nzo

Thought I'd post my progress here after a few hours work. I was keen to make an Each Way Nudger from scratch in 3D (possibly VR as well). I would be grateful for any graphics / scans of the glass, decals etc. for the full nostalgia. I've made the reels, spin and win detect logic and it looks quite nice so far. Next thing I plan to do is add a bot routine to sim-play it for random tweaking, with some AI for the way I'd play it with holds. After that comes the gambling and nudging stuff and finally put it all in a nice 3D model with all the fx. Maybe I'll even have a bank of them so you could decide which ones to play, just like we did in the arcades when we were kids Anyway, it would be nice if someone could help with supplying any graphics from the EWN unit. I'm using a nice set of fruits here which aren't the original ones, but the best I could find so far. The positions on the reels are correct as far as I know.

I can fine tune the reel spins later (thanks for the feed back). In the meantime, I've been working on the top panel and the nudge stuff. Also, I've introduced the camera a bit more considering it's 3D and all. So, the camera can move to the focus of what's going on; in this example, the nudge option starts. I've also added some code for looking at the mouse pointer in the 3D world (the cube you see moving about). This will be so you can interact with the sim in 3D with the mouse instead of keyboard (and later maybe VR).

OK, latest update. I've finished most of the work on the bottom glass panel now (just the credit display to do). Time to start working on the top panel and nudges. This version has chance behaviour built into the gamble based on the target payout rate. All the lights on the bottom panel are working and got some more sfx in (not the best, but not a lot around). When the nudge function goes in, I'll add the look function which will allow the player to look into the viewport to see some more of the reels, which will make the 3D aspect of this bring it to life and add something new. If it ends up being worth the effort, then this could be an interesting VR feature. I've also tested both the 5p and 10p play versions and the glass automatically updates all the displays for the different games and payouts. The idea in the final game would be that there's a number of machines, all with their own "state" and the player would be able to move from machine to machine, deciding if they are paying out or not. Some will be £1 jackpot, others £2. The state of the machines could be reset / randomised and perhaps the overall goal could be to get the most out of the machines from a set starting stake - like pocket money and that's the driver to keep playing the sim.

I think I'm ok for graphics now. It might be usable if I make some kind of intro / logo when the sim starts up, so I'll have it anyway if it's going cheers

Thanks for the extra files, but I've done some extensive work on some existing images and stripped them right down. Actually, most of the glass work is generated dynamically at run time now (from the reel images and a font I found which is virtually identical to the JPM one). Here's a video of the current situation. Most of the visuals on the glass are dynamic now, so I can switch between different payout structures easily and even change reel symbols and the glass would update. The sounds have been hard to find and needed a little work to make them usable. I've restructured the code now to allow for different modes (gamble/collect, nudge etc.) so that will be the next thing to work on. I did some experiments on using light effects to simulate bulbs and that may appear in a future update. This is still the 3D version, so the reels are actual reels. I put the MK1 fruits in, but I haven't edited the reel sequence, so it may still be wrong.

I'm using the images for the panels, as they are quite suitable. I did plan to remove all the fruits and pay values from the panels and add them dynamically from the reel fruit sets and config for different machine setups, but the reel fruits I am using (the each way shuffle fruits) are a really good quality and better then the reel1-3.bmp you have kindly posted here. I wonder if there's a better quality scan of the fruits for this model (I can't really use the ones in the bmp files or the ones from the panels) as they are quite artifacty (new word). Either that or if some artist can clean them up a bit?

Excellent! Thanks a lot.

that could be useful, thanks. Although I don't have photoshop, would it be possible to export all the layers as PNG? thanks

Sorry I missed this: I am using AGK for this.

Just a rough preview of starting to look at the actual modelling of the 3D machine. I've started by putting the front panel in and drilling out one of the reel windows a bit to see what they look like through it. Still a bit of work to go on that. I've gotten some fascia graphics from some other site which will do for now and I'll tart it up a bit at some point - perhaps using the reel images as the source for the decal payouts so I can use multiple reel sets / payout combos. There will be a bit of work to align / scale the reels to look right in the clip window and when you "look" up and down to see what you can nudge. I've changed the first hold button in code to see what it looked like rendered into the texture as a test.

Instead of picking random positions and making the reels seek them, I was approaching this in a more mechanical way and assigning spin times for each reel. Reel 3 spins longer than reel 2 and so on. Working literally eliminates other problems like dealing with randoms that are unrealistic positions (such as 2 steps further on), which would look very odd and if a reel is held, I just need to shift the spin times to the reels that are not held. I also need to maintain the true position so any behaviour (nudges, holds) put the reels in the actual position, so the randomness is maintained on inherited randomness + interaction. Because I started this off initially with an actual reel model spinning, I'd already worked out a virtual stepper of 18 degrees per fruit, so stepping .36 degrees per frame with say, random(18,36)*5 will always land on a fruit of course but the other reels have a longer possible spin duration; reel 2 will be say, Reel1SpinTime+(random(12,18)*5). I can shift the spin times along towards reel 3 depending which reels are held - if reel 1 and reel 2 are held, then reel 3 gets reel 1's spin time. If reel 3 is held, then I just set the spin time to zero. This seems to behave aesthetically the way I recall the machine working - including the reel 2-3 lag being shorter than the reel 1-2 lag. I only added the 3 x melon and 3 x pear AI nudge check up to that point, as the next order check would be for 3x JPM which requires a variation due to the 3x3x3 win position. (Plus I'd had enough for one evening at that point and was keen to see the AI nudge effects). The way I've done it means that say, a 20 fruit reel doesn't get an average spread if you have a particular preference for holding certain items. This way, an identity or personality of the machine could be learned by the player, that can be set or controlled by config for instance, that made for a different weighting for certain reels. On reel 2 and reel 3, several of the positions land 1.5x to 2x more or less frequently than others, which I can use for weight balancing at some point - hence the tweaking of the reel spin function.

Interesting results from adding nudges (partially) to the sim. So, when I added AI nudging (assuming the AI knows the reels) then the payout rocketed on my original randomiser. I tweaked the reel spin function a bit before I started with the nudge function and got a better landing for certain combos which were rare or excluded. Using these rates: Hold chance of 20% and executed on wins only (not intuitive holds) increased the non-hold payout to 40% (just random reel spins were at about 30%, but I've tweaked that up a bit now) I only added melons and pears to the AI nudger function and got a new 140% payout. The nudge chance is 10%, with the AI selecting the best direction. The nudge count is just random 1-10 This is good in one way, as it means I'll definitely have to add some weight controls. I'll plug the rest of the wins into the nudge AI and see what it ends up with there.

I'd already added the most basic hold logic in the sim only randomness, holding wins only. This pushes the overall win %age up to ~40% with a target hold chance at 20% I will do the auto nudge and then the gamble, so I have all the parameters available for adjusting. It would be more aesthetically pleasing if it wasn't obvious if the game was trying to claw back money by obviously reducing just nudges or just holds or just gambles (or will it?). I'll get the rest of the sim behaviour in and then do some tweaking on the values.

I've been looking for this old fruit machine - possibly the first one I got familiar with as a kid. It was definitely around in the late 70's and it ate my pocket money. The only things I can say about it was that it was 10p for 2 plays, didn't have nudges, but had this odd feature whereby if the feature enabled, then when you pressed start, you got 2 rapid spin/hold sequences with a 1-2 sec pause each time, then a final 3rd spin. The jackpot was £1 and the jackpot symbol was like a dark blue/light blue target or swirl motif. I'm fairly sure the jackpot was a 3x1x3 position or less likely a 3x3x3. Definitely not just the win line. There were 3 or 4 in a row of these machines in one of the local arcades, so I doubt it was uncommon. cheers

As part of my sim, I've added a function in to look at randomisation to help with determining payouts. Interestingly enough, I've found that even simulating millions of 10p coins in my sim, the payout comes out at about 30% for no holds, nudges and so on - just a pure random result (or at least based on the seeds I have used) I was always fascinated by the fruit layout on these machines and it may be interesting to see how different layouts perform on a purely random sequence. It will be fun to add a play-bot to this sim to see what kind of improvements it makes when I add ranked hold preferences based on the type of play I would prefer. Maybe interesting if I publish my "hold" preferences and see if / what sort of behaviour impacts the result. I am not aware of any code on the chips that control or influence the randomisation (if there indeed is any) and wondered if anyone had any insights into how payout percentages were controlled on these machines, other than via the gamble/nudge opportunities?

The bonus game was random at coin insert / ready to start. The rest about the spin/pause sequence sounds pretty much the same. There wasn't anything clever, like advancing a bonus either.

No sorry. I've put everything I can recall. I guess only people who remember it would know. It's a long shot, I know.

I made a mesh like a cake tin with no bottom. The texture for each reel is created at run-time using an image atlas and a data list for the order. This way, it's simple to specify any combination of any set of symbols. I'm fixed on 20 symbols per reel for now, which is OK.

Thanks, that would be great.

That's useful, thanks. I'll check them.

Hello all, I am looking to develop an old (well 80s) style fruit machine for nostalgic reasons. I'd like to initially recreate the JPM each way nudger V1, as it has particular childhood memories for me growing up in a seaside town. Hopefully, I'd be able to get hold of the images for the reels, decals and perhaps sound fx and such. As for the logic, I would create an editor so it can be tweaked for payouts and behaviour, unless such data is already available. I have previously remade many classic arcade games from the era and would be interested in adding one or more of these old classics to my list. Thanks

Thanks Frig, I'll check those out.

Hi TTX, glad you considered my "review" magnanimous. I was aware of the age of the conversion (I've got a long history of works going back even to the 80's, so i know what it's like for things to age!) Nice that you've noticed my post and I would be glad if you could share any of your observations and guesswork for my effort, should it come about. cheers

I tried it and although it's kind of OK, I think I can do better. Brought back a few memories though, so thanks. My goal is to do it myself, from scratch so to speak. I'd do it in 3D though - maybe even VR for the proper experience. Definitely needs the actual sounds though. It's also not quite the version I remember, so might be a version 2. Anyway, it's piqued my interest in this even more, so thanks for that.

I didn't find anything searching the site. Would appreciate the standalone though.