Post by Tenshigure on Aug 29, 2005 12:10:55 GMT -5
Need Raw Deal: Apprentice? Sign Up At games.groups.yahoo.com/group/RDAP/ and access the files!
The Complete Raw Deal: Apprentice FAQ
By Sam “Tenshigure” Reese
1. Introduction
What is Apprentice exactly? Originally it was created by DragonStar Studios as a way for people to play Magic: The Gathering online; however it was soon modified to support several other trading card games to be able to play online as well, Raw Deal being one of them. Despite the fact that the mechanics need a bit of tweaking to properly work with the system, it has become quite an effective tool.
Not only can it be used to compete against opponents all over the world, however, but it is also a very efficient way of browsing through the entire card library of Raw Deal and maintains a clean organization of deck lists. No more do you need to shuffle through boxes of foils to figure out what cards can do certain things; Apprentice puts everything into a manageable interface. Not only that, but you don’t have to wait for the spoiled sets to hit the shelves before testing them in your decks! Thanks to editing programs, these “patches” for Raw Deal sets can be arranged and provided to the general public within a matter of minutes!
DISCLAIMER: Apprentice, being a free program, does not provide any actual support to the company that develops the game, Comic Images. At any time, if Comic Images orders a cease and desist order upon the creation or modification of the Raw Deal patches, all support will be stopped. Likewise, if an official program is ever released by Comic Images Inc. or any affiliates, any and all support for the Apprentice patches will be stopped for both moral and legal reasons. Use at your own discretion, as we take no responsibility for any problems or errors that may occur while operating this program.
2. Updates
04-14-05: Version 1.0 Uploaded. Look for several updates and other helpful links within the next few days/weeks.
3. Downloading and Installing Raw Deal: Apprentice 1.46
The best place to obtain all files for Raw Deal: Apprentice is at the Yahoo group “RDAP: Raw Deal Apprentice Patches,” located at the following link:
games.groups.yahoo.com/group/RDAP/
You will have to register as a member of Yahoo! Groups to be able to access the files, but you can be assured that the files provided are the most recent and are the “official” Raw Deal patches that are also provided at the Comic Images’ Raw Deal Mailing List on Yahoo! Groups as well. Under the “Files” link, you can find the proper file named “Raw Deal.exe” underneath the folders.
In the “Apprentice Patches” is the cardinfo.dat and Expan.dat file that you can use to update your version of Apprentice in case you download it from another site. Place the Expan.dat file in the root directory where Apprentice is installed, and the cardinfo.dat file into the Sets folder, overwriting the files already located in the respective folders.
To install Raw Deal: Apprentice, download it and open it, following the instructions provided. By default, the files will be put into: C:\Raw Deal – Apprentice. Note that it will overwrite old files there, including old decks. It's advised you don't change the folder where you have it unzipped to (C:\Raw Deal - Apprentice). Changing it will mean you'll also have to edit the Appr.ini file with notepad. Note that if you have a functioning Apprentice already you'll just need the aforementioned cardinfo.dat and Expan.dat patches.
4. Basic Walkthrough and Customizing Raw Deal: Apprentice
(Note: Special thanks to the editors at Magic-League.com for the original walkthrough)
When you first open Raw Deal – Apprentice, you will be met by this screen.
This may look a little daunting at first, but it is very simple once you know what the areas are for, and the functions of the buttons. Here is a quick explanation of the apprentice interface:
- The first thing you will notice is the large area with a star-like background to it. This is the virtual table, the main playing area, and this is where all of the cards are played.
- Below the main playing area, is a dark-blue box. This is your chat window, which you use to communicate your actions with to your opponent. You can use this window to explain what you are doing (ie using Diving Takedown as an action, using your Superstar Ability).
- To the left of the main playing area, is your hand. The cards in your hand are listed here.
- Just above your hand are three buttons: a face-down Raw Deal card, a face-up card with Skull-and-Crossbones, and a face-down card with a Red X struck through it. These represent your Arsenal, Ringside Pile, and Removed From Game pile respectively.
- In the original Apprentice program, there was a huge line of buttons that assisted in playing Magic: The Gathering. However, with no need for these in Raw Deal, the .THM files created specifically for Raw Deal remove these not only to make it look cleaner, but also due to the fact they serve no purpose for game play. Above these buttons there is a large line of buttons.
- The first button, “new,” starts a new game.
- Next to “new” is a button titled “edit”. This opens the Deck Editor (see Section 5: Using the Deck Editor for more info).
- The last button next to “edit” is the “draw” button. This draws a card from your Arsenal into your hand.
- When you are in a game, if your opponent disconnects, a “re” button may appear on the far right. This is used to reconnect you to your opponent.
These buttons are the ones you will mainly use when playing, but there are a lot more options in the toolbars, for performing more advanced actions. If there is no function to perform a certain action, you should explain it to your opponent in the chat window.
Now that you know the basic functions of Raw Deal - Apprentice, you can set it up for your matches you will be having. First of all you will need to set your name so as to identify yourself when you are playing. To do this, go to Options > Set Name. A box will pop up asking you to enter your new name. You can use your regular name, a nickname, or the Superstar that you are using, whatever you want! Now enter your name into here, it should look a bit like this:
Now your Raw Deal – Apprentice program is ready for battle, but you aren’t: You don’t have any decks yet! To create these decks, you’ll have to go into the Deck Editor. Click on the “Edit” button to do so.
5. Using the Deck Editor
Afterburn Update: To filter cards to Afterburn-legal Cards, click on the Expansion pull-down menu, switch 'All' to 'Afterburn,' and hit 'Go'. To reverse the process, switch it back to 'All' and hit 'Go' again.
If you click on the “Edit” button located in the top-left corner of the screen, you will be presented with the following screen:
The buttons at the top do the following:
- ‘New’ – Blanks the Deck List to create a new deck.
- ‘Load’ – Loads a .DEC file to edit.
- ‘Text’ – Exports the Information in the deck list to a .TXT document.
- ‘Save’ – Saves the deck list in .DEC format.
- ‘p De’ or ‘Print Deck’ – Prints the Deck List.
- ‘p Li’ or ‘Print List’ – Prints the Card List (DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE FILTERED THE CARDLIST)
- ‘Go’ – After entering filters to the respective boxes, select this button to apply the filters to the card list.
- ‘Stop’ – Stops the filtering of cards if it is taking too long to process (shouldn’t need to be used)
If you know exactly what card you want in your deck, you can type in the name of the card in the box below “Find Card:” and then click “Add”. If you want to add multiple copies of each card, just hit “Add” until the number of cards you need appear.
To view a card’s text and information, right-click on the name of the card and you could be displayed with the following (the example is the Mid-Match card titled Raw Deal!):
In the deck editor, several shorthand techniques are used to help filter out your searches, as well as clearly identify what cards you are placing into your deck (Throwbacks do this). The following are what each mean:
B- Backstage Area Card
E- Enforcer Cards
P- Pre-Match Cards
M- Mid-Match Cards
T- Title Belt Cards
(T) – Throwback Versions of Cards
(SS) – Superstar Cards (note: Only if cards have the same name as the Superstar)
If you don’t know what specific cards you need, then you can use the filter tools. They may seem tricky at first, but after some experimenting it gets pretty easy. Due to the fact the cards have been modified from Magic: The Gathering, the box names have been modified as well (again, if not mentioned, it does not work properly for Raw Deal):
- ‘Contains’ - Filters the Card’s Title
- ‘Text Box’ - Filters the Card’s Beginning Text
- ‘Flavor Text’ - Filters the Card’s Ending Text if Long or Flavor Text.
- ‘Expansion’ - Filters the Cards based on what set it was released in (ie Premiere / Armageddon)
- ‘Power / Toughness’ - Filters Fortitude / Damage.
- ‘Card Type’ - Filters the Card Type (ie Strike, Reversal, Set-Up, Chain, Heel)
Again, after entering all of your filters you wish to use, hit the “Go” button to apply the filter to the card list.
Note that sometimes the title of the card has to be edited for length, so if you have to filter this way, you may have to try different words to properly find it. Also, the text of cards can also be forced to be split into the Flavor Text box, so you may have to attempt filtering the text you’re looking for (ie “Throw Opponent Out of the Ring”) in that as well.
Another issue with the filters is that they will only look for certain specific strings. So if you wanted to find cards that had “Arm” and “Wrist” in their title for Ring Psychology: Arm, you would have to do two separate searches to properly get both Arm and Wrist. Not only that, but “Arm” will find any instances where “arm” letter together in a word. So while you will find cards like Arm Bar and Single Arm DDT, you will also get the results such as Armageddon and The Leader of the Edge Army.
Lastly, to properly look for specific Fortitude and Damage Ratings, you can precede your filters with “D:#” for Damage and “F:#” for Fortitude Value, where # is the number you are wanting (if you want both, use the format D:# / F:#).
Once you are done editing your deck list (the default number of cards you should have in a list are 81: 60 for the Arsenal, 20 for your Backlash Deck, and 1 for the Superstar Card), click on the Save Button to save the list in .DEC format.
Tips for Deck Building
- When building your deck list, be sure to include your Backlash Deck cards, Superstar Cards, Enforcers, Backstage Area Cards, EVERYTHING you would use to play the game in a single deck list. There is no way to access the cards otherwise, and you will be sorting these out when you begin play (see Section 7: Advanced Walkthrough – Playing Raw Deal: Apprentice and Hotkeys for more info).
- Contrary to belief, the Sideboard is NOT a substitute for your Backlash Deck, as you cannot access it during the game.
- Have a default style of naming your decks, as your database can get quite large after some time, such as format.date.name. This will keep things a lot more organized in your decks directory.
- Setting up a default standard to organize your decks in the deck list can help speed up the process of building and identifying how many types of cards you have in your deck. The .DEC file “default.DEC” is what I use, and offer for you to try out. It is in the “Decks” folder in the root directory of Apprentice.
6. Playing Apprentice: Solitaire and Connecting and Playing Online
Now you are ready to play Raw Deal with Apprentice. Although you may want to immediately play against an opponent online, it is normally advisable to play a few solitaire games first, which you can do without connecting to an opponent. To start any type of game you click on the new game button. From there you will be presented with this screen:
Before you do anything, you will need to load the deck you want to play with, you do this simply by clicking Load Deck, and selecting the appropriate deck from your Decks directory. After that, you can select your game type, either solitaire or a game connected by the internet. If you play a solitaire game it will simply go straight into the game (proceed to Section 8: Playing Raw Deal in Apprentice on how to play), but when connecting to the internet you will be presented with another screen:
From this point, you have to decide whether you are going to be the host player or the client player. For each, do the following:
Host Computer
- Click on ‘Waiting for a Call’ and make note of the number next to “My Current IP”. This is the IP address, the identification of your computer that your opponent will use to connect to you.
- Click OK, contact your opponent (be it through MSN, AIM, etc.), and provide to him your IP address.
- Your opponent will use the IP address and connect to your computer if everything goes alright.
Client Computer
- Have your opponent follow the procedure in “Host Computer” and obtain his IP address from him.
- In the “Calling My Opponent At” box, type in the IP address and click on OK. You should connect.
Should you have any issues on not being able to connect or having errors from programs you have on your computer, go to Section 9 Errors FAQ for more information.
If you receive an error or know that you are behind a firewall or router, immediately proceed to Section 7: Playing Online with a Firewall or Router on how to resolve this issue.
When you have completed connection, the connection window will close and you should get a bunch of text scrolling through your Chat Window. Some of the things you’ll see:
- A Request for a new game.
- The number of cards in your and a life counter set (not used in Raw Deal: Apprentice)
- A Security Code – This ensures who you are playing now is still who you are playing should you have to continue your game.
- Your Starting Message – This can be anything from “I’m Ready” to “Are You Ready To Feel The Pain?”. Basically, it’s our taunt.
7. Playing With A Firewall or Router
Should you be behind a firewall or router and are unable to accept calls on Apprentice, this section may help you out. The difficulty of making it work can vary, depending on the type of hardware or firewall your network is operating. This is more of a suggestion to point you in the right direction, and again I want to make note that you are taking these directions at your own risk. One last thing; if you are behind a firewall at a school or office building where you personally do not have access to for this guide, I’m sorry to say you’re pretty much SOL.
Part 1: Connecting Through A Router
Your IP
First off, follow the instructions in “Playing Apprentice: Solitaire and Connecting and Playing Online” for a Host Computer, all the way to the point where you get to this screen:
Make note of your IP address either by writing it down, or highlighting the number and copying it to your clipboard (Control+C). This number is assigned by the router, which unlike your public IP address, is unique only accessible either by the router or by other computers on your network (in your house, campus, business, etc.). Every single computer connected to the router has the same public IP, because there is just 1 modem connecting the router to the internet.
When you want an opponent to connect to you, you will have to give him your public IP address. Then the router will see someone trying to connect on port 4747 (the port number Apprentice gives by default), but it won’t know yet to which computer in the “router network” your opponent wishes to connect. Since that’s the case, you will have to tell the router that you’re the computer!
The Router’s IP
Obtain the IP of the router itself so that you are able to change its settings. By default, you should only have to replace the numbers after the last dot with a single 1. It should look something along the lines like this: “192.168.0.1”.
Type that IP address in your browser (ie Internet Explorer) like this: “http://192.168.0.1”. Hit Enter, and a pop-up box should appear asking you to log into your router. If the pop-up box does not come up, try to replace the last 1 with a 0, like this: “http://192.168.0.0”. If this also does not work, obtain your Public IP through other means. One such way is by going to www.whatismyip.com/ or by going into an IRC program and typing “//say $ip”.
Logging Into the Router
If you have not yet set a password for your router settings, simply type "admin" in the User Name and leave the Password field blank. Hit Enter to log in. If you are unable to log in, go back into the login screen and leave the User Name blank while typing "admin" as the password. If this still does not work, you will need to obtain the password that was set for your router. The only person who would know this is the person who had set up the router in the first place.
Setting Up Apprentice with a LinkSys Router
If you have a LinkSys Router, then it'll work slightly different then explained below. If you have a LinkSys Router, view the following image to see how to do it:
Virtual Server a.k.a. Port Forwarding
Once you are in, you will need to get to the Application/Virtual Server section. For a D-Link router, it will look like the following:
What you can do here is setting the router to forward data that it received from an outsider at a specific port to your computer. Do the following to set the port forwarding
- In ‘Name,’ type “Apprentice” to remember the program name.
- Enter your Private IP Address (in the above example, it was 192.168.0.181)
- Under ‘Protocol Type,’ select TCP.
- For the Public and Private Port, type in ‘4747’ (the default port for Apprentice)
- In ‘Schedule,’ select Always.
- Click on ‘Enabled’ and then click ‘Apply’ on the bottom.
If you begin to get confused and/or this process didn’t work for you, look at all the programs previously installed in the virtual servers section. By looking at how they have been installed, you may get a better understanding of what you need to change to fix the problem.
You'll also need to check if the firewall options in the router wouldn't block the traffic. So you will probably have to open port 4747 in the firewall settings of the router for your private IP.
Part 2: Playing Through A Firewall
If you believe you are Firewalled and cannot receive calls from an opponent, please try to connect to that opponent on port 21 from then connect to opponent. When both are firewalled you can try port 21 and try to connect and be connected to. About 90% of the time this will fix the problem.
If you are having difficulty playing through Windows XP’s SP2 Firewall or accidentally blocked the program from connecting, fix it by doing the following:
- Open Windows Firewall by going to Start > Control Panel > Windows Firewall.
- Click on the ‘Exceptions Tab’ and under the list, click ‘Add Program…’.
- On the ‘Add a Program’ window, click on ‘Browse…’ and go to the directory where your Raw Deal: Apprentice program is installed, selecting the program.
- Click OK and attempt to connect again.
If this does not work or are using a program like Norton Firewall, refer to your owner’s manual on how to open ports, opening the TCP connection on Port 4747 or Port 21. If you have AOL, similar to how certain things do not work you will have to have higher access levels to be able to properly use Apprentice (anything above Child Control will do).
8. Advanced Walkthrough – Playing Raw Deal: Apprentice and Hotkeys
Now that you’ve successfully began a game in Apprentice, it’s now time to show you how exactly to set up each game! If you are playing against an opponent online, you and your opponent must decide who gets which side of the playfield.
Then, go to View > Library and drag your Superstar, Backlash Cards, and any other card that isn’t a part of your Arsenal cards into your hand. Be sure to shuffle your Arsenal afterwards (Control + S or Action > Shuffle Library). You may want to do it more than once to make it truly random. Place your Superstar Card and Enforcer Cards (if you have them) into the Top-Left corner of your playfield.
To play through your Pre-Match Segment, place your cards face-up in order similar to how you would in a Raw Deal game. After you have completed this phase, place the remaining Backlash cards face-down on the table by holding the Shift key down while dragging them onto the table, placing them underneath your superstar card and Pre-Match cards in a group.
Make note that Apprentice is based on the honor system, and that it is suggested that when you want to look at any cards you have face-down (ON YOUR SIDE) that you drag it back into your hand while holding the Shift key to keep it face down and view the card information by right-clicking the card title and selecting ‘View Card’. Then when you are done with the card, return it to the table the same way by holding down the Shift key once more.
When it comes to drawing your cards, you can do this in several different ways:
- Click and drag your mouse from the Arsenal card down into your hand each time until you have enough cards in your hand.
- Press Control+D together, which is the hotkey for drawing a card, until you have enough cards in hand.
- Click on the ‘Draw’ button in the top-left menu until you have enough cards in hand.
- While holding the Shift key down, click on the ‘Draw’ button and on the prompt, type the number of cards you will be drawing for your opening hand.
The following is a list of particular actions you will be doing in Raw Deal: Apprentice:
- To Overturn Cards/Remove Cards from Game: Left-Click and drag your mouse from the Arsenal to the Ringside Pile/Removed From Game Pile
- To View The Top Cards of the Library: Select View > Top Cards of My Library and type the number of cards you wish to view (ie for The Game’s ability, type 3)
- To Randomly Discard Cards: Select Action > Bury Random Card From Hand.
- To Randomly Remove Cards From the Game for Volley: A very difficult process, here is how you do it:
- Place your entire hand face-down on the table.
- Select Action > Graveyard > Move Graveyard to Hand
- Select Action > Bury Random Card From Hand until you’ve met the requirements to reverse the volley card.
- Select Action > Graveyard > Remove Graveyard From Game
- Select Action > Hand > Move Hand to Graveyard
- Return your hand back from the table to your hand.
Apprentice Hotkeys
Ctrl+S: Shuffles your Library
Ctrl+I: Rolls a Die
Ctrp+D: Draws a card
Right-Click: View more options for a particular card.
Holding Shift: Plays a card face-down.
9. Errors FAQ
<Insert Card Name Here> doesn’t seem to be I the card list/has wrong text? Hey, I’m only human when it comes to patching the files. If you find any discrepancies in the card list, e-mail all problems to me at Tenshigure@gmail.com, with the subject “Apprentice Patch Error” as the title, or reply in the “Post Apprentice Patch Errors Here!” Thread on Team Canada Online. I will not respond to any e-mails, and my filter will automatically junk any mail that does not have that specific subject heading.
I’m unable to accept incoming calls as the host? If you are behind a firewall, follow the instructions in Section 7: Playing With A Firewall or Router
The IP address I’m using does not seem to be working? If you are behind a router, find out the public IP of your network and follow the guide to set up Port Forwarding and determine our public IP address.
How do I fix the ‘Silver is not a valid integer’ error? If you are getting this error, you can solve it by doing one of these two methods:
#1) Go through the following menu items in the main Apprentice menus:
- Go to ‘Options’ > ‘Preferences’
- Under the ‘Theme’ tab, click on “Change Theme”
- Select any proper .THM file (by default, there is Raw Deal – Raw.THM)
- Restart Raw Deal - Apprentice.
#2) If the previous method did not work, do the following.
- In the main directory of Apprentice (C:\Raw Deal – Apprentice), open up Appr.ini with Notepad or any Text-editing program.
- On Line 29, if you do not see something similar to “Theme=Graphix\Raw Deal - Raw.THM,” change the file to reflect this change.
- Save the Appr.ini file and restart Raw Deal – Apprentice.
10. Credits
- Sam “Tenshigure” Reese – Gotta thank myself for doing all of this crap, heh..
- Comic Images Inc. and Affiliates – For designing an awesome card game that we just can’t get enough of.
- Creed and Hahn - For passing the torch on down to me to upkeep the Apprentice Patch for Raw Deal. It was a matter of coincidence, trust me!
- Magic-League.com’s Writers – Several of their guides have been modified for this particular one, and they were very helpful in the long run.
11. Conclusion
This is probably the most work I’ve ever done for Raw Deal: Apprentice, including the patches and THM files themselves! If you have any comments/questions as to how to get the program to operate properly, or something does not make sense, contact me at Tenshigure@gmail.com with the subject “Apprentice FAQ” in the title. Enjoy the program!
12. Copyright Info
Raw Deal ©2001 World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved
Raw Deal is produced by Comic Images
Apprentice © Dragonstar Studios, All Rights Reserved.
The Complete Raw Deal: Apprentice FAQ
By Sam “Tenshigure” Reese
1. Introduction
What is Apprentice exactly? Originally it was created by DragonStar Studios as a way for people to play Magic: The Gathering online; however it was soon modified to support several other trading card games to be able to play online as well, Raw Deal being one of them. Despite the fact that the mechanics need a bit of tweaking to properly work with the system, it has become quite an effective tool.
Not only can it be used to compete against opponents all over the world, however, but it is also a very efficient way of browsing through the entire card library of Raw Deal and maintains a clean organization of deck lists. No more do you need to shuffle through boxes of foils to figure out what cards can do certain things; Apprentice puts everything into a manageable interface. Not only that, but you don’t have to wait for the spoiled sets to hit the shelves before testing them in your decks! Thanks to editing programs, these “patches” for Raw Deal sets can be arranged and provided to the general public within a matter of minutes!
DISCLAIMER: Apprentice, being a free program, does not provide any actual support to the company that develops the game, Comic Images. At any time, if Comic Images orders a cease and desist order upon the creation or modification of the Raw Deal patches, all support will be stopped. Likewise, if an official program is ever released by Comic Images Inc. or any affiliates, any and all support for the Apprentice patches will be stopped for both moral and legal reasons. Use at your own discretion, as we take no responsibility for any problems or errors that may occur while operating this program.
2. Updates
04-14-05: Version 1.0 Uploaded. Look for several updates and other helpful links within the next few days/weeks.
3. Downloading and Installing Raw Deal: Apprentice 1.46
The best place to obtain all files for Raw Deal: Apprentice is at the Yahoo group “RDAP: Raw Deal Apprentice Patches,” located at the following link:
games.groups.yahoo.com/group/RDAP/
You will have to register as a member of Yahoo! Groups to be able to access the files, but you can be assured that the files provided are the most recent and are the “official” Raw Deal patches that are also provided at the Comic Images’ Raw Deal Mailing List on Yahoo! Groups as well. Under the “Files” link, you can find the proper file named “Raw Deal.exe” underneath the folders.
In the “Apprentice Patches” is the cardinfo.dat and Expan.dat file that you can use to update your version of Apprentice in case you download it from another site. Place the Expan.dat file in the root directory where Apprentice is installed, and the cardinfo.dat file into the Sets folder, overwriting the files already located in the respective folders.
To install Raw Deal: Apprentice, download it and open it, following the instructions provided. By default, the files will be put into: C:\Raw Deal – Apprentice. Note that it will overwrite old files there, including old decks. It's advised you don't change the folder where you have it unzipped to (C:\Raw Deal - Apprentice). Changing it will mean you'll also have to edit the Appr.ini file with notepad. Note that if you have a functioning Apprentice already you'll just need the aforementioned cardinfo.dat and Expan.dat patches.
4. Basic Walkthrough and Customizing Raw Deal: Apprentice
(Note: Special thanks to the editors at Magic-League.com for the original walkthrough)
When you first open Raw Deal – Apprentice, you will be met by this screen.
This may look a little daunting at first, but it is very simple once you know what the areas are for, and the functions of the buttons. Here is a quick explanation of the apprentice interface:
- The first thing you will notice is the large area with a star-like background to it. This is the virtual table, the main playing area, and this is where all of the cards are played.
- Below the main playing area, is a dark-blue box. This is your chat window, which you use to communicate your actions with to your opponent. You can use this window to explain what you are doing (ie using Diving Takedown as an action, using your Superstar Ability).
- To the left of the main playing area, is your hand. The cards in your hand are listed here.
- Just above your hand are three buttons: a face-down Raw Deal card, a face-up card with Skull-and-Crossbones, and a face-down card with a Red X struck through it. These represent your Arsenal, Ringside Pile, and Removed From Game pile respectively.
- In the original Apprentice program, there was a huge line of buttons that assisted in playing Magic: The Gathering. However, with no need for these in Raw Deal, the .THM files created specifically for Raw Deal remove these not only to make it look cleaner, but also due to the fact they serve no purpose for game play. Above these buttons there is a large line of buttons.
- The first button, “new,” starts a new game.
- Next to “new” is a button titled “edit”. This opens the Deck Editor (see Section 5: Using the Deck Editor for more info).
- The last button next to “edit” is the “draw” button. This draws a card from your Arsenal into your hand.
- When you are in a game, if your opponent disconnects, a “re” button may appear on the far right. This is used to reconnect you to your opponent.
These buttons are the ones you will mainly use when playing, but there are a lot more options in the toolbars, for performing more advanced actions. If there is no function to perform a certain action, you should explain it to your opponent in the chat window.
Now that you know the basic functions of Raw Deal - Apprentice, you can set it up for your matches you will be having. First of all you will need to set your name so as to identify yourself when you are playing. To do this, go to Options > Set Name. A box will pop up asking you to enter your new name. You can use your regular name, a nickname, or the Superstar that you are using, whatever you want! Now enter your name into here, it should look a bit like this:
Now your Raw Deal – Apprentice program is ready for battle, but you aren’t: You don’t have any decks yet! To create these decks, you’ll have to go into the Deck Editor. Click on the “Edit” button to do so.
5. Using the Deck Editor
Afterburn Update: To filter cards to Afterburn-legal Cards, click on the Expansion pull-down menu, switch 'All' to 'Afterburn,' and hit 'Go'. To reverse the process, switch it back to 'All' and hit 'Go' again.
If you click on the “Edit” button located in the top-left corner of the screen, you will be presented with the following screen:
The buttons at the top do the following:
- ‘New’ – Blanks the Deck List to create a new deck.
- ‘Load’ – Loads a .DEC file to edit.
- ‘Text’ – Exports the Information in the deck list to a .TXT document.
- ‘Save’ – Saves the deck list in .DEC format.
- ‘p De’ or ‘Print Deck’ – Prints the Deck List.
- ‘p Li’ or ‘Print List’ – Prints the Card List (DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE FILTERED THE CARDLIST)
- ‘Go’ – After entering filters to the respective boxes, select this button to apply the filters to the card list.
- ‘Stop’ – Stops the filtering of cards if it is taking too long to process (shouldn’t need to be used)
If you know exactly what card you want in your deck, you can type in the name of the card in the box below “Find Card:” and then click “Add”. If you want to add multiple copies of each card, just hit “Add” until the number of cards you need appear.
To view a card’s text and information, right-click on the name of the card and you could be displayed with the following (the example is the Mid-Match card titled Raw Deal!):
In the deck editor, several shorthand techniques are used to help filter out your searches, as well as clearly identify what cards you are placing into your deck (Throwbacks do this). The following are what each mean:
B- Backstage Area Card
E- Enforcer Cards
P- Pre-Match Cards
M- Mid-Match Cards
T- Title Belt Cards
(T) – Throwback Versions of Cards
(SS) – Superstar Cards (note: Only if cards have the same name as the Superstar)
If you don’t know what specific cards you need, then you can use the filter tools. They may seem tricky at first, but after some experimenting it gets pretty easy. Due to the fact the cards have been modified from Magic: The Gathering, the box names have been modified as well (again, if not mentioned, it does not work properly for Raw Deal):
- ‘Contains’ - Filters the Card’s Title
- ‘Text Box’ - Filters the Card’s Beginning Text
- ‘Flavor Text’ - Filters the Card’s Ending Text if Long or Flavor Text.
- ‘Expansion’ - Filters the Cards based on what set it was released in (ie Premiere / Armageddon)
- ‘Power / Toughness’ - Filters Fortitude / Damage.
- ‘Card Type’ - Filters the Card Type (ie Strike, Reversal, Set-Up, Chain, Heel)
Again, after entering all of your filters you wish to use, hit the “Go” button to apply the filter to the card list.
Note that sometimes the title of the card has to be edited for length, so if you have to filter this way, you may have to try different words to properly find it. Also, the text of cards can also be forced to be split into the Flavor Text box, so you may have to attempt filtering the text you’re looking for (ie “Throw Opponent Out of the Ring”) in that as well.
Another issue with the filters is that they will only look for certain specific strings. So if you wanted to find cards that had “Arm” and “Wrist” in their title for Ring Psychology: Arm, you would have to do two separate searches to properly get both Arm and Wrist. Not only that, but “Arm” will find any instances where “arm” letter together in a word. So while you will find cards like Arm Bar and Single Arm DDT, you will also get the results such as Armageddon and The Leader of the Edge Army.
Lastly, to properly look for specific Fortitude and Damage Ratings, you can precede your filters with “D:#” for Damage and “F:#” for Fortitude Value, where # is the number you are wanting (if you want both, use the format D:# / F:#).
Once you are done editing your deck list (the default number of cards you should have in a list are 81: 60 for the Arsenal, 20 for your Backlash Deck, and 1 for the Superstar Card), click on the Save Button to save the list in .DEC format.
Tips for Deck Building
- When building your deck list, be sure to include your Backlash Deck cards, Superstar Cards, Enforcers, Backstage Area Cards, EVERYTHING you would use to play the game in a single deck list. There is no way to access the cards otherwise, and you will be sorting these out when you begin play (see Section 7: Advanced Walkthrough – Playing Raw Deal: Apprentice and Hotkeys for more info).
- Contrary to belief, the Sideboard is NOT a substitute for your Backlash Deck, as you cannot access it during the game.
- Have a default style of naming your decks, as your database can get quite large after some time, such as format.date.name. This will keep things a lot more organized in your decks directory.
- Setting up a default standard to organize your decks in the deck list can help speed up the process of building and identifying how many types of cards you have in your deck. The .DEC file “default.DEC” is what I use, and offer for you to try out. It is in the “Decks” folder in the root directory of Apprentice.
6. Playing Apprentice: Solitaire and Connecting and Playing Online
Now you are ready to play Raw Deal with Apprentice. Although you may want to immediately play against an opponent online, it is normally advisable to play a few solitaire games first, which you can do without connecting to an opponent. To start any type of game you click on the new game button. From there you will be presented with this screen:
Before you do anything, you will need to load the deck you want to play with, you do this simply by clicking Load Deck, and selecting the appropriate deck from your Decks directory. After that, you can select your game type, either solitaire or a game connected by the internet. If you play a solitaire game it will simply go straight into the game (proceed to Section 8: Playing Raw Deal in Apprentice on how to play), but when connecting to the internet you will be presented with another screen:
From this point, you have to decide whether you are going to be the host player or the client player. For each, do the following:
Host Computer
- Click on ‘Waiting for a Call’ and make note of the number next to “My Current IP”. This is the IP address, the identification of your computer that your opponent will use to connect to you.
- Click OK, contact your opponent (be it through MSN, AIM, etc.), and provide to him your IP address.
- Your opponent will use the IP address and connect to your computer if everything goes alright.
Client Computer
- Have your opponent follow the procedure in “Host Computer” and obtain his IP address from him.
- In the “Calling My Opponent At” box, type in the IP address and click on OK. You should connect.
Should you have any issues on not being able to connect or having errors from programs you have on your computer, go to Section 9 Errors FAQ for more information.
If you receive an error or know that you are behind a firewall or router, immediately proceed to Section 7: Playing Online with a Firewall or Router on how to resolve this issue.
When you have completed connection, the connection window will close and you should get a bunch of text scrolling through your Chat Window. Some of the things you’ll see:
- A Request for a new game.
- The number of cards in your and a life counter set (not used in Raw Deal: Apprentice)
- A Security Code – This ensures who you are playing now is still who you are playing should you have to continue your game.
- Your Starting Message – This can be anything from “I’m Ready” to “Are You Ready To Feel The Pain?”. Basically, it’s our taunt.
7. Playing With A Firewall or Router
Should you be behind a firewall or router and are unable to accept calls on Apprentice, this section may help you out. The difficulty of making it work can vary, depending on the type of hardware or firewall your network is operating. This is more of a suggestion to point you in the right direction, and again I want to make note that you are taking these directions at your own risk. One last thing; if you are behind a firewall at a school or office building where you personally do not have access to for this guide, I’m sorry to say you’re pretty much SOL.
Part 1: Connecting Through A Router
Your IP
First off, follow the instructions in “Playing Apprentice: Solitaire and Connecting and Playing Online” for a Host Computer, all the way to the point where you get to this screen:
Make note of your IP address either by writing it down, or highlighting the number and copying it to your clipboard (Control+C). This number is assigned by the router, which unlike your public IP address, is unique only accessible either by the router or by other computers on your network (in your house, campus, business, etc.). Every single computer connected to the router has the same public IP, because there is just 1 modem connecting the router to the internet.
When you want an opponent to connect to you, you will have to give him your public IP address. Then the router will see someone trying to connect on port 4747 (the port number Apprentice gives by default), but it won’t know yet to which computer in the “router network” your opponent wishes to connect. Since that’s the case, you will have to tell the router that you’re the computer!
The Router’s IP
Obtain the IP of the router itself so that you are able to change its settings. By default, you should only have to replace the numbers after the last dot with a single 1. It should look something along the lines like this: “192.168.0.1”.
Type that IP address in your browser (ie Internet Explorer) like this: “http://192.168.0.1”. Hit Enter, and a pop-up box should appear asking you to log into your router. If the pop-up box does not come up, try to replace the last 1 with a 0, like this: “http://192.168.0.0”. If this also does not work, obtain your Public IP through other means. One such way is by going to www.whatismyip.com/ or by going into an IRC program and typing “//say $ip”.
Logging Into the Router
If you have not yet set a password for your router settings, simply type "admin" in the User Name and leave the Password field blank. Hit Enter to log in. If you are unable to log in, go back into the login screen and leave the User Name blank while typing "admin" as the password. If this still does not work, you will need to obtain the password that was set for your router. The only person who would know this is the person who had set up the router in the first place.
Setting Up Apprentice with a LinkSys Router
If you have a LinkSys Router, then it'll work slightly different then explained below. If you have a LinkSys Router, view the following image to see how to do it:
Virtual Server a.k.a. Port Forwarding
Once you are in, you will need to get to the Application/Virtual Server section. For a D-Link router, it will look like the following:
What you can do here is setting the router to forward data that it received from an outsider at a specific port to your computer. Do the following to set the port forwarding
- In ‘Name,’ type “Apprentice” to remember the program name.
- Enter your Private IP Address (in the above example, it was 192.168.0.181)
- Under ‘Protocol Type,’ select TCP.
- For the Public and Private Port, type in ‘4747’ (the default port for Apprentice)
- In ‘Schedule,’ select Always.
- Click on ‘Enabled’ and then click ‘Apply’ on the bottom.
If you begin to get confused and/or this process didn’t work for you, look at all the programs previously installed in the virtual servers section. By looking at how they have been installed, you may get a better understanding of what you need to change to fix the problem.
You'll also need to check if the firewall options in the router wouldn't block the traffic. So you will probably have to open port 4747 in the firewall settings of the router for your private IP.
Part 2: Playing Through A Firewall
If you believe you are Firewalled and cannot receive calls from an opponent, please try to connect to that opponent on port 21 from then connect to opponent. When both are firewalled you can try port 21 and try to connect and be connected to. About 90% of the time this will fix the problem.
If you are having difficulty playing through Windows XP’s SP2 Firewall or accidentally blocked the program from connecting, fix it by doing the following:
- Open Windows Firewall by going to Start > Control Panel > Windows Firewall.
- Click on the ‘Exceptions Tab’ and under the list, click ‘Add Program…’.
- On the ‘Add a Program’ window, click on ‘Browse…’ and go to the directory where your Raw Deal: Apprentice program is installed, selecting the program.
- Click OK and attempt to connect again.
If this does not work or are using a program like Norton Firewall, refer to your owner’s manual on how to open ports, opening the TCP connection on Port 4747 or Port 21. If you have AOL, similar to how certain things do not work you will have to have higher access levels to be able to properly use Apprentice (anything above Child Control will do).
8. Advanced Walkthrough – Playing Raw Deal: Apprentice and Hotkeys
Now that you’ve successfully began a game in Apprentice, it’s now time to show you how exactly to set up each game! If you are playing against an opponent online, you and your opponent must decide who gets which side of the playfield.
Then, go to View > Library and drag your Superstar, Backlash Cards, and any other card that isn’t a part of your Arsenal cards into your hand. Be sure to shuffle your Arsenal afterwards (Control + S or Action > Shuffle Library). You may want to do it more than once to make it truly random. Place your Superstar Card and Enforcer Cards (if you have them) into the Top-Left corner of your playfield.
To play through your Pre-Match Segment, place your cards face-up in order similar to how you would in a Raw Deal game. After you have completed this phase, place the remaining Backlash cards face-down on the table by holding the Shift key down while dragging them onto the table, placing them underneath your superstar card and Pre-Match cards in a group.
Make note that Apprentice is based on the honor system, and that it is suggested that when you want to look at any cards you have face-down (ON YOUR SIDE) that you drag it back into your hand while holding the Shift key to keep it face down and view the card information by right-clicking the card title and selecting ‘View Card’. Then when you are done with the card, return it to the table the same way by holding down the Shift key once more.
When it comes to drawing your cards, you can do this in several different ways:
- Click and drag your mouse from the Arsenal card down into your hand each time until you have enough cards in your hand.
- Press Control+D together, which is the hotkey for drawing a card, until you have enough cards in hand.
- Click on the ‘Draw’ button in the top-left menu until you have enough cards in hand.
- While holding the Shift key down, click on the ‘Draw’ button and on the prompt, type the number of cards you will be drawing for your opening hand.
The following is a list of particular actions you will be doing in Raw Deal: Apprentice:
- To Overturn Cards/Remove Cards from Game: Left-Click and drag your mouse from the Arsenal to the Ringside Pile/Removed From Game Pile
- To View The Top Cards of the Library: Select View > Top Cards of My Library and type the number of cards you wish to view (ie for The Game’s ability, type 3)
- To Randomly Discard Cards: Select Action > Bury Random Card From Hand.
- To Randomly Remove Cards From the Game for Volley: A very difficult process, here is how you do it:
- Place your entire hand face-down on the table.
- Select Action > Graveyard > Move Graveyard to Hand
- Select Action > Bury Random Card From Hand until you’ve met the requirements to reverse the volley card.
- Select Action > Graveyard > Remove Graveyard From Game
- Select Action > Hand > Move Hand to Graveyard
- Return your hand back from the table to your hand.
Apprentice Hotkeys
Ctrl+S: Shuffles your Library
Ctrl+I: Rolls a Die
Ctrp+D: Draws a card
Right-Click: View more options for a particular card.
Holding Shift: Plays a card face-down.
9. Errors FAQ
<Insert Card Name Here> doesn’t seem to be I the card list/has wrong text? Hey, I’m only human when it comes to patching the files. If you find any discrepancies in the card list, e-mail all problems to me at Tenshigure@gmail.com, with the subject “Apprentice Patch Error” as the title, or reply in the “Post Apprentice Patch Errors Here!” Thread on Team Canada Online. I will not respond to any e-mails, and my filter will automatically junk any mail that does not have that specific subject heading.
I’m unable to accept incoming calls as the host? If you are behind a firewall, follow the instructions in Section 7: Playing With A Firewall or Router
The IP address I’m using does not seem to be working? If you are behind a router, find out the public IP of your network and follow the guide to set up Port Forwarding and determine our public IP address.
How do I fix the ‘Silver is not a valid integer’ error? If you are getting this error, you can solve it by doing one of these two methods:
#1) Go through the following menu items in the main Apprentice menus:
- Go to ‘Options’ > ‘Preferences’
- Under the ‘Theme’ tab, click on “Change Theme”
- Select any proper .THM file (by default, there is Raw Deal – Raw.THM)
- Restart Raw Deal - Apprentice.
#2) If the previous method did not work, do the following.
- In the main directory of Apprentice (C:\Raw Deal – Apprentice), open up Appr.ini with Notepad or any Text-editing program.
- On Line 29, if you do not see something similar to “Theme=Graphix\Raw Deal - Raw.THM,” change the file to reflect this change.
- Save the Appr.ini file and restart Raw Deal – Apprentice.
10. Credits
- Sam “Tenshigure” Reese – Gotta thank myself for doing all of this crap, heh..
- Comic Images Inc. and Affiliates – For designing an awesome card game that we just can’t get enough of.
- Creed and Hahn - For passing the torch on down to me to upkeep the Apprentice Patch for Raw Deal. It was a matter of coincidence, trust me!
- Magic-League.com’s Writers – Several of their guides have been modified for this particular one, and they were very helpful in the long run.
11. Conclusion
This is probably the most work I’ve ever done for Raw Deal: Apprentice, including the patches and THM files themselves! If you have any comments/questions as to how to get the program to operate properly, or something does not make sense, contact me at Tenshigure@gmail.com with the subject “Apprentice FAQ” in the title. Enjoy the program!
12. Copyright Info
Raw Deal ©2001 World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved
Raw Deal is produced by Comic Images
Apprentice © Dragonstar Studios, All Rights Reserved.