Honestly dude, I threw this together after jotting it down on paper first.
I originally did it using 1 active with the 1 full image then 2 half images above and below but it looked poor.
If you have any questions about the example i posted just hit me up and i'll do my best to help.
I tested what you provided, and it looks awesome. I attempted to test the current frame of reel 1 against the current frames of the other reels, and while that works, it's not really the way you'd want a real slot machine to work. I have to rewire my mind to think logically for that.
My thought process at the moment is to try and map each frame within the reels to specific values. For example, the sunglasses would all be alterable value a = 1, sun would be a = 2, etc. I'm not sure how that'd work off the top of my head, and it'd probably be more work as well, but I can't think of a more coherent process just yet.
I'm also going to try and see if there's a way to get the full reel to work the way it should, as in that example I showed from YouTube.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this. The animation speeds can be slowed down with some trickery, Due to the way the reels are setup it would be virtually impossible to assign an alterable value to the reel images which is why i had to go through manually and write down the position of each image,
As far as getting "the full reel to work the way it should" I'm a little confused as to what you are trying to achieve.
Are you talking about the animation speeds, the staggering of the reels or the bounce?
Sorry if I'm a little unclear in what I'm saying. I'll try and go through your post piece by piece.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this. The animation speeds can be slowed down with some trickery, Due to the way the reels are setup it would be virtually impossible to assign an alterable value to the reel images which is why i had to go through manually and write down the position of each image,
Slowing down the animation speed is as easy as making the counter drop down slower (I made it happen every 5/100ths of a second, I think).
Assigning an alterable value to a reel image should be easy too. If the current frame = 0, it's the first frame that you see. With that in mind, you know what each image's value should be thereafter. I tested it by looking at the current frame. If it was 0, I set a counter to 1. If it was 1, the counter was 2. If it was 2, the counter was 3. And so forth and so on. It worked without error for me. I would think that instead of assigning the value to a counter, you could just as easily set an alterable value in its stead.
As far as getting "the full reel to work the way it should" I'm a little confused as to what you are trying to achieve.
If you look at the youtube example I provided, the entire reel moves as one giant image. It's probably anywhere from 80-150 symbols long, but it moves as one. Whereas in this example, each reel space (Reel 1, Reel 1 top, Reel 1 bottom, etc.) cycle through symbols individually. The ones that you see in casinos (and in that Youtube video) may use the same individual symbols method, but they animate it differently to give the illusion that it's one reel. At this point, I don't know, and all my attempts ended fairly messily. I like your method for how clean it is.
Are you talking about the animation speeds, the staggering of the reels or the bounce?
Everything that you had in your example were done splendidly. I'm a big fan of the staggering reels (I was doing the same thing in my testing as well). I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean by "the bounce" though.
I sort of understand what you are saying. I hate having to do things this way as it is really difficult to convey your meaning through words when you have it clear in your head but i'll try my best.
Ok, here we go.
Assigning an alterable value to a reel image should be easy too. If the current frame = 0, it's the first frame that you see. With that in mind, you know what each image's value should be thereafter. I tested it by looking at the current frame. If it was 0, I set a counter to 1. If it was 1, the counter was 2. If it was 2, the counter was 3. And so forth and so on. It worked without error for me. I would think that instead of assigning the value to a counter, you could just as easily set an alterable value in its stead.
This is in essence what i have done however as you said it could be done using alt. values but as I am coding this for the competition i have had to limit my use of them.
If you look at the youtube example I provided, the entire reel moves as one giant image. It's probably anywhere from 80-150 symbols long, but it moves as one. Whereas in this example, each reel space (Reel 1, Reel 1 top, Reel 1 bottom, etc.) cycle through symbols individually. The ones that you see in casinos (and in that Youtube video) may use the same individual symbols method, but they animate it differently to give the illusion that it's one reel. At this point, I don't know, and all my attempts ended fairly messily. I like your method for how clean it is.
I think i have achieved something like this in the second example i posted. You could go one step further with this and use quarter images aswell as half images but you would have to increase the spin counter accordingly.
I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean by "the bounce" though.
If you watch the video you posted you will see that the reels bounce a little just after they stop.
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Assigning an alterable value...
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This is in essence what i have done however as you said it could be done using alt. values but as I am coding this for the competition i have had to limit my use of them.
If you don't mind, when you're done with the competition, could you describe/show what you've done? I'm all for streamlining things as long as I know how
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If you look at the youtube example I provided...
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I think i have achieved something like this in the second example i posted. You could go one step further with this and use quarter images aswell as half images but you would have to increase the spin counter accordingly.
That gives it the full reel effect, which, again, is awesome, but not the mechanic. Whereas the ones that you and I have made has the animation (or in your second example, the direction) changing frame by frame, the one from YT seems to slide - I don't know if that's just an advanced style of animation. Maybe that individual piece contains all the frames as well - Maybe it has more than one frame per symbol, but only stops at a certain one, which would cause that bounce perhaps, and would still make it look like it was sliding?
You could achieve the sliding using one hell of an animation sequence. I'll throw something together now. give me a few mins and you'll see what i mean.
I often have to stop what I'm looking at and think about the next step overnight, and you seriously come up with an answer like a second after I'm done asking the question. It's unreal.
I'm hoping this is what you were getting at, obviously it's not the full reel. It would take me ages to create it but it will use a combination of the principals used in both my previous examples:
Yep, that was pretty much what I meant, and that was mostly the way I thought it would work. I'm assuming the nudge/bounce could be achieved by picking a certain value and shifting it to the nearest full value (so instead of 2/5 Watermelon, 5/5 Watermelon, as an example). That's pretty much spot on what I was thinking, and I think that you could still use the alterable values to calculate that (or however you're using it). I'm very excited to see how your game in the competition turns out. Once you've got that up, I want to see what I can make on my end. I have a hell of an idea, and the examples you keep providing are definitely helping me see the ways that I can streamline it. Once I have something that I think would be up to snuff, I'll post my own example, and see what you think. Thanks for all your help!
register on fruit-emu.com and download a fruit machine emulator, download a fruit machine and then go into design mode, load the layout from the fruit machine you downloaded and then open the reel editor. You can save the reel images into a folder for use in other apps.
That'd be awesome. From the testing standpoint, having reels that are already available are great to work with. On top of that, it might be extra easy, with that in mind, to adjust the images with fully customized art afterward.
If you like what I have to show a few days/weeks from now, I'd be glad to collaborate on something of that nature. Like I said before, I'm much more on the creative side of things than the programming side, but the ideas that I come up with are pretty interesting most of the time.
That'd be awesome. From the testing standpoint, having reels that are already available are great to work with. On top of that, it might be extra easy, with that in mind, to adjust the images with fully customized art afterward.
If you like what I have to show a few days/weeks from now, I'd be glad to collaborate on something of that nature. Like I said before, I'm much more on the creative side of things than the programming side, but the ideas that I come up with are pretty interesting most of the time.
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Edited by lembi2001
