Sahara Slot Machines Programming

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The casino measured 56,000 sq ft (5,200 m 2) and included 790 slot machines, as well as 74 table games. 232 233 The casino was small compared to others on the Las Vegas Strip. In contrast to the Sahara casino, the number of slot machines in the SLS was reduced to allow more table games. Project 3: Slot Machine. Slot machines are the most popular game in modern casinos. If you’ve never seen one, a slot machine resembles an arcade game that has a lever on its side. For a small fee you can pull the lever, and the machine will generate a random combination of three symbols.

Ever since SLS Las Vegas was purchased by developer Alex Meruelo, speculation has run rampant about what the new name of the resort would be. Now, we know.

Sahara

According to a well-placed source, SLS will be renamed Sahara Hotel & Casino.

And all was right with the world.

Since about the time Meruelo Group acquired SLS in April 2018 (yes, we broke the story, because that’s how we roll), rumors swirled the casino would be named Grand Sahara Resort. Meruelo also owns Grand Sierra Resort in Reno.

In the end, though, we hear cooler heads prevailed, and the name Sahara Hotel & Casino will be announced as the hotel’s official name in the next few weeks.

We are downright elated at this news.

Renaming SLS as Sahara is a brilliant move. It plays upon the storied history of the casino, while saving a metric hell-ton of money by playing up an existing brand rather than trying to create a new one from scratch.

While the previous Sahara went downhill toward the ends of its life (Sahara closed in 2011 after 59 years of operation), there’s a surprising amount of goodwill toward the brand, and we suspect Vegas visitors and locals will embrace the new Sahara’s throwback vibe.

Sahara Slot Machines Programming

Since acquiring SLS, the resort has had a multi-million dollar facelift, including dramatic changes to the casino and the recent opening of the Casbar lounge.

Sahara Slot Machines Programming

The original Sahara had a Casbar lounge. Ah, the circularity of the universe. (We’ll share more about the new lounge soon, as it’s incredible. We’re just too Captained to do it justice at the moment. Yes, “Captained” can be used as a verb.)

This is not your grandpa’s Sahara.

Clues about a Sahara rebrand abound at SLS.

For example, the casino’s loyalty club is called Club 52. Sahara opened in 1952. The loyalty club’s logo features a design flourish used in the original Sahara’s advertising.

Those aren’t ovaries. They’re a design flourish! Freak.

Oh, and while we’re delivering the scoop, here’s another juicy item: We hear Alex Meruelo has purchased another Las Vegas casino.

Mind blown.

Now, we can redirect our speculation from the new name of SLS to which casino he’s acquiring. Treasure Island? Planet Hollywood? Another Caesars Entertainment casino?

We’ll get an official announcement soon.

Also, expect more news out of SLS/Sahara soon, including official confirmation of scoop we’ve already shared: Cleo is closing. Umami Burger is closing. 800 Degrees Neapolitan Pizzeria is closing. Bazaar Meat is staying and getting an expansion. “Magic Mike Live” is moving in.

Sahara Slot Machines Programming Games

Oh, and expect an announcement of a major renovation to the resort’s pool complex. Are you not entertained?

In the meantime, let’s just bask in the magnificence of a new name for SLS: Sahara Hotel & Casino.

We can’t wait to have her back.

Update (6/27/19): It looks like the official-official name of SLS will be Sahara Las Vegas Hotel & Casino. Big thanks to Fernando D. on Twitter for the find.

Boom. A little past, a little next, it’s the new Sahara Las Vegas.

I was bored and that can be a dangerous thing. Like doodling on the phone book while you are talking on the phone, I doodle code while answering questions on DIC. Yeah, it means I have no life and yes it means I was born a coder. During this little doodle I decided to make a slot machine. But not your standard slot machine per say, but one designed a little bit more like the real thing. Sure it could have been done a little more simpler and not even using a Wheel class at all, but what fun is that? In this entry I show the creation of a slot machine from a bit more of a mechanical aspect than a purely computerized one. It should provide a small sampling of classes and how they can represent real life machines. We cover it all right here on the Programming Underground!

So as I have already said, this little project was just something to play around with. It turned out kinda nice, so I thought I would share it. But what did I mean about it being mechanical in nature? Well, if you have ever played a real slot machine, not the digital ones they have in casinos now, you would see a metal case with a series of wheels. Typically it would be three wheels with pictures on them. When you put your money in and pull the handle the wheels would be set into motion. They would spin and then the first wheel would stop, followed by the second and then the third. After they have all stopped, the winnings are determined and you are paid out in coinage or credits.

Sahara Slot Machines Programming Software

I thought, why not be a bit mechanical in this slot machine design and create the wheels as a class called “Wheel” and give it the ability to spin independently of the other wheels? Have the wheel keep track of which picture (or in our case number) is flying by and report the results to the actual slot machine class. I could have done this mechanism without the need of a wheel at all and instead load up an array and have it randomly pick a number from the wheel. Little slimmer, little more efficient but wouldn’t show much programming theory.

What do we gain by recreating these Wheel classes and spinning them independently? Well, you gain a slight bit of flexibility. Independently we are able to control the speed of the spinning if we wanted to, we are able to grasp the idea of the wheel as a concept in our mind and manipulate it. We could easily built in features like if the wheel lands on a certain number it will adjust itself. Like some slots in Vegas, if you land on lets say a rocket in the center line, the machine would see the rocket and correct the wheel to spin backwards 1 spot (in the direction of the rocket as if the rocket was controlling the wheel). We could spin one wheel one way and another wheel another. We could inherit from that wheel and create a specialized wheel that does a slew of new different behaviors. All encapsulated into one solid object making the actual Machine class oblivious to the trickery of the wheel itself… encapsulation at its finest!

The machine class we create will contain 3 pointers. Each to one of the wheels. The machine itself will be in charge of a few different tasks. Taking money, issuing and removing credits, determining when to spin, telling each of the wheels to spin and checking our winnings based on some chart we create. It has enough on its plate than worrying about the wheels and reading their values.

So lets start with our Wheel class and its declaration/implementation…

wheel.h

As you can see the wheel itself is not a difficult concept to envision. The bulk of the work is in the read() method. Here we simply read the values from our internal array of integers (the values on the wheel) and return those values as an array of the three integers… representing the visible column. This column will then be loaded into our 2-Dimensional Array back in the Machine class. The 2D array represents the view or screen by which the user sees the results. Remember that the user never gets to see the entire wheel. Only the 3 consecutive values on the face of the wheel.

Here is how it may look in the real world. We have our machine with the three wheels and our 2D array called “Screen” which acts as our viewing window. Each wheel will report its values and those values will be put into the screen…

Below is our machine class…

machine.h

This looks like a lot of code but really it is not if you look at each function. Most of them are very very simple to understand. We have a spin method which essentially spins each of the wheels, reads their values back from the Wheel class into a pointer (representing each column), then they are loaded into the 2D array one column at a time (our view screen), printed for the user to see the results and lastly the winnings are checked. The checkwinnings() method determines which rows to check based on the amount of the bet. If they chose 1 line, it checks for winning combinations on the middle row only. If they choose 2 lines, it checks the middle and top lines, 3 line bet checks all three horizontal rows, 4 line bet checks the first diagonal as well and 5 line bet checks both diagonals in addition to the lines.

How does it check the lines? Well each line is given to the checkline() helper function which compares the 3 values of the line against an enumerated type of various symbols. Here we are just assigning a symbol against each numbered value to help the programmer determine which numbers correspond to which winning combos. For instance, luckyseven represents the number 3 in the enumeration. So if it runs across a line with 3 number 3s, then it knows it hit the grand jackpot and credits the player 1000. This method makes things easy because if we ever wanted to change the win patterns later, we could change the enum and checkline method to do so. We could also build in multiple types of symbols and even let the user choose what slot machine game they want to go by. It becomes very flexible and is a testament to great design!

Sahara Slot Machines Programming Machine

Lastly we can put some tests together just to show some the various aspects of how this thing works and how the programmer can use the classes…

slotmachine.cpp

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This simply inserts a 5 dollar bill and a coin for good luck. Then bets 5 lines and spins. Despite the outcome we go and bet five lines again and spin once more. Hopefully we win something this time around! But either way, those are the classes for you and I hope you like them. As always, all code here on the Programming Underground is in the public domain and free for the taking (just don’t cause a mess in isle 3, I am tired of running out there for cleanup). Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. 🙂