The World of Avlis

Hello.

Just visited the casino in the Noble's district in Elysia. Very nice. I applaud the creator.

However, I wanted to ask how the blackjack works. I played for probably about 2 hours, and it doesn't seem right to me.

Can someone please share the logic behind how the dealing is rolled?

It feels like it rolls a 1d10 for each card fresh each time. I does not feel like it uses a deck, least of all 6 decks. Most importantly, it does not represent the appropriate ratio of 10s to other cards. There should be a 31% chance of each draw being a 10, and I do not see this. It appears that each number has a 10% chance of being drawn. If this is the case, then the odds are stacked very heavily against the gambler, and the methods one would use at something like vegas casino would be very much contra-indicated here. If there is no deck (least of all six), and a radical under-representation of 10s, then there is no such thing as a "bust" card for the dealer -- one of the major factors that tilts the scale back toward the gambler (dealer still has advantage of course).

I would request that the methods used for calculating cards be adjusted so as to be the same as in a real casino -- six diminishing decks, a re-shuffle 5/6 of the way through (with an indication that shuffling has occured) and the appropriate ratio of 10s to other cards. The house still has the advantage, but if someone knows how to bet, then it is not a large advantage.

Wishlist: I would *love* to see a way of incrementing bets from hand to hand, and to have splitting and doubling down. I understand the latter two might be difficult -- but boy would you have something great if even the first was done. This allow for skilled players to fair better, rather than to just rely on luck.

Thanks.


F

Let me first give a small disclaimer:

I'm a programming-problem junkie. I -can't- resist giving my two-coppers when someone either asks for help or needs it. That even includes if they're not asking me, and in all probability, it isn't my place to answer. Which.. Is the case, here. (Since I've been here for what..? A week?)

That said..

I played the blackjack game when I got to Elysia for the first time, a couple days ago, and I must say, it was fun.

As far as using decks, though.. Eesh.. With the data structures that NWN has available, it might be really tricky. =/

Most decks are done with some sort of resizable array or linked list, but NWScript has neither of those.. I guess the dealer could have 52 local integers on her, and then every time a card is drawn it could be checked against the appropriate variable, and if that card isn't supposed to be in the deck anymore, it draws again..

The way I did it in my only module to ever use a deck of cards, was to have an inaccessible container that had all the cards in it. That way, when someone drew, it could just port a random one out and into their inventory. But.. That's not really practical here.

Hrm.. Personally, I was impressed with it, as-is, but, as I said before, I can't resist answering questions as best I can, and those are the best ideas that the Kooshy could come up with. =/

I can tell you that these kind of improvements are at the bottom of our priority list, so it will most likely never be changed. The reason being ofcourse that we only have limited resources.
However, if you feel you could do the job yourself, feel free to submit a Sub-contractor application and make us a nice new script, if it's any good, we'll gladly implement it