thealteredemu Posted March 22 Report Share Posted March 22 So, as I used to play the earlier versions in the wild till they got chipped, sadly we only have Open the Box 02 with the lines trick in tact. Past few weeks I’ve been figuring out by looking at the Open the Box 02 and comparing it with the fixed 04 programme. I started with Line 1 - Unlimited Nudges and have managed to make this line free. So will be going through all the lines and doing the same, I hope to take this over to the other clones we don’t have free lines working roms…. So Pay Rise, Pound for Pound, Camelot, Grand Prix and maybe Hi-De-Hi. J 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 22 Author Report Share Posted March 22 Also going to look i to the Sys1 Play it Again Deluxe as early £6 token versions were also emptiable via lines. We have version 03, which is the fixed version, so hoping to do this one too as it was a personal favourite as it was a lot more trickier as there were no features like Nudge Quick to make it quicker. Also only 3 max nudges to play with so you had to know roughly were the reels were landing and manipulate those. It was fairly easy once you got the hang of it as the machine would offer max nudges on almost every credit once it was behind percentage. The good thing about these ones is that it didn’t have the percentage watchdog so these don’t do those mini streaks to level out. J 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeP Posted March 22 Report Share Posted March 22 3 hours ago, thealteredemu said: So, as I used to play the earlier versions in the wild till they got chipped, sadly we only have Open the Box 02 with the lines trick in tact. Past few weeks I’ve been figuring out by looking at the Open the Box 02 and comparing it with the fixed 04 programme. I started with Line 1 - Unlimited Nudges and have managed to make this line free. So will be going through all the lines and doing the same, I hope to take this over to the other clones we don’t have free lines working roms…. So Pay Rise, Pound for Pound, Camelot, Grand Prix and maybe Hi-De-Hi. J Really interested to see how you get on with this, I have the most nostalgia for these games, as this was the first emptier I knew. It’s a shame only the Open the Box emptiable ROMs exist, also many of the games have no DX layouts. My recollection was that this emptier was a case of paying the lines wins (when nudged in) out of a different pot to that which awarded the wins in the first place, so if that were the case I would have thought the same fix would apply to all the lines? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeP Posted March 22 Report Share Posted March 22 3 hours ago, thealteredemu said: Also going to look i to the Sys1 Play it Again Deluxe as early £6 token versions were also emptiable via lines. We have version 03, which is the fixed version, so hoping to do this one too as it was a personal favourite as it was a lot more trickier as there were no features like Nudge Quick to make it quicker. Also only 3 max nudges to play with so you had to know roughly were the reels were landing and manipulate those. It was fairly easy once you got the hang of it as the machine would offer max nudges on almost every credit once it was behind percentage. The good thing about these ones is that it didn’t have the percentage watchdog so these don’t do those mini streaks to level out. J I didn’t know Play It Again could be done, I had wondered if it could (and Twilight Zone) but thought that without the 2.20 nudge time exchange it just wouldn’t be possible even if the lines could be effectively taken for free, so I never even tried. It is one I would love to have a go at should the ROMs be found, or reverse engineered, as you are proposing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 22 Author Report Share Posted March 22 Sure, early 02 Play it Agains could be done in the normal cabinet. I had a Deluxe Play it Again in the fancy gold cabinet, they are the only £6 versions that could be done. I have a set of Plat it Again £4.80 02, lines seem free but I’ve never done a play it again in a normal cab personally. Trouble is they introduced the watchdog that will force a mini streak. The deluxe version doesn’t have this. I’ll work on the deluxe one as I have done these in the wild. The two I had were both 10p play £6.00 token jackpot. I believe it was the BWB/Ace version that were emptiable. I should definitely be able to complete the hack, I did some more earlier and was able to find some magic. I’m aiming to get a ton of me time over the weekend for some hacking If you are interested it would be great to get someone who can test a rom for a longer period of time, but I’ve got further with this 04 Open the Box and am satisfied the hack only affects the lines and taking other wins will kill the machine J 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 23 Author Report Share Posted March 23 @MikeP Try this Open the Box v4 hack I've been working on. I've combined the rom so you only need to load this in as a single rom file J opentheboxv4hack4.zip 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeP Posted March 23 Report Share Posted March 23 (edited) 7 hours ago, thealteredemu said: @MikeP Try this Open the Box v4 hack I've been working on. I've combined the rom so you only need to load this in as a single rom file J opentheboxv4hack4.zip 32.49 kB · 3 downloads Thanks, have had a go at this, my observations: I first did a RAM reset, its percentage is 78%, I don’t know how to change this (can anyone let me know please?), so that’s what I was running with. I put £400 through on autoplay, mopping up easy wins myself at the end. End percentage was 84.3% so something not quite right here. Maybe accounted for by the lines it occasionally rolled in, but these should be accounted for (in the long term) in a different pot, not free, I think (if we are trying to make it like the 02 program). I noticed several times on autoplay, when it got over generous it several times rolled 3 straight jackpots in - the 02 version didn’t do this. It reminded me of the only Ace game I played after the rechips which was Pay Rise (for Spot the Ball) this rolled in straight jackpots if it got too happy, usually 3 on the £4.80 and 2 on the £6 I think, so maybe the 04 Open the Box chip is similar to that anyway. Then I played for the lines only, and I put £164 in for £180 out but that included a streak. Of course, that’s way over percentage, but only a modest return for an emptier. Now I did nudge in some things I shouldn’t have, I know that, and I am no way as fast nudging on the emulator now as I was back then on the actual machine, but I got the impression I was taking something that wasn’t (effectively) free because it never got mega happy, and certainly didn’t start rolling jackpots in like it did when on autoplay earlier. It also rolled some lines straight in, it shouldn’t have, if the wins were being allocated to the lines pot, as that should have been clobbered, if that makes sense. Hope this helps! Edited March 23 by MikeP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 23 Author Report Share Posted March 23 Cheers Mike, I had a little play earlier and managed to get these results from a ram reset. I mean, it's not perfected yet and there are many aspects that I won't be changing, the 04 has many more differences comparing it to the 02 chip so I'm not going to be able to recreate a perfect 02 sadly. My knowledge is intermediate at best. In that 1480 it only stitched me up with the mini streak twice, so obviously something is a little off with the hack. I will take another look as want to get it a bit closer. I will also test out V02 as well to see how that performs in the emulator. There are many difference profiles so it might be that this 04 is set to an arcade profile, which will usually pay more tokens, also, not sure as we don't any dip setting info, it could be that there is a dip for higher percentage token wins or it could be that my little hack just sends it a little too happy for tokens wins? Like I say, I am going to give it a other go to see if I can refine any changes I've made Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 23 Author Report Share Posted March 23 BTW, I have mine set to 84%, which is about right for those earlier 90's slots, I think most I played ranged from 78% up to around 84%. J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 23 Author Report Share Posted March 23 PS. Thanks for giving it a go. Even if I can't get it quite like the 02 revision it's still better than playing the chipped up releases we have, especially when I port the work over to the other machines that we don't have earlier roms for. I'm especially looking at doing Pound for Pound and Hi-Flyer as these are the first ones I emptied in the wild J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 24 Author Report Share Posted March 24 @MikeP I did some play on the original 02 and this does in fact rolls lines straight in on the reels. I've done more work on making the hack a little more elegant to reflect the 02 version. I've found jump routines that the 004 doesn't do in the lines win scenario. The 02 software sends it off to a jump point, looking at the 04 the data is unchanged in this region and matches the 02 code, so the fix is somewhat of a hack just to get those line wins accounted for. This is what I'm preventing it from doing. Anyway, am trying this new way to see if things work a little better. Now my 04 is doing pretty much exactly the same as the 02 on line wins :). The challenge might be that some of the other machines were completely overhauled code base wise, though I doubt it, the line fix looks like a quick fix to get an update out, I mean there was also an 03 £4.80 Open the Box so the code hasn't changed an awful lot, just those free wins patched out, rerouted. I'll try and get another version uploaded later today with the new method. I'm hoping I can clone this technique over to other machines, I'll certainly give it a try, as long as I can get this kicked into shape. J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 24 Author Report Share Posted March 24 Yes!!! This new method is playing identical to 02. It stitched me up with the forced wins after around 37 in, I'd only affected the Jackpot lines so was only taking them and the machine was flying. Without taking any wins apart from the jackpot lines I'm ahead but the machine was too buzzed so it forced the wins on me, no token wins, just single bars, then double bars and finally treble bars for a repeat. Anyway, this is feeling a lot truer now. I'm going to hunt down those other lines and fix them in the same way. Once I've completed this unhack I will upload it here for some more deeper testing if you would like to give it another blast. J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 24 Author Report Share Posted March 24 @MikeP By the way, this is my config for 82% 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john ando Posted March 25 Report Share Posted March 25 cant the win table be changed to 4.80,there is images for it I see plenty of liars and thieves. Just look at me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boulderdash Posted March 25 Report Share Posted March 25 18 hours ago, thealteredemu said: @MikeP I did some play on the original 02 and this does in fact rolls lines straight in on the reels. I've done more work on making the hack a little more elegant to reflect the 02 version. I've found jump routines that the 004 doesn't do in the lines win scenario. The 02 software sends it off to a jump point, looking at the 04 the data is unchanged in this region and matches the 02 code, so the fix is somewhat of a hack just to get those line wins accounted for. This is what I'm preventing it from doing. Anyway, am trying this new way to see if things work a little better. Now my 04 is doing pretty much exactly the same as the 02 on line wins :). The challenge might be that some of the other machines were completely overhauled code base wise, though I doubt it, the line fix looks like a quick fix to get an update out, I mean there was also an 03 £4.80 Open the Box so the code hasn't changed an awful lot, just those free wins patched out, rerouted. I'll try and get another version uploaded later today with the new method. I'm hoping I can clone this technique over to other machines, I'll certainly give it a try, as long as I can get this kicked into shape. J Great thread this. As I'm sure many here are fed up of hearing I financed my uni degree by emptying ace machines, but I was nowhere near as expert at it as some others. I simply only took line wins which kept being available on the exchanges even after it forced jackpot wins on me. I'm not technical at all, but to me it would seem to be a simple one extra line of code to make sure the machine counted any band aid wins as well as reel wins, and tightened up once it started getting over the RTP. But given the guy who wrote these programs went to jail for leaving this exploit, maybe he buried it a bit to make it harder to fix once discovered. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeP Posted March 25 Report Share Posted March 25 (edited) 20 hours ago, thealteredemu said: Yes!!! This new method is playing identical to 02. It stitched me up with the forced wins after around 37 in, I'd only affected the Jackpot lines so was only taking them and the machine was flying. Without taking any wins apart from the jackpot lines I'm ahead but the machine was too buzzed so it forced the wins on me, no token wins, just single bars, then double bars and finally treble bars for a repeat. Anyway, this is feeling a lot truer now. I'm going to hunt down those other lines and fix them in the same way. Once I've completed this unhack I will upload it here for some more deeper testing if you would like to give it another blast. J Well, that explains why I was struggling a bit, I was taking whatever lines were offered so if you had only hacked the jackpot ones, that would explain it! Incidentally, doing this in the emulator you can just prioritise the jackpot lines I suppose, but it wasn’t like that in the wild, as the strategy needed to be tailored to what was in the tubes. (In these games you could see what was in the cash and token tubes by looking through the reel window - max was about £80 in £1 coins, £50 in tokens (I’m sure Welcome Break services held more cause their tokens were really thin!), and some 20ps.) 20 hours ago, thealteredemu said: @MikeP By the way, this is my config for 82% Thanks, that helps, playing with it, it seems various percentages are possible based on DIP switch 1 settings, what does the DIP switch 2 that you have set on do? I ask because none of these were set with the version I was playing with, just wanted to be sure we’re comparing like with like, if I have another go at this. On 23/03/2024 at 23:30, thealteredemu said: PS. Thanks for giving it a go. Even if I can't get it quite like the 02 revision it's still better than playing the chipped up releases we have, especially when I port the work over to the other machines that we don't have earlier roms for. I'm especially looking at doing Pound for Pound and Hi-Flyer as these are the first ones I emptied in the wild J Absolutely, that is the thing of real interest. But I’m not sure the artwork is available for these either, maybe the best bet is to get access to that Pound for Pound that was recently unearthed in the abandoned arcade in Grimsby! Edited March 25 by MikeP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 25 Author Report Share Posted March 25 Aye... Would absolutely love images of that. I usually only create layouts for machines that I actually emptied in the wild back in the day, that's what does it for me to relive those crazy days of travelling around targeting certain machines. I'm not interested in just playing slots, only if they have something. What era did you play Mike? I played heavily from around late 1980's till late 1990's. I would often go out with a mate in the later 2000's but I was well out of the loop apart from some old gambling buds, one of which still plays. I can't imagine how bad it is nowadays mind!! I was going to ask what machines you did, but back in the 1990's there was pretty much something on everything It was a special time back then, especially as rechips could take some time to filter down as mobile phones and the internet were very young. Did you have a favourite emptier? Mine were the BWB Monte etc and Project Coin Bullseye and Happy Days, though I did enjoy the strange quirk of Project Coin Classic 777 handle play, we hammered these back in the day, they were so popular and you could play with the handle and basically get it paying over 100%, so always some profit in them as you could never really get it paying over percentage normally, they were good at keeping to target. J 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 25 Author Report Share Posted March 25 Regarding this Open the Box. I might switch my attention to Pound for Pound or Camelot as if I can't sort those out then just making another Open the Box lines free seems a little pointless. I know these are all clones but just to play them all with free lines would be nice for historic purposes as it's highly unlikely early versions will turn up now. Looking at the OTB 04 code, to reflect the 02 it requires me to do my own jump routine as the space in 04 routine is somewhat smaller and I can't fit the changes. This isn't something I've done before but I believe I understand enough to get this sorted, will be a bit of a task but this is just something that floats my boat so am determined to make it happen. I think I might be able to find some space and put the whole new routine in this jump, which, if it works will make it quite a bit easier to transpose to the other clones :). So I'll test this theory with OTB04 as I'm more familiar with the code now. I'll post up a 04 test file once it's completed. If it seems to be playing ok then I'll work on the others. J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 25 Author Report Share Posted March 25 10 hours ago, john ando said: cant the win table be changed to 4.80,there is images for it I won't be doing any layout related work on this, if there are images maybe throw them up to DIF, I'm sure someone would be willing to do some work on it. J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 25 Author Report Share Posted March 25 2 hours ago, MikeP said: Well, that explains why I was struggling a bit, I was taking whatever lines were offered so if you had only hacked the jackpot ones, that would explain it! Incidentally, doing this in the emulator you can just prioritise the jackpot lines I suppose, but it wasn’t like that in the wild, as the strategy needed to be tailored to what was in the tubes. (In these games you could see what was in the cash and token tubes by looking through the reel window - max was about £80 in £1 coins, £50 in tokens (I’m sure Welcome Break services held more cause their tokens were really thin!), and some 20ps.) Thanks, that helps, playing with it, it seems various percentages are possible based on DIP switch 1 settings, what does the DIP switch 2 that you have set on do? I ask because none of these were set with the version I was playing with, just wanted to be sure we’re comparing like with like, if I have another go at this. Absolutely, that is the thing of real interest. But I’m not sure the artwork is available for these either, maybe the best bet is to get access to that Pound for Pound that was recently unearthed in the abandoned arcade in Grimsby! I'm not sure what the dips do, I imagine there is a manual for a similar ACE Coin machine kicking about somewhere and it would shed some light on the various settings. Though I'm fairly confident one might be higher token wins, can't be certain, but we must have a user manual for one of these slots, someone will have one. J 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeP Posted March 25 Report Share Posted March 25 (edited) 6 hours ago, thealteredemu said: What era did you play Mike? I started playing in the £4.80 era, very much an enthusiastic amateur, would win when I knew stuff, lose when I didn’t. But I see from my time on DIF I only knew a tiny fraction of the methods that were out there, it is always interesting to learn what methods there were on the old machines! The Ace lines emptier was the first I knew about, probably a little late in the day. It has always been my favourite, partly because it needed some skill to do it well, and also because of the scale of the thing - it worked on 7 machines, and they were literally all over the place in 1992. The next one was Pay Rise spot the ball the next year, and I was fairly early to that party after I spotted someone doing one in a motorway services. There were some very addictive games in the £6/£8 era, but I didn’t really have anything good after Pay Rise, until the £15 era when I used to do the Barcrest forces, some of the great JPM skill games (Arcadia was a favourite), Lotta Luck/Jackpoteers, then the Vivid method, and I always liked doing TIJ2, someone told me about the Super Cross Fire trick, but I worked out for myself how to manipulate the reels to get the super feature entry, it played very well on the £25 jackpot. And, like many, I suspect, I lost interest in the AWP after the £25 era. Edited March 25 by MikeP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boulderdash Posted March 25 Report Share Posted March 25 Similar to me Mike. Loved the Aces and Donkey Kong was great too. DOND WIYB was probably the last full emptier I had. After that you're looking at manipulations rather than a full empty because I was working rather than a player and the machines were starting to be connected to the internet so you had to be on it immediately. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 25 Author Report Share Posted March 25 10 hours ago, Boulderdash said: Great thread this. As I'm sure many here are fed up of hearing I financed my uni degree by emptying ace machines, but I was nowhere near as expert at it as some others. I simply only took line wins which kept being available on the exchanges even after it forced jackpot wins on me. I'm not technical at all, but to me it would seem to be a simple one extra line of code to make sure the machine counted any band aid wins as well as reel wins, and tightened up once it started getting over the RTP. But given the guy who wrote these programs went to jail for leaving this exploit, maybe he buried it a bit to make it harder to fix once discovered. I heard someone went to jail over this back in the day... looking at the code, it could have easily been a mistake, though I'm not privvy to the source code, this is compiled code obviously, if he was in jail who fudged the Spot the Ball in a similar fashion? Spot the Ball was a later bug, only on the £6 token v1 - v3 chips it would seem. I mean 'Find the Pea' on Open the Box doesn't work on the early version 02, which I always found odd since the code across all these looks to be roughly the same base code. I'd assume if this was a genuine mistake it would have been in all those clones as there is no need to change that part of the code barring to accommodate for the higher £6 value. On early 02 version OTB, it basically does something different for line wins, whilst the 04 jumps to a point in which the win is accounted for. Strangely the code in this area is exactly the same so the code was there to take account for those wins even on the 02 software, I dare say I could fix the 02 bug just by rerouting to that set of routines. Was the same guy involved in the Spot the Ball emptier? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted March 25 Author Report Share Posted March 25 My personal favourite emptiers were I've managed to make the lines free on Sys1 Play it Again, it could take a bit of an age to do as you had to know how the reels were going to land etc, it had an element of skill involved in that way, as boring as it was it was still a buzz to empty. Not sure how feesible it was set on 20p to be fair, on 10p it still had the same win values so it was cheaper to get. Plus the Deluxe version didn't have the % watchdog so it just stayed in that happy to nudge for anything state. J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeP Posted March 25 Report Share Posted March 25 (edited) I am as certain as I can be after all this time, that Pay Rise spot the ball worked on the £4.80 version that had the lines fixed, before the £6 ‘upgrade’. I’m sure I remember doing it, I can remember the feature occasionally offering 480P - an amount which the £6 version just did not offer. Edited March 25 by MikeP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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