#Craps and BJ on HD
3 messages in this thread
I own Craps Academy and Blackjack Academy and I would like to
install both on my hard drive without having to use a key disk. Does
anyone know how I might accomplish this?
– Tim
As far as Blackjack Academy is concerned, why bother? I bought the game to
practice counting, basic strategy, etc. After a while, I started seeing
the same sequences of cards over and over again. It appears that BJA
doesn't actually shuffle — it randomly picks one of a number of
preshuffled decks.
You would be much better off getting BlackJack Lab, a truly wonderful
shareware blackjack programme which is available on CI$. It is HD
installable, will multi-task, etc. It is also a much more powerful
simulator.
As far as Craps Academy goes, I really like the simulation. The graphics
are wonderful, and the interface is not bad. The problem is (you guessed
it) that the programme doesn't actually roll the dice. Rather, what it
does is to randomly select a series of dice decisions from a set of such
series. In other words, after a while, you start seeing the exact same
sequence of dice rolls!!
I think we should pressure Dan Cogliano (author of BlackJack Lab) to start
working on Craps Lab (or something more atractivly named).
Gordon Rose
I know the author of Blackjack and Craps Academies. I find it difficult
to believe that he is using a 'set of decks', although it is certainly
possible. The programmers SIG in our club saw those games throughout their
developement and offered many suggestions, I don't recal the question of
how to randomize the deck or dice ever coming up. Perhaps the problem is
that the random number generator used doesn't initialize very well.
After reflecting on the above, I thought I'd call the author and ask, he
laughed and assured me that he _does_ shuffle the cards (using the supplied
Manx random number generator) and rolls the dice. He gave me the details
of initializing (time from program start to 1st mouse click in BA, vertical
beam position in CA) and in the shuffle (the cards are collected from the
table in a 'fixed' order (so if you change ANY decision (hit-nohit) the
order is 'different') then a loop is run exchanging the 1st card with a
random one, then the 2nd….to the end). He said if you'd like to talk to
him, he'd be more than happy. If you do, let me know, and I'll Email his
phone # to you.
Victor A. Wagner, Jr.