BlackJack Rip offs

I never mentioned anything about odds. This isnt about losing becuz I got a lower score or anything its based souly on malfunction

Well I tried to message you and you never responded so someone told me I should post about it here. and I wasnt talking crap about you or anything. as I told you in IMs, you and have never bumped heads, so there was no need for me to be rude or anything. anyhow I understood the tables problems as before, I just wish you would've responded to me in IMs. then I wouldnt have ever bothered to take a friend's advice and post this ....I just figured "I lost alot of money and even if posting about it doesnt work, hey...at least I tried something rather than just sit back..." ya know? so I guess just dont worry about it if you're having alot of probs with RL money. I know the feeling.

I've been a 'little' busy handling complaints from people standing around getting free money. Your refund is a priority but it's on the back burner right now.

Jack - one idea may be to let you activate a 'free credit' like a space invaders machine... someone says 'the game froze and didn't play' -- give em a free credit to play the game again while you watch

Like I tell my friends that come to Vegas to visit me : "See those big buildings down there on the strip? Do you REALLY think they built them to give YOU money?"

Siggy.

People complaining about getting free money?

people complaining about getting free money?

you lost me right after "you'd have a trusted account". with all the people yelling about alts on here i don't see a trusted account working out. maybe if a Linden did it.

No I mean having the "authentication" group in control of a very specific ALT account, who's sole purpose is to compile and release scripts that can no longer be modied from the original source code.

I apologized. Game the system all you want! Pfft. If you can't fix the system, embrace it!

oh gotcha Hank i see what you mean. still how would everyone else know the alt account didn't change the code right before saving it? and why would everyone trust the authentication group anyway?

Ok complaints is the wrong word. After a while that's how it feels. But yea Hank, all the people who show up all have good ideas and/or problems with something, need something, want to know something, want a game do to something different, want more money to be spit out of the free money machines. And I'm trying to fix things that have been reported a long time ago but there just insnt enough time to keep everyone happy. I'll get to everyone eventually but I'm going to handle the happy people first because there are lots of them and only a couple with actual problems.

And the tables aren't slow. You don't need faster tables.



*EDIT : By the way I _CANT_ give out a refund if the tables crash, in fact they time out if the player doesn't play because they could be dealt a bad hand and I would lose. The only way I could lose money if I started giving out refunds, and I have I said, two people have cost me $240 RL money, I want to add up the transactions myself but the Lindens will not give me a copy of the records because they don't get involved with gambling disputes.

Well, it comes down to making a group from trusted individuals in SL. You'd just have to trust them to do the right thing. If the group was ever caught "fixing" something or cheating, then they would lose that trust forever.

I highly doubt LL would provide this service without some hefty US$ charges, at their RL hourly rate. Inworld, I'm sure several pople would be "interested" in creating a group to consult, help, and validate scripts for approval by the group, and then have trusted members log into the ALT account, compile the script, and lock it down(for a L$ fee, I'm sure). The script could never be changed after that point. You can tell it was locked down because the script was made by the ALT account.

I am all in favor of certification. My games would exceed standards without question. However, there is no way I am turning over my system code to any 3rd party who doesn't have Linden in their name. I think that's going to be the major stumbling block for this idea.

-AP

@Jack - thank you for trying to help your customers to the extend you say you are doing.

Tony, while this is true... if I were to make a program and a bug in Windows crashed it, it'd still be a faulty program. That excuse would not cut it in the real world... imagine a Wall Street bug crashing the system, or an airport control tower? yeah.

Your program for a platform. If you are saying you have this problem in your games, I strongly suggest you immediately discontinue their use.

Then bitch to the Lindens, not Jack.

- Ace

Are you abdicating that scriptors should not take personal responsibility for their products?
Especially in the case where they make money off them?

Actually, Hiro, I beg to differ. In the real world (in which I hold a real job and it happens to be in software), after you have worked around whatever bugs you have in your dependencies, you lay the blame where it belongs and you try to get the right things fixed.

Some examples:
MS Windows crashes randomly because of a display driver developed by ATI.
Norton Antivirus crashes randomly because of a bug in a MS Windows DLL.

Before these companies release their software they (most of the time) do everything they can to test them and make sure they behave as expected on their platform, but ultimately, if they hit a bug in the platform that they can't fix, they notify the people who need to fix the problem and work with them for a fix. They don't, as you suggest, immediately discontinue their use.

I was simply pointing out that the crash was not in Jack's code and that the right fix needs to come from LL. I still don't think I'm wrong in this statement.

Nobody is saying scripters shouldnt be responsible for their stuff, Hiro...

What people is saying is is, there reaches a point where its out of your hands. Crashes to desktop, for example, while tragic, are not an issue with the code. Its not even an issue the scripter caused to happen or could program around.

You relate this to a bug in an operating system. Well, fine, I guess thats true. And yes, certainly if the bug is known people writing stuff should do their best to avoid the bug.

But there are things we just cant do anything about. Comming at this from a vehicle designer's perspective, I'm all too aware of this. Despite our best efforts, things *will* go wrong with vehicles we charge money for. We know this. The game will eat them on a sim crossing, or they will stop responding for no apparent reason, or they will die on a SL update, or something. We try to avoid these bugs when its within our power to do so, but it quite often simply isn't. So we deal with it as best we can, and deal with problems that arise as best we can.

This is true of a lot of other things in SL. There comes a time when you have to say to yourself, "I've done the best I can on (x thing). It works fine. Yes, there is random issue #9324, but it is totatly unrelated to my work, and there is simply nothing that can be gained by fretting about it.".

Crash to desktops are fickle things, and don't seem to be consistant between clients. I myself crash to desktop frequently when flying above the cloud level. Don't ask me why. Am I going to stop selling vehicals that go up to that height? No.

Reitsuki, Tony,

You two make sense, but the bottom line is "boo-hoo". If you make the choice to create software in an environment that is unstable, you need to be prepared to provide 100% support. Yes, that can mean going back to the platform provider to see if they can fix bugs. But in the meantime, as long as you're profiting, it's your problem.

Especially in SL. We scriptors all know how tenuous LSL's functionality can be. We choose to script anyway. If our stuff breaks, we need to fix it. In the case of a broken airplane, that's easy - replace the plane or provide a refund. But when you get into the order of 23k being lost by a player to a faulty gambling machine, you need to be ready to provide a refund.

Jack has said he's given a refund and I applaud him for this.

As for the crashing issue, the same thing goes. We scriptors KNOW that it's a random issue for all players. We CHOOSE to code for it anyway. Gambling is different from selling objects because you can tell whether or not a transaction has taken place with object sales, but gambling - you can never know, just from looking at your account history, if things have worked as intended.

Solutions:
1. Assume customer is always right - put in a logging system into the casino games, where it records all details of what happened and XML-RPCs it to a webserver email for 100% accountability.
2. Buyer beware - make it absolutely clear - like a popup notecard with big letters - that if the player crashes or if the script fails that the user can't get a refund. Then the gambler can decide, INFORMED, if they want to take the risk.

I doubt many casinos want to do the prior solution, since it leaves a hole for people to exploit (whoops! My first 4 cards of 5 are bad... I'll just pull the plug on my network card), then I would assume the latter is the desired solution.

And if a casino is afraid that they will lose a lot business because of such a warning, then I believe they are running a dishonorable business anyway.

I'm saying that its not the scripter's fault that a client crashes. There's nothing in LSL that can do that to a client. So if the client crashes, one should call Linden Lab, not whoever's script was around at the time.

- Ace

I believe the odds in Black Jack are 51% to 49% in favor of the house if you are using normal decks.

Just to add my two cents worth (or 5L$ at current exchange on GOM).



First off you can't say this. I know for a *fact* there are attribute combination for particular functions that will crash the sims. But on the bright side LL is really good about fixing client crashes, especially if you have automatic crash-reporting turned on. One known bug that can cause a client to crash is when the log file the SL client uses gets to large and uses up all the disk space or exceeds the file size supported by the file system.

Hank: I would like to help out with your group to review and certify code used in casino equipment. I'm morally against gambling in SL in it's current un-regulated form.

BlackJack is a game that requires player interaction. If a player crashes out while playing the game should refund the money automatically; it's easy enough to build in a time out and sim check (llKey2Name). Also sending regular emails about status is a good idea. It could even just be a prim in another sim to double check the payouts.

woah i was just playing these tables and was betting 500K a pop and i lost. i mean they glitched..yea tahts what it was.. can i have my money back please...

Actually, when a player loses money to a bug at my places, I make it right. Every time. Now of course, I have lots of logging and I can usually tell if the player is trying to "pull a fast one" Which gets an automatic perma ban) ... but there are some cases where I can't tell. In those cases the benefit of the doubt always goes to the player. If it happens again and I suspect there may be some hanky panky going on, I make it right again and tell that player they are 100% at their own risk from that point forward and I ask them not to play the games at all.

Regulation would be nice. But again, who is going to do it? Like I said, no way I am passing out my systems to 3rd parties who don't have Linden in their name.

-AP

Cmon Aggy! Can I check your Acey Ducey script for you?
Schwanson "Linden" Schlegel