ManaLink Updates & Info

[jatill]

Well, I'll miss all the new folks once the official forum is back up, but it's good to have everyone here while they are. Watching the progress is a whole lot of fun!

It's good to see ol' HP around too, maybe he'll find time for a Card Gen GUI update.

And it's nice to see you finally exercising your moderator privelages. I knew you had it in you.

Screw the old forum, I think we should all move here regardless

[mathusalem]

Mathusalem-
The shockland work you did doesn't have to be lost. Just export the entire hunk of code that you added as a skp file. And then copy and paste your manalink.csv entries here. Someone can patch your work in. If you can get to it today, I'll do the patching.

Edit: Ug, the new magic.exe wasn't actually based on the latest update, but the second latest. I'll have to re-add 5 cards

hello jatill
let's trade !
Ok there's no way I'll be able to fix Sol'kanar's special by myself. I know it's simple, but I just can't do it, no matter what harry's explanations say.
so what I'm proposing is.
I re-implement the shocklands and if you wish some other tedious cards that only need Lego building with sky editor, and you fix the old Swamp king.
what do ya say ?

big kuddos for Mox Diamond (my top ten wishlist is thawing day by day )

[Bog Wraith]

Screw the old forum, I think we should all move here regardless

I'm really glad you feel this way Jatill!

This is a great site. The software architecture is better. The Layout & GUI are superior.
I like the added bonus of hovering your mouse over a card name and getting the card detail as in this example of my namesake: Bog Wraith.

Goblin Hero, the admin of this great site, and Huggy have done a superb job in creating and maintaining this place for not only all the varied forms of Magic, but for other CCG games as well.

It is a great honor for me to be a mod here along with my friend Huggy!

I'm curious to know what the rest of you think in this regard and that even if/when the old site comes back, do you echo Jatill's and my desire to move ManaLink here permanently!
I know that I'm a bit biased seeing how I've been here for awhile, but I just think the structure, layout and usability of this site suits us all!

I know that it might be a bit off topic in this thread, but I'd like to hear what you all think.

Comments...?

[gmzombie]

im indifferent about the site...mainly because i cant get here at work lol. it is filtered but manalink was not. but i do like the forum and that whole name of card thing is pretty cool too. On a note about finding out what phase your on as this was disscussed in a different thread maybe now we can see about some step cards like relentless assault? just hoping everythign is going well and im glad to see such progress

[HarryPitfall]

Also, I'm a old member here too I help the people with the proxy generator GUI... Harry Pitfall is well know in virtual world...

[Bog Wraith]

The name HarryPitfall is the stuff of Legends the way we hear it!

[EviL_CLonE]

Huggybaby was explaining something in other topic, and pasted some sort of letters and numbers that my brain cannot translate, but something there brought my attention:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MicroProse\Magic: The Gathering\MultiOptions]
"DeckMinimum"="40"
"DeckType"="1"
"PlayerDeck"=""
"PlayerRandom"="1"
"BestOf"="5"
"FreePlay"="5"
"Ante"="1"
"AllowSideboarding"="0"

Is there a Sideboarding Option in the game?

[mathusalem]

I know there 's only a sideboarding option in sealed deck.
this is a great find as it would allow to use many of the hate cards that are quite underused and useless otherwise. (Acid rain, Flashfires, Jovial evil Typhoon....ok these rae not the best of the crop, but at least with a sideboard they could find a use)

[Snacko]

To build the sources you neeed gcc (mingw http://www.mingw.org/ or http://www.tdragon.net/recentgcc/)
and yasm (http://www.tortall.net/projects/yasm/). You can use the build.bat if you have both gcc and yasm
in your PATH.
The dll is currently loaded at 0x02001000 so it shouldn't interfere with the other dll.
Due to the changeing adresses of the card functions currently you need to use the jumps at the begining of
the dll. The first jump is at 0x02001006, next 0x01001008 etc. You need to point your Code Pointer to that
address and it will then jump to the actual code address.
Thanks to using an external assembler to code you can use MACROS which can be as simple as named constants
to fully fledged functions.
Ex. After defining all the macros you can write [asm]addMana blackMana[/asm] and it does all the heavy lifting
for you and you don't have to worry that you type someting wrong.
Currently it's just bare bones, but once you populate the macros you could code really complex cards using
only a few lines of code.
The Sample directory contains an example of Swamp coded and run from the dll (overwrite files after applying
the HarryPitfall's release).

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?df1yq3ryt2t

[HarryPitfall]

I like this... really...
My real trouble is how the system manages de calls, basm isn't that happy with calls to fixed address :/
The code is very readable even with assembler, you don't need to worry about 'jumps' or 'calls'...

[Snacko]

Then basm is really limiting you as a proper assembler shouldn't care what you do.
Personally I like to know what the codes does even after a few years without reengineering it. Text labels and macros help it as it's easier for most of the people to remember a function name than the address it's located at.

[HarryPitfall]

basm is a internal assembler inside delphi, isn't for real assembler coding... only relocated call are supported :/ like:
call tobject.free
call system.getmem
but
call 0x408010 <- is a error...
:/ so, I build the dll just to have space and use the current development way.. copy/paste

I download yasm+gcc, and will try to make the full asm dll, and will try to code something and make usefull macros! since i'm a programmer, this way is better for me...

[jatill]

basm is a internal assembler inside delphi, isn't for real assembler coding... only relocated call are supported :/ like:
call tobject.free
call system.getmem
but
call 0x408010 <- is a error...
:/ so, I build the dll just to have space and use the current development way.. copy/paste

I download yasm+gcc, and will try to make the full asm dll, and will try to code something and make usefull macros! since i'm a programmer, this way is better for me...

Let me know how it works out. I don't want to jump into using any new tools until they are Harry approved

[HarryPitfall]

ok, I manage to have a minimalist gcc+yasm compiler (oh oh oh), and compile perfectly, some of the changes I made:

> The jump table uses jump near, this make jumps with 5 bytes instead 2 or 5 bytes (dependent of how far the code label is)
> change dllentry to _dllentry on gcc entry point, to avoid a warning.

Isn't mean that he will add support now for this kind of programming, I need todo some testing, but I have a good news, is a amazing way to make cards when correctly managed.


I'm thinking in add this support inside editor, on a new tab, so, with some kind of 'wizard'... like this:

"defines & macros", a database-like editor, that you can define the things... this will generate function.mac file on the fly based on data;
"code pointers", same style, you will define 'names', that the program will give to you the code pointer (2001006, 200100B), and let you 'code' the card... this will generate the manalinkex.asm;

So, you will do everything inside editor, editing the information and coding the cards... and the editor will generate functions.mac, manalinkex.asm... and compile it for you...

[Bog Wraith]

This back and forth is GREAT to see here with you guys.

Thanks Snacko for your input!

For me, this just solidifies the desire to move to this forum permanently. The guys here that work on the other software like MWS, MTG Forge, Incantus, Arcane, etc... are a tremendous resource for give and take between you programming types and are also all a great bunch of guys!

Besides, it's getting close to a week since the old site went down. I think soon, the decisiion will have been made for us!