Manalink update 15 of July, 2012 AKA Kamigawa stories V3

[Aswan jaguar]

Gargaroz does mention in the list of fixed bugs the cards that has recoded in last patch at least the majority of them(we are just people and all tend to forget).
Also don't forget that new abilities that are inserted could influence older cards that worked fine before.

@Stassy wrote: (starting from 1.32, we have already a list by Mok though)...
where is that list Stassy?

[stassy]

It's the 1.32 patch note, in there Mok explains his first tweak and list cards that were fixed and thus recoded (Readme132.txt)

[0rion79]

thanks

[franjoal]

missing angelic wall pic appears to me not

[stassy]

Indeed I can confirm this card art is missing.

[Sonic]

Yes well, not being a mind reader - if someone keeps activating cards after I've returned the edited Manalink files and compiled the artwork archive for the months release there will be artwork missing.

[Althuna]

Yes well, not being a mind reader

Haven't you got a Crystal Ball?!

[gmzombie]

i actually think the recoding of older cards is a good thing though. Heres my take on it. We all remember what Mok said on his departure that if we ever got all the functions listed of what they do we could then be able to figure out how to fix the AI, and game engine. Now coming back to the original point by recoding the cards that are hard coded already it gets rid of unwanted code in the magic.exe which will help weed out game engine code and card code. At least this i just my opinion. I love the updates

[Althuna]

Yeah. For me, bugs are annoying, especially when there is a lot to work through, but I like that we are making progress. It does sometimes feel bad when a new patch brings a whole new bunch of bugs, but at least we are getting new cards in the process. Once we fix all these bugs we are going to have a huge selection of cards to play with. So I think its worthwhile

[Althuna]

Question I have about this. When I try to unpack the file, all of them work except for "DraftSets" which gives me an error that says, "There is already a folder with the same name as the file name you specified. Specify a different name."

Not sure what to do about that.

[stassy]

Damn was about to post in the wiki faq but you went ahead

It's a window error, the file DraftSets is actually a simple text file which hold some card list for draft I suppose, but its file extension has been removed.

The issue is that Windows OS really don't like file with no extension and will confuse it with a folder and give such error due to archive software.

You can safely extract all files but this one, then extract it separately somewhere else if you want to then put it back into the ML folder, but I think this is not an essential file and draft 3.0 is not ready yet so...you can leave it be in the archive.

[0rion79]

@ gmzombie , I know that I have opened the discussion about recoding old cards and I really have to agree with you! But the point is not recoding original cards as timetwister, but keep recoding "modern" cards as the already named Oran Rief, even if they are already working fine, just to "slim down" their code and optimize it.
Imho, it is not a valid reason if the result can be a new spreading of bugs.
Of course, I also agree to recode them when something "huge" happens in the world of Magic, like the planeswalkers, that forces to recode some of the older cards due to the new interactions, or when the chance to reduce approximations arises.
In short, it depends: I have just share what are (imho) good and bad reasons: optimizing code without any other interaction is "bad", especially if it leads to bugs that will take months to be fixed.

[stassy]

The issue if we don't have all card in hand (pun intended) as there are still hardcoded functions covered in shadow in the Magic.exe.

As new abilities are introduced and coded, it will unintentionally break the original cards even if they are not directly concerned by the code (eg.Tetravus and Shroud), so in some case we are to recode them.

The only big major issue I see on recoding old cards is that we definitively reduce the pool of playable cards in multiplayer since any recoded card with RuleEngine will no longer work, but I guess we have no choice...

[Dave]

I have to disagree with Orion about not tweaking new cards. As a programmer goes along he gets new insights. He should use these insights to improve cards/behaviour. Its called maintaining the source, or preparing for future use, etc.
The purpose for this is :
1) faster execution time, which results in better AI(AI determines in a set count of clockcycles, what his best move is).
2) Big changes (for example in MTG rules) are easier to apply.
Yes, Gargaroz should mention these changes in his fixlist, but i guess they are easily forgotten. Usually they are done on a number of cards with the same behaviour (as he did with Lifelink).

[0rion79]

The idea is good, what I see as risky is the ratio among benefits and harms to game's stability. Just my point of view and I'm sure it is worthy of at least talking about this.