Dougsta
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Posts posted by Dougsta
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2 hours ago, slotsmagic said:
I don't have access to the ROMs from here but shouldn't MFME automatically insert the correct PIC code on booting? If not I'm pretty sure it can be worked out easily enough.
Failing that, if the lamp numbers - while wrong when used in another DX - remain the same between boots and when being played, it wouldn't be too hard to convert the lamp numbers. Just a case of editing the layout, probably about an hour's work.
Yeah I think you're right, the latest MFME does that job for us. I was thinking that if the PIC code is correct, the lamps would be correct across versions, as the CHR is just an intermediate mapping ruleset, but it could be someone will need to just amend the lamp numbers.
@logopolisCan you post those oldest ROM versions please? I'll take a look and see if I can revise the lamping.
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14 hours ago, logopolis said:
There is also TOT2 0.2 and TOT2 0.3 which are both £5 and £15 program but if you try and run it in the DX then all the lamps are wrong.
The CHR/PIC is wrong and needs to be amended. Later versions of Barcrest ROMs almost always updated the CHR. I'm not an expert on how that is fixed these days, but one of the layout designers will certainly know how.
And what an amazing machine it was on the early £15 chips. You could easily get £100+ on a streak. I always found it interesting how Follow Me offered a repeat chance after the £25 upgrade, which it never did on £15.
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I don't ever recall seeing this on a game in the wild. For example, Club Dracula is bad for it in the emulator, but didn't do this in the wild. It would be a terrible bug if they did, really.
As andrew96 said, emulation can be off at times. Chris had a lot of custom code to handle various scenarios that might seem trivial, and occasionally something would naturally get overlooked.
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I think this is a very minor emulation issue, some sort of timing in the code. They didn't do this in the wild.
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2 hours ago, logopolis said:
Ha not at all. There are several ways to trap phones when it doesn't want to give them. I have made a video which I haven't yet released on YouTube because there might be a few of these about still. Actually I think I might release it, why not! These never got upgraded to £100 and I don't know of any about anymore.
I'm thinking get 2 phones while on the nudge stack, then try to trap via bonuses and/or shuffling to get cash stack positions that will guarantee you the 3rd phone. I think there are a lot of options there, looks a fun one to play that way.
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Always fun to do these experiments. There was an Epoch Maygay clubber released here back in 2018, I've forgotten the name but it could be trapped. See also the early Club Psycho Cash Beast ROMs that turned up a couple of years back - switchable to 1K jackpot with a working emptier
Edit - the Maygay clubber was Rags to Riches. Detailed explanation of how I trapped it here, but I doubt it will be easy to repeat.
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I seem to remember one of the low down features - Pick a Reel or something was always good for an easy few quid each board. Fast Cash was also reasonable. Otherwise just drain the value and try to get a Multi Ball / Extra Life feature and see if you can get get a high win from those. If it awarded the Super feature it was usually a reasonable sign, you had to get to the outer edge to get jackpot.
These were OK if played with restraint. Forcing was a hiding to nothing.
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Isn't this the error that comes when trying to load a .dat file in the new versions of the emulator, or a .fml file in the legacy versions?
In other words, you are trying to load an incompatible layout format in whatever version of the emulator you've got.
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Yeah Rob Hubbard's stuff was top drawer. Anyone who can produce stuff like this despite the ZX Spectrum's limitations has got skills.
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Yeah, this was a good game. There is an excellent DX by Dad, and a very poor classic which was the first layout I ever made.
You'll find them in the legacy area.
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Most of the time it’s the note acceptor that slows down booting. Turning it off might help. Depends on the game really.
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1 hour ago, monkeyboypaul said:
I'm curious to know:
Who discovered the exploits? Was it a particular type of person, interest group (computer code nerd) or age demographic? I was 'only' 15 in 1995, and far more interested in girls and beer than deconstructing fruit machine programming! I noticed a lot of older 30+ players who must've been able to spot patterns and had the deeper pockets to follow through. I'd take no more than £20 out for a gamble back then, often much less. Spoke to Mr P last year, he said he'd take £100-150 out each time back then! Was it arcade employees who'd see this stuff day in, day out, and then pass it on?
Did these people purposefully set out to find the exploits? Did they have access to a machine, or hit a specific arcade who got machines early - which must've cost them hundreds initially! Or was it a lucky stumble? Example, referring to @Chopaholic video below - how does someone know that the £6 win is free on SuperPot, or that it comes from the streak pot? There's no visual indicator, no live view of the drift? how?!
How information was documented & passed on? We're talking very early internet days. Mobile phones aren't common. Was any particular location a hotspot for this - the South East maybe? I lived in Skeggy and we knew fuck all. It was all word of mouth.
How did players check for new chip versions in machines like SuperPots? Discretely switch it off and on again?
I'd love to know what I was missing!
As for the death of AWP - my interest waned at £15jp, I started to lose too often, and too much, plus I moved to the city & nightclubs happened. You'd still find the odd older machine in them, so i'd still dabble and often do ok (compared to the crowds who didn't grow up in arcades!).
Some good questions there! The free win issue on Maygays was a common theme (so was the permanent invincibility trick) on their games. I guess you discover it by noticing that the machine never gets unhappy when you take these wins, work out that the wins must be "free", and just keep rinsing and repeating from there. Once you've done a machine enough, you'll notice the change to the chipped version when it refuses to play ball. With Super Pots, it just never spins an 8 or 3 unless it's streaking.
Then the next Maygays you encounter you immediately start searching for ways to get over the block. I think Hot Pots had one of the Gold Pot wins free as well if you could get it over £5.
Off and On wouldn't be enough on most games, as they don't all tell you the specific revision when booting. One thing I heard of was on some games you could see a sticker/plate they added once an update had been done, if you looked between the reels. Could be urban myth.
Pros often bought and sold info between themselves, especially once they were done with an area. Visit, rob the machines, then sell the trick to a local for £200, since you'll never be back. Personally I just subtly observed others on games, especially if they looked like they knew what they were doing. I got the Jackpoteers trick that way, for one. Other stuff I worked out for myself, like optimal strategies on JPMs and certain Barcrests with a fixed streak cycle (Revolution, Gold Strike etc).
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10 hours ago, wearecity said:
I don't believe that was the case.
More a case, that his work and other members of his family could become aware of it and it could bring trouble to his door. Just like people get sacked or forced to resign for a view or action expressed from when they were a completely different person to what they are now.
My brother got the sack from a job for a Facebook comment, which was reported to his work.
Apologies if I got that wrong. I agree that you’ve got to be careful with social media these days
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15 minutes ago, Chopaholic said:
Many thanks for all the comments folks, much appreciated.
I've been turning things over in my mind as to how I can restore (nearly) all of the FME content from the old channel to a new channel (I'll jettison the online slots stuff), it'll take a bit of a time but it should be doable.
In terms of new content it'll be limited, Arcade Simulator updates, maybe the odd 'Sinbad moment', that sort of thing, but mostly just restoring the 200+ FME videos from the old channel to be available again. (The Gambling Low Ebbs series won't be on the list, they were the ones that were causing me the most stress along with some of the online slots stuff, but the idea with the Gambling Low Ebbs videos would be to make them available privately to the specific Google accounts of only DIF members who want access.)
I've got a bit of time off work coming up, so I'll see if I can up with something that'll function OK, it won't be any sort of mass reuploading, but maybe a process that could get a video reuploaded once per week or so. (Each reupload would be re-appraised, edited where required/beneficial, and timecoded.)
TBH it was quite surprising to realise that the channel/videos had actually managed to touch quite a few people, as @Mort alluded to above, I hadn't quite understood the extent of it, albeit in its own small way as a niche hobbyist channel.
Once again, thanks for all the kind words.
That's good to hear! The channel was loved because it was unpretentious and based entirely on your enthusiasm for your hobby. You tell a good story and covered a good range of topics. There was something for everyone.
It's a shame that someone in your personal life saw fit to spoil that. There are some assholes around.
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I don't ever remember seeing an Elegance cab with a note acceptor fitted, so it might be impossible in any case.
That said, the manual for Duff Beer Guide does mention Note Acceptors, so they must have been planned at some point. Is the round panel where the Global Games sticker sits removable? If not, I can't see any other obvious place an acceptor could be housed.
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Sad to hear it, but if the channel has become more trouble than it's worth then it's totally understandable.
Thanks for all that you put into it.
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Watched @Chopaholic's latest video on Autoplay and reducing RTPs. I reckon that banning Autoplay will cause a significant, but not disastrous reduction in volume from UK players. Addicts will always gamble, almost regardless of what conditions they have to do it in. Sad but true.
Same with the reducing RTPs. Obviously people who are active at Casinomeister are a far more informed breed of gambler. Joe Public probably isn't even aware of the fact that RTPs can vary like this, and this is why more and more casinos are just dropping their RTPs. They see only positive effects, since the vast majority of customers are completely blind to it and carry on regardless.
With all that said, it is a clear race to the bottom. Once RTPs are screwed down to the absolute minimum, players are going broke quicker, and regulations are tightening faster, the industry will have run out of options.
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30 minutes ago, Reg said:
Good Afternoon All.
Today I paid what I believe to be the last bill of 2021 for this site costs.
I have brought this forward a little earlier then planned but am delighted to pay the surplus money towards the Cats Protection League in memory of Chris Wren as per this chain.
Thank you to everybody that specifically supported the Cats Protection League and this charity for Chris Wren's memory directly and also everybody that has supported the site that created some additional excess money that could also be donated.
The Cats Protection League is the official charity of this site from now on and I hope we can do the same in the future.
The second post has been edited to show the donation, but I also share this here again.
Thank you.
Great stuff Reg. Well done to you for organising this, and to everyone who donated. I'm sure Chris would be delighted.
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Is it true or was it urban myth that if you stopped no numbers on Shoot Em Up, you'd get an instant jackpot? And also wasn't it possible to get 3 red bars too?
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Yeah it looks like Barcrest just gave up and did the bluntest fix possible. I guess they thought it would only ever be seen by players they didn't want, so sod it! They were already well past their peak by this point, and Bellfruit were eating up market share with DOND. Mistakes like the ones on Alien must really have cost them.
I've seen Red Alert do 12 -> 12 before and lose for Fireman's Lift. This was on the very final chip, I think.
Rich Geezer also did 12 -> 12 when gambling for the Reel Stop feature, which was guaranteed jackpot.
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Yeah it sees the Blasts and Nudges, but I always felt you could get your jackpot win a little earlier this way. You can get it into a 3-way spot where it has to avoid the last red arrow, 8 Blasts and 12 Nudges, and often you'd have too many Shots for it to prevent you getting one of them. The machine would have to be reasonably happy for this to be possible.
I have to say I rarely forced this machine on any jackpot. Only if very red on feature entry would I force for the streak. Otherwise I'd take the value out of it as much as possible, and watch out for the very subtle IM that others might miss.
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Easy Streak and its clones were decent games. I seem to remember there being an indication that the streak was close because you repeatedly got boards with entirely (or mostly) red arrows. It was a bit like the old BWBs that had a tell based on the red streak lights.
One thing that's also worth doing is developing 8 Blasts to have two bells in view. Just use Respin Reels and Bonus Nudges to do this. If you could simultaneously get 3 bells within 12 nudges that also helped, but this wasn't as easy. You could sometimes trap it into either a red streak or jackpot this way, but it was just a way to get jackpots sooner, and certainly not any kind of emptier.
If looking to cut and run, I used to grab Cash Repeaters and the feature Money Spinner. Some decent wins were possible.
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1 hour ago, Chopaholic said:
I'm not even sure it's as complicated as that, I think it might literally just be a single RNG pick and you get one of the 1.2m possible outcomes, some of which will include a bonus round. i.e. Once you press the 'START' button everything after that is entirely pre-determined from a single RNG pick.
We're saying the same thing in a different way
When you press start, a random outcome is picked from the bag of possible outcomes. Some of those will be bonus rounds, and each of those will have different total prize amounts. So before getting the bonus, two things were totally random:
- Whether you get a bonus or not
- How much money you'll get from that bonus
The rest is, as you rightly say, a pre-determined sequence.
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45 minutes ago, Chopaholic said:
Not quite the case on Jammin' Jars, it has a pool of (IIRC) 1.2 million results in the RNG table and each game round it basically just picks a result out of the pool and plays out the sequence, so how much a bonus round paid isn't random once it actually starts, the pick itself at the start of the game round is fair and random though.
Yeah, that’s what I understood. Pre-bonus, being awarded a bonus and total prize were random parameters. The actual in-bonus events thereafter are not random.
£6Jp Andy Capp - Dodgy programming from yesteryear
in The Laboratory
Posted
Be interesting to know if it compensated that win properly? That sounds like a programming error somewhere