Attached (also here for your convenience: ) is the Apprentice patch for Shards of Alara.
I compiled it with a program I coded myself.
It is a clean compile from Gatherer, meaning it incorporates all the latest errata, including the changes in WotC's September 2008 Oracle/Rules Update Bulletin.
Enjoy!
And any feedback or comments are welcome.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
- Jon Finkel Facts: (follow the link at left to see more Facts, or add more Facts!)
- Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice—because he was trying to count how much damage Jon Finkel deals in an average game.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
Everything looks good, but there is one issue with the Sealed Deck generator. I've generated about a hundred pools, and no mythics to be found. Not too big of a deal, since I almost never use it except to practice making sealed decks, but I just wanted to bring that to your attention.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
:symur::symur::symur::symur::symur:
Several years ago, WotC apparently surveyed Magic players across the globe. They found that people liked turning things sideways, and hated LD. This is the result:
Hmm... I can explain that. In apprentice you have to specify of what cards a sealed deck from a certain set consists, i.e. 3R, 10U, 32C. This is all saved in a text file, so you can't do something goofy like 3(12,5%M/87,5%R), 10U, 32C, because the program is not built like that. So, there isn't currently a way in Apprentice to solve that problem.
You could say there is always 1 mythic rare in a sealed deck I guess.
Everything looks good, but there is one issue with the Sealed Deck generator. I've generated about a hundred pools, and no mythics to be found. Not too big of a deal, since I almost never use it except to practice making sealed decks, but I just wanted to bring that to your attention.
This is an issue with Apprentice, created years ago, long before mythic rares, not with my patch, which is the best it can be given the limitations of Apprentice.
Onderzeeboot is correct: in Apprentice, there is simply no way to modify Distro.dat to get mythic rares to work like mythic rares in the sealed deck generator.
And the sealed deck generator is actually even more limited than that: it's not just an issue of percentages; the sealed deck generator will not recognize the M or B rarities, only C, U, and R. (The "Land Pack" option only works because Apprentice was apparently programmed with a special case to generate lands if all rarities are 0.)
- Jon Finkel Facts: (follow the link at left to see more Facts, or add more Facts!)
- Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice—because he was trying to count how much damage Jon Finkel deals in an average game.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
First Type, you are the coolest dude on the planet Earth! I've been using Apprentice for so long that I just don't care to switch to MWS and thanks to you I don't have to switch. Really a great service to the communinty. Thanks again!
Just recently started using MWS. How do I actually get this "installed?"
Magic Workstation and Apprentice are completely different programs, and an Apprentice patch won't do anything in Magic Workstation.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
- Jon Finkel Facts: (follow the link at left to see more Facts, or add more Facts!)
- Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice—because he was trying to count how much damage Jon Finkel deals in an average game.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
Forgive my ignorance, but could someone explain exactly how to install this patch? I have Apprentice installed, but have no idea how to actually add the set. My attempts thus far have failed. Help!
Just unzip the file in the directory you have Apprentice installed, and answer yes when prompted to overwrite the files
Hm... well that's what i did. I made sure the apprentice was not open, put the files into the Apprentice directory (C:/Program Files/Apprentice) and said yes when it asked if i wanted to replace the files. I open Apprentice and i can't find the ALA set or any cards from shards. I'm baffled.
Forgive my ignorance, but could someone explain exactly how to install this patch? I have Apprentice installed, but have no idea how to actually add the set. My attempts thus far have failed. Help!
Hm... well that's what i did. I made sure the apprentice was not open, put the files into the Apprentice directory (C:/Program Files/Apprentice) and said yes when it asked if i wanted to replace the files. I open Apprentice and i can't find the ALA set or any cards from shards. I'm baffled.
You probably made the common mistake of opening the patch in Winzip, selecting all the files, and then dragging them into the Apprentice folder. If you do this, the patch will not work because this will result in WinZip ignoring the subdirectory info for "CardInfo.dat" and extracting "CardInfo.dat" to "C:\Program Files\Apprentice" rather than where it should be: "C:\Program Files\Apprentice\Sets".
Instead, what you should do is to make sure the ZIP file is inside "C:\Program Files\Apprentice", right-click on the ZIP file, select "WinZip -> Extract to here", and then answer yes when it asks you whether you want to overwrite. This will result in all the files within the patch being written to the correct subdirectories, since the ZIP file contains subdirectory info.
To sum up: All files belong in "C:\Program Files\Apprentice", except for "CardInfo.dat", which belongs in "C:\Program Files\Apprentice\Sets". If you just do automatic extraction with a right-click, everything ends up in the right place.
- Jon Finkel Facts: (follow the link at left to see more Facts, or add more Facts!)
- Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice—because he was trying to count how much damage Jon Finkel deals in an average game.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
You probably made the common mistake of opening the patch in Winzip, selecting all the files, and then dragging them into the Apprentice folder. If you do this, the patch will not work because this will result in WinZip ignoring the subdirectory info for "CardInfo.dat" and extracting "CardInfo.dat" to "C:\Program Files\Apprentice" rather than where it should be: "C:\Program Files\Apprentice\Sets".
Instead, what you should do is to make sure the ZIP file is inside "C:\Program Files\Apprentice", right-click on the ZIP file, select "WinZip -> Extract to here", and then answer yes when it asks you whether you want to overwrite. This will result in all the files within the patch being written to the correct subdirectories, since the ZIP file contains subdirectory info.
To sum up: All files belong in "C:\Program Files\Apprentice", except for "CardInfo.dat", which belongs in "C:\Program Files\Apprentice\Sets". If you just do automatic extraction with a right-click, everything ends up in the right place.
Thanks for the help FirstType, and thanks for this great patch! As it turns out, my compression application was not letting me extract to my Apprentice directory. So, i just extraced it to my documents and cut/pasted the files into the directory. For whatever reason this didn't work. Figured out that with vista (yes vista again), you have to run your compression software as Administrator. After doing that i followed your instructions and that fixed the problem. Thanks again!
Okay, I tried extrating it and I totally got a runtime error everytime I try to open it now. x_x
EDIT: Nevermind. After a couple trys and redownloading Apprentice several times, I figured it out. My roommate showed me how he did it. He extracts to the desktop and just "Move and Replace"s the appropriate files. And thanks a bunch for this. I don't generally play Magic much as even it has become too costly for me. I still love playing the game though. ^^
The Shards patch will include everything before it. In fact, it will totally overwrite past patches when you use it. You don't need separate patches, just grab the one provided by FirstType and you're good.
I compiled it with a program I coded myself.
It is a clean compile from Gatherer, meaning it incorporates all the latest errata, including the changes in WotC's September 2008 Oracle/Rules Update Bulletin.
Enjoy!
And any feedback or comments are welcome.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
Several years ago, WotC apparently surveyed Magic players across the globe. They found that people liked turning things sideways, and hated LD. This is the result:
You could say there is always 1 mythic rare in a sealed deck I guess.
This is an issue with Apprentice, created years ago, long before mythic rares, not with my patch, which is the best it can be given the limitations of Apprentice.
Onderzeeboot is correct: in Apprentice, there is simply no way to modify Distro.dat to get mythic rares to work like mythic rares in the sealed deck generator.
And the sealed deck generator is actually even more limited than that: it's not just an issue of percentages; the sealed deck generator will not recognize the M or B rarities, only C, U, and R. (The "Land Pack" option only works because Apprentice was apparently programmed with a special case to generate lands if all rarities are 0.)
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
Magic Workstation and Apprentice are completely different programs, and an Apprentice patch won't do anything in Magic Workstation.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
Hm... well that's what i did. I made sure the apprentice was not open, put the files into the Apprentice directory (C:/Program Files/Apprentice) and said yes when it asked if i wanted to replace the files. I open Apprentice and i can't find the ALA set or any cards from shards. I'm baffled.
You probably made the common mistake of opening the patch in Winzip, selecting all the files, and then dragging them into the Apprentice folder. If you do this, the patch will not work because this will result in WinZip ignoring the subdirectory info for "CardInfo.dat" and extracting "CardInfo.dat" to "C:\Program Files\Apprentice" rather than where it should be: "C:\Program Files\Apprentice\Sets".
Instead, what you should do is to make sure the ZIP file is inside "C:\Program Files\Apprentice", right-click on the ZIP file, select "WinZip -> Extract to here", and then answer yes when it asks you whether you want to overwrite. This will result in all the files within the patch being written to the correct subdirectories, since the ZIP file contains subdirectory info.
To sum up: All files belong in "C:\Program Files\Apprentice", except for "CardInfo.dat", which belongs in "C:\Program Files\Apprentice\Sets". If you just do automatic extraction with a right-click, everything ends up in the right place.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
Thanks for the help FirstType, and thanks for this great patch! As it turns out, my compression application was not letting me extract to my Apprentice directory. So, i just extraced it to my documents and cut/pasted the files into the directory. For whatever reason this didn't work. Figured out that with vista (yes vista again), you have to run your compression software as Administrator. After doing that i followed your instructions and that fixed the problem. Thanks again!
EDIT: Nevermind. After a couple trys and redownloading Apprentice several times, I figured it out. My roommate showed me how he did it. He extracts to the desktop and just "Move and Replace"s the appropriate files. And thanks a bunch for this. I don't generally play Magic much as even it has become too costly for me. I still love playing the game though. ^^
GWU Rafiq of the Many GWU (50% complete)
RG Wort, the Raidmother RG (40% complete)
WU Hanna, Ship's Navigator WU (20% complete)
thx
My Moderator Helpdesk| My Custom Set List | My MSE Template HostingBeers Tasted: 113 | Last Beer Sampled: Flying Dog Horn Dog Barley Wine Ale
thx