Shandalar Deck Injector

[RyanfaeScotland]

So since gremlins ran off with my old topic here is a new one.

For those that don't know I've developed a deck injector for Shandalar and aptly named it Shandalar Deck Injector. You can download it from http://www.mybrillgamesite.com/projects/?id=93 and ask in this topic if you have any problems or queries.

So what does it allow you to do?

It allows you to use any card in game at any point in the game. It is also growing and now allows the editing of food, gold and amulets.

How does it work?

You create a deck in the deck builder app that comes with Shandalar (Duel) and save it. You then open my program and select the save you want to inject the deck into and the deck you want to inject and when you hit inject it is done.

Will I lose the cards I already have?

Nope, it will keep all your cards and will only add to your hand the ones need to make the deck. If you do want to get rid of all your cards you can hit the clear button.

Isn't this cheating?

Yeah pretty much but by now you've probably played Shandalar so much that it is just nice to be able to get straight into it with your favourite deck. However it also allows you to have an unlimited amount of any card in your deck (i.e. 30 plague rats), this is definatly cheating (but fun).

Does it support the new cards that are found in Manalink etc?

No, from the little I've read about it it sounds like this is a near impossibility but I'd still never say never

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Now some questions from me

What are silvers?

I understand a bit about ASM but haven't tore an exe apart before (I've worked with 68K Megadrive roms). What flavour of assembly can I expect out of Shandalar.exe and any recommendations on disassemblers, debuggers and what not to get started with?

Oh also there appears to be a bug that stops it working in Windows 7, this is on the to-do-list.

As before you are free to host the program on your site and distribute it by any non-profit means but please don't link directly to my download, to the site is fine.

Cheers

[stassy]

Do you mean slivers? :p

[Huggybaby]

I understand a bit about ASM but haven't tore an exe apart before (I've worked with 68K Megadrive roms). What flavour of assembly can I expect out of Shandalar.exe and any recommendations on disassemblers, debuggers and what not to get started with?

Do a search on Snacko's posts, he has answered some of these questions.

[Bog Wraith]

Thanks Ryan for getting this topic back up here, back where you belong.

Welcome to your new home. It's great to have you here with us again!

[RyanfaeScotland]

Do you mean slivers? :p

I'm not sure, do I?

Do a search....

Cheers Huggy will do, I remember reading quite a bit of it before but it's been a while so deffinatly a good idea to have a refresher

Thanks Ryan for...

Hey Bog Wraith thanks for getting Shandalar a forum of its own (and to Huggybaby for making it), well deserved I reckon I did panic a little bit when my bookmark didn't work but that's everything sorted out again.

EDIT - Having a look around the forum I stumbled upon the Shandalar Clone. With this progessing well is there any real need to rip up the real one?

[psydev]

Thanks so much for making this! Should make for some interesting games...

Note: if anyone has the problem where all the names of cards disappear, and all dialog boxes in Shandalar are blank, rebooting fixed it for me.

[Bog Wraith]

EDIT - Having a look around the forum I stumbled upon the Shandalar Clone. With this progessing well is there any real need to rip up the real one?

No, not at all Ryan. They are two different entities. The other is being formed to create a similar feel within the main program which is Forge, an awesome game that is a favorite round these parts and where a bunch of talented folks are building and constantly improving. There is a Quest module to Forge which is what is being developed within and there is a map and other similar to Shandalar entities that are being developed for this new part of Forge.

The original Shandalar is still going strong on it's own and your project is very much a part of this great game. Shandalar will be with us for a lonnnnnng time, so keep up what you're doing!

[CirothUngol]

What are silvers?

Slivers are a CreatureType that grant abilities to all other slivers. Here, check out this List of Slivers.

By themselves they aren't very powerful, but get a bunch on the table, and you're likely to be facing a horde of Flying, Regenerating, Shrouded, Life-Giving, Card-Stealing, +4/+4 Beasties... great fun! I've loved 'em ever since they came out in the Tempest Expansion.

[RyanfaeScotland]

Thanks so much for making this! Should make for some interesting games...

Note: if anyone has the problem where all the names of cards disappear, and all dialog boxes in Shandalar are blank, rebooting fixed it for me.

How did this happen and could I recreate it on my comp?

No, not at all Ryan. They are two different entities...

Cheers Bog Wraith that's good to know. Doubt I'll be able to get my teeth into it so much that I'm re-writing the assembly but doesn't hurt to look into it if it is something people are still interested in.

Slivers are a CreatureType that grant abilities to...

Wow they are pretty serious cards! I love plauge rats so could see me abusing those slivers quite badly if they were part of Shandalar Sadly however my program is a long way off allowing you to use any type of new card, nevermind ones with status effects across large groups.


So I've added a little bit more functionality to the injector but sadly it is not card related. You can now alter your gold, food and by time I actually release it your health as well* so we can finally even the playing field against 500 health Arzakon (eat my 1 million health )

So yea, if it wasn't a little cheaty before it deffinatly is now

The code needs a little clean up again and some error catches thrown in (I noticed you can break the injector instantly by hitting 'inject!' with nothing loaded) but it should be out soon.

*Ok I'm starring this because I'm pretty certain I managed to edit the amount of life/hp you have in the past but sadly I didn't write down my offsets (d'oh) however I also remember it is closely tied to your manalinks so I'm not sure if I dreamnt up this editing or not.

[psydev]

Thanks so much for making this! Should make for some interesting games...

Note: if anyone has the problem where all the names of cards disappear, and all dialog boxes in Shandalar are blank, rebooting fixed it for me.

How did this happen and could I recreate it on my comp?

I don't know. I ran the deck injector and when i loaded a save game it said "error" but then I hit "inject" anyway and then loaded the game. The deck had injected but for some reason all the dialogs and card names were blank. I replaced the saved games from old ones and relaunched the program but the bug persisted. It was very strange and I wondered if maybe the program modified something other than the save game file.
Anyway, I rebooted and it was fixed. I was a little worried for a while I had mucked up my install. It never happened again.

Note: I injected the deck and it combined with another deck that was already there, giving me like 7 black lotuses or something. Later, certain cards did not show up again in my card collection.

[RyanfaeScotland]

Hmmm interesting, did you have a particularly big deck at the time? Perhaps the program isn't capable of handling the amount of cards you had when you first loaded your save in hence the error and then missed writing over the ones at the tail end of your collection.

Eventually you should be able to choose whether to overwrite your current held cards or to add in the new ones along side them and also which position to place the deck (1,2,3 or in collection) but for now I'll add in some more useful error messages and codes to help tracking down these errors.

Cheers for reporting this and the feedback

[Bog Wraith]

Changed to Sticky!

[RyanfaeScotland]

A sticky? For me? Well I'm flattered

As a thank you why not have a extra rushed copy of the newest version of the deck injector, now with added screenshot!



You can get it in the same place as the last one http://www.mybrillgamesite.com/hacking/other/mg.php as I'm not keeping a collection of old versions on the site (at least not at this stage).

It hasn't changed a great deal from the last version yet. You can now edit the amout of food and gold, not health yet. I've added a little bit more error handling, nothing ground breaking and that's about it.

I've made it so that you can inject without saving any changes you might have made to food/gold and visa-versa. Not sure if I like this though cause it means having to hit 2 buttons to do the job of 1 but I think it is better for those who don't want to cheat so I'll run with it just now.

Feedback, bugs, comments all appreciated.

(Still no Windows 7 support I'm afriad but think I'll look at that for the next release.)

[Duffstrodamus]

So I just downloaded your thing...
Whenever I go into the deck editor, the only card that's available is the air elemental.
Any idea how to fix that?

[RyanfaeScotland]

Hmmm strange, can you explain a little more, do you mean that once you have made a deck and loaded it in to my program the only card that appears is the air elemental or that when you open the deck editor all you see is air elemental?