game

Liquid Edge Games says big prize money and online distribution means their new robotic combat game, RoboForge (www.roboforge.net), is set to usher in the age of the true professional online gamer. Recently gone gold, RoboForge allows players to builds robots on their PC and then enter them into online combat tournaments where they have the opportunity to win big prize money.

ROBOFORGE Goes Gold

Build Robot Gladiators and Win Cash Prizes

Auckland, New Zealand, 30 July 2001 –

Liquid Edge Games says big prize money and online distribution means their new robotic combat game, RoboForge (www.roboforge.net), is set to usher in the age of the true professional online gamer.

Recently gone gold, RoboForge allows players to builds robots on their PC and then enter them into online combat tournaments where they have the opportunity to win big prize money.

“Players download RoboForge direct from our website (http://www.roboforge.net). Using the simple construction kit they build 3D robots on their PC’s and train them to think and fight. After taking on pre-programmed robots that come with the game they can then submit their bots over the Internet to fight in free-to-enter or professional tournaments”, says Mike Ward, CEO for Liquid Edge.

Ward says the professional tournaments are like professional sports with the Ligaz888 winners receiving money and prizes. Liquid Edge say they will be running tournaments of 10,000 entrants or more on a daily basis with a first prize of up to US$10,000.

“Top players will become gaming professionals with RoboForge. It’s a gamer’s dream come true,” says Ward.

By delivering the game online and bypassing publishers, Ward says RoboForge is again breaking new ground. He says the technology employed has dramatically reduced the installation file size to 30mb which makes distribution quick and seamless over the Internet.

“Online distribution is really the future of game distribution because publishing and distribution costs eat up an enormous chunk of the profits on games. We’re able to pass cost savings onto gamers and at a RRP of US$29.95 the game is substantially cheaper than most premium games on the market.”

The game has been developed 100% in Java and will be able to run on all Win32 platforms, Linux and other Unix variants. The minimum spec PC required is 233Mhz CPU, 64MB Ram and a 8MB 3D card.

Ward says RoboForge does not breach the strict Internet gambling laws because it is purely a skill-based game with no luck or chance involved. Players get full details of what their robot was thinking at all times during the fight so they know exactly why it won or lost.

Ward says three years have been spent developing and testing the RoboForge concept and technology.

RoboForge is being marketed primarily through an Internet re-seller program. Liquid Edge welcome enquires about distribution opportunities for RoboForge.

RoboForge is being sold for a limited time at a special launch price of US$19.95.

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Where did slot machines come from? And how have they achieved the remarkable popularity we see today.

Although the first slot machines were manufactured on the East Coast of the U.S., they didn’t start to gain acceptance until they had migrated all the way across the country to San Francisco around the end of the last century. In the saloons and brothels of the notorious Barbary Coast and the Tenderloin districts, customers won a cigar or a free drink when they played a nickel in the primitive slot machines, which used playing cards as winning symbols. Few of the players understood the math in use on the reels of those devices, so the proprietors raked in enormous profits.

There were many slot manufacturers in those days, one is credited with creating the ‘modern’ slot machine that included spinning reels and cash payouts. Charles Fey, a German immigrant invented the ‘Liberty Bell’ slot machine in 1899 that is the template for every machine built since then.

The three-reel design was copied by many other manufacturers, and by 1905, thousands of slot machines could be found in the U.S., in cigar stores, barber shops, saloons, and bowling alleys.

The Liberty Bell was a simple machine to explain. Each reel operated independently of each other, and stopped one after another. Each reel had ten symbols or ‘stops.’ As a result, there were 1,000 different combinations (10 x 10 x 10 = 1,000). Three specific symbols must be lined up in order to win the jackpot, but there was only one way to do that out of the 1,000 possibilities. Since slot machines are all basic mathematics, and this is still the basic principle behind modern slot machines, that will be the last of the mathematics of slots we’ll discuss in this book.

The early machines were often rigged to prevent that big ligaz888 jackpots from hitting, but it didn’t prevent the growing popularity of the aptly named ‘one-armed bandits.’

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 destroyed the factories of every slot manufacturer, but, along with the rest of the city, the slot builders returned even stronger. But when preachers and holy-rollers blamed the calamity on God’s wrath over the sins of the city, slots were outlawed in San Francisco in 1909, followed quickly by bans in all of California and Nevada.

To skirt the law, slot manufacturers disguised their machines as ‘gum’ machines that would dispense packs of gum for jackpots. To further camouflage the machines, the playing card symbols were replaced by fruit-cherries, lemons, oranges, peaches, etc.-and labels of the brands of gum dispense that evolved into the ‘bars’ on today’s machines.

The imposition of Prohibition in 1918 ushered in the return of illegal slots and the lure of banned liquor and gambling caused an explosion of slots during the Roaring ’20s. The ‘Golden Age’ of the slot machine ended quickly when Prohibition was repealed in 1934. Except for Nevada, where gambling of all sorts was legalized in 1931, slot machines were …