Chopaholic
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Posts posted by Chopaholic
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Yes I fired up Apidya from time to time because it was such a nice looking and sounding game, but then I always quickly remembered it wasn't much fun to play
On the tangent of getting sound hardware to do impossible stuff, were you aware of the 'multitracker' Tim Follin managed to program for the 48K ZX Spectrum?
Personally I was always more a fan of the C64 with its amazing SID chip and then later the Amiga (over the Atari ST), but you've got to admire talent like this.
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I played Apidya right back when it was released in 1992 and TBH was never really much of a fan of it. I gave it a fair crack of the whip as I liked the graphics and music/sound so much. but the game simply isn't that much fun.
It's brutally difficult, which isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself, but Apidya just feels unfair.
The developers of the game wanted it to be a Japanese style shooter and whilst they got the aesthetics mostly right they didn't really understand the game style itself very well IMO, the main problem being the lack of dynamic difficulty based on how the player is doing.
If you go back even to a game such as Nemsis in the arcades (a 1985 Konami shooter), the game adjusts its difficulty based on your performance, if you do really well, get all your options maxed out and are laying waste with the lasers, the enemies start moving faster, fire more bullets that move quicker and so on. (Just get to the end of Level 1 in Nemesis without losing a life and having all your goodies, it really tries to kill you.)
The flip side of this that if you're doing badly, you've lost a life or two, have an underpowered ship or whatever, the game will dial things back a bit to still give you a fair chance, to the extent you can take out the boss at the end of the first level with just a single speed up and the basic gun.
Apidya doesn't do this (not as far as I could ever tell anyway), and you can see this in @Reg's video, he knows he's stuffed at the end of Level 1 because he's got a basic ship, the boss fight an exercise in futility. (You can also see how it leaves a residual enemy from the level itself on screen still attacking him, Nemesis despawns anything else around before throwing the boss onto screen.)
And it's not even like it's a resource issue (i.e. lack of CPU or RAM or whatever), the Amiga is a more powerful machine in every regard than the arcade hardware that Nemesis was built on - the coders of Apidya just didn't get this critical element of Japanese shooters.
So for me Apidya looks and sounds lovely, but it's not a great game to play.
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Hi folks, there are loads of FME videos to get reuploaded to the new channel (200+) so it'll take a while to get through them all, at the very least each video will need to me to watch it through from start to finish to do the timecodes, do a new thumbnail, description and so on - so a bit of effort involved for each one. I am intending to get through the lot, but at a rate of 2-3 per week it'll still take a little while.
As such, if there are any videos you can remember from the old channel that you'd like to see bumped up the list, just post here to let me know which one.
@lammas10 has mentioned in another thread he'd like the That's Life one to be reuploaded, so I'll get that one in the pipeline to get done sooner rather than later.
EDIT TO ADD - This does not include the Gambling Low Ebbs videos, my plan is to make those privately available to DIF members via invite, but that isn't ready yet.
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Here you go folks, back in business.
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This is a great little game to fire up from time to time, and to chase your own high scores on. (My current single credit best is 659600.)
Just a couple of notes, the next ball is shown at the top left, it's useful for planning out whether to take out a clump or not. The 'success rate' thing that was confusing you slightly is how far you've progressed through the game, the first one you see is always 20% as the submarine dives down, which is why it went to 23% when you died on the level after that.
I see someone left a comment on the video saying they remember me having the cat from the game as my avatar back in the FF days
(Which indeed I did.)
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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 arrange 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.
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Hi Alarmkid the raw file for that video is 10GB in size so that's not getting emailed anywhere!
I'm currently musing on the possibility of opening a new channel and working through uploading the old channel's back catalogue to make them available again, but can't say for sure if/when it'll happen yet.
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Thanks everyone I do genuinely appreciate all the comments. It was a bit of a wrench to delete the channel as (1) I'd put so much time and effort into all the content on there and (2) Whilst it was a small, niche channel, the videos were viewed many hundreds of times on average, with some getting quite a bit more than that, and I didn't want to 'let down' those people.
(As an aside, the more popular videos were managing over 1000 views, with some getting to 1500+ or even 2000+, such as the Psycho Cash Beast Club video. The most watched video on the channel was 'Roshtein - fake money streamer?', which last time I'd checked was around 175,000 (!) views.)
Ultimately though it's supposed to be a hobby, and when a hobby has started to cause you a degree of stress and worry, it's probably time to change things.
@wearecity is quite correct that the channel ended up going in directions I really wasn't expecting when I started it, once I began dropping little anecdotes and stories into the videos - (which I did very early on, and it was very well received) - they morphed into something far more personal, culminating of course with the first Gambling Low Ebbs video, which became a series.
(I remember recording the first Gambling Low Ebbs video, it was late one evening and I'd had a small sherry or two, and the idea of getting some of this horrible stuff 'out of me' had been percolating in my head for a while, so I went downstairs and just recorded it, it all just came out. It was a bombsite and the footage sat on my hard drive for months, I didn't think it was salvageable but I decided to try and edit it together one evening and managed to get it into a coherent state, and the first Gambling Low Ebbs video was born, it got a really positive reaction in the comments (as well as here at DIF) and I leaned more into the personal story/anecdote/feelings side of things going forward.)
The simple truth is though, that many of those videos contained a lot of personal stuff, including descriptions of activities that were flat out illegal, and we all know how stuff can 'reach through time' to bite you on the arse these days, and I didn't want that to happen.
(I'm not going to go into specifics here, and nothing horrible happened, but I will say that my online name and channel, crossed paths with my professional real life in a way I really didn't like, and it made me realise that a genuinely malicious actor could make serious trouble for me if things had gone in a different direction. (It's not just that, there's some other stuff too.) Oh yes and there was also an attempt to hack my Google account, that came as a result of the Online Slots stuff, mutil-factor authentication FTW there. Oh and the guy who threatened to track me down and beat me up over the Alien method video, which was nice. Ultimately though it was the IRL crossover, along with some of my changing circumstances, that made me go ahead and delete the channel.)
This is not the exact scenario, but imagine you're working with a new customer on a big project, there's a lot of money at stake and you're a key resource on this project, and your online identity and YouTube channel are known to the customer, something goes wrong and/or someone decides they don't like you, and they're also aware of (multiple!) videos where you graphically describe taking drugs, dealing drugs, abusing alcohol, stealing, and being utterly consumed by gambling to the point of self-harm, hospitalisation, hunger and desperation - are you potentially compromised by those videos?
I did consider doing a 'sanitising sweep' on the channel to leave behind only the 'safest' videos, but that idea was dead in the water because the personal stuff was woven so much into so many videos, plus I really hated the idea of butchering my own content, to me it either had to be 100% genuine or not at all. I also considered self-censoring future videos either during the recording or editing phase, but again, that felt totally alien to me and I knew I wouldn't be able to do it and not hate what I was making.
It wasn't a rash or impulsive decision to delete the channel, it's actually been bothering me for a while now, and whilst I am genuinely sorry to those who watched and enjoyed the channel because it's no longer there, I can't lie, it's actually a weight off my shoulders now, so I know I made the right decision. I know it sounds harsh, but as wearecity notes above, it's a big risk to take for videos that are often only getting a few hundred views and generate no income. (The channel would have only earned pennies even if I did monetise it, but I was adamant that it should purely be a passion project so never went down that route, or asked for donations on Patreon or anything like that.)
When I started the channel I had no earthly idea if anyone at all would watch it, so it was nice to see it grow into a reasonable little channel, and I'm delighted to have been able to introduce new people to fruit machine emulation, Arcade Simulator, and of course the community here at Desert Island Fruits or elsewhere such as The Mecca and Dad's FME.
Please note that I did a hard-delete on the channel, it doesn't exist on YouTube anymore so the content is gone in that regard, thus I do not have the option of sending out private links to anything such as @Boulderdash asking above if he can have a link to the Ebbs videos. However, I have got backups of every video I made for the channel, so if there's anything anyone wants a copy of I'm sure we can work something out. (I'll PM you about the Ebbs videos Boulderdash, and @dad you're welcome to have a copy of the DAD Tribute video
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Morning folks it wasn't the easiest decision to make but it's been on my mind for a while now, a few things have changed for me IRL, including professionally, and I was uncomfortable with so much of me being 'out there' as it were, it was no great secret who I was and there was a lot of personal stuff on the channel.
On a wider note my enthusiasm for making videos had been rather on the wane, the death of Chris really hit me and cast a shadow over things that I tried my best to combat, but ultimately didn't succeed in doing.
I'm glad I got all but one of the Gambling Low Ebbs series done, and was able to cover the birth of Arcade Simulator into a public release.
There was the option of simply leaving the channel in stasis rather than deleting it, but it had started to 'cross the streams' in some ways I wasn't entirely comfortable with, and quite frankly was becoming a source of worry.
Thanks to all who watched and commented, I hope you enjoyed the videos, the channel had a run of almost exactly four years, in which time I produced hundreds of videos that received many hundreds of thousands of views in total, and it was a pleasure to have the chance to make something that so many people connected with.
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Hi folks just a heads-up my channel is now deleted, so if you're looking for it nothing has gone wrong, it's how I want it to be.
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That really is bizarre, why on earth doesn't the machine even remotely look at what the result of a winning gamble would be?
Compensated machines are so fucked up.
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On 05/12/2021 at 19:27, jasonc said:
Thanks as always for the video, Tommy C for the DX and everyone involved with sourcing.
I was curious about how this one played out, so I did a bit more digging... this Cheerful Pessimist video from 2017 has an interesting insight:
Sure enough, that seems to be what is happening - and not only can you trigger the notorious critical error (HEY! Check it out!) but you can really screw up the profile of the machine - to your benefit or detriment.
- Cash or Bust (Death or Glory) in IM awards Mega Streak, for faster experimentation.
On restart, there seems to be three scenarios:
- The restart was too late, and the win will be accounted for correctly and the IM happiness on 50p will end.
- The machine successfully recovered the win on restart (e.g. during count-up or reel spinning phases) - it'll be credited to the bank but wrongly accounted for against the 30p stake.
- As happened in the video - if you restart just after the count-up finishes on any win (e.g. during bookkeeping phase), the machine can "pop" (sound effect) on restart and does a memory clear - the win is voided (neither tracked or credited) and the existing bank and credits will also be lost. This means the machine has accounted for wins that it will never pay out.
The meters do give an idea of the fuckery going on:
- CASHIN (physical cash) and VTP (total staked) drift apart due to the credits lost by memory clears.
- STK1 PERC (30p) and STK2 PERC (50p) track the awarded wins, but PERCENT (overall) behaves differently - e.g. 28.9% overall is lower than both 105.0% at 30p and 36.1% at 50p components.
- STK1 PERC can increase without STK1 VTP changing - e.g. 3351 at 64.1% becomes 3351 at 73.7%
If you do get the critical error, you can still check the meters out of curiosity through the door - in my case STK1 3405 at 126.5% (+£131 drift) was fine, but 3405 at 136.5% (+£165 drift) killed it.
Thanks @jasonc that's a really interesting analysis of what's going on
A couple of people left comments on my video also making the point that the 'free' win is indeed wrongly accounted for against the 30p stake, hence the 50p stake stays buzzing.
Also, apparently, this was a good machine to play before the plugging was discovered, as it dual-staked so a decent player could take all the value out of it properly via the Revolver feature on both stakes, so the plugging being discovered and knackering all the machines for them was really quite unwelcome!
TBH it all just feeds more and more into my overarching narrative that compensated machines were just never done properly.
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On 03/12/2021 at 22:50, logopolis said:
Cheers for the shout out in the video! It was good for this method to have some commentary because it might have been a bit difficult to figure out what was actually going on without the narration.
There are a few others on your channel @logopolis that I might give the same treatment if that's OK with you
As with this one, I'll give full credit to you and link to your video and channel, to make it clear I'm just doing a 'narrated version' of your video as it were.
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Hitting the legendary CRITICAL ERROR state on a Barcrest where it basically drops on its arse and screams that it wants its mummy.
Thanks to @Tommy c for the layouts featured
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6 hours ago, MPU_FIVE said:
Just tried running Fairground in MFME 20.1 and the dice reel does'nt show the dice when it spins... always lands on the blank red as in picture... also reels are pissed... (winning symbols are below the winline in the pic) - did this happen to you @Chopaholic? - and if so, how can it be fixed?
Cheers -
Gary.
I see wearecity has already answered your question above Gary but yes I had to do the same fix on my copy of the layout as well, which is quite advanced by my standards!
IIRC the main reels were quite badly out and needed a pretty hefty offset to get them correct.
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22 hours ago, WonkySausage said:
another fine vid choppers
i didn't know about Hot Dogs and looks really fun to play, so it's another added to the collection, also cheers Dad for the layout as well!
It's a fab little machine, going from the comments on the video it's also one many people never saw back in the day either, which was kind of the point of video really, to give some attention to what's a bit of a hidden gem IMO, especially as it harks from the 'old testament' era of fruit machine emulation.
14 hours ago, wearecity said:Another enjoyable video.
Loved, Hot Dogs, me and a girl I worked with, played it many times in a few arcades. I sent a picture of the layout to her, a little while back on Facebook and she instantly remembered it.
We used to go for Butch 9/10, with the odd time for Fritz. but never Flash.
All the features were worth an exchange, because they could all give £3 +, even Money Belt and Spin A Win.
Fairground, is another one, I played many times in many places, but always found it quite frustrating, so never pushed it for the anything beyond £3 repeat. Always felt the feature board was a bit too short.
Fairground works well on the original 20p/£6 combo I think, any other stake and prize combo stuffs it up, and it really needs the £3 repeater too.
Hot Dogs is just flat out great, no real idea why it didn't do better back in the day TBH, if you think about how many Popeyes, Hagars, Fairgrounds etc there were, but I never saw a Hot Dogs for real.
6 hours ago, MPU_FIVE said:Another brill Degsy video... love to chill out with a cuppa and watch on my big telly in my hovel of a living room!
Remember playing Fairground in the Ship, Sittingbourne... used to have 4 fruit machines in that pub and 2 pool tables, and a dartboard. I loved it there - i could even buy drinks/crisps/chocolate from the bar with the 20p tokens from the machines. Those were the days! I miss them.
That's a highly agreeable setup, real fruit machines and videos of fruit machines in one neat package
Fairground is one I have lots of memories of as there were so many of them around at one point, is it just me though, or did that dice reel always break on the real thing?
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22 hours ago, dad said:
I really enjoyed that review of my old DX Degsy, thank you! Its years since I played it myself. If I remember correctly this was my first dabble with trying to do a 'Photo DX' and was a royal pain in the arse. Lots of flashburn everywhere and having to redraw stuff. I had a request not so long ago to redo this one from the original photo and thought - sod that!! Even now with much more experience I don't think I could improve it that much TBH!
Anyway, you mentioned in the Video if I'd be happy for you to release a MFME 20.1 update. It goes without saying that I'm more that happy for you to do this, as I would be for any of my older layouts if you wanted to do so in the future.
Cheers
Thanks DAD it's been a favourite of mine to return to over the years so it was nice to give it a proper airing on the channel, I appreciate you saying you're happy for it to get a new lease of life in V20.1 so if anyone asks me for it I'll pass it over
It still holds up well as a DX today IMO, perfectly playable and a great machine too!
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Wonky is correct F12 is your key for that, there are a load of useful keyboard shortcuts in MFME and I don't know all of them myself. There is one to reset the short term meters which is handy as it saves loading the layout back in, but I'll be buggered if I can remember what it is.....
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Here you go, it's converted over to work in V20.1, I've changed the coin input from £1 to 10p, and it's got a good 'infinite' autoplay profile that will (99.9% confident) work forever if left to its own devices.
Thanks to @Tommy c as this is his layout from back in 2013
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Going for the ambitious triple jackpot on the old 2p PCP machine Fruit Cracker - which is 300x stake if you can get it!
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On 22/11/2021 at 01:01, jasonc said:
Thanks for the videos as always.
I was thinking about the Compensated or Random thread, and one of the comments there was the distortion of stake to jackpot - a point mentioned here as a key part of the 2p era as well.
It's a curious comparison to the £1/£100 era, because those machines despite the (slightly) better percentages are much more aggressive in the compensator. To the point nobody really plays the game itself - they force it for jackpot.
I know the 5p/£6 era gets a bad reputation - and as someone who used to play them at the arcades on holiday, it was a double-edged sword. Machines that could be fully converted (where the minimum prize was 20p or 40p) allowed for a reasonable game, but those that couldn't (where the minimum reel win was £1, and most feature boards were itching to pay £2+) were going to be the equivalent of watching paint dry while you wait 50+ spins for a feature board that wouldn't kill you at the first opportunity.
The thing with the 2p machines is they were often built around modest 40/50p repeaters, with the £2 as the 'halo' top prize that was generally kept separate from the normal run of gameplay.
I suspect that £100 jackpot machines save more of their RTP for jackpots and big DOND games, stuff like that, so there's not as much left for general gameplay as the old 2p machines would have.
5p games are alright but as you say, they really have to have the wintable adjusted to match, the ones where £1 is the lowest win are awful.
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On 22/11/2021 at 00:29, jasonc said:
One of the observations Degsy mentioned in the video was that the old ones hadn't been nerfed from 96% yet - and that's because they have to formally communicate that change to all players. We are very much a frog in the boiling pot at the moment: some operators are only launching new games at 93-94%, some are nerfing the back-catalogue as well (and sending out hideous emails trying to hide the evidence - the William Hill one was a shocker as the links were broken!), some are even going full speed and nerfing again from 94% to 91-92%.
Casual players are definitely noticing autoplay has gone, whether they care enough to change their habits I don't know - but the UKGC trying to force it from a secondary or passive activity (as it is for many of us - watching YouTube on the side or similar) to an active one (because that's the only way to be responsible in their eyes) does seem to be a blunder, and we'll only see changes if it causes a massive reduction in play or an increase in dangerous behaviour (e.g. average stakes increase).
It's done me a favour in a way, I wasn't spending big money on online slots, £100-£150 here and there, but since Unibet nerfed their RTPs I haven't deposited a penny anywhere.
No great loss in the grand scheme of things, hopefully too many people won't get taken down by the new lower RTPs without realising what's happened.
Anyone recognise this fruit machine from Fawlty Towers?
in Emulator Chat
Posted
If it's from Season 1 then that was broadcast in 1975, which is before microprocessor control.
Season 2 was 1979 so there's a chance it could be microprocessor controlled, but it's unlikely.
Actually, having had a look at the picture again that's from the first episode of Season 1 (A Touch Of Class) which is when Lord Melbury came to stay at the hotel, so it'll definitely be electromechanical.
Therefore for it be emulated you'd need the schematics as slotsmagic notes above, so pretty much a 0% chance I'm afraid. (Electromechanical machines don't have ROMs.)