ManaLink Graphic Updates & Info

[mathusalem]

Both Akroma and Maze of Ith now have an alternate art (Akroma has the DvD art and Maze has the Judge promo art) you should download my newest complete archive, it should correct the problem

[stassy]

Serrated Arrows has the graphic of the whole card Llanowar Dead lol

[mathusalem]

heee.... Well two bugs there : serrated arrows is not coded. and that whole llanovar dead is not even in my folder. So i'm afraid that bug is all yours

[stassy]

Ah ok, I though that your update on the CVS was only on the graphic, so only space were filled, my bad then.

[mathusalem]

Well my update is only graphic yes. Serrated arrows was added in the CSV by orion, I think he wanted to give it a try. But he didn't succeeded as it remained uncoded. therefore I never added the image.

[Salbei]

However I neeed one of the coders to look into the game's code and make it accept the files that I have prepared. i'm making simultaneously png and bmp files. it could be handy to try the png files, the reasons being that it is a newer format, ansd that it supports alpha layers, howeevr I don't know if the game would support an alpha layer rather than the green masks it uses for transparency.

Anyway, once again, I need a coder to do that.

wouldn´t it make more sense to convert your bmp/png files into that .pic format and just overwrite it ?

i´ve toyed around a bit with that. the problem is that .pic can be pretty much everything.

programs that use .pic :
- SoftImage
- 15/24bit RGB Autodesk Animator PIC/CEL files
- Radiance image file
- PC Paint Pictor page format
- Pixar PIC file
- Lotus

the images should have been created with one of these programs if i´m right. just an idea. should be possible to narrow down the list (was the program available ~10 years ago ?^^)

afterall i don´t know much about file formats. so this may be a bad idea.

[mathusalem]

The .pic files used by the game are not any used by those program. as I said in another thread, and Skymarshal and a programmer friend of mine agreed with me, the .pic files we are dealing with here are actually a secure native format used just by the game.
they are really annoying to deal with and handle. we spent years just managing to open them.
so That's the reason why we think it's a much better idea to tell the game to load files in another format.

believe me, as hard as the task of finding where the game loads images is (and this had been found out by Mok, which is the reason why we have jpg pics for the card, bmp for the card face, and a great looking rampage icon -which I did) changing the pics into .pic files would be as troublesome ....if not more

[jatill]

The .pic files used by the game are not any used by those program. as I said in another thread, and Skymarshal and a programmer friend of mine agreed with me, the .pic files we are dealing with here are actually a secure native format used just by the game.
they are really annoying to deal with and handle. we spent years just managing to open them.
so That's the reason why we think it's a much better idea to tell the game to load files in another format.

believe me, as hard as the task of finding where the game loads images is (and this had been found out by Mok, which is the reason why we have jpg pics for the card, bmp for the card face, and a great looking rampage icon -which I did) changing the pics into .pic files would be as troublesome ....if not more

Well, I'm speaking a little naively here, but I think finding the code where the pics are located is easy. I look at the decompiled magic.c and see lots of code like this:

sprintf(&Filename, "%s\\WINBK_StartDuelButtonNormal.pic", dword_739E30);
*(_DWORD *)a4 = sub_459FA0(a1, &Filename);

So I think it's the code at 459FA0 that loads the pics. As Snacko mentioned earlier, it's a matter of replacing that with libraries that load jpg's or whatever instead. I have 0% idea how to do that, but any professional (or competent) C developer would know just what to do.

[Salbei]

The .pic files used by the game are not any used by those program. as I said in another thread, and Skymarshal and a programmer friend of mine agreed with me, the .pic files we are dealing with here are actually a secure native format used just by the game.
they are really annoying to deal with and handle. we spent years just managing to open them.
so That's the reason why we think it's a much better idea to tell the game to load files in another format.

believe me, as hard as the task of finding where the game loads images is (and this had been found out by Mok, which is the reason why we have jpg pics for the card, bmp for the card face, and a great looking rampage icon -which I did) changing the pics into .pic files would be as troublesome ....if not more

gotcha.

it would make further "modding" of skins a ton easier like that, i see your point. that would be very user friendly since you could switch the look of the game more or less on demand.

Well, I'm speaking a little naively here, but I think finding the code where the pics are located is easy. I look at the decompiled magic.c and see lots of code like this:

sprintf(&Filename, "%s\\WINBK_StartDuelButtonNormal.pic", dword_739E30);
*(_DWORD *)a4 = sub_459FA0(a1, &Filename);

So I think it's the code at 459FA0 that loads the pics. As Snacko mentioned earlier, it's a matter of replacing that with libraries that load jpg's or whatever instead. I have 0% idea how to do that, but any professional (or competent) C developer would know just what to do.

guess it won´t be as easy as just changing the .pic to .bmp and see what happens , or ?
like :
sprintf(&Filename, "%s\\WINBK_StartDuelButtonNormal.bmp", dword_739E30);
*(_DWORD *)a4 = sub_459FA0(a1, &Filename);

given that you actually got a .bmp to replace that one.
i´ve downloaded mathusalems work and i must say i really admire your creativity.
ah , before i forget it. re-check the spelling of your pics (caps-letters where the original is normal , dunno if that stuff is case-sensitive).

[jatill]

guess it won´t be as easy as just changing the .pic to .bmp and see what happens , or ?
like :
sprintf(&Filename, "%s\\WINBK_StartDuelButtonNormal.bmp", dword_739E30);
*(_DWORD *)a4 = sub_459FA0(a1, &Filename);

given that you actually got a .bmp to replace that one.
i´ve downloaded mathusalems work and i must say i really admire your creativity.
ah , before i forget it re-check the spelling of your pics (caps-letters where the original is normal , dunno if that stuff is case-sensitive).

No, I did try that, and it crashes the game.

[Salbei]

meh, would have been too easy

[0rion79]

Well my update is only graphic yes. Serrated arrows was added in the CSV by orion, I think he wanted to give it a try. But he didn't succeeded as it remained uncoded. therefore I never added the image.

Nope, Serrated Arrows has been commited to me by Jatill, but it was already in my "best of Homelands" mini-set, that was too difficult for me to code, so it is a good idea if you provide that image too
Instead, thrulls are just my proposition and there isn't any guarantee that they will be coded (even if it would be cool!)

[gmzombie]

a quick question to jatill or any programmer. if the game works right now with bmps on some of the pics why not find that code and then modify that code that is the particular file aka dark.pic for example. also jatill can you decompile deck.exe to a c output...if it hasen.t already been done. there has to be a way to kinda duplicate but create a new deck builder to incorp a new look to the system while keeping the basic structure. maybe im over my head but this sounds logical to do although im no codefr I like to try diff things.

[gmzombie]

guys what about this i DE compiled magic and thought about this from jatills comment about this earlier

sprintf(&Filename, "%s\\WINBK_StartDuelButtonNormal.pic", dword_739E30);
*(_DWORD *)a4 = sub_459FA0(a1, &Filename);

we see the sub_459FAO well check this out

j_sprintf(&FileName, "%s\\Abilities.bmp", dword_60EDA0);
dword_608D3C = sub_466720(&FileName, 0);

the bmps are at sub_466720 so if in theory we changed the sub on the startduelbuttonnormal.pic to sub_466720 and add a bmp file of the same name we should have the better images right>?

[scythe000]

forgive mw, IANOAP, but does the sub refer to a subroutine? Does it point to an existing section of code that tells the app how to render bmps? If so, then what you say makes perfect sense! I didn't even know the prog was rendering any bmps at all. Now, if we could get it to do pngs, that'd rock.