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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:27 
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Captain Caveman wrote:
Grim... wrote:
Captain Caveman wrote:
thinking how I was ever going to tell poor Mrs Caveman, working her arse off and going without lunches at work for the sake of £2 that she didn't have, that I'd blown away the family holiday budget on a fucking fruit machine. What a twat.

Fuuuuuuuuck ?:|


Yeah, I've never felt so ashamed in all my life. :'(

I've spent the last 10 years trying to make it up to both her and my girls, who found it in their hearts to forgive me, despite everything.

I have to ask... do you think such a thing would have happened to you under a Conservative government? ;)

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:29 
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Captain Caveman wrote:
Get help mate. Give your missus all your cards and cash and be totally honest with her about your reasons, so you've never access to money. Set up a savings account and put all money saved in that (irrespective of what you owe), and reward you and her with a nice holiday with the proceeds.


I'm single and live alone so it's only affecting me which makes it a little harder. Plus my main vice is online slots now rather than the physical ones. If you've never played the likes of the Microgaming/Playtech slots online - they're far more addictive than physical machines, to me at least.

I appreciate the advice from you and AE though - I'm trying to sort myself out again at the moment. Currently I'm at the stage where I'm blogging my progress daily just to have an incrementing record of my thoughts at the time so that I'm not bottling stuff up. I'm on a whole 8 days without so far, so it's very early days yet though. ;)

(I tend to keep all this crap out of the Nay thread)

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:29 
SupaMod
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Alberto wrote:
I have to ask... do you think such a thing would have happened to you under a Conservative government? ;)


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:33 
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@ Alberto obv.

:roll:

Mock all you like - I deserve to be mocked in many ways and I accept that by posting what I did, it was inevitable, though I daresay addiction isn't a laughing matter, at least not in my book. However, at least I finally faced the issue and changed my behaviour, so I can take a little pride in that. Plus it's given you the opportunity of a cheap shot and a jolly good laugh, right?

I guess I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of this - self inflicted to be fair (although, playing those first few quid in a fruit machine, I wasn't to know I'd become almost instantly hooked for 20 years). I've seen the human misery it can cause. Let's hope you never have to find out.

@ Grim

Nah, not at all mate, at least not from me.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:37 
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devilman wrote:
Captain Caveman wrote:
Get help mate. Give your missus all your cards and cash and be totally honest with her about your reasons, so you've never access to money. Set up a savings account and put all money saved in that (irrespective of what you owe), and reward you and her with a nice holiday with the proceeds.


I'm single and live alone so it's only affecting me which makes it a little harder. Plus my main vice is online slots now rather than the physical ones. If you've never played the likes of the Microgaming/Playtech slots online - they're far more addictive than physical machines, to me at least.

I appreciate the advice from you and AE though - I'm trying to sort myself out again at the moment. Currently I'm at the stage where I'm blogging my progress daily just to have an incrementing record of my thoughts at the time so that I'm not bottling stuff up. I'm on a whole 8 days without so far, so it's very early days yet though. ;)

(I tend to keep all this crap out of the Nay thread)


Good for you mate, you CAN do it! Get GAMCARE or whatever it is on your PC as well, it will block all gambling sites. Email all the online casinos that you use, telling them of your addiction issue and they are LEGALLY OBLIGED to strike you and your IP address etc. off their systems.

Don't ever forget, far from being some massive sacrifice on your part you aren't making any sacrifice at all, the rest of your life will be so much better as a result from this, right from Day One. :)

Cavey

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:37 
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devilman wrote:
I'm single and live alone so it's only affecting me which makes it a little harder. Plus my main vice is online slots now rather than the physical ones. If you've never played the likes of the Microgaming/Playtech slots online - they're far more addictive than physical machines, to me at least.

I appreciate the advice from you and AE though - I'm trying to sort myself out again at the moment. Currently I'm at the stage where I'm blogging my progress daily just to have an incrementing record of my thoughts at the time so that I'm not bottling stuff up. I'm on a whole 8 days without so far, so it's very early days yet though. ;)

(I tend to keep all this crap out of the Nay thread)


Some of the Microgaming slots are like digital crack.

I binned about £3K on them over a few month period about three years ago :belm:

It didn't help that I got a few good wins early on, including an £1100 spin for a 90p stake on a Thunderstruck clone called Summertime, plus a couple of £450-£500 wins on the bonus round in Hitman.

Next thing I know I'm playing fucking low-techs at £5 per spin at 2am in the morning, lost £1000 in one night 8)

I eventually packed them up by playing thousands of quid through in demo mode rather than with real money (they still have the same %age in demo mode), and keeping an accurate record of much money I was 'losing' - and fortunately that did the job. Quite a relapse for me really, I hadn't gambled like that for fucking years.

EDIT TO ADD - Yeah I guess this is why I say stuff like '£610 isn't a lot of money', it's not supposed to be blasé and it's not because I'm rich, the 'value' of money changes I think when you can see £1000 disappear in about three or four hours.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:37 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Squirt wrote:
The mother-in-law works in a bookies, where they have one of those roulette machines, and the amount of cash that goes into that thing every day is scary. There are people who'll come in on payday, drop a couple of hundred quid in an hour and then come in next week and do exactly the same thing again. And those roulette casino machines don't even look like much fun.


Those are not technically fruit machines, they're known as FOBTs or Fixed Odds Betting Machines.

The key difference between fruit machines and FOBTs is that FOBTs are random whereas fruit machines are controlled.

So on a FOBT, you can lose £200 and it's still no closer to paying out, it doesn't 'have' to pay anything out, as it just picks a random number every time you press the button and displays the result.

Fruit machines have target percentages which the software actively works towards, so if you lose £100 on one (or £800 as Cavey did :facepalm: ), then it is actually closer to paying out, and eventually it will have to drop big wins.

This for me is why I found fruit machines so addictive but never gave a fuck about casino games or other random games, and also because a lot of fruit machines do genuinely respond to skilful play and/or knowledge of the features/reels etc, you get a feeling of control and that you can influence what happens.


When I worked at the train station, the man who waved sticks at the trains would spend upwards of £200 every Saturday. We were taking about £700 per week per machine or so, in a comparatively quiet station.

I was always under the impression that the "70%" stickers, or whatever they are, meant that for every 10 £1 coins that you stick into it, three go into the hopper which any player will never see again, the remainder going into the prize hopper.

Without wishing to sound rude, I find the last part of your quote hard to genuinely believe to be true, it's too much like a Skinner box.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:46 
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MaliA wrote:
Without wishing to sound rude, I find the last part of your quote hard to genuinely believe to be true, it's too much like a Skinner box.


Honestly dude it's true, indeed, this is partly why me and Cavey well and truly lost our shirts back in the day, because unbeknown to us there was a whole raft of tricks/cheats/exploits/etc on virtually all fruit machines, and we were just the mugs filling them up for the clued up players.

A really simple example, for a period of a few years in the 90s, all machines made by a manufacturer called JPM did something called 'numbering' - whereby the player watched the hi/lo gamble reel (which runs from 1-12) during normal play. If the hi/lo reel ever span to a 1 or 12, the machine had a jackpot in it. The more often you saw 1 or 12, the closer it was and the more jackpots you'd be able to get out of it.

If you didn't see a 1 or 12 at all, the machine was dead and would not pay out a jackpot.

If the machine was happy, you'd see it showing 1 or 12 less often, and when it stopped showing 1 or 12, you'd taken all the jackpots out of it.

You can test this behaviour in the emulator on the machines that do numbering, if you don't see 1 or 12, you'll never ever gamble a win to the jackpot or get it off the feature.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:50 
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Yeah, a lot of them have tells, especially if you got to the feature board. I recall that the Simpson's machine turned Homer red, and you couldn't die.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 14:56 
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Grim... wrote:
Yeah, a lot of them have tells, especially if you got to the feature board. I recall that the Simpson's machine turned Homer red, and you couldn't die.


That's an invincible board, generally referred to as a 'red board'. I'd say about 99% of players know about that though :D

There was a way to manipulate the red boards on The Simpsons (which was actually a clone of a machine called The Great Escape), as the machine maintained two cashpots in the code (a normal pay pot and a streak pot), so you played it until it offered a red board, and then deliberately DIDN'T take the jackpot, instead just collecting £2 or £3 from the board.

You had to keep doing this until it paid a jackpot off a normal (non-red) board, and then the next board would be guaranteed red with two repeats on the jackpot.

On a £15 jackpot it made a total pay of at least £60, although sometimes the red board would repeat three times, to make £75.

The Great Escape and another clone called The Italian Job are both emulated, and that behaviour works on the emulators.

Maygay did rechip this behaviour (i.e. replacement code on a new program cartridge), so that the machine would do 'phantom red' boards instead, whereby the board was red but the logo didn't turn red, so the player had no way of knowing if they were being given the streak-beginning normal jackpot, or were actually knackering the streak pot. After the rechip they were dodgy and too dangerous to play for this reason.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 15:00 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Grim... wrote:
Yeah, a lot of them have tells, especially if you got to the feature board. I recall that the Simpson's machine turned Homer red, and you couldn't die.

That's an invincible board, generally referred to as a 'red board'. I'd say about 99% of players know about that though :D

There was a way to manipulate the red boards on The Simpsons (which was actually a clone of a machine called The Great Escape), as the machine maintained two cashpots in the code (a normal pay pot and a streak pot), so you played it until it offered a red board, and then deliberately DIDN'T take the jackpot, instead just collecting £2 or £3 from the board.

I wrote the following words about ten - fifteen years ago:
Little Me wrote:
INVINCIBLE MODE
The Invincible mode is shown when the Homers Meltdown logo turns RED. Proceed around the board for the Super Jackpot!
As with the Simpsons and the Great Escape, some players still prefer to turn down the RED mode (collect a low win - £2?), and keep playing until they hit a normal feature, then twat it for £30+

Spook!

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 15:01 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
MaliA wrote:
Without wishing to sound rude, I find the last part of your quote hard to genuinely believe to be true, it's too much like a Skinner box.


Honestly dude it's true....


Sorry, I've phrased that really clumsily, and I'm aware this could be a potentially sensitive matter to some, and don't want to come across as belittling choices that other's have made/are making/will make in their lives. I'm naturally suspicious of gambling and things that take money away from people with the promise of returns (although, it has just come to my mind that the VC firm I'm currently working for does exactly that, and I've found that to be fascinating), and don't really partake in it, so it is all somewhat alien to me.

I'm happy to be educated (I've stuck money in a fruit machine about four times in my life, if that) on an anecdotal level, as I find things like that interesting, but my viewpoint is so far removed from the situation it's hard for me to make decent comment.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 15:08 
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MaliA wrote:
Sorry, I've phrased that really clumsily, and I'm aware this could be a potentially sensitive matter to some, and don't want to come across as belittling choices that other's have made/are making/will make in their lives. I'm naturally suspicious of gambling and things that take money away from people with the promise of returns (although, it has just come to my mind that the VC firm I'm currently working for does exactly that, and I've found that to be fascinating), and don't really partake in it, so it is all somewhat alien to me.

I'm happy to be educated (I've stuck money in a fruit machine about four times in my life, if that) on an anecdotal level, as I find things like that interesting, but my viewpoint is so far removed from the situation it's hard for me to make decent comment.


Well even that £1000 monster that Cavey got mullered by could be manipulated, indeed, the information on how to do this was worth huge amounts of cash in the day, and some folks got themselves barred from entire casino chains.

I never did get the full story on it, but it was something to do with how the machine maintained not entirely separate 'pots' for each of the stakes on the top reels, and therefore the player could take multiple jackpots out of it (i.e. walk away with £2000 or £3000), it also had a tell whereby it would show a certain win on one of the stakes to indicate it was in a 'doable state'.

Unfortunately the multiple jackpots were still properly accounted for by the code, so needless to say they went on the mother of pisstakes afterwards, which is where Cavey got twatted >:|


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 15:09 
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Grim... wrote:
I wrote the following words about ten - fifteen years ago:
Little Me wrote:
INVINCIBLE MODE
The Invincible mode is shown when the Homers Meltdown logo turns RED. Proceed around the board for the Super Jackpot!
As with the Simpsons and the Great Escape, some players still prefer to turn down the RED mode (collect a low win - £2?), and keep playing until they hit a normal feature, then twat it for £30+

Spook!


Are you an ex-player then?


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 15:11 
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Yeah. Not to the same scale as the others in this thread (because I didn't have the money), but I remember once putting my weeks wages into Wipeout the day I got them and losing the lot, and deciding something had to change.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 15:14 
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Grim... wrote:
Yeah. Not to the same scale as the others in this thread (because I didn't have the money), but I remember once putting my weeks wages into Wipeout the day I got them and losing the lot, and deciding something had to change.


Wipeout had one fucker of an emptier for it on the original chip, by the time they turned up over here they'd all been rechipped so I never got to have a crack on one.

After the rechip it was just a straight force and hope for the streak.

Unfortunately Impulse (who made Wipeout) used the 'EPOCH' tech, which is one of the very few techs not emulated. (Well, it is emulated, but the emulator has not been publicly released.)

Did you maintain a fruit machine site then?


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 15:20 
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Captain Caveman wrote:
Good for you mate, you CAN do it! Get GAMCARE or whatever it is on your PC as well, it will block all gambling sites. Email all the online casinos that you use, telling them of your addiction issue and they are LEGALLY OBLIGED to strike you and your IP address etc. off their systems.


This is where being a geek goes against me. I actually bought some software - txnogam which very aggressively blocks anything gambling related. If I were to even click on the Poker thread on here for example, it would close the browser. If I were to listen to a song on Spotify with certain words in it (there's a White Zombie song which has 'poker' in the title for example) it would kill that off too. However, when I really had the urge to gamble, I figured a way around the software in the end - bypassing software I'd paid for :facepalm:

The other week I got myself excluded from the FortuneLounge group of online casinos which covers quite a few, so hopefully that'll help. It's annoying to still get offer emails from casinos (and their partners) I've excluded myself from though... I've noticed that unsubscribe options for casino emails are just useless.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 17:36 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Party Time is done dude, Scorpion 1&2 emulation were added in MFME V3.0, replacing the functional but clunky BFMulator for Scorpion hardware. (At the other end of the spectrum, Scorpion 4 is done as well, which covers all BFM/Mazooma/QPS machines up to around 2006 or so.)

IIRC I got the crazy token streak out of Party Time the last time I played it, so you'll probably need to pump it a bit before it'll pay anything out as downloaded :D


Wrong Party Time by the way. ;)

It's more this kinda thing ...

Attachment:
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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 17:40 
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devilman wrote:
AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Party Time is done dude, Scorpion 1&2 emulation were added in MFME V3.0, replacing the functional but clunky BFMulator for Scorpion hardware. (At the other end of the spectrum, Scorpion 4 is done as well, which covers all BFM/Mazooma/QPS machines up to around 2006 or so.)

IIRC I got the crazy token streak out of Party Time the last time I played it, so you'll probably need to pump it a bit before it'll pay anything out as downloaded :D


Wrong Party Time by the way. ;)

It's more this kinda thing ...


Ahhh right. Unfortunately the ASTRA tech isn't emulated, or rather, like EPOCH it is, but not publicly available.

Also, it's still a current and commercial tech, which muddies the water too.

Astra certainly hit the proverbial jackpot with Party Time, and they've been riffing on it ever since.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 17:51 
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devilman wrote:
Party Time
I've watched my pal gamble away a small fortune in that machine on more than one occasion. On the plus side I got to chat up the attendants & drink as much tea as I could manage while he did it :)

I hate gambling machines, the puggies here got rid of almost all their arcade machines & replaced them with this shite :( That & there's nothing worse than going for a pint with a friend and them spending the night transfixed by the flashy thieves in the corner, at least smokers are back within five or so minutes :S

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 18:06 
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Wullie wrote:
devilman wrote:
Party Time
I've watched my pal gamble away a small fortune in that machine on more than one occasion. On the plus side I got to chat up the attendants & drink as much tea as I could manage while he did it :)

I hate gambling machines, the puggies here got rid of almost all their arcade machines & replaced them with this shite :( That & there's nothing worse than going for a pint with a friend and them spending the night transfixed by the flashy thieves in the corner, at least smokers are back within five or so minutes :S


Even on the original £15 jackpot they had a massive streak in them, and were therefore quite capable of taking £200+ without kicking out more than the odd win here and there.

I generally kept clear of them, or just tried the odd tenner, they were deadly if you got sucked in and they didn't go on the streak.

In the past I've been very guilty of abandoning my friends/girlfriend on a night out to play the fruities, and fucked off home early, broke and despondent, more times than I care to remember.

On one particularly 'memorable' occasion I ended up in hospital, which was nice.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 18:26 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Even on the original £15 jackpot they had a massive streak in them, and were therefore quite capable of taking £200+ without kicking out more than the odd win here and there.

I generally kept clear of them, or just tried the odd tenner, they were deadly if you got sucked in and they didn't go on the streak.

In the past I've been very guilty of abandoning my friends/girlfriend on a night out to play the fruities, and fucked off home early, broke and despondent, more times than I care to remember.

On one particularly 'memorable' occasion I ended up in hospital, which was nice.
I might be remembering wrong, but I think the Party Time over the road was a £2 play, one of the popular ones when they were "winning" definitely was anyway 8)

For something so common & seemingly innocuous it's amazing the amount of damage gambling can cause. Though you could say the same about booze, drugs & even food I suppose :shrug:

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 18:39 
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Wullie wrote:
I might be remembering wrong, but I think the Party Time over the road was a £2 play, one of the popular ones when they were "winning" definitely was anyway 8)

For something so common & seemingly innocuous it's amazing the amount of damage gambling can cause. Though you could say the same about booze, drugs & even food I suppose :shrug:


If it was £2 per play it won't have been that Party Time, the only machines that allowed £2 per play were the infamous 'Section 16' machines, which was quite one of the cheekiest and nastiest evils ever created by the gambling industry.

We're only going back six years or so here, but at the time the maximum permitted jackpot for arcade fruit machines was £25, with a maximum 30p stake. (With repeat chances and streaks, the 'real' jackpot was more like £100 (£25 + three repeats), but these were rare, and the price of play was capped at 30p.)

The 'industry' had been pushing for bigger jackpots and stakes for ages, but the regulator kept knocking them back.

So what did they come up with? Section 16.

These machines had a £500 jackpot at a price per spin of £2, except such a machine would have been illegal, so how did they get around it?

The machine had 20 winlines, each winline cost 10p to play, and the jackpot on each winline was £25. The industry argued that what the player was choosing to do was play twenty 10p games simultaneously, and that each 'individual game' had a jackpot of £25. If all twenty games were played at once and all came in together, 20x£25 gave the £500 jackpot, at £2 per spin. (It was possible to choose how many winlines to play, including 1 winline for 10p with a jackpot of £25, but no one ever actually did that, of course.)

And they fucking got away with it too.

The legislation was changed to outlaw S16, but not before a huge amount of damage had been done, there are absolute horror stories of people losing thousands and thousands of pounds in these things over the course of several sittings, as arcades fell over themselves to install row upon row of S16s.

People literally in the arcade first thing in the morning, to pick up where they left off the day before, and getting attendants to reserve machines for them whilst they cleaned out their bank accounts.

Also, S16 were random, not controlled/compensated, so they can and did take many thousands of pounds without ever paying anything close to a £500 jackpot. A lot of folks simply didn't understand that unlike the old £25 jackpot machines, there was no way to 'force' a random machine.

Truly hateful things, I never got much involved with them myself (worst I ever did was a £300 kicking one night IIRC, never to be repeated), but some folks basically lost their lives to them, jobs, family, house, the lot.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 18:46 
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Eek, some of the tales of gambling addiction are harrowing, as some who felt bad enough wasting £4 trying to win a g.f. a Hello Kitty plush from a claw-crane machine. :( It's good to hear that AE and Cavey have gotten over their problems – must've taken a lot of willpower to get over the physiological side of the addictions.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 19:07 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
'Section 16' machines
That's seriously grim.

As I said with Party Time I could well be misremembering, might just be thinking about the sickening amount of money getting pumped in to it with nothing coming out :(

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 23:47 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Some of the Microgaming slots are like digital crack.


Just remembered something that amused me. I don't suppose you've seen Thunderstruck II? It's the first fruit machine I've seen that actually has achievements. Considering that like most online slots it's just a case of hitting 'spin' and has no element of skill whatsoever, it doesn't really feel like much of an achievement.. particularly when you don't even win anything for unlocking them. :)

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 8:52 
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devilman wrote:
AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Some of the Microgaming slots are like digital crack.


Just remembered something that amused me. I don't suppose you've seen Thunderstruck II? It's the first fruit machine I've seen that actually has achievements. Considering that like most online slots it's just a case of hitting 'spin' and has no element of skill whatsoever, it doesn't really feel like much of an achievement.. particularly when you don't even win anything for unlocking them. :)


Yeah I had a little dabble on Thunderstruck II last year, very clever achievement system, to say the least.

Thing is though, the different free spins rounds that you unlock still remain random and none of them is really 'better' than any of the others, they're just weighted differently.

Indeed, I eventually settled on the first one as being the best suited to getting large wins, the third and particularly the fourth were far 'flatter' so gave loads of small wins but hardly ever added up to anything exciting. They made the progression look better by giving the later unlocks far more free spins, but you only need to look at the reel sets they used, fucking full of basic symbols and hardly any of the higher paying ones. (See also the 'MEGA WILD' round, the reels for that were chock full of 9,10,J quite a lot of Q,K,A and very few high paying symbols.)

The first free spin choice could give bugger all, but thanks to the multiplier you only needed one decent win to make it worthwhile.

NOTE TO SELF - Do not be tempted, despite being on holiday and at your PC with a fridge full of booze available. Eeek, lol :spew:


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 8:53 
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I can see how they get you... I've just won £6 off £1 credit on the Gladiator machine.

I like these AtrocityExhibition. Do you have any more exciting ones or could you point me in the direction of some?


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:02 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Thing is though, the different free spins rounds that you unlock still remain random and none of them is really 'better' than any of the others, they're just weighted differently.


I noticed that too. I did get one decent win on the end one, but more often than not, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th options were pretty weak.. more spins, but hardly any wins from it.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:05 
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My 2p.

Hate Fruit Machines. I watched my mate nearly piss his life away (like literally starve to death as he stopped buying food) on them until I physically dragged him away from one and told him to sort his life out. This guy would buy a pint of milk and a packet of chewing gum in Sainsburys at 8am and get as much cash back as his Switch Card would let him and then play the fruities until he was spent up. Then back to Sainsburys for more cashback. He must have been £30k in debt by the time any of use noticed. Loans, credit cards, borrowing off mates, all in pursuit of a fucking £250 jackpot. Evil fucking machines. Life ruiners.

Anyway, sorry about that.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:17 
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DavPaz wrote:
My 2p.

Hate Fruit Machines. I watched my mate nearly piss his life away (like literally starve to death as he stopped buying food) on them until I physically dragged him away from one and told him to sort his life out. This guy would buy a pint of milk and a packet of chewing gum in Sainsburys at 8am and get as much cash back as his Switch Card would let him and then play the fruities until he was spent up. Then back to Sainsburys for more cashback. He must have been £30k in debt by the time any of use noticed. Loans, credit cards, borrowing off mates, all in pursuit of a fucking £250 jackpot. Evil fucking machines. Life ruiners.

Anyway, sorry about that.


Nah man entirely fair comment and TBH I kind of like where this thread has gone, forums are (IMO) far more interesting and human places when folks open up a bit and actually talk to each other, even if the subject matter isn't entirely cheerful.

And yes, fruit machines can indeed be absolute life ruiners, in conjunctions with drugs and alcohol, they very nearly landed me in the morgue. There are literally years of my life that with the benefit of hindsight I effectively wasted and lost, and they ain't never coming back.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:27 
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TheVision wrote:
I can see how they get you... I've just won £6 off £1 credit on the Gladiator machine.

I like these AtrocityExhibition. Do you have any more exciting ones or could you point me in the direction of some?


What resolution does your PC/laptop run at?

There are some complications around different eras of machines requiring different versions of MFME, the most recent machines all run on a version of MFME that doesn't support any kind of resizing, so some of the best layouts require a vertical resolution of 1200 pixels, otherwise you won't be able to see the whole layout.

This is one of the most recent machines emulated (indeed, the basic codebase is still in use on brand new machines), but it's designed for 1600x1200 or better.

30p play/£25 jackpot, with a solid £100 streak, but it can eat money like a bastard when it's in the mood, with horrible blocks at £5 and £15. And it's got fucking Ant and Dec in it - 'Welcome to the jungle!'

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:28 
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I'm running 1280x1024.. I guess that's going to limit me then.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:31 
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Ummm... I've never really understood fruit machines, and the terminology here isn't helping :D

A solid £100 streak? What does that mean?


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:34 
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TheVision wrote:
I can see how they get you... I've just won £6 off £1 credit on the Gladiator machine.

I like these AtrocityExhibition. Do you have any more exciting ones or could you point me in the direction of some?


The JPM ones have some good features - Indiana Jones, Roller Coaster, Sonic the Hedgehog and Casino Crazy spring to mind. AE might be able to sort you out with some links for those.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:34 
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It's a continual run of wins (normally with no interaction from the player) which add up to £100.

[edit]At Trooper.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:40 
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Grim... wrote:
It's a continual run of wins (normally with no interaction from the player) which add up to £100.

[edit]At Trooper.


How is that allowed if the jackpot is £25? Surely that means the jackpot is £100?

Oh, and "Horrible blocks at £5 and £15"? :shrug:


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:43 
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Grim... wrote:
It's a continual run of wins (normally with no interaction from the player) which add up to £100.

[edit]At Trooper.


Yep.

The new £70 jackpot fruit machines are capped by law at two repeats, but that's still a rather scary £210 :o (Scary as in, you wouldn't want to be the sucker catching them after paying out.)

Here's a £70 jackpot Rainbow Riches repeating twice, as you can see the dude already had some wins in the bank, so he's got nearly £300 in there. (For balance it should be noted that these machines can take hundreds of pounds in cold blood, very nasty.)



And here's a £140 mega streak on a pub machines, as Grim... says, it requires no interaction from the player, he just stands there and watches the wins roll in, 'behind the scenes' it takes a credit at £70, as that's the maximum prize per credit.

Mega streaks are basically the 'top feature', and quite compelling :S



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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:44 
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Trooper wrote:
Grim... wrote:
It's a continual run of wins (normally with no interaction from the player) which add up to £100.

[edit]At Trooper.


How is that allowed if the jackpot is £25? Surely that means the jackpot is £100?

Oh, and "Horrible blocks at £5 and £15"? :shrug:


It will take another credit for each £25. There are stickers on these things that say that the maximum you can win from one credit is £25 so you have to play another to win a repeat etc.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:49 
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I have a question.

Is there any "skill" involved in winning on these things or is it all down to chance?


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:50 
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Have I told the story about my mate 'Chinese' Rob* winning 2 £250 jackpots from adjacent machines within 2 minutes of each other in a crowded pub on a Firday night? 250 pound coins fit very nicely into a pint glass.

*He's Indian. Lol.


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:52 
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Trooper wrote:
Grim... wrote:
It's a continual run of wins (normally with no interaction from the player) which add up to £100.

[edit]At Trooper.


How is that allowed if the jackpot is £25? Surely that means the jackpot is £100?

Oh, and "Horrible blocks at £5 and £15"? :shrug:


Well back in the day when the jackpot was £6 (and before that £4.80), machines had to go on streaks to make them worth playing, as £4.80 wasn't exactly a thrilling amount of money, even in 1991.

As such they'd pay loads of big wins and jackpots in quick succession, even the £4.80 machines could kick out £40-£50 on the streak.

That behaviour has basically scaled over the years, as the jackpot has increased (£4.80 to £6 to £8 to £10 to £15 to £25 to £35 and now £70), the streak has always remained.

'Blocks' are a really horrible control method that fruit machines use to prevent the player achieving 'undesirable' wins, BFMs (they make I'm A Celebrity) had a block at £5 and £15 on their £25 jackpot machines, when the machine is 'blocking' you'll never, ever get a win above the block, whatever you do. This leads to stuff like unwinnable 'gambles', whereby the machine will offer you a hi/lo 'gamble' on the number reel, and whichever you choose, it'll just choose a losing result. (i.e. If you're on a 2 and choose 'HIGHER' it'll spin in a 1, however if you were to choose 'LOWER' it'll spin in 3 to 12. We tested this in the early days of the emulators with VMWare, as we were finally able to do what no one had ever done before, and rewind time.)

A certain :attitude: and myself teamed up over this issue for fruit machine Fairplay campaign - http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.c ... /index.htm


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 10:05 
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TheVision wrote:
I have a question.

Is there any "skill" involved in winning on these things or is it all down to chance?


Knowing what the features do, knowing the reels, being able to hit skill stop features and all that sort of stuff would certainly count as skill.

JPM/ACE machines from the 90s are widely regarded as being the most influenced by skill.

Have a crack at this bugger, if it ever spins a jackpot straight in, you're doing it wrong and a decent player could have jackpotted it long before it actually rolled in.

This uses a different emulator (included in the zip file), fairly self-explanatory, just run the executable and scan the folder you've unzipped too.

The guy who did this layout was (is) a fucking Photoshop genius, the source photos he had to work from were total gash.

http://files.enjin.com/62279/Arcadia.zip

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 10:19 
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I've just spunked about £30 of fake money into that machine and won nothing. I can totally see how people get addicted to the "just one more go" factor of these.

*Edit* And I've just won £18 off a couple of credits on Gladiators. I don't get it... but yes, addictive!


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 12:17 
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TheVision wrote:
I've just spunked about £30 of fake money into that machine and won nothing. I can totally see how people get addicted to the "just one more go" factor of these.


I probably hammered it the last time I played it, and if I do say so myself, I'm very good at it - so you're effectively the poor guy playing the machine after me and losing his shirt.

(Real fruit machines have battery-backed RAM so that the machine keeps track of where it's up to with its payouts, so that when it gets turned off at night and switched on the next day, it remembers where it was up to. The emulator uses a .RAM file which emulates the behaviour of that physical RAM, so the same principle applies.)


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 13:56 
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Blimey I did leave it in a bad mood.

Took me £20 to get a jackpot, but there's usually more than one in it, or a bit of afters at least.

There's no point pushing for the top STREAKER feature as JPMs don't maintain traditional streak pots as such, so all the value can be taken out of it by other means.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 15:56 
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TheVision wrote:
I have a question.

Is there any "skill" involved in winning on these things or is it all down to chance?


As AE has said there used to be a fair bit of skill involved in these , especially around the mid 90's , and being good at the skill parts often allowed you to get the jackpots and big wins easier and quicker than those who did not.

Also after the manufacturers worked out that people could really be that skillful they changed the machines to 'cheat' you out of them - as an example a number of games at the time had a stop'n'step feature (normally low down on the feature board) where one reel spins really fast and you press the button to stop it - these were all true skill so if you were good enough you got the jackpot off this feature 'most' of the time.

Later chips then made this feature 'cheat' where even if you pressed it at the correct time the reel would 'slip' onto the next symbol (and no this wasnt the person 'missing' the feature as you could take it again and again and you could hit 'up to the bar' with no issues but it would not allow you to hit anything above)

AtrocityExhibition wrote:
The guy who did this layout was (is) a fucking Photoshop genius, the source photos he had to work from were total gash.


There were really 2 people who could turn any rubbish small image of a machine into a work of art , one is the person who did this (who i'm suprised you didnt name) , and the other was Pook


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 19:41 
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New media centre PC = excessively massive gambling game.

It's only pretend money, mind.

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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 19:47 
Filthy Junkie Bitch

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devilman wrote:
Captain Caveman wrote:
Get help mate. Give your missus all your cards and cash and be totally honest with her about your reasons, so you've never access to money. Set up a savings account and put all money saved in that (irrespective of what you owe), and reward you and her with a nice holiday with the proceeds.


I'm single and live alone so it's only affecting me which makes it a little harder. Plus my main vice is online slots now rather than the physical ones. If you've never played the likes of the Microgaming/Playtech slots online - they're far more addictive than physical machines, to me at least.

I appreciate the advice from you and AE though - I'm trying to sort myself out again at the moment. Currently I'm at the stage where I'm blogging my progress daily just to have an incrementing record of my thoughts at the time so that I'm not bottling stuff up. I'm on a whole 8 days without so far, so it's very early days yet though. ;)

(I tend to keep all this crap out of the Nay thread)

There is a free download programme which will block any form of gambling from your computer. It really works (I once spent a good hour trying to unlock it for a game of online poker on facebook). I strongly recommend it, although, it is no more than claiming you've given up smoking when really it is because you are at the in laws ;)


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 Post subject: Re: The pointless emulation thread - fruit machines
PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 19:56 
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Which one's that? The ones I've seen have all been paid apps with free trials. I imagine they work in similar ways though - in which case, I can work around it if the urge gets strong enough.

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