Old deck builder after some cleaning

[gmzombie]

just to give you a heads up running deck.exe on my computer dosent work still but ill try it on my laptop.

edit: tried it on my laptop but only the background and the 3 buttons comes up. cant right click to exit but the sound is working

[Mok]

just to give you a heads up running deck.exe on my computer dosent work still but ill try it on my laptop.

edit: tried it on my laptop but only the background and the 3 buttons comes up. cant right click to exit but the sound is working

Crazy. And what happens when you launch it from magic.exe? I'm curious if it launches if the search option works.

[Sonic]

Updated: V2
http://www.mediafire.com/?43zcu1059av9z6v

Sonic been busy knocking up some new modern background card templates.

So now, thanks to Mok, you can have gray Artifact backgrounds with colored text/picture frame borders for colored Artifacts.

[gmzombie]

If launched from magic.exe it works fine although I haven't tried the search option yet.

edit search option works fine for me.

[Aswan jaguar]

Also Sarlack has made card Templates and modern fonts available.
Here is a link to his post.
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5897&start=15#p76904
I believe we have to put all files for duel art,deck art...to the main updates so people can choose among different cardart,dbart,duelart and be able easily to change or go back to an earlier art.

And some pictures of Sonic Card Templates and Sarlack.
@Sarlack I believe they are bit too bright especially when in hand.

[Sonic]

I’ve modified my card templates slightly – the original yellow band round the picture and text frames of the Gold and Multicoloured Artifact templates are now multicoloured; more reflective of the modern card style.
Also, there was also an error in the first posted set – the Green Artifact template was the wrong color.

ModCardTemplateV2:
http://www.mediafire.com/?43zcu1059av9z6v

[Sarlack]

Here is the latest version of the card backs. They are now in pic format. The zip contains all the fonts used for magic card printing, but you will only need 2 of them for the game. read the sarlack.txt for instructions.

[Sarlack]

@Aswan jaguar
The colors are from my print files. Colors look brighter on the screen then they appear after the press.
see attachment.

[Mok]

Ok, I consider beta version of manalink stable enough to move on. Thanks, if was funny couple of weeks revisiting the project on which I wasted so much time once Sorry that I didn't fix old "sealed deck" mode, but it was hardly usable anyway and I consider it too boring to fix just for fixing sake (fixing 2k limit there won't make it usable).

As promised, here is a couple of asm sources that may or may not help some further changes. They require Turbo Assembler 5 and Watcom Linker to compile. I included both in the archive (but even if they weren't - TASM5 is included in Borland C++ Builder free edition that is from time to time available from the current owner of Borland old stuff, and Watcom linker is free in Open Watcom package). Sorry, the sources are not yasm compatible at all. Unpack it somewhere and inside SrcMok there are couple of files:

- MakeCardArtLib.bat will create fresh CardArtLib.dll (for completeness sake only as you are going to use Snacko's version anyway)

- MakeCSV2DAT.bat will create fresh csv2dat.exe and ct2exe.exe which are needed for the xls->csv->Cards.dat/Rarity.dat/DBInfo.dat/Magic.exe conversions. Just in case you need to modify it or want to rewrite as these are really old and crude.

- MakeDeckDll.bat will create fresh DeckDLL.dll. The source is cleaned a bit from pure resourced version straight from IDA but large parts are still really bad. Who cares, it works

- MakeDrawCardLib.bat will create fresh CardArtLib.dll. Same as deck builder, it's only partially cleaned, but it's short and pretty simple. Can be used to make real "new look" for the cards or as a base for rewrite (Snacko's or anyone else).

The required external .dlls (image.dll and zlib.dll) are also included (latest versions).

Gargaroz, if you are planning to include my deck builder in next beta, please add not only the files from the archive in first post of this thread but also Image.dll/DeckDLL.dll/DrawCardLib.dll from this archive as these are a bit newer versions with a couple of small mistakes fixed.

Ok, that's it. I'll keep tinkering with manalink for a short time to answer possible questions of Gargaroz and then I'm off. As mentioned, I'm simply not interested in working on a big pile of hacks the project is now. It's simply not interesting enough. If at some point in future someone will be determined enough to do it the right way, drop me a mail (my old @ at op.pl is valid) as I might be tempted to help. What I mean by right way is simple: ignore the whole C code (not remove, just ignore and let the people willing to work on it continue), dump the magic.exe into ida, make a list of all available functions, slowly add names to all functions and all globals (DISCUSSING it), at some point when most of it is done start to move cards and engine functions into C, one by one, replacing old functions with hooks to the rewrites, checking for regressions. At some point most of the engine should be running from C code with possibly gui stuff left in the exe, then modify the engine to support things that were unavailable or were plainly not possible (real effect priorities, switching targets and so on) then and only then add more cards. But simple as it sounds, it's a long tedious work that also requires people with strong knowledge of both C and asm so... it's not likely to happen at all

Ok, good luck and have fun!
Sources package: http://www.mediafire.com/?8webba4hgccqnbi

and just for fun here is Shandalar.exe and Facemaker.exe hopefully fixed to work properly on new systems (the face at character creation should work, the texts on sold cards should be visible): http://www.mediafire.com/?lezx3rbl89sl1mf

[gmzombie]

Well i would like to be the first to say that im truly very happy that you came back to get us over this hurdle of the 2k limit. With everything that you have already done there is no reason why we cannot have years of card code to go plus with all the info that you have given us i feel fairly confident we can overcome the other parts of the game that fail to work at the moment ie sealed deck, and maybe someday adding new cards to shandalar. I hope that this time you don't become disconnected totally from us again. We are all grateful for all the work you have done thus far and just want to say don't be a stranger. Thanks again.

[0rion79]

Mok, a feedback about your patch for deckbuilder: it is really cool! May I suggest some more hints, if you can?

1 - obviously, if you can, add more expansion sets.
2 - about creature filters, you have improved it a lot but sometimes activating the filters is without effects and there is the need to manually disable options as "summon", "tokens", "artifact creatures".
3 - I've also seen that now filters from artifact creatures and non-creature artifacts are ineffective, since all non-creature artifacts have lost their ID, that was very useful. Can you restore it? Or is there any reason for NOT doing that?
4 - sill about artifacts, can you add one more option to filter special artifacts as "equipment"?
5 - about enchantments, can you add one more option to filter among "planeswalkers"? We already know that the engine cannot support more spell types so I guess they will stay as they are now...
6 - I've really appreciated your new filters with golden cards, which is an improvement than before. But, imho, it would be even better if you could simply add 5 voices as: white, green, red, black, blue. In the actual way, the player has to browse among one-color cards that are really a lot and so they reduce the effectivenes of your improvement.
7 - about Ability filter (the icon with the eye), is it possible to add new abilities? Can the list of abilities may be all ticked off by default? It would be much better!

That's all!

[gmzombie]

hell man he gave us his source for deckdll.dll. i was looking at it last night and let me tell you it looks very complete and useful for anyone who can do asm code. What i have noticed in the deckdll source is that there seems to be a total of 4 extra buttons that could be coded i think. maybe snacko could shed some light on this as im sure he would love to take a look at this great source. Maybe someone could recode it in C if that would help anyone. With the right amount of work we could get this program even better than it is now.
by the way sealed deck option in the main page seems to work fine for me? is it crashing on certain cards>? Or were we talking specifically the draft option

[KrNeki]

@gmzombie
Sealed works for me too, but it has a few glitches. I noticed that some cards are randomly replaced by others after deck construction and if I go to deck editor between rounds it does not list the cards that have been replaced.

[Dave]

Thanks, Mok, for all the magnificient work in this short period of time. I too hope that you will check on us once in a while. Maybe Gargaroz can post some questions, he/we might have, once a month/quarter to you?
Now all we have to do, is learn asm and start that tedious work that Mok mentioned.
Has someone any idea where to begin learning asm?

[Aswan jaguar]

Thanks for all the work you did for this project,for all of us who we love Manalink and you did so much in few weeks.I am really grateful,not only you helped with the 2k-limit but improved many other things,introduced new things and made a base so others can mod,develop the project further.
By breaking the 2k-limit that bothered this community and Devs for years and was holding back devs and project to take part since they didn't see any "future" to the project so some never bothered to take part into Manalink,you made Manalink more attractive and interesting and hopefully we will see new Devs to help our great Developers.

I would also like to thank you because you made the community more active and many were intrigued to help break the limit and I want to thank everybody who offered to help and participated not only with work but ideas,suggestions even by little.

I would specially like to thank gmzombie who never stopped trying to solve this,find ways,try different things and even when most were discouraged he kept on going and finally came with this great to ask Mok=(solution) to help out.

I totally agree with gmzombie please don't be a stranger and visit us from time to time(especially when you feel bored:

Mok wrote:
but I was bored today and decided to take a quick look. It seems there's not much to do really, but I can't really say if it will be enough.

,since when you are bored you do great things
Of course everybody here wishes that other devs with "strong knowledge on both ASM and C" will intrigue you to continue the work on the project.

My best wishes
Aswan Jaguar