0 install (which is the same where Shandalar
 is concerned), or a modified Manalink 1.3 where changes are limited to
 the data set. It needs to be run from the Magic folder where your save
 games reside.

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 OPTIONS:
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* Change Difficulty Level?
--------------------------
 Lets you change the difficulty from the one you started out with. 0 is
 Apprentice, 3 is Wizard. You can actually set it to anything up to 255 if
 you like: monsters will have correspondingly more life - Arzakon gets 100
 more for each level, I presume - and the AI will spend more time working
 out its plans. In that regard we're probably talking diminishing returns,
 though. Setting difficulty higher than 3 will cause a minor display error
 on the character screen which can be happily ignored and may also cause
 crashes or freezes, but hopefully that shouldn't be too common.
 Difficulty-dependent dungeon settings are not affected by this option.

* Give More Mana Links?
-----------------------
 There will be a second prompt with an option to add mana links in all
 cities. If you press N you'll get to enter your desired number of mana
 links to add in random cities. If you press Y there will be a third
 prompt (and a fourth) asking if you also want to turn all villages into
 cities. Starting every duel at 123 life is not really anyone's idea of
 suspense, but the option is there. Adding a mana link in a city also
 flags it as visited so that it shows up in the city list (but not on
 the map screen).

* Free All Cities and End Ongoing Siege?
----------------------------------------
 If the enemy wizards have four mana domes each and are busy working on
 the fifth, this hack is your friend. It will remove all mana domes and
 as an added bonus stop a siege if it's underway.

* Set All Wizards to Dead (but enable all monsters)?
----------------------------------------------------
 Using this option will set all wizards to defeated, leaving their castles
 in ruin. This means you can't reach the end of the game and fight Arzakon,
 so why would anyone want to do that? Well, the thing is, if the wizards
 are all dead, there won't be any sieges, which is great if you hate sieges.
 There will still be monsters running around so that you have enemies to
 fight and lairs to visit. If you had defeated one or more wizards
 previously, their monsters will return and join in the fun. Special note:
 if you use this function, you cannot trigger the endgame by reviving a
 single wizard and defeating it. To meet Arzakon, set all wizards to alive
 using either of the following two functions, then defeat them normally
 and/or set all of them but one to dead using the toggle function.

* Set All Wizards to Alive (and enable all monsters)?
-----------------------------------------------------
 When you want to wrap up your siege-free game, or you just want to reset
 things in general, this hack comes in handy. It will restore all the
 wizards to life, rebuild their castles and set their armies loose.
 (It may seem odd at first that these last two hacks are not symmetric
 when it comes to the monsters, but if you think about it, a world where
 you do nothing but run around and deliver messages between village elders
 doesn't really make for an exciting game, however unobjectionable to the
 common folks of Shandalar.)

* Toggle Wizards (and their monsters) Separately?
-------------------------------------------------
 This option allows you to toggle the state of each wizard. Using this
 function to kill a wizard will also stop their minions from appearing on
 the world map, as if you'd defeated them normally.

* Reset All Failed Quests?
--------------------------
 Failing a quest is of very little importance in the game, especially since
 there's a bug that may cause the flag to be set in the wrong place. It
 won't stop you from getting all mana links or anything. Still, this option
 is here for people who are satisfied with nothing less than perfection.

* Restock All Town Inventories?
-------------------------------
 Normally, town inventories don't renew unless you purchase from what
 they already have. This option simply makes them all randomize their
 inventories as if you had just arrived in Shandalar.

* Give a Bunch of Amulets?
--------------------------
 Gives you 10 amulets of each colour to a maximum of 255 (assuming you
 didn't already have more). If you say yes at the second prompt, your
 number of amulets is simply set to 255 of each colour instead. If you
 had a million before, you now have less.

* Give a Bunch of Food and Gold?
--------------------------------
 Gives you 5000 gold and 500 food to a maximum of 65535 (assuming you
 didn't already have more). Converting the gold to additional food is
 easily done in the game if you only want more grub. Choosing the
 high-powered option sets your amount of food and gold to 65535. How
 you're going to carry it is your problem.

* Make All Monsters Afraid of You?
----------------------------------
 Records enough victories against each monster type and colour that they'll
 offer you tribute on Wizard level. (If you set the difficulty higher,
 they'll still pay tribute.) This does not affect your win/loss record or
 your journal.

* Reset Monster Victories and Timers?
-------------------------------------
 This function deletes all recorded victories against monsters and resets
 all timers associated with the spawning of lairs and monsters. Additionally,
 any nearby monsters are removed, but an ongoing siege is not stopped.
 This means you will start afresh where monster encounters are concerned,
 finding more lairs and meeting weak monsters that normally stop spawning a
 while into the game. Again, the win/loss record will not reflect this.

* Give All World Magics?
------------------------
 Fairly straightforward.

* Turn Off Cards in Effect in Dungeons?
---------------------------------------
 Do you hate those Power Struggles with a passion? Do you roll your eyes when
 the AI trips itself up trying to make use of its free Leviathan? Make them
 go away with the push of a button. Note that monsters in castles sometimes
 get two free cards and the second card is not affected by this hack.

* See All Dungeon Clues?
------------------------
 Provides the three types of clues - location, colour and rules - for all
 castles and dungeons. Entering and leaving a dungeon will obscure its
 location as usual.

* Turn Off Life Carrying Over in Dungeons?
------------------------------------------
 This stops life gain and/or loss from carrying over between duels in
 castles and dungeons. That's pretty much a must if you want to play
 suicide black or stupid red burn throughout the game, so let's not consider
 this a dirty cheat. The dungeon clues screen will show the messages "Life
 losses carried over" AND "Remaining life added to next duel", but this is
 actually what it normally looks like if you play on the easier difficulties.
 If you say yes at the second prompt, not only do life losses not carry over,
 but life bonuses from dice DO carry over (effectively you get a higher life
 total for as long as you remain in the dungeon), and losing a duel will not
 throw you out of the dungeon, although the corridor space the monster was
 occupying will become impassable. In this case the dungeon clues screen
 won't say anything about life.

* Clear Card Restrictions in Dungeons?
--------------------------------------
 This option removes all restrictions like "no blue cards" or "no artifacts"
 or "one Rakalite minimum". Now you can make your own rules.

* Repair Lost Dungeons?
-----------------------
 This one may require an explanation. Each dungeon saves its cards in up
 to three slots. Due to what is presumably a bug, a dungeon disappears
 permanently when the card in the first slot has been taken, meaning you
 can't have another shot at any remaining ones. If this has happened, this
 option will shuffle a card to the first slot and bring the dungeon back.

* Fill Up Empty Dungeons with Random Cards?
-------------------------------------------
 If you already raided all the dungeons and want to do it again, this will
 fill each empty card slot in each dungeon with a completely random card.
 It could be Black Lotus, it could be Swamp, it could even be Akron
 Legionnaire. That's how crazy this function is. (Castles could
 theoretically hold up to two cards each, but a bag of gold and jewels is
 probably worth more than a random card anyway.)

* Catch a Break?
----------------
 This option rolls a bunch of minor hacks into one. Firstly it will stop
 an ongoing siege if there is one. Secondly it will replace all nearby
 monsters with lairs. Thirdly it will give you +20 life and a free Serra
 Angel in the next duel (which can be handy if you need to retake a city
 from a dragon who starts with Hypnotic Specter in play). Finally it resets
 two timers that serve to increase difficulty in subtle ways as time goes on.
 Hopefully there'll be no unwanted side effects of that.

* Change Name?
--------------
 If you don't like the name you started out with, or if the game's
 25-character limit was too restrictive, you can get a new one. You can
 enter up to 55 characters with no ill effects, but all the same it may
 be wise to keep within 35 or so. If you want to enter characters like
 î or é that are normally disallowed, be aware that they are disallowed
 for a reason and won't display properly.
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Splicer v1.0 ReadMe:

Code: Select all

-------------------
 Shandalar Splicer
-------------------
 By Per Jorner
 v1.0 (July 2009)

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 This simple utility copies character data from a save made in Shandalar in
 MicroProse's Magic: the Gathering, and can then insert that data into other
 saves. It could be used, for instance, if you start a red character and only
 after revealing the whole map learn that there's almost no mountain terrain.
 Or if you feel you're done with one map and want to explore another instead
 of going after the wizards, but don't want to start entirely from scratch.

 When asked for a save to extract data from or insert data into, press a key
 from 1 to 0, corresponding to the order on your in-game list of saves, or A
 for the auto-save. (For anyone who's interested, the splicer edits the .sve
 part of a Shandalar save. Magic3.sve is the auto-save, while those ranging
 from 4 to D are your regular saves in order.) Extraction creates a small data
 file called splcetmp.sve, which can be spliced any number of times but is
 overwritten by any further extractions unless moved or renamed. Splicing will
 always use the current splcetmp.sve.

 The splicer always overwrites your card collection and current decks; your
 gold, food and amulets; your name and gender; and a few other relevant bytes.
 It also asks whether you want to overwrite monster victories and/or world
 magics; if you don't, they remain as they were in the destination save. Note
 that your win/loss record does not carry over even if you splice monster
 victories, only the extent to which monsters fear you and the associated life
 penalty for the wizards.

 The splicer doesn't affect difficulty level, world map layout and visibility,
 town data (including mana links and mana domes), dungeon contents and
 characteristics, dungeon clues, wizard status, journal entries, current
 location, or current quest; it's assumed that the destination save is newly
 created or in any case prepared the way you want it. You can use the
 Shandalar Haxxer to edit some of these things if you want, e.g. to quickly
 bring your mana link total back up to 20.

 Your character portrait is not affected in any way. You can either fix the
 portrait as desired when you start up the new game you intend to splice your
 character into, or swap out the appropriate .fce file.

 The utility is written for Manalink 1.3 saves, meaning it will also work with
 saves from a Manalink 2.0 install (which is the same where Shandalar is
 concerned), or a modified Manalink 1.3 where changes are limited to the data
 set. It needs to be run from the Magic folder where your save games reside.
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