JPH09253273A - Slot machine - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To enable the effective use of a memory area by executing a driver program stored in a storage medium, supplying a speaker driving means with input audio data and outputting an sound effect from speakers. SOLUTION: A microcomputer for controlling a slot machine consists of a main CPU 30M which performs prize-winning decision control and display control and a sub CPU 30S which performs surround control. According to a sound driver the sub CPU 30S reads the score data, corresponding to sound effect numbers supplied together with an interruption command NMI from tire main CPU 30M, from the data area Y in a ROM 31. Frequency data corresponding to the interval data of the score data out of frequency data fc to ff, etc., stored in the sound driver is read and fed to a speaker driving circuit 43. And a speaker 50 is driven. These arrangements enable the effective use of a data area.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a slot machine which is electronically controlled by utilizing a microcomputer.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a slot machine, for example, when three reels are rotated and the reels stop, the winning of the game is determined by whether or not the symbol marks displayed on the surface match a predetermined combination. It has been loved for a long time because it has a simple and clear rule.

Recently, what has become particularly popular has been devised by electronically controlling it by using a microcomputer so that the player is not bored with the change. One of them is the operation from the player and the rotation of the reel,
It is considered to play electronic music to produce a more attractive game in response to an event such as a stop.

[0004]

However, the slot machine can win coins, for example, by winning the game, and if it is too complicated and attractive, it will arouse the player's euphoria, and from the viewpoint of public order and morals. Not preferable. Therefore, in the case of a slot machine controlled by using a microcomputer, the capacity of the program and data is legally limited, and the program is prohibited from using a specific instruction code such as a register indirect jump instruction. There are restrictions such as.

Therefore, it is necessary to make a device which does not arouse euphoria within the limits of the fixed capacity and the instruction code. One of them is to play electronic music for various events, but it is necessary to devise various methods to play more attractive music.

When playing electronic music, it is necessary to store, for example, score data for each event, pitch data included in the score data, frequency data corresponding to the pitch data, etc. in the data area of the memory. However, in order to be able to support more types of slot machines, store versatile data in the program area as much as possible, and store note data specific to slot machines in the data area. Is preferred.

Even in such a case, it is necessary that the program area is a combination of instruction codes of a simple program, has general versatility, and can play electronic music at a higher speed.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an electronic device having a sound driver capable of effectively utilizing a small memory area by forming a program structure including a part of data so as to save the data area. It is to provide a slot machine having a music reproducing means.

Another object of the present invention is to obtain frequency data of general-purpose pitch data irrespective of the model of the slot machine, which can be performed in the same program execution time and in a short time between pitches. It is to provide a slot machine having an electronic music reproducing means.

[0010]

According to the present invention, the above object is to provide a plurality of rotating reels around which symbol marks are displayed, and a start lever to rotate the rotating reels so that the symbol marks after stopping are Corresponding to a speaker that outputs a sound effect for each event, a speaker driving unit that gives a sound signal to the speaker, and sound effect data generated when an event occurs in a slot machine that determines whether or not to win a prize And a driver program for obtaining a data area for storing musical score data having at least a series of pitch data and output sound data corresponding to the pitch data by sequentially determining a plurality of bits constituting the pitch data and branching them. A storage medium having a program area for storing the output sound data by executing the driver program. It is accomplished by providing a slot machine, characterized in that a control means for supplying the motion means.

In the data area of the storage medium, the musical score data unique to the slot machine is stored, and in the program area in which a general-purpose driver program is stored, the output sound data corresponding to the pitch data is stored. Can be used effectively. Further, since the output sound data corresponding to a plurality of pitch data can be acquired with the same number of command steps, it is possible to correspond to the musical score data of any configuration.

Further, in the present invention, specifically, the pitch data is composed of a plurality of binary bits, and the driver program sequentially judges whether the plurality of bits are 1 or 0, and all the bits are After the determination, the frequency data corresponding to the pitch data is acquired as output sound data. This is a simple algorithm that sequentially determines a plurality of bits, and can be implemented in assembler language without using complicated jump instructions that are restricted.

Further, in the present invention, the control means performs at least winning determination control and display control, and main control means for generating an interrupt signal and sound effect data in response to the occurrence of the event, and the interrupt signal and sound effect data. Is input, the driver program is executed to obtain output sound data, and the sub-control means supplies the output sound data to the speaker drive circuit.

By dividing the main control means and the sub control means, it is possible for the sub control means to exclusively control the sound, and it is possible to realize higher speed voice control.

Note that the above-mentioned pitch data is data corresponding to, for example, Doremifashi Rashi (CDEFGAB),
The output sound data is, for example, frequency data corresponding to it. Then, the speaker drive circuit receives the frequency data and outputs a sound signal from the built-in FM sound source to the speaker.

[0016]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. However, the technical scope of the present invention is not limited to the embodiment.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an external configuration of a slot machine. Reference numeral 10 is a main body of the slot machine, and 11 is a display unit for displaying a combination of winning symbol marks and a payout table. On the front of the main body, there are three reel windows 12, 13, 1
4 are provided, and reels that rotate respectively are provided inside. Reference numeral 15 indicates the number of medals to be paid out when a prize is won, and is sequentially counted down during payout. Reference numeral 16 is a medal insertion slot. After a normal medal has been inserted, the player operates the start lever 8 to rotate the reels and presses the stop button 17 of each reel at a desired timing to stop the reels. In this example, three symbol marks on the reel are displayed from the reel window, and the lines of "1", "1" and "2" are displayed according to the number of medals to be inserted before the start. The lines and the lines “1”, “2” and “3” are activated respectively. Then, when the combination of the winning symbol marks is completed on the activated line, coins are paid out from the coin payout opening 18 to the tray 19 according to each payout.

FIG. 2 is a system configuration diagram using a microcomputer for controlling the slot machine.
Each of the three reels 1, 2, 3 is driven by a stepping motor 4, 5, 6. Reference numeral 40 is a drive circuit for driving the motor. The rotation of the reel is detected by the reset detection elements 17, 18, 19 by the reset mechanism provided in the reel.
C is a count of the number of pulses given to the motor from the reset timing and the timing detected through
It can be recognized by the PU 30 side, and the symbol mark at the time of stop can be recognized by the count number until the stop.

When a player inserts medals, the number of inserted medals is detected by the medal detector 20 and displayed on the front panel of the slot machine by the medal insertion indicator 52 according to the inserted number. When the player operates the start lever 8, the reels rotate and stop after a predetermined time from each stop button. The CPU 30 determines whether the symbol mark on the activation line at that time matches the combination of the winning marks. When there is a winning combination, it is displayed on the front panel by the winning line display 51, and the number of medals according to the payout table of the winning is displayed on the display unit 15 by the segment type LED display 53. Then, the number of coins is paid out by the hopper 46. The medal payout detector 22 is the payout opening 1
The number of medals discharged from 8 is detected and notified to the CPU 30. The counter 47 counts and displays the number of inserted coins (not shown). Reference numerals 42 to 45 are drive circuits for driving each.

In the figure, B is a control unit comprising a microcomputer, etc., and the output ports 34, 35, 36, the input port 33, the ROM 31, and the RAM 32 are respectively CPU3.
0 is connected via a bus or the like (not shown). CPU
The ROM 30, the ROM 31, and the RAM 32 will be described in detail later, but the ROM 31 stores a control program for controlling the entire slot machine and data necessary for the control. The control program includes, for example, a winning determination control program, a display control program, a sound control program, and the like. The data includes, for example, a correspondence table of symbol marks and their codes, a correspondence table of winning symbol marks and payout medals, a payout table, display data corresponding to various events, sound data, and the like. In RAM32,
For example, the number of coins inserted during the operation, the occurrence of a bonus period, etc. are stored.

The above is the overall outline of the slot machine in which the present invention is implemented. Next, the sound control part of the present invention will be described.

FIG. 3 is a system block diagram detailing the portion of the CPU 30 of FIG. The CPU 30 includes a main CPU 30M which mainly performs winning determination control and display control,
It is divided into sub CPUs 30S that perform sound control.
The main CPU 30M is the ROM 3 via the bus BUS1.
It is connected to 1M, RAM32M and an interface. The interface outputs various display commands, coin payout commands, etc. in response to various operation signals from the user, and is here collectively shown as an interface for simplicity.

The main CPU 30M mainly controls winning determination and display, but gives an interrupt command NMI together with a sound effect number to the sub CPU 30S in synchronization with the occurrence of various events. On the side of the sub CPU 30S, control is performed so that a required sound is output from the speaker 50 based on the interrupt command and the sound effect number. Here, examples of various events include coin insertion, slot rotation, slot stop, and winning.

Similarly, the sub CPU 30S uses the bus BUS2.
It is connected to the ROM 31S and the RAM 32S for the sub CPU via. 43 is a drive circuit of the speaker 50,
It has an FM sound source inside. The ROM 31S is divided into a sound driver program area X and a data area Y. Sub CPU according to sound driver
30S is an interrupt command NMI from the main CPU 30M.
The score data corresponding to the sound effect number supplied with
Read from the table in the data area. The score data is
For example, it is composed of pitch data of Dremifah (CDEF ...), respective length data, repeat command data, transpose data and the like. The sound driver is a program that stores frequency data fc, fd, fe, ff, etc. corresponding to the pitch data (CDEF) in the score data, and acquires the frequency data according to an algorithm described later to drive a speaker having an FM sound source. It is given to the circuit 43.

For example, if eight octaves are required, 96 pieces (12 × 8) of pitch data are required. Further, in the FM sound source, as shown in the figure, frequency data fc, fd, f
An electronic circuit for calculating the output waveform corresponding to e is stored.

By the way, a slot machine used for a specific business needs to be controlled to the extent that it does not cause so-called euphoria. Along with this, the capacities of the control program area and data area are strictly limited. For example, in the case of the sound driver, the program area is 16
It is 1000H in the base system and C00H in the data area (in this example, the data area is 3/4 of the program area). Therefore, in order to generate the maximum sound effect for as many events as possible, it is important to effectively use the data area for storing the score data.

On the other hand, the data area is usually created individually for each slot machine, and it is desirable that the sound driver program area is a general-purpose one that can be applied to all slot machines.

Therefore, in the present embodiment, even music data that can be commonly used by all slot machines, such as a pitch data table and a frequency data table, is stored in the sound driver program.

Further, in the case of a specific business slot machine, use of a complicated instruction code such as a register indirect jump instruction is restricted in the control program. Therefore,
When 96 pitch data are stored in the sound driver program, an algorithm for obtaining frequency data corresponding to specific pitch data from the score data is
It is necessary to configure without using register indirect jump instructions. In addition, it is necessary to obtain the frequency data corresponding to the 96 pitch data with the same acquisition time and as short an acquisition time as possible in order to ensure versatility and shorten the processing time. .

Therefore, in the present embodiment, an algorithm is adopted in which a plurality of bits forming the pitch data number are branched depending on whether they are 0 or 1, and each bit is sequentially determined.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing such an algorithm. In this example, frequencies corresponding to four pitch data are acquired. That is, the relationship between the pitch number and frequency of the four pitch data is as follows.

C = “00”: fc D = “01”: fd E = “10”: fe F = “11”: ff Explaining according to the algorithm of FIG. 4, the pitch obtained from the musical score data in the data area. The data of bit 0 of the least significant bit of the number is acquired (step S1). Then, it is determined whether bit 0 is 0 or 1 (step S
2). Next, the data of bit 1 of the next bit of the pitch number is acquired (steps S3 and S7). Then, it is determined whether the bit 1 is 0 or 1 (steps S4 and S8).
Then, the frequencies of the corresponding pitch numbers are obtained (steps S5, 6, 9, and 10).

According to the above algorithm, since each bit of the pitch number represented by a binary number is determined in order from the least significant bit, it is possible to obtain the corresponding frequency data with the same number of program steps for all the pitch numbers. Can be done.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of another algorithm for obtaining frequency data. This algorithm is shown in Figure 4.
It is a comparative example of the algorithm described in 1 above, and is for explaining the characteristic points of the algorithm of FIG. In this example, it is determined whether or not the pitch number is 0 by successively reducing the pitch number by one.

As shown in the figure, in step S20, it is determined whether or not the pitch number is 0, and if it is 0, the frequency data of the pitch number 0 is acquired (step S21). Next, the pitch number is decremented by 1 and it is similarly determined whether or not it is 0 (steps S22 and S23). If it is 0, the frequency data of the pitch number 1 is acquired (step S24). Further, the pitch number is decremented by 1 (step S25), and similarly 0
It is determined whether or not (step S26), and if 0, frequency data of pitch number 2 is acquired (step S26).
27). Further, in the case of 1, frequency data of pitch number 3 is acquired (step S28).

This algorithm can also be realized without using a special register indirect jump instruction or the like, but the number of instruction steps required for obtaining frequency data of each pitch number is different, and even the worst case is obtained. It takes an extremely long time. Therefore, it is not preferable as an algorithm for acquiring frequency data corresponding to a general pitch number.

The algorithm shown in FIG. 4 can be implemented by an assembler program widely used in 8-bit microcomputers and the like without using a special register indirect jump instruction or the like. An example of the program is shown below.

LIST 4: 1 RRCA 2 S1 JR C, LIST 4 2 3 S2 RRCA 4 S3 JR C, LIST 4 1 5 S4 LD BC, 0600H + 288 6 S5 RET 7 LIST 4 1: 8 LD BC, 0600H + 343 9 S6 RET 10 LIST 4 2: 11 RRCA 12 S7 JR C, LIST 4 3 13 S8 LD BC, 0600H + 323 14 S9 RET 15 LIST 4 3: 16 LD BC, 0600H + 385 17 S10 RET 18 At the right end, step numbers in FIG. 4 corresponding to each program step number are shown.
1 is the address of the program, which means that the first address of the program is LIST 4. In step 2, it is a write rotation instruction that shifts the bits in the A register with carry by 1 bit at a time. as a result,
The least significant bit of the pitch number is shifted into the carry area. If the carry flag C is 1 in step 3, LI
ST 4 Jump to address 2. JR is a jump relative, which is a relatively simple instruction code that jumps to an area within 256 bytes, and is different from a register indirect jump instruction that jumps to an arbitrary address. In step 4,
The bits in the A register are again shifted by one bit, and the bit next to the least significant bit is stored in the carry area.
Then, at step 5, if the carry flag is 1 again, the process jumps to the address LIST 41. This jump instruction is also a jump relative instruction. And step 6
Store 0600H + 288 (fc) of frequency data in the BC register at.

At step 9, frequency data 600H + 343 (fe) is stored in the BC register. In step 12,
The data of bit 1 of the pitch number is shifted to the carry area, and in step 13, if the carry flag C is 1, jump to the address LIST 43. In step 14, B
Acquire frequency data 600H + 323 (fd) in the C register. Further, in step 17, frequency data 600H + 385 (ff) is acquired in the BC register.

As shown in the program list above,
The algorithm shown in FIG. 4 can be configured without using a restricted instruction code such as a register indirect jump instruction. Moreover, each frequency data can be stored in the control program. Since frequency data can be acquired within an equal time for any pitch number, any musical score data can be dealt with at an equal speed. Optimal as an algorithm.

When the pitch data for 8 octaves is used, 96 pitch data are required as described above. Therefore, when the pitch data is composed of 8-bit binary numbers, the lower 7 bits are used to specify the pitch data. Therefore, in that case, in the algorithm of FIG. 4, a judgment instruction of 1 or 0 of 7 layers is performed.

[0042]

As described above, according to the present invention, the sound driver for controlling the sound of the slot machine can handle all pitch data within the same execution time but within a relatively short time. The frequency data can be acquired, and the program can be configured without using the restricted register indirect jump instruction or the like. Therefore, it is not necessary to store a versatile table of pitch data and frequency data in the data area, and the data area can be used effectively.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an external view of a slot machine.

FIG. 2 is a system configuration diagram of a slot machine.

FIG. 3 is a partially detailed system configuration diagram of FIG.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of a frequency acquisition algorithm.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of a frequency acquisition algorithm (comparative example).

[Explanation of symbols]

 1, 2, 3 rotating reel 8 start lever 10 slot machine main body 50 speaker 43 speaker control circuit 30M main control means, main CPU 30S sub control means, sub CPU 31S storage medium, ROM

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A slot machine in which a plurality of rotating reels around which symbol marks are displayed and a start lever rotate the rotating reels to determine whether or not a prize is won based on the combination of the symbol marks after the stop. A speaker that outputs a sound effect for each time, a speaker driving means that gives a sound signal to the speaker, and data that stores score data having at least a series of pitch data corresponding to the sound effect data generated with the occurrence of an event. A storage medium having a region and a program region for storing a driver program for obtaining output sound data corresponding to the pitch data by sequentially determining a plurality of bits constituting the pitch data and branching the output sound data; And a control means for executing and supplying output sound data to the speaker driving means. A slot machine to mark. 2. The slot machine according to claim 1, wherein the pitch data is composed of a plurality of binary bits, and the driver program sequentially judges whether the plurality of bits are 1 or 0, and all the bits are stored. It is characterized in that the frequency data corresponding to the pitch data is acquired as the output sound data after the determination of. 3. The slot machine according to claim 1, wherein said control means performs at least winning determination control and display control, and main control means for generating an interrupt signal and sound effect data in response to the occurrence of said event, and said interrupt. It is characterized by further comprising sub-control means for inputting a signal and sound effect data, executing the driver program to obtain output sound data, and supplying the output sound data to the speaker drive circuit. 4. The slot machine according to claim 1, wherein output sound data corresponding to the pitch data is stored in the program area.