[Noisebridge-discuss] Dice-O-Matic

[Sai Emrys]

http://gamesbyemail.com/News/DiceOMatic

Be sure to check out the video; it's seriously awesome.

- Sai

"Currently, GamesByEmail.com uses some 80,000+ die rolls for play in
games like Backgammon, Gambit (a RISK clone), W.W.II (an Axis & Allies
clone) and others. To generate the die rolls, I have used Math.random,
Random.org and other sources, but have always received numerous
complaints that the dice are not random enough. Some players have put
more effort into statistical analysis of the rolls than they put into
their doctoral dissertation.

A few years ago I tinkered with a dice rolling machine made from
Legos. Though great fun, it was noisy and cantankerous and unreliable,
and it never recovered from the move two years ago. But it had made
players happy, at least for a while. So I decided to make a
'professional' grade rolling machine.

I had been slowly accumulating parts for over a year when I put out a
plea for financial assistance. Many players donated small amounts, and
a few made some over-the-top donations. I also received a large
donation of the elevator parts. The help allowed me to gather the last
and most expensive bits, and four months of spare time later,
everything is working better than planned.

I had a soft target of a machine capable of 200,000 rolls a day, as
site traffic is growing. However, any automation project worth doing
is worth over doing, and I way overshot the mark. The result is what
you see here: a machine that can belch a continuous river of dice down
a spiraling ramp, then elevate, photograph, process and upload almost
a million and a half rolls to the server a day. I may not get
nominated for a Nobel prize, but the deep rumbling vibration you feel
more than hear when two rooms away is quite impressive.

There is no doubt that I will still receive complaints about the
rolls, but now I can honestly say I have done all that I can possibly
do: the rolls you get are exactly as random as those you would get
throwing by hand. As I promised earlier, if you donate to the site and
are unhappy about the rolls, let me know and I will pull a die out of
the machine, melt it flat and mail it to you, as an object lesson to
the other dice. Tangible revenge. "