37 replies to this topic

[DaemonX]

I know I don't understand the 'Scene' like others do, but this to me looks like nothing to do with is Fruit-Emu actually legal?

[ady]

I know I don't understand the 'Scene' like others do, but this to me looks like nothing to do with is Fruit-Emu actually legal?

When I read the initial thread yesterday I had to try working the question out.

Fruit Emu means FME, would have been titled better is Fruit machine Emulating legal.

To me Fair Play was interesting at the time, but to be honest it was nothing we didn't know anyway.

[Guitar]

- Can you explain how you are stopping 'Grooming'?

Um its an emulator so it stops grooming the same way that the manufacturers prevent grooming. If they aren't preventing it then neither is the emulator. Thats what an emulator is / does.

The American and UK gaming industries are very different. As far as I know (so someone please correct me if neccesssary. In the USA you can only play slot machines in a casino, whilst you can play machines in casino's in this country, a vast majority of the fruit machines in the UK are in 'amusement arcades'.
Casino's are quite a glamorous affair with (often) free drink, cheap food, waitress service, and pre smoking ban, free cigarettes / cigars. People would go and make a night of it.

There are two main classes of amusement arcades. Inland and Seaside.

Seaside arcades are often on the lowest percentages allowed, their main trade is in tourists and so they have no 'regulars' to annoy with the low percentages. People at the seaside will often go in with a set amount of money and play till they lose, they are only in the area for 1 or 2 weeks and so the low percentage payouts won't put them off so much. Because of this many seaside operators will often use other scams or ways of cheating money (often quite rightfully belonging to the punter).

Inland arcades often have higher percentages and will rely on their 'regular' customers to make a profit. Because of this they play a much fairer game.
These inland arcades will also often offer up a cup of tea / coffee and free sandwiches. Also competitions or free prize draws for players are not uncommon.

BUT, both types of amusement arcade are usually fairly dark, dingy affairs with little to none of the glamour that casino's offer. In Las Vegas they sell more adult nappies than child nappies (diapers in USA) because the people don't want to leave their machine because of 'sharking' or 'grooming'. From what I hear, the 'pros' in the USA will groom machines for days, just hanging aorund the casino's the getting on a machine at the right time. But in UK amusement arcades the only people that can afford to wait 3 - 4 days for a £45 streak are chavs (I don't know a USA translation for this word) anyway. Sharking isn't much of a problem when the person sharking you is 15 and you can knock them out at a seconds notice.

To be honest I don't think MFME being used to 'groom' machines is a problem. If someone does find an exploit it is usually chipped out long before it is emulated, and even if it isn't you still have to find the few un-chipped ones. Remember the romsets we use are often the earlier romsets deliberately because people feel they often give a better game. Thats fine in the emulator because no operator is going to lose money over it. Its not real money. If an operator doesn't check to see if updates are available for his games and he loses money, thats his fault, he wasn't doing his job properly.

If it really is a problem, maybe the manufacturers should hire someone who can code properly. Its not hard to make good software. If the main manufacturers of a multi-billion dollar / pound worldwide industry cant get it right, maybe they should change what they are doing. They could go back to the older style machines with less features and more 'gameplay'. The only way these exploits get through is because of dodgy coders who leave in these exploits for their own personal gain, so unless all software is independantly audited (something I believe the manufacturers dont want), its going to stay that way.

Look at the sec 16 Bellfruit emptier with the £2 and the 10p's (I feel I should add I found out about this long after it was re-chipped). Thats either sloppy coding, or deliberately left in. Either way, such a fault should not get through their testing process and it did, on more than one machine too.

These machines are there to take peoples money, they have no other purpose when in an arcade/ casino/ kebab shop/ motorway services. Therefore the manufacturers should be well aware by now that every possible way a machine can be minipulated, will be minipulated. And if they cannot understand that or work around it, they are in the wrong business.

I may sound a bit harsh towards the manufacturers here, but emptiers / minipulations hurt me too. The only emptiers I know about are ones that have been known publically (and therefore chipped out and useless) for a long time. The only machine I have ever 'emptied' is emulated and I did it for the sole purpose of a bit of fun, just to see if I could do it.
If a machine gets minipulated and the cash paid out is accounted for it people like me who don't know the cheat that end up paying for it. The operators still make their money back in the end, the manufacturers still make their money, and I lose mine because they don't do their job properly. If the minipulation is in the machine it will get found out and used whether an emulation exists or not, so at the end of the day the emulator does no more harm. An emptier is potentially worth thousands, so it wouldn't surprise me if the people who find these minipulations do so by buying their own machine to practise on. They will easily make the cost of the machine back by selling the emptier (legit emptiers go for thousands apparently, I've never had the money to find out) and selling the machine on.

I am not in the industry, and I never have been. If I have made an error above then please correct me. I haven't been in every arcade / casino / bingo hall in the UK so I have made fairly general comments.

As far as being legal is concerned, an emulator is perfectly legal. The roms and artwork however are not legally distributable. You asked about what support we have had from the manufacturers. As I understand it, the only manufacturer to consider helping us was Empire Games. For a while they hosted the roms on their site and allowed us pretty much free reign over the roms. A gentlemans agreement over the length of time a machine had to be out before we could emulate was used. But the scene itself went beyond this agreement and Empire withdrew their help and asked us to remove all Empire Games from the sites.

However the advantage the scene does have is that any manufacturer who decided to start getting legal over roms and artwork unneccessarily, would probably suffer a backlash of a lot of their machines not taking as much money. And a lot of other companies machines taking more.

By the same token, any company that did decide to come forward and help the scene would probably take more money in their machines. I think the first manufacturer to release an emulator for their older machines (a manufacturer could easily stop their newer games running) to the public, will get a LOT of goodwill (and money).

Guitar

[editor]

I would like to thank all those that helped with the editing of the feature to hit the mark. I have sent out this copy to the team that gave information, but thought I should circulate the final with the forum:


...How much of the intransigence to embrace retro is linked to an aversion to open a complicated and particularly messy can of worms is unknown, but ever-increasing financial pressure is being applied to utilize this natural resource.

The complacency that smothered amusement and allowed MAME to erode perceived value could be about to visit gaming. The Skill and Amusement with prizes scene has seen emulators simulating their cash-payout machines before. The Stinger was one of the first to report the practice in Stinger #xxx, at that time linked to the FairPlay lobby that via their simulators revealed discrepancies in Nudge (Hi-Low) and Random payout behavior of AWP's and forced clear signage on UK machines – a issue highlighted by use of the AWP emulator.

The first fruit machine emulator software backend was called the MPU and offers a means for modern machines to be emulated. Bundled for £50 ($25) with a number of Fruit machine ROMS (Images) the system fell afoul of Barcrest in 2001 – legal action forcing the software to be re-developed to only play old machines and avoid infringing copyright. Developers of this emulator and another fro JPM machines joined forces to create the Multi-Fruit Machine Emulator (MFME). It was these emulators that were linked to a serious issue.

The big issue for the gaming industry is these emulations, known by a growing community as ‘CyberSlotz,’ offer a level of access to current prize-payout machines, which is not healthy. Certain groups have acquired current machine ROM Images skilled themselves on achieving jackpot conditions (rehearsing the machine) and then travel the towns 'stripping' machines of their prize pot. Most of the trade is oblivious to this behavior, while operators at the sharp end are dismissive of manufacturer security -- concerns increased after the AWP B4 kit situation (see #xxx).

A concern beyond machine stripping is that the popularity of ‘Cyberslotz' could migrate to other platforms superseding the archaic Pub and Bar machine. A familiarity with Cyberslotz could create a generation willing more often to 'Virtually' play an AWP application on their PC or – even more worrisome -- on their mobile phone! This could raise serious questions about the conventional AWP machine’s validity and usher in its inevitable replacement. But not all the emulators of fruit and slot machines are out there to defraud AWP systems. The legitimate machines are also supported by a growing number of player groups.

This vocal fan base has expanded to embrace social player networks and have developed their own PC based AWP and SWP video machine freeware system. The Amusement & Gaming Extension for the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (AGEMAME) – that had previously been developed as MAGE -- offers much of what MAME championed with a growing operational archive of past and present gaming machines accurately emulated on players PC's. The current forum repository for the AGEMAME ROM Image library contains over 1,000 fruit machine ROMS (though claiming all are old ROM’s and no currently operated machines are emulated). The majority of users are loyal gaming fans wanting to archive favorite games.

The AGEMAME is focused on gambling games and related machines (against MFME’s Fruit machine focus). The open source project is tightly monitored to avoid grooming, with no current ROM’s deployed without their free circulation from the manufacturer. Where AGEMAME is growing a strong following, MFME has been abandoned due to the impact of the illegality of its operation and the problems it could cause – as was stated by one source “…like throwing bricks at a beehive!”.

The Pinball table sector has ...


Thanks again for your help guys.

[VampUK]

With respect, WHAT A LOAD OF PISH!

[jamesb99_1999]

You should perhaps have checked your facts a little better before writing this! I didn't even recognise any of it from your descriptions?? You sure that's Agemame you are thinking of?

[editor]

Always love the 'non constructive' fanboy replies. I was lucky that we managed to communicate with moderators at the site rather than have to play the 'personal remarks' game.

Constructive please - rather than 'PISH' mungers!

[jamesb99_1999]

Always love the 'non constructive' fanboy replies. I was lucky that we managed to communicate with moderators at the site rather than have to play the 'personal remarks' game.

Constructive please - rather than 'PISH' mungers!

You'd understand the "scene" enough to make that comment with your 6 posts so far (that's irony as you probably won't understand unless I point that out).
I won't say f*** you, but "f*** you". I understand the scene well enough to say what you have written is incorrect and your whole attitude has stunk worse than your use of the English language. It was obvious from the start that this "piece" was being written with an agenda (which I can accept), but to get your facts so utterly wrong and then abuse people who are actually part of the scene for pointing that out is disgraceful. Guess we'll be seeing you working as a "proper" journalist in no time.. Not.

And because somebody is a moderator (whoever has been giving you this information), does not make their commentary any more accurate as you would realise if you weren't trying to make the words of other people fit your agenda.

For a start, whichever community has ever called any of these cyberslots??? idiot.

[Guitar]

You can't compare MAME to the fruit machine emulators and AGEMAME.

The reason MAME supposedly did so much harm is because you were paying to play the game in the arcade. When you can play exactly the same game for free, I can see how that can do harm.

The reason people play fruit machines is for the chance to win money. No fruit machine emulator can offer that same buzz or excitement because you can't make the money fall out of the PC. And if you could our PC's would be weighed down with £1 coins.
Some will argue that they only play fruit machines for the fun of playing, I personally believe they are the ones deluding themselves (as many of us did to begin with, including me) that its all they play for, until the day they realise they've just spent all their wages that month in a fruit machine.

The reason I play the games on the PC is because I don't have the spare cash to play the machines anymore. For a typical session on the machines £20 used to suffice for me. But with modern machines I wouldn't dream of playing with less than £100 or more in the back pocket as that is how much I believe it takes to ensure that some decent gameplay and maybe a jackpot can take to get. I'm sure many here will testify that £100 isn't enough in some cases.

But even if the emulator didn't exist I wouldn't be in the arcades giving them money, as I don't have the money to give.

If the manufacturers are losing money, which seems implied by the article, then maybe its because of factors other than the emulator. Factors such as a failing US economy which has had an effect on the UK economy too. In a country where a lot are in debt because of the loans they got in recent years with massive APR's, and the papers full of articles on credit crisis in the UK and banks forclosing left right and centre, I would imagine that the country on the whole can't afford to gamble what they used to.
The introduction of the sec 16 / B3 machines probably hasn't helped either. The ones who lost thousands (and with it their homes, cars and families) have probably (and hopefully) been scared off for life. Many of the people who played these machines at £1 - £10 per spin and lost that money, are now having to get loans on massive APR's just to see themselves straight and therefore don't have the money to play with either.

The smoking ban as I understand it has caused the closure of some arcades. I have to say that when I do play (often only £5JP machines as the higher JP's take my money, often without amusement) I tend to stop when I fancy a cigarette and use that time outside in the cold to leave the area before losing more money.

The industry got greedy with the sec16 machines and maybe that is what is causing their losses.
The emulator (MFME) cannot play many recent games at all. Ok it plays 2 currently active technologies but with Scorpion 4 many of the new games don't run at all, and the ones that do run, often only run in door open mode, which doesn't play the same at all.
The newer MPU5 (Barcrest) games don't appear to work at all. The older games on MPU5 that work are now old enough that had we still been under the gentlemans agreement of 3 years, we could still emulate them.

Comparing MAME to MFME and AGEMAME is like comparing poker in a casino to playing card games with the family for fun. The poker in the casino is fun because you can win money. The card games at home with the family are to kill some time, if you weren't playing cards with the family, you wouldn't suddenly rush to the casino just to play a game of cards. You'd watch TV or read a book instead, or whatever your chosen pastime is.

Guitar

[Guitar]

Also, in your article £50 = $100 , not $25.

[Guitar]

but to get your facts so utterly wrong and then abuse people who are actually part of the scene for pointing that out is disgraceful. Guess we'll be seeing you working as a "proper" journalist in no time.. Not.

Um he ignores the truth and went for the story he wanted, he has every chance of becoming a pro journalist imo.

[jamesb99_1999]

That was one of many points I was waiting to make Guitar For this well written/ researched article he couldn't even use basic facts like conversion correctly.

[Guitar]

I just looked up cyberslotz and much of it seems to be simulators of machines, connected to online casino's that allow you to play online. If its companies like that that are losing money, well maybe its because increasing percentages of people who use their debit/credit cards online get used for fraud. Also that much of the online casino software comes with adware, spyware and uses the internet connection at odd times.

[VampUK]

Certain groups have acquired current machine ROM Images skilled themselves on achieving jackpot conditions (rehearsing the machine) and then travel the towns 'stripping' machines of their prize pot.

I'd like to see proof of this, if you cannot provide proof then I reserve the right to call your "article" pish. Have a nice day!

[Gazeyre1966]

I have never read so much piss in my life!!! f*****g journalists, they haven't got a clue have they??? This editor guy certainly doesn't....Cyberslotz....Mwwwwwaaaaahhhahahahahaha!!! Wake up you knobend

Put some time and effort into your investigation before coming up with tripe like that...and yes, it is tripe of the highest order.

I, for one, will be watching with interest to find out where this will be published....and I will e-mail and spam your mag to f*** telling them what an incompetent twit you are.

Oh, no need to tell me...Stinger report. What the f*** is that?....Leading industry newsletter????....Mwwahahaha hahahaha ha ha!! Pull my bell end.

[impact]

To me it`s like some sort of corp company that is lossing a lot money and pointing there fingers at us. Well stuff Corp company and other systems of control.

For those who know i feel a write tax moment comming on strong SORRY BUT.
*ucking corp company that *uck our heads up with market market pants pants pants ideas watch what we buy eat click on surf to *uck `em.Fruit Emu is more legal then you wiping your ass .How because i at the atei show made clear to companys that there are emualtors which are out which allow me to play games of theres with pics of really fruit machines , using the really software and it running on my pc .Let me make it clear er these companys to which i will say barcrest bellfruit,jpm and a hand full of many others from the atei2007 the hardware is very old,like phill b from jpm said impact has had a good life and that it is very nice to hear that my teams work is still wishing to be played and can for a non money making piece of software, bellfruit Wow thats the words really cool people wont let old tech die and barcrest mike.? it was going to happen i was asked what money/how much is the software to play our games. me i said free and to told there is nothing wrong to what is going on there

[superbank]

I'd like to see proof of this, if you cannot provide proof then I reserve the right to call your "article" pish. Have a nice day!

Why I went around all my local arcades only yesterday and "stripped" all the Line Up's of their tokens!! Consider that truth - and not a bit of pish!!

[elcondor]

I would like to thank all those that helped with the editing of the feature to hit the mark. I have sent out this copy to the team that gave information, but thought I should circulate the final with the forum:


...How much of the intransigence to embrace retro is linked to an aversion to open a complicated and particularly messy can of worms is unknown, but ever-increasing financial pressure is being applied to utilize this natural resource.

The complacency that smothered amusement and allowed MAME to erode perceived value could be about to visit gaming. The Skill and Amusement with prizes scene has seen emulators simulating their cash-payout machines before. The Stinger was one of the first to report the practice in Stinger #xxx, at that time linked to the FairPlay lobby that via their simulators revealed discrepancies in Nudge (Hi-Low) and Random payout behavior of AWP's and forced clear signage on UK machines – a issue highlighted by use of the AWP emulator.

The first fruit machine emulator software backend was called the MPU and offers a means for modern machines to be emulated. Bundled for £50 ($25) with a number of Fruit machine ROMS (Images) the system fell afoul of Barcrest in 2001 – legal action forcing the software to be re-developed to only play old machines and avoid infringing copyright. Developers of this emulator and another fro JPM machines joined forces to create the Multi-Fruit Machine Emulator (MFME). It was these emulators that were linked to a serious issue.

The big issue for the gaming industry is these emulations, known by a growing community as ‘CyberSlotz,’ offer a level of access to current prize-payout machines, which is not healthy. Certain groups have acquired current machine ROM Images skilled themselves on achieving jackpot conditions (rehearsing the machine) and then travel the towns 'stripping' machines of their prize pot. Most of the trade is oblivious to this behavior, while operators at the sharp end are dismissive of manufacturer security -- concerns increased after the AWP B4 kit situation (see #xxx).

A concern beyond machine stripping is that the popularity of ‘Cyberslotz' could migrate to other platforms superseding the archaic Pub and Bar machine. A familiarity with Cyberslotz could create a generation willing more often to 'Virtually' play an AWP application on their PC or – even more worrisome -- on their mobile phone! This could raise serious questions about the conventional AWP machine’s validity and usher in its inevitable replacement. But not all the emulators of fruit and slot machines are out there to defraud AWP systems. The legitimate machines are also supported by a growing number of player groups.

This vocal fan base has expanded to embrace social player networks and have developed their own PC based AWP and SWP video machine freeware system. The Amusement & Gaming Extension for the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (AGEMAME) – that had previously been developed as MAGE -- offers much of what MAME championed with a growing operational archive of past and present gaming machines accurately emulated on players PC's. The current forum repository for the AGEMAME ROM Image library contains over 1,000 fruit machine ROMS (though claiming all are old ROM’s and no currently operated machines are emulated). The majority of users are loyal gaming fans wanting to archive favorite games.

The AGEMAME is focused on gambling games and related machines (against MFME’s Fruit machine focus). The open source project is tightly monitored to avoid grooming, with no current ROM’s deployed without their free circulation from the manufacturer. Where AGEMAME is growing a strong following, MFME has been abandoned due to the impact of the illegality of its operation and the problems it could cause – as was stated by one source “…like throwing bricks at a beehive!”.

The Pinball table sector has ...


Thanks again for your help guys.

Just a note, I never received this copy, otherwise I would have made a correction - AGEMAME's game list is far smaller than 1000, you've added all the FME ROMs collection together. The stuff about controls is correct, though, although I still maintain that 'grooming' through emulation does not occur to the extent you are claiming.