Well its time for a new world order as the times they are
a-changin', and we must roll with the Joneses as someone probably said once.
What's all the futuristic nomenclature about? The progression of our casino slot
machine into our online slot machine, that's what! So we've moved into the
information age, where actually touching things is passe. No worries though,
the Internet has us covered once again with the advent of the online slot
machine.
Getting into the guts of an online slot machine is a slightly
different journey. We're not talking to machinists and carpenters anymore, we've
moved on to programmers and graphic designers. Online machines are pieces of
software. Like all pieces of software they take some input from the user, and
produce some altered output according to an algorithm (the main piece of code
that defines the nature or behavior of the software).
An online slot machine takes the spin as input, a simple mouse click, and runs
the instance through its algorithm and produces an output. The code basically
attempts to randomize the return values of each individual reel. Unlike a
mechanical slot machine, all three wheels are not always seen to spin about one
axis. There are many different approaches a programmer can take to produce a
slot machine, but to provide a machine that produces consistent odds and
wins/losses without losing its true randomness is quite a professional task.
Mathematics and game programming go hand in hand, sometimes stretching the
limits of both disciplines, such as in modern 3D gaming.
Online slot machines are basic in comparison, but offer the same idea, a digital
representation of what we might otherwise experience in the real world. An
interesting point comes up when discussing the online slots that wouldn't
normally make its way into a casino slots conversation. That's the issue of
security. In casino slots the player cannot influence the spinning of the reels
and their returned value unless they were to physically get inside the machine,
or smash it real good. Online however, a cracker may wish to try an get in
between the client (your home computer) and the server (the computer the online
casino houses, where the bet is placed) and alter either the signal going out to
the server, or the one coming back from it.
|
