Creating flash casino games

July 6, 2006 2:40 AM

Im looking at creating a couple of mini flash casino games for a university project, probably just blackjack and roulette.

It needs to log credit and award 'virtual money' Im hoping some people could point me in the direction of the best strategy to research and adopt. There are 2 things I need to research:

1) any links to statistics on payouts, probability of casino games

2) the best technology to interface the flash game with a database, im familiar with php linux and mysql but also know

suggestions appreciated

posted by toocan to computers & internet (5 comments total)

2) Check out Flash remoting. There is a open-source version for PHP called AMFPHP. It's very mature. It has several advantages over using XML.

Also give a thought to security. Flash games are generally very easy to hack for anybody with an SWF decompiler and a couple of hours time. If the credits result in any kind of real-world prizes, you should check out steps to prevent arbitrary submission of stats.
posted by uncle harold at 3:13 AM on July 6, 2006

Sorry to be so vague about the security aspects, but I have to go and that's a whole chapter. If you need more info and no one answers, I will ckeck back later.
posted by uncle harold at 3:17 AM on July 6, 2006

Why would you need statistics on payouts? If you model the games themselves -- a roulette wheel has 37 or 38 spots (depending if you include the "00"), and a deck has 52 unique cards -- the correct "odds" will emerge naturally.
posted by TonyRobots at 7:24 AM on July 6, 2006

uncle harold, yeah could you please post some info on security
posted by toocan at 1:40 AM on July 7, 2006

Here is a good overall primer on the vulnerabilities involved in highscore lists updated by Flash.

Note that the crossdomain restrictions of Flash and the binary format of AMF make this a little more difficult, but not really secure. A hacker can always write his own simple client and run it from his desktop, circumventing the domain checks.
posted by uncle harold at 4:43 AM on July 7, 2006