SBSlot

(c) Scott M. Baker, smbaker@primenet.com

Purpose:

SBSlot is a slot machine simulator. There are presently two separate programs included in this package:

• SlotStat.Exe: Statistical slot simulator. Used for obtaining an accurate simulation of the odds/payoffs of a slot machine. Text-based output format. Capable of automatically simulating the slot machine for millions (billions?) of pulls.
• Slot3D.Exe: Graphical 3D slot game. This requires Microsoft's DirectX 3.0 package for Windows-95. This program is intended to function as a realistic slot machine game. If you need DirectX3, try searching my directX links page at http://smbaker.simplenet.com/directx.html.

Installation:

You can run the automated install program (Setup.Exe) or you can copy the files manually into the directory of your choice. SlotStat.Exe is the statistical program and Slot3d.Exe is the graphical game.

SlotStat Operation:

The initial screen will ask you to load a file; A few are supplied for you to use. Once the slot machine file has been loaded, the screen should display the initial state of the machine (i.e. no credits, reels at initial positions, etc).

Press 'Pull' to pull the handle one time.

Press 'Run' to initiate automatic mode; The machine will be pulled several times per second, simulating game play.

Press 'Stop' to stop automatic mode.

Press 'Reset' to reset the statistical data at any time.

There is also a checkbox marked '100x Speed Mult'. This will make the machine operate 100 times faster than the normal speed.

Slot3D Operation:

The initial screen will ask you to load a file.Once loaded, you should get a 3D window displaying the slot machine. You can operate the machine by pressing the yellow buttons or by using the pull-down menu options.

You can pan the screen up/down/left/right by using the scrollbar controls on the window borders. You can zoom in and out using the +/- keys or the Display menu option.

Several yellow buttons are present on the slot machine:

• [Change]: Cashes in some boney for credits. It'll automatically repeat the last cashing that you did. Defaults to $20. You may select other denominations using the pull-down menu.
• [Cash/Credit]: In a real machine, this button cashes out your money. Since your PC doesn't have a Coin Hopper attached to it, this button doesn't do anything.
• [Bet 1]: If you want to bet less than the 3-credit maximum, then you can bet one credit at a time.
• [Spin]: Assuming you have used [Bet 1] to bet one or more credits, you can spin the reels.
• [Play 3]: This plays three credits and spins the reels automatically.

There are several display options located under the Render and Display menus. These modify the 3D rendering options and control a few other visual aspects.

Note: If you are getting a very low FPS (Frames Per Second) rate, you might want to disable (uncheck) the "Display Payoff Chart" option.

Slot Machine Basics:

Historically, there have been several different types of slot machines:

• Early Mechanical. The really old 'antique' slots.
• Electro-Mechanical. Solenoids and relays added to give more complex game capabilities and improve reliability. Reels are still mechanical, but the electronic parts perform functions like multiplication, detecting payline symbols, accepting multiple coins, running lights & sounds, etc.
• Video. Rather than using mechanical reels, reels are displayed as 'graphics' on a video screen. Probabilities/Odds entirely determined by computer.
• Modern Electronic. Computerized, but with stepper motor reels. Made to look and feel like a mechanical machine, but it's really all computer based.

With the earlier machines (Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical), the probabilities are entirely determined by the symbols on the reels. You can simply read the symbols off the reels and input the data into SBSlot for a simulation.

The newer machines (Video and Modern Electronic) are a bit more difficult. These machines typically have some sort of virtual reels encoded into the computer. These encodings may or may not be representative of what you see in their displays.

Most video machines can activate a 'reel test' diagnostic which will display the contents of the 'virtual reels' to the video screen. These virtual reels can be quite large, up to even 256 symbols per reel. Although it takes a long time to get all these symbols copied down, the layout is relatively straightforward.

Modern Electronic machines (such as IGT's s+ series) also have a reel test mode. However, since these machines do not have a video display, it can't simply dump the information out to you. Instead, the machines must display the contents of their 'virtual reels' on the 'physical reels'. This amounts to having to spin their 'physical reels' to display each symbol on the 'virtual reel'.

An important note here is that the physical reel is NOT the same as the virtual reel in the slot machine's computer. You cannot take the symbol information off the physical reels! What the slot manufacturers have done amounts to fiddling around with the probabilities a bit.

Note that one machine isn't the same as another. The chips on the motherboard determine the contents of the 'virtual reel'. Thus, one double diamond machine may have a very different payoff from another.

Slot Machines Included

bertha.slt: Bally 'big bertha' $1 video slot. This is a mammoth machine, standing about six feet tall. It's got a big 27" video screen. The internal configuration of the machine is such that there are 3 reels each with 255 symbols per reel.

golden.slt: This is another Bally video slot. This one has four reels, each with 64 symbols per reel. This is a $5 token machine, and has a payoff of $5,000,000 if you hit four golden nuggets straight across. Of course, there's only 1 golden nugget on each reel, leading to a probability of 1/64^4.

doubled.slt: This is an IGT double diamond deluxe, one of the state-of-the-art machines you can currently find in casinos. It's a modern electronic machine. The physical reels have 11 symbols and 11 blank spots each, but the 'virtual' reels have 72 symbols each,.

The game has a few special features, including symbols that "clunk down" if they appear above the payline. Thus, while there are a large number of blank spaces on the reels, many of them are adjacent to a bar which will clunk down and award you a jackpot. Note: SlotStat doesn't currently display the 'clunk' itself, but it does account for it and display the final results correctly.

Note: The machines and trademarks mentioned above are copyrighted by their respective manufacteres, Bally, and International Gaming Technology (IGT).

.slt files

Slot machine data is stored in .slt files. The format is as follows:

There are three sections, for symbols, reels, and payoffs respectively. Each section is seperated by a "%%". The final section should have a "%%" after it.

You'll also find several special tags that are specified by a percent sign and a name, for example "%sndmusic". These are used to specify various attributes. Most should be fairly self-evident if you want to tinker around with them.

symbols:

The format is:

[character] [filename] [description]

Fields are specified as follows:

• [character]: One-letter identifier that you'll use to refer to the symbol in the reel and payoff sections.
• [Filename]: Identifies the image that will be displayed in the Graphical 3D version. All files are assumed to be BMP files and no extention is specified. Direct3D handles textures better if multiple textures are grouped into the same file (i.e. four textures stored in a 256x256 file is better than four 64x64 files). There are several ways to specify the texture filename/format:
  • Simple filename (no extention). The entire file will be treated as the texture for the symbol.
  • Filename (no extention) with a slash and a number [1-4]. The file will be treated as a 2x2 grid of textures. The numbering works as follows:

    filename/1	filename/2
    filename/3	filename/4

  • Filename (no extention) with a slash and a letter [a-p]. The file will be treated as a 4x4 grid of textures. (sym256.bmp and sym512.bmp are set up this way) The numbering works as follows:

    filename/a	filename/b	filename/c	filename/d
    filename/e	filename/f	filename/g	filename/h
    filename/i	filename/j	filename/k	filename/l
    filename/m	filename/n	filename/o	filename/p

  • The single string "blank". This will be treated as a pure white (RGB=1,1,1) ;space, and not read from an actual bmp file.

• [description]: Textual description/name of the symbol.

You can also prefix a symbol by (wild) if it is wild, (double) if it should double the jackpot, (up) if it should 'clunk' up, and (down) if it should clunk down.

'*' is a special symbol meaning 'any' and should not be used here.

Example, "a 1bar single bar"

reels:

All reels are speficied on one line, with one reel symbol per line. (That probably didn't make any sense. here's an example)

[reel 1 sym 1] [reel 2 sym 1] [reel 3 sym 1]

[reel 1 sym 2] [reel 2 sym 2] [reel 3 sym 2]

...

[reel 1 sym n] [reel 2 sym n] [reel 3 sym n]

I hope that made more sense. Here's a concrete example:

c 1 2

7 3 3

g 0 g

Reel #1 would have the symbols "c", "7", and "g" (top to bottom). Reel #2 would have "1", "3", and "0". Reel #3 would have "2", "3", and "g".

Payoffs:

This is the most complicated section. Each payoff begins with a character for each reel symbol. Then theres a carat (^) followed by one or more payoff amount (in coins), followed by another carat (^) followed by a textual description.

For example,

"c c c ^ 2 ^ Cherry-Cherry-Cherry", This could mean 2 credit payoff for three cherries

You can use a + to specify the symbol can be above or below the payline as well. For example,

"+g +g +g +g ^ 1000 ^ gold-gold-gold-gold", This could mean four golden nuggest left to right, on above or below the payline.

Enclosing multiple symbols in braces means any symbol could match. For example,

"[123] [123] [123] ^ 100 any bar-any bar-any bar", could be used to match any series of bars. (assuming 1 = single bar, 2 = double bar, 3 = triple bar)

You can use an asterisk (*) to denote anything (including a blank) may match. For example,

"c * * ^ 1 ^ cherry-any-any", could be used to match a single cherry.

Revision History

• Version 1.0
  • Initial Public Release
• Version 1.1
  • Fixed problem with each 'pull' being counted twice
  • Fixed payoff problems in golden nugget
• Version 1.2
  • Finsihed 3D version.

Contacting me:

You can reach me by email at smbaker@primenet.com.

You can find sbslot at

http://smbaker.simplenet.com/sbslot/sbslot.html.

--- or ---

http://www.primenet.com/~smbaker/sbslot/sbslot.html.