334 replies to this topic

[Heihachi_73]

Did you turn on the Jackpot key (L) as well? Both keys need to be in the 'on' position for the initialisation to work.

Additionally, make sure your keyboard isn't failing to read all 3 keys a same time - for example, my old HP PS/2 keyboard doesn't let me use Z+X+C simultaneously, and will simply return an error beep from the PC. In this case, you might have to remap one of the keys - you could remap all 3 keys to Z if you really wanted.

[mikej8]

Sorry about the delay in responding.

Man, do you know your stuff, Heihachi_73! I remapped the ZXC keys all to Z and it worked like a champ. Thanks!

I hope you don't mind a few additional questions.

The US version of enchanted forest allows one to select the number of lines played with W - Y (upper) keys, and then, you can select the number of credits per line with S - H (lower keys), which also spins the reels. So, for example, you'd hit Y to specify 9 lines, then hit "F" for 3 credits per line and spin. That's the way the games play in our casinos.

In the NZ games, the upper keys select the cr/ln value, and the lower keys the number of lines and also spins the reels. Thus, you'd hit Y for 5 credits per line, then striking "F" sets 5 pay lines and spins the reels, so you're playing 25 credits when you were hoping for 45. Are you aware of any way to make these games behave like the US enchanted forest?

I tried re-mapping the keys but it didn't work at all.

I hope that was reasonably clear.

Second, is there a document somewhere of what the dip switches do? I wondered if there was a dip switch setting for the above.

Thanks again for your help. I'm enjoying fiddling around with these things, and learning a lot.

Mike

[Heihachi_73]

That's just the way the non-US games are designed - since Australia is the upside down land, the buttons are the 'wrong' way on the real machine too.

With AU/NZ and other non-US games, you select the bet per line on the top row, then play the amount of lines to spin the reels. Rather than selecting the lines first and hitting a "Bet" button to actually bet, that would be too logical for us dumb Aussies! Even the latest widescreen Gen7 machines have the same layout, lines at the bottom and bet at the top; IGT, Konami, WMS as well.

Most of the DIP switches do nothing for the most part, outside of operator modes (e.g. setting denomination, note acceptor value etc; the latter is just a way to trick the machine into accepting a different emulated banknote, otherwise there would have to be separate $1/$2/$5...$100 note buttons). The only game which is affected by a DIP switch is Enchanted Forest (NSW, eforesta), turning on Auto Play will disable the gamble feature and turn the gamble button into an auto spin toggle. Also, only the US games support a note acceptor.

The bet per line values are hard coded in the game, so you can't make a 45 credit max game into a 90 credit game (of which, later games sometimes allow you to change the bets), or a 5 line non-multiplier game like the NZ Top Gear into 25 credits like the normal version bets (not dumped).

[mikej8]

That's pretty much what I thought, since ALL of the roms I have of No-US MKIV and/or V (I'm not sure where the distinction comes in) games behave the same way. It does seem bass-ackwards, but that's only because I'm used to it the other way around. Annyway, you guys invented them, so who am I co complain?

A couple things I noticed in my wanderings: In all cases, instructions to initialize these games included hitting "K" and "J" for Audit and Jackpot, but in fact, I've yet to find a game in which "J" is Jackpot. It's "L" in every case I've encountered. J is to collect a jackpot or collect a win. And the ZXC key strike didn't work for me until you suggested I remap all three to a single key (Z). And that's done with the Tab key, Input (this game), and simply assigning the key you want to the function(s).

The non-US games (I have only eforest to compare, and that's hardly a representative sample), pay about half what the US rom pays for the 5-of-a-kind winners. For example, five Kings pays 200 credits per coin on the US rom, where the non-US ones pay half that. I get dragons so rarely that I'm not sure what the pay list is (US is 5, 100, 1000, 2000 for 2, 3, 4 and 5 of a kind), but I think it's 5,100, 500 and 1000 in the non-US machines.

I live in Colorado, where gambling is licensed only in historic mining towns, specifically Cripple Creek, Blackhawk and Central City (all decaying gold mining towns). The old Pokies are enormously popular here, with banks of Enchanted Forest, Thunderheart and The Gambler (Kenny Rogers) machines (all variants of the expanding-wild tree-eyes), Wild Africa (variation of Black Tiger, with 4 rows), and one amazingly generous Halloweek-themed 5-line machine. All are CRT machines, with a few Enchanted Forest consoles sporting smaller screens and rather quicker play (you can enter a bet to interrupt the credit counting and play on). These have what sounds to me like 16-bit sound. Same music, just a bit more sophisticated than the older ones.

Unfortunately, their note-acceptors are aging, and they can be really balky with our new $20.00 or $10.00 bills, and the casinos are starting to retire them because of that. You'd think that replacing a note acceptor wouldn't be a big deal.

We have "Limited-stakes" gaming in Colorado. In this case, the maximum bet one can make anywhere in our casinos is $100. Up til a year or so ago, the limit was $5.00 so the most you could bet was 5 credits (nickels) on a 9-line machine. As a result, none of the slots feature Double Up or Gamble options. It'd be really easy to exceed $100 on a bet, so they're just not on the machines. The few MKVs I've seen in Vegas do have them, though.

The only rom I haven't been able to locate (I think), is K. G Bird.

Are you familiar with the Thunderheart (Air Force theme) and Gambler games? I'd never heard of Phantom Pays, but it's a nice alternative to Tree Eyes on occasion.

Thanks for all your help and information. These things have saved me several thousand bucks, assuming that I drove "up the hill" and played them as long and often as I've been playing these.

Mike

[Heihachi_73]

K and L is correct. The documentation needs to be updated, it used to be J and K.a long time ago.

The reason the paytables are so low is due to New Zealand gaming laws, which restrict the maximum win per spin to $500. So, their games favour small frequent wins rather than large wins so the games can retain their return to player percentage. On an Australian machine, they usually pay the same as US games, and the win limit is $10,000 per spin - this means that you could theoretically win $10,000 on every single free spin, whereas the NZ version would immediately stop the games when it hit $500 (and double up would be disabled as well). The Australian double up can be used on any win, but is limited to $10,000 (remaining credits are 'banked' aside until 5 gambles are done or the player takes win). The only time when the double up can't be played is if a progressive jackpot or Hyperlink bonus goes off, the game win will be added straight to credits.

Thunderheart - I played this game a long time ago, it was the same as Enchanted Forest but had a biker theme. They now use the theme for a Hyperlink jackpot bonus game similar to the Cash Express trains. I never played The Gambler, I don't think we had it down in Victoria.

The hard part has been getting people who actually own the boards to dump and test their ROM sets to see if they actually work or not, despite the large amount of slot owners on NewLifeGames and the like. For example, we need another dump of Caribbean Gold II, as the set was missing almost half of the EPROMs on the board (it only had the main game and four graphics chips in the set), and with the New Zealand games, a lot of the PROMs (located at U40 on MK2.5 boards and U71 on MK4 boards) weren't dumped so they have the wrong colors, simply using what's available. Another thing with the games is the lack of documentation from the owners - many of the games lacked any identification or ROM label info, so we don't know what they are (e.g. gtroppo.u40 should have a label like 1CM23 or whatever it is, and the C.Gold graphics chips should not be named the same as the program EPROM, but it's better than the meaningless u21.bin it originally had).

Edited by Heihachi_73, 17 January 2012 - 12:23 PM.

[mikej8]

This is a really interesting discussion to me because these machines have always fascinated me.

The Gambler was a movie made for TV in 1974 starring Kenny Rogers (with a sequel in '80), so I can see why it didn't show up much in NZ/AU. I wonder why Phantom Pays doesn't make a US appearance.

I have one final question I hope you can answer. I know that the pokies are hard-coded to some payout percentage (so it can't be changed with the audit access or dip switches). I'm given to understand that the reels are displayed according to the results of a random-number generator, and each symbol on each reel is identified by a unique number. I gather also that the reels are fixed too - the symbol order is as though they were physical reels with a paper strip, right?

A random number should be just that, so the only way I can figure out how one would change payoff percentages without tampering with the random-number generator is to modify the reels in some way - take away a King and replace it with a 9, for example, or make sure a tree eye will never appear in the third column as a King or something like that. Am I close in my assumption? That question's been buggging me for quite a while, and I'm going to guess that you have the answer.

Thanks again,

Mike

[Heihachi_73]

Yes, each reel is in a 'strip' inside the game code. It would theoretically be possible to modify the games, but you would also need to modify the game's internal checksum data and/or any other protection data which may be hidden in the game program, as they are very touchy with running modified software. Changing the reel strips would change the payout percentage, however you would need a special program or detailed knowledge to find out what the actual game percentage would become - in games with free games and other bonus features, these features are part to the total percentage, so the games themselves, minus bonuses, can pay as low as 30% if they wanted to, it all depends on how much the game relies on the bonus wins in this case. A game without a bonus feature (like Black Rhino) is almost always more 'solid' when it comes to paying out, because the entire return to player is the game itself.

The random number generator doesn't need to be touched in terms of modifying the reels (I don't think it's even possible to rig a *random* number seed in the first place!), all you would need to do is change the symbol and the game would literally replace that 9 with the King, as per your example. You could have a screen full of dragons and tree eyes if you want, it doesn't affect the machine randomly picking numbers 44-28-13-53-39, it doesn't know or care what symbols reflect these positions, that's up to the permutation table to decide if joining the symbols corresponding to 44-28-13-53-39 counts as a win or not. Some games however won't know what to do if it encounters a wild on reels where they're not supposed to be. For example, Indian Dreaming won't count wilds on reels 1-3-5 as x3 or x5 in the free games because it's not in the program code (but the game itself still knows it's a wild, so it will still substitute for the highest symbol and/or scatter). I don't know what would happen if Enchanted Forest was to find 3 wilds on the same reel at once, it would probably just count itself on each line three times, I don't know what it would do with a wild on reel 1 or 5 though, there is a possibility that it might only pay on its actual position (e.g. top of reel 1) rather than cover each position of the reel.

The double up game does not contribute to the percentage as it is a true, fair 50/50 game (e.g. the double up is not rigged to make you 'occasionally' lose like some of the European games in MAME; the Igrosoft games actually cheat to make you lose). The same can be said with the later suit gamble (introduced in the MK5 games), the x2/x3/x5/x10/x100 on Super Bucks III (and a few other games - each reel is a fair spin, for example the 100:1 reel is literally 99 'LOSE' symbols and 1 'WIN' symbol), and the Konami dice gamble (introduced in the Endeavour hardware on select few games only; I have never seen it on later machines, they seem to have reverted to standard red/black). IGT's suit gamble differs from the Aristocrat one, in that it gives you x3 instead of x4 for a correct pick, but an incorrect pick but correct colour counts as a draw rather than a loss; the wrong colour is still an outright loss. Technically, if you chose Spade for instance, you would have a 3/4 bet on Spade and 1/4 bet on Club; the odds still pay 4:1 but the bet isn't all out on the one suit.

One thing about the Igrosoft games and their Beat The Dealer double up feature:
If the game decides it wants to cheat, it will pick a card like normal, but force your card to be lower than the dealer's card. For example, if it picks a 3 in cheat mode, your card will ALWAYS be a 2 regardless of which card you pick out of the four selectable. If you technically have upturned cards 4-2-K-9 and pick card 1, it will swap the cards so that the card you picked will become the 2 (as proven with save states). I would imagine their high/low double up is the same. Of course, this type of 'weighted' double up is illegal in most English-speaking countries. IGT is known for the Beat The Dealer game, and these will not cheat you despite the possibility of having an impossible to win hand (for example the dealer draws a King and your 4 cards on the screen never even revealed a King or Ace that you could have picked to win or at least equal it).

Edited by Heihachi_73, 22 January 2012 - 06:33 AM.

[bald_noggin]

Hello all.

My name is Col (aka bald_noggin). I have been looking recently over the MAME driver for the MKV machines and reading the post within these forums.

I think I may be able to help out a little.

Other than having a small collection of MKV and MKVI games, I also have technical documents including schematics for the MKV which may reveal some more interesting features of the Main Board such as the DES chip.

Please contact me if you are interested.

Cheers,
bald_noggin.

[Heihachi_73]

A lot of the MKIV and MKV manuals were archived online many years ago, notably the US manual and the NSW Jubilee manuals - are your ones different from the archived PDFs? The DES chip seemingly wasn't used by any software to date.

The MAME driver has been on hold for the time being since there is a minor bug in the ARM core (Arculator's ARM core seems to be more stable, however Arculator is not done in C so porting code is a bit tricky). Also, the 2KHz timer is not hooked up in MAME yet; this should be a simple fix however (it was submitted ages ago but turned down for being 'hacky' of all things). Additionally, the DRAM Emulator is not 100% correct (it passes the startup test but is always 'on', so the games crash when they finish the startup tests and attempt to boot) - the US games lack the DRAM Emulator entirely so theoretically they should be the first to boot up if all goes well.

The MKVI driver was added by Haze (not us) and is just a placeholder for the handful of games dumped (mostly Asia/South Pacific region, and the denomination seems to be in RM, which is Malaysian ringgit). This video of 50 Lions is probably the same chipset as MAME's version, or a variant of it.

[bald_noggin]

Hi Heihachi_73,

Yep, those are the ones I have. In the manuals for the US machines (I also have a US MKVI manual but no schematic), it does mention that the main board may have the DES chip although, it is not used by any US games.

I have a number of dumps for MKV and MKVI games that are not listed against the mame .c files that are dumps that I had personally made.

I'll have to see if I can mod the aristmk5.c files to add them but it will be no good without the 2Khz timer not working at least.

I'm going to have agood look at Arculator now.

Thanks again for the info. If you need any help, let me know. My current studies are in Software Development.

Cheers,
Col.

P.S. I did manage to get a MKVI main board working on a MKV machine provided that the MKVI game did not need a touch screen. All that was needed was a jumper change in the backplane.

Later.

[Heihachi_73]

Touchscreen games do work in MKV cabinets as well (I gather you have the more common MKV series II), you just need the MKV/MVP touchscreen unit to go with it.

[pottzman]

hey bald_noggin,

what MKVI roms do you have?

[Heihachi_73]

What on earth for? MKVI dumps are practically useless to anyone, especially when it comes to emulation (the MAME driver does absolutely nothing and there are no devs interested in this hardware, despite playing around with other SH-4 based systems like the Dreamcast/NAOMI/Atomiswave). Adding these games to MAME will only help its preservation status, since there is basically no emulation code in the driver.

MKV is only stuck "not working" in both MAME and Arculator since the hardware isn't just an old Acorn Archimedes with a coin slot and hopper (the 2KHz timer is trivial to implement, however the code was initially turned down as a 'hack job' for some reason).

[pottzman]

they might not be useless to me!

[Heihachi_73]

They're really only useful if you have the entire machine for now. Of course, that would change if we could get more people interested in working on these types of machines (currently, the only non-arcade work being done is on fruit machines, obscure European games or early 1980s video poker - everyone else has seemingly moved to MESS).

[pottzman]

Well I have some emulated mk6 roms that work fine. I just wanted to see if bald_noggin had some roms that i don't have that i could try to see if they also work!

[Heihachi_73]

Those four games are not emulated at all, they are Windows apps, probably converted from the original game's source code (not binary e.g. ROM dumps) from the factory for testing purposes. The "50lionsa" set in MAME was in fact identified as the exact same program version which the 'emulated' version was made from; however if you compare the code layout in the original with the 'emulated' version, the Win32 code is all over the place rather than being directly ported across, and that there is no SH-4 code or even emulator code in there at all (each game is presumably compiled separately rather than being just an emulator where you could add a random ROM dump and start running it). I believe the base system (e.g. BIOS) is also converted as part of the Win32 exe file, rather than being another two chips that are separate from the 2-8 game EPROMs. When you dump the real game EPROMs, you end up with a series of garbled, 4MB binary files, not a folder containing exe and dll files waiting for you to run it on a PC.

[pottzman]

I wasn't referring to those famous 4 games.

[freddy1]

^{Pottzman what games are you referring to.}

[pottzman]

something like wheres the gold or wild panda