New Game: Blackjack

Blackjack

Rules

Blackjack, also known as Twenty-One, is the most widely played casino banking game in the world. Blackjack is a comparing card game between a player and a dealer, meaning that the players compete against the dealer. It is played with one or more decks of 52 cards. The object of the game is to beat the dealer which can be done in a number of ways:

• Get 21 points on the players first 2 cards (Blackjack), without a dealer Blackjack
• Reach a final score higher than the dealer but not exceeding 21; or
• Let the dealer draw additional cards until his or her hand exceeds 21.

The player or players are dealt an initial two-card hand and add together the value of their cards. Face cards (kings, queens, and jacks) are counted as ten points. A player and the dealer can count his or her own ace as 1 point or 11 points. All other cards are counted as the numeric value shown on the card. After receiving their initial two cards, players have the option of getting a "hit", or taking an additional card. In a given round, the player or the dealer wins by having a score of 21 or by having the highest score that is less than 21. Scoring higher than 21 (called "busting" or "going bust") results in a loss. A player may win by having any final score equal to or less than 21 if the dealer busts. If a player holds an ace valued as 11, the hand is called "soft", meaning that the player cannot go bust by taking an additional card; 11 plus the value of any other card will always be less than or equal to 21. Otherwise, the hand is "hard".

Probability

You see, what you may not know about Blackjack, is that there are a number of subtle rule changes a casino can make (their 'house rules') that alter their edge considerably in this game.

In many casinos a dealer/player tie is called a push, and you win your money back. In fact if a player lost on ties from 17-21, it would give the house an extra 8.86% house advantage, on top of their other house edge.

In fact, according to the respected Wizard Of Odds web site, there are over 3,000 subtle rule combinations that can massively affect the edge when playing blackjack.

The link I've given you explains this in more detail, and there is even a calculator provided that allows you to enter the rules from the specific casino you play at and see the house edge.

Once you know the house edge, that's only part of the battle. The next issue is how you play. If you don't play perfect mathematical strategy, you start to give up more edge to the casino.

So when someone tells you that blackjack has a really low house edge, for the most part they are wrong. The exact edge is determined by the rules in place, together with the skill and ability of the player. In a casino with bad blackjack rules, and a player who is not playing perfect strategy, the edge could easily be worse than a slot machine.

For all of these reasons, it's not possible to answer your question. The odds of you beating the dealer, depend very much on the rules, and your ability as a player to make the right decisions.

Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWn8xHKhYYs

What Do I Need?

• Cards
• Tables
• Deck
• AI intelligence

My customers

describe the customer
- age - 11-20
- gender - Mostly male
- income - Average if any
- what kind of jobs - Mostly no jobs as they will be too young
- what type of gamers - medium, racing fans
- what hobbies do they do - normal hobbies, mixed
- with friends - mostly
- online/offline - both
- hardcore gamers - not really
- what prices they are willing to pay - the competitors prices are about £40-£50
- why this game over others - because it is something they want.

Potential Impacts

Constraint	Potential Impact	Solution/Back Up Plan
Illegal racing	Could cause young people to race illegally.	Title screen explaining that racing is illegal and should not be performed at any times.
Budget	The budgeting for this game would be a lot because I would have to find a engine that would support what I want to do. All of the development kit would have to be brought as well.	Develop the game way in advance to make sure that you can price everything effectively.
Licensing of Cars	The car companies could sue me for using their cars.	Would have to ask the car companies to use their cars.

HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

WHAT DOES HCI IN GAMES DESIGN?

All games have a user interface. They all have a way in which allows the player to play the game accordingly. Its not just about what players press to make the avatar to move, it includes opening menu's, config screens, and in-game, on screen buttons. Its best to keep these controls simple and fast.

DIFFERENT WAYS A PLAYER CAN INTERACT

- A computer mouse
- A touch screen
- A program on your Mac or Windows machine that includes a trashcan, icons of disk drivers, and folders.
- Pull down menu's
- A Xbox controller
- A PlayStation controller
- Motion sensors
- A computer keyboard

Different consoles and PC's allow the same game to be played differently. An example of this is Call of Duty. The Call of Duty series is available on almost every console and PC. But on console typically PlayStation and Xbox, the game is played with a typical, Xbox and PlayStation controllers. This allows the player to perform a number of button presses in a small time as the controller is within their hand. This allows the player to have a good and easy way of controlling the game. However on PC, the game is generally played on a keyboard and mouse. This means that it is a lot harder to play the game. This is because not all of the buttons are easy to press within a short amount of time when playing the game. This can be changed though. You can either changed what buttons do what or you can add a wired Xbox controller to have the same experience as Xbox and PlayStation consoles. If you do this you lose some accuracy as a mouse is more accurate that a joystick on a Xbox or PlayStation controller. Furthermore the console Nintendo Wii, released Call of Duty with a slightly different way of playing. The way you play on the Nintendo Wii is why motion. You use the controller to guide where you player looks and moves all with motion. This performs the game to feel completely different and takes a lot more skill to perform well in the game. However this can not be substituted for a controller. If you play the game on Nintendo Wii, the idea is that you play it with motion. This three interactions with the same game makes the game feel entirely different at some points. For example simply moving around is a lot different if you are doing it with a mouse, controller or motion. They all require different skill. Xbox, PlayStation and PC all insist that the player is sat down and not really doing anything other than moving their hands.

How can the following information limit the recording of sound?

How can the following information limit the recording of sound?

DSP – Digital Signal Processor

Software plug-ins or DSP emulations of multiband compressors can be complex, with many bands, and require corresponding computing power.

RAM – Random Access Memory

While the maximum RAM limit for 32-bit Windows 7 editions is 4GB, when it comes to the 64-bit editions, the amount of memory that the OS can address depends on which edition you are running.

Here are the upper RAM limits for the different editions of Windows 7:
Starter: 8GB
Home Basic: 8GB
Home Premium: 16GB
Professional: 192GB
Enterprise: 192GB
Ultimate: 192GB

These limits are similar to those for Vista editions, expect that Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate have had their upper limits raised from 128GB to 192GB.

File format (eg Mp3, Wav, Aiff)

MP3 is an audio coding format for digital audio which uses a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio streaming or storage, as well as a de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on most digital audio players.

The WAV format is limited to files that are less than 4 GB, because of its use of a 32-bit unsigned integer to record the file size header (some programs limit the file size to 2 GB). Although this is equivalent to about 6.8 hours of CD-quality audio (44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo), it is sometimes necessary to exceed this limit, especially when greater sampling rates, bit resolutions or channel count are required. The W64 format was therefore created for use in Sound Forge. Its 64-bit header allows for much longer recording times. The RF64 format specified by the European Broadcasting Union has also been created to solve this problem.

Unlike the better-known lossy MP3 format, AIFF is uncompressed (which aids rapid streaming of multiple audio files from disk to the application), and is lossless. Like any uncompressed, lossless format, it uses much more disk space than MP3—about 10MB for one minute of stereo audio at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz and a bit depth of 16 bits. In addition to audio data, AIFF can include loop point data and the musical note of a sample, for use by hardware samplers and musical applications.

Audio output (eg Mono, Stereo, Surround)

Mono simply indicates the use of a single channel. Mono includes the use of a single microphone used to record sound, which is then played through a single channel through a speaker. The easiest way to check if a sound is a mono recording is through a set of headphones, incidentally, you can easily distinguish whether or not the sound plays through one headphone and not the other. Mono recording was typically used before the development of stereo recording. All the sound signals recorded are channel through a single audio channel, therefore mono sound delivers no implication of sound perspective, for instance there is no hint of the direction in which the sound is being recorded from.

Whereas mono has one independent audio channel, stereo has two. Signals that are reproduced through stereo recording have an exact correlation with each other, so when the sound is played back through either speakers or headphones, the sound is a mirrored representation of the original recording. Stereo recording would be useful in situations that require the use of sound perspective, for instance the clear location in instruments on a stage. The stereo system must have an equal cover over the two audio channels.

Why do we need 5.1? What's wrong with good old fashioned stereo? One of the fundamental limitations of stereo is that all the reverberation of the original acoustic space, whether recorded naturally or added artificially afterwards, comes out of the speakers from the front, together with the music. In real life, reverberation comes from all directions (unless you're in the open air!) and this limits how realistic stereo can ever be. 5.1, with its extra rear channels placed behind the listener, can re-create the original acoustic space more accurately than stereo ever can.

PCM – Pulse Code Modulation

There are potential sources of impairment implicit in any PCM system:

• Choosing a discrete value that is near but not exactly at the analog signal level for each sample leads to quantization error.
• Between samples no measurement of the signal is made; the sampling theorem guarantees non-ambiguous representation and recovery of the signal only if it has no energy at frequency f_s/2 or higher (one half the sampling frequency, known as the Nyquist frequency); higher frequencies will generally not be correctly represented or recovered.
• As samples are dependent on time, an accurate clock is required for accurate reproduction. If either the encoding or decoding clock is not stable, its frequency drift will directly affect the output quality of the device.

In what types of scenario may you use the following audio recording equipment?

Multi-track recording

Midi – Multi Instrument Interface

DAT, Analogue

Software Plug-in’s

Software Sequencer

SOUND FILE FORMATS

SOUND FILE FORMATS

UNCOMPRESSED

- wav

- aiff

- au

- smp

- voc

LOSSY COMPRESSION

- mp3

- ra

- vox

Unit 73: Sound for Computer Games

Unit 73: Sound for Computer Games

Psychology of sound

Timbre

In music, timbre also known as tone color or tone quality from psychoacoustics, is the quality of a musical note, sound, or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include spectrum and envelope.

List at least 3 games (or films)

- Jaws

- Assassin’s Creed

- Super Mario Bro’s

Audio Atmosphere

3D audio - 3D audio is improved surround sound technology. It features sound that not only plays from in front and behind, but also beside, and even above/below. 3D audio can be used with headphones, which act as surround sound speakers, playing sound in one ear, where the sound is coming from.

Surround Sound - Surround sound has 5 or 7 speakers, set up around the room. This makes the sound come from the speakers behind or in front, depending on what sound is playing, and where the sound is coming from, in relation to the centre point (a person, or the middle of the screen etc). This gives an immersive experience from your own home.

Interactive adaptive sound - This is when music or sound effects adapt to the players inputs and gameplay. For example, the background music changes when the character stops exploring, and starts fighting etc. It also adapts to movement, for example, if you step on concrete to wood etc.