Updates on the way.
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Re: Updates on the way.
by gmzombie » 15 Jul 2015, 20:23
lol yea i have to do it that way as i didnt have the program to take a snapshot and at work i get crap sprint coverage..go figure lol. im going to post a special re-up of just the magic.exe file in a zip on the manalink side to let people try it out for themselves. ill have to post a warning about other resolutions though. i havent figured it all out yet but im so giddy to share the greatness korath is bringing us on the shandalar side.
can I maze of ith your snowstorm?
http://home.comcast.net/~gmzombie/index.html old stuff in here. don't use this stuff right now till I get time to get back into it and readjust.
http://home.comcast.net/~gmzombie/index.html old stuff in here. don't use this stuff right now till I get time to get back into it and readjust.
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Re: Updates on the way.
by Arrabal » 17 Jul 2015, 10:04
Hey Korath, I just registered to say thank you for your work. This is amazing! I always dreamed to have Shandalar updated with the new expansions cards.
I'm also curious to take a look at the source code and see how things works, but I'm really busy these days. I expect to have some spare time to check it out and, who knows, even help you if needed.
I'd like to provide some feedback as well, although it has nothing to do with your work. Installation process is a bit messy for newcomers. I managed to do it once, but many card pictures are missing and when I tried to install it from scratch in a second computer, I simply failed. I think it's a bit confusing because it's not clear where the files you must download are and it's not really straightforward how you have to install them.
If someone could provide a simple how to in non ambiguous terms, I could even work on a game installer or install script that would do it automatically. Let's say you rephrase the instructions as in this example:
"Download Manalink 3.0 from <link_url>" instead of "Download the last Manalink version from some post in this forum" or "Download the patch <link_url> and run it" instead of "Apply some manalink patch on your install direcory"
I hope no one gets offended for this comment, it's just feedback from someone who discovered this page a couple weeks ago. I'm glad to help if I'm able in the future and I want to congratulate every person that worked on this, specially Korath. In the past I have done some reverse engineering works too and I know how hard it can be.
Congratulations. Keep up the good work.
I'm also curious to take a look at the source code and see how things works, but I'm really busy these days. I expect to have some spare time to check it out and, who knows, even help you if needed.
I'd like to provide some feedback as well, although it has nothing to do with your work. Installation process is a bit messy for newcomers. I managed to do it once, but many card pictures are missing and when I tried to install it from scratch in a second computer, I simply failed. I think it's a bit confusing because it's not clear where the files you must download are and it's not really straightforward how you have to install them.
If someone could provide a simple how to in non ambiguous terms, I could even work on a game installer or install script that would do it automatically. Let's say you rephrase the instructions as in this example:
"Download Manalink 3.0 from <link_url>" instead of "Download the last Manalink version from some post in this forum" or "Download the patch <link_url> and run it" instead of "Apply some manalink patch on your install direcory"
I hope no one gets offended for this comment, it's just feedback from someone who discovered this page a couple weeks ago. I'm glad to help if I'm able in the future and I want to congratulate every person that worked on this, specially Korath. In the past I have done some reverse engineering works too and I know how hard it can be.
Congratulations. Keep up the good work.
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Re: Updates on the way.
by gmzombie » 17 Jul 2015, 12:46
I'm actually working on a new installer as we speak. I just have to get a few things down and then I'll upload it to the world. It will be fully complete up to date fate reforged and latest shandalar update as well.
can I maze of ith your snowstorm?
http://home.comcast.net/~gmzombie/index.html old stuff in here. don't use this stuff right now till I get time to get back into it and readjust.
http://home.comcast.net/~gmzombie/index.html old stuff in here. don't use this stuff right now till I get time to get back into it and readjust.
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Re: Updates on the way.
by JamesSylvan » 17 Jul 2015, 20:10
Hello,
I am trying to install and play Shandalar. I have extracted Shandalar, then extracted Manalink, overwriting everything in Program. Then I extracted the Fate Reforged patch, replacing all files again. Then I extracted the Shandalar.dll and UIStrings.txt to Program.
When I run Shandalar, the game starts up. I chose the difficulty, then when I select a color, nothing happens. I am just clicking green, red, black, etc. and the button presses but nothing happens.
Thanks for all your hard work. I really want to play this!
I am trying to install and play Shandalar. I have extracted Shandalar, then extracted Manalink, overwriting everything in Program. Then I extracted the Fate Reforged patch, replacing all files again. Then I extracted the Shandalar.dll and UIStrings.txt to Program.
When I run Shandalar, the game starts up. I chose the difficulty, then when I select a color, nothing happens. I am just clicking green, red, black, etc. and the button presses but nothing happens.
Thanks for all your hard work. I really want to play this!
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Re: Updates on the way.
by Korath » 17 Jul 2015, 22:49
Arrabal, yes, installation is unacceptably poor.
Otherwise, that's the point at which the Facemaker launches. If you run Facemaker.exe directly, does it work?
- Part of it's not under my control (since it relies on the Manalink distribution; I really, really prefer to my deliverables to be ~4Mb compressed and not the ~415Mb of a complete Manalink distribution).
- Part of it's because it hasn't been anywhere near a priority yet, and won't be until I'm much closer to caught up with Manalink in terms of cards programmed.
- Part of it's because I actually prefer it to be a bit difficult for the time being. The wider distribution this gets the sooner and more likely WOTC and/or whoever ended up with MicroProse's assets is to put an end to it.
Otherwise, that's the point at which the Facemaker launches. If you run Facemaker.exe directly, does it work?
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Re: Updates on the way.
by CirothUngol » 17 Jul 2015, 23:50
Hiya Arrabal! Thanx for registering just to say "Wow, this is great!" Here is a copy/paste of my post answering the same question in another thread. I've omitted CardArt from the download to minimize it's size:Arrabal wrote:If someone could provide a simple how to in non ambiguous terms...
1) Download and extract Manalink3_20150325.7z found at one of the links in my signature.
2) Start Manalink_Launcher.cmd to install the default Mods for Manalink. It contains the latest 'Fate Reforged' patch, but with No CardArt. If you'd like CardArt, use Sonic's latest image archives found here.
3) Download Add_Shandalar_LoremastersTower2_preAlpha.7z from the same folder, place it in the '\Manalink3\' folder created by the previous archive, and extract it in place to update the '\Program\' folder with all of the Shandalar goodness. This archive contains the clean files from the Shandalar_2012 install + Korath's updated files for 'LoremastersTower2_preAlpha'.
That should get you up and running. If you have issues with animations not working, please try installing the CCCP, as it's never failed me. ^_^
Hell yea! If your folder structure is similar then the Mods from my download should work fine with any Fate Reforged install.gmzombie wrote:I'm actually working on a new installer as we speak.
"I thought the day had brought enough horrors for our ragged band, but the night was far worse."
-Lucilde Fiksdotter
Shandalar 2012 Revisited
Magic: The Gathering Abandonware
-Lucilde Fiksdotter
Shandalar 2012 Revisited
Magic: The Gathering Abandonware
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Re: Updates on the way.
by JamesSylvan » 18 Jul 2015, 18:09
Thanks so much, both of you.
It seems I was extracting the shandalar rar first, then overwriting it with the manalink stuff after, instead of the other way around.
Everything works fine now. The instructions in the post above work perfectly to install everything fresh.
By the way, is there a github repo where I can check out your work?
It seems I was extracting the shandalar rar first, then overwriting it with the manalink stuff after, instead of the other way around.
Everything works fine now. The instructions in the post above work perfectly to install everything fresh.
By the way, is there a github repo where I can check out your work?
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Re: Updates on the way.
by Korath » 18 Jul 2015, 19:36
No; the project would violate github's terms of service if hosted there. There's a zip of the source tree as of the last release attached to the same post as the release itself, if you just want to browse. PM me your ssh public key if you want read access directly to our dev server (I'm not prepared to make that fully public, since it's not my machine - it's in the basement of a friend of mine, and I don't want to hog all his bandwidth).
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Re: Updates on the way.
by Arrabal » 19 Jul 2015, 22:29
Hello. Thanks to gmzombie, Korath and CirothUngol you very much for taking the time to reply! I really appreciate it. I'm really looking forward to gmzombie's installer, that's great news.
I'm enjoying the game very much.
I understand, no one wants them to ruin all the fun and that is a powerful reason to make the install process a bit difficult. And thank you again for your amazing work.Korath wrote:Part of it's because I actually prefer it to be a bit difficult for the time being. The wider distribution this gets the sooner and more likely WOTC and/or whoever ended up with MicroProse's assets is to put an end to it.
I'm enjoying the game very much.
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Re: Updates on the way.
by Korath » 21 Jul 2015, 20:52
I'm still working on interrupts (progress tracked in the original post), and MicroProse X spells and modal spells needed to finish Fork (post). At least nominally.
I wasn't happy with the way Drain Life only had a "real" casting cost of
and manually charged its 
cost in its own card function instead of letting the engine do it. Being restricted to only black mana wasn't a problem; the engine would have been able to handle (spend only for X) just fine, the same way it can handle for e.g. Howl from Beyond. It just wasn't capable of charging both a fixed amount and an X amount of the same color. This also comes up with Gloom and X spells, though, since the only white X spells in the original game are Guardian Angel and Alabaster Potion, and Gloom's been broken in Manalink since forever, I'm not surprised I hadn't noticed it before.
Even so, I might have been able to stomach that for now if it were just Drain Life and Gloom, but there's also a handful of other spells like Tribal Unity and Flowstone Slide and Stroke of Genius that I kept stumbling across while implementing other X spells between fixing the MicroProse ones. So I finished reverse-engineering charge_mana()'s subfunctions, extended them to deal with charging fixed and X amounts in the same color on the same call, and made the function that reads cards.dat (née Manalink.csv) manually parse mana cost strings that contain "|X|(digit)" instead of trusting the numeric data from the Req columns.
And that was the hard part of getting hybrid mana working natively in the engine, so I did that too.
There's data slots available in card_ptr_t that are completely untouched by Shandalar.exe, some of them conveniently interspersed with the mana costs, so - like the 
spells - I can parse them from the mana cost strings when reading cards.dat, encode them into cards_ptr[], and let the engine charge the casting cost like for any other spell. Plumeveil and Boggart Ram-Gang and Nip Gwyllion all have the same card function as Gray Ogre, and it Just Works. It even dealt with mixed hybrid/colored costs like for Grixis Grimblade or Thopter Foundry without any additional work, compared to the complex hacks used to get those even sort of right in Manalink.
Right now they can't be used in activation costs. That's a fairly easy fix that I probably won't do just yet; it would only let me add about a half dozen more cards due to other limitations. There's also no provision for charging more than one hybrid combination at once, like 
; but no cards have such a cost, and none add a hybrid cost to other cards. At least, not that I can find.
Phyrexian mana (as in Dismember) and monocolor hybrid (as in Spectral Procession) will be harder.
I'm also pretty sure I've fixed the problem with the AI refusing to play lands at all if playing its naively-selected "best" land gains it no advantage, most often seen with the Ravnica-block bouncelands like Orzhov Basilica. It's harder to test for sure with just the Lairs (like Treva's Ruins) and Scorched Ruins and Lotus Vale, though; lands that simultaneously produce dissimilar mana - not just the Ravnica lands, but the original Karoo cycle too - are blocked by Mana Flare, which is blocked by a dozen other things that took me the better part of a month to fix the first time in Manalink.
I wasn't happy with the way Drain Life only had a "real" casting cost of
and manually charged its cost in its own card function instead of letting the engine do it. Being restricted to only black mana wasn't a problem; the engine would have been able to handle (spend only for X) just fine, the same way it can handle for e.g. Howl from Beyond. It just wasn't capable of charging both a fixed amount and an X amount of the same color. This also comes up with Gloom and X spells, though, since the only white X spells in the original game are Guardian Angel and Alabaster Potion, and Gloom's been broken in Manalink since forever, I'm not surprised I hadn't noticed it before.Even so, I might have been able to stomach that for now if it were just Drain Life and Gloom, but there's also a handful of other spells like Tribal Unity and Flowstone Slide and Stroke of Genius that I kept stumbling across while implementing other X spells between fixing the MicroProse ones. So I finished reverse-engineering charge_mana()'s subfunctions, extended them to deal with charging fixed and X amounts in the same color on the same call, and made the function that reads cards.dat (née Manalink.csv) manually parse mana cost strings that contain "|X|(digit)" instead of trusting the numeric data from the Req columns.
And that was the hard part of getting hybrid mana working natively in the engine, so I did that too.
spells - I can parse them from the mana cost strings when reading cards.dat, encode them into cards_ptr[], and let the engine charge the casting cost like for any other spell. Plumeveil and Boggart Ram-Gang and Nip Gwyllion all have the same card function as Gray Ogre, and it Just Works. It even dealt with mixed hybrid/colored costs like for Grixis Grimblade or Thopter Foundry without any additional work, compared to the complex hacks used to get those even sort of right in Manalink.Right now they can't be used in activation costs. That's a fairly easy fix that I probably won't do just yet; it would only let me add about a half dozen more cards due to other limitations. There's also no provision for charging more than one hybrid combination at once, like
; but no cards have such a cost, and none add a hybrid cost to other cards. At least, not that I can find.Phyrexian mana (as in Dismember) and monocolor hybrid (as in Spectral Procession) will be harder.
I'm also pretty sure I've fixed the problem with the AI refusing to play lands at all if playing its naively-selected "best" land gains it no advantage, most often seen with the Ravnica-block bouncelands like Orzhov Basilica. It's harder to test for sure with just the Lairs (like Treva's Ruins) and Scorched Ruins and Lotus Vale, though; lands that simultaneously produce dissimilar mana - not just the Ravnica lands, but the original Karoo cycle too - are blocked by Mana Flare, which is blocked by a dozen other things that took me the better part of a month to fix the first time in Manalink.
- More cards completed | Open
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Re: Updates on the way.
by rinslime » 22 Jul 2015, 05:35
First time installing Shandalar and Manalink. When I run Shandalar.exe, I get the error
The program can't start because CdTools.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
I feel like I missed a step or something.
I downloaded one of the shandalar zips, unpacked manalink 3.0 on top of it to overwrite, updated to FR update by overwriting, updated card art correctly, then unpacked the latest version of Shandalar on top of it all, so that it overwrites other files.
I read somewhere that I could try to get this dll and other files from an older manalink 2.0 archive and insert them manually, but the mediafire mirror I found in wiki was dead/removed so I can't even try that.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
EDIT:
After doing even more reading around I figured out that I didn't have files from the 2012 archive of Shandalar. I got them from the post above with the dropbox/google/onedrive links. I even tried checking a thread that said it was 2012 install files but the author removed the download links, and pointed me towards the latest version (which was just a 4mb patch and did not contain the original dll's and stuff)
Some feedback on that, the install instructions for a first time install really need to be fixed up. I had like 12 tabs open searching everywhere for a solution. The instructions say to install an older version from somewhere on the forum, but it doesn't really point you anywhere. There is no sticky with official download links, and it doesn't specify that you need clean 2012 files with all those dll's. I was confused and I just ended up downloading a previous 4mb update as my base. It would be really helpful for future first timers if there were some clarification on that, or if it could simply link to a base like the one in the dropbox/google/onedrive above, and instruct people to then ensure they have the latest version to overwrite on top of that.
The program can't start because CdTools.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
I feel like I missed a step or something.
I downloaded one of the shandalar zips, unpacked manalink 3.0 on top of it to overwrite, updated to FR update by overwriting, updated card art correctly, then unpacked the latest version of Shandalar on top of it all, so that it overwrites other files.
I read somewhere that I could try to get this dll and other files from an older manalink 2.0 archive and insert them manually, but the mediafire mirror I found in wiki was dead/removed so I can't even try that.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
EDIT:
After doing even more reading around I figured out that I didn't have files from the 2012 archive of Shandalar. I got them from the post above with the dropbox/google/onedrive links. I even tried checking a thread that said it was 2012 install files but the author removed the download links, and pointed me towards the latest version (which was just a 4mb patch and did not contain the original dll's and stuff)
Some feedback on that, the install instructions for a first time install really need to be fixed up. I had like 12 tabs open searching everywhere for a solution. The instructions say to install an older version from somewhere on the forum, but it doesn't really point you anywhere. There is no sticky with official download links, and it doesn't specify that you need clean 2012 files with all those dll's. I was confused and I just ended up downloading a previous 4mb update as my base. It would be really helpful for future first timers if there were some clarification on that, or if it could simply link to a base like the one in the dropbox/google/onedrive above, and instruct people to then ensure they have the latest version to overwrite on top of that.
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Re: Updates on the way.
by Korath » 22 Jul 2015, 17:36
See six posts up for why my instructions aren't aimed at the casual installer and five posts up for instructions that are.
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Re: Updates on the way.
by gmzombie » 22 Jul 2015, 22:16
You never cease to amaze us with your insight and knowledge of reverse engineering and making functions the way they should be. If you keep this up we may want the shandalr duel engine instead of manalinks lol anyways I also believe if you can't get those cards the other way is to just disable them in the ini for right now..just a thought though great job.
can I maze of ith your snowstorm?
http://home.comcast.net/~gmzombie/index.html old stuff in here. don't use this stuff right now till I get time to get back into it and readjust.
http://home.comcast.net/~gmzombie/index.html old stuff in here. don't use this stuff right now till I get time to get back into it and readjust.
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Re: Updates on the way.
by orionite » 30 Jul 2015, 16:20
This sounds great and I appreciate all the work you have put into it, but I too am stuck trying to actually run the installation. Following the instructions above, I get application was unable to start errors, when trying to execute Shandalar. First it seemed to be related to a drawcard.dll. I applied gmzombies dll pack, but while that particular error went away, it still refuses to start (0xc00000fd). Not sure where to go from here. Any ideas?
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