Central Server Progressive Gaming System Architecture
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current progressive gaming systems are limited in adaptability, configurability, and scalability, as they require each gaming machine to be physically or wirelessly connected to a specific progressive controller, restricting the number of machines that can participate in progressive awards and limiting players to only those associated with their current machine.
Innovation Solution
A central server-based system that acts as the progressive controller, allowing multiple gaming machines to communicate and participate in various progressive awards, enabling players to wager on side bets for different progressive awards and dynamically manage progressive pools, thereby eliminating the need for physical rewiring and increasing flexibility.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If each gaming machine is connected to a specific progressive controller, then the progressive award tracking is reliable, but the device complexity and wiring requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
A central server is introduced as an intermediary between gaming machines and progressive award tracking. The server receives wager information from multiple gaming machines via network communications, maintains progressive award balances, and determines winners without requiring direct connections between machines and dedicated controllers. This eliminates complex wiring while maintaining reliable tracking through centralized processing.
2Stability of the object's composition
If gaming machines are physically or wirelessly connected to a specific progressive controller, then the progressive award system is stable, but the adaptability and scalability are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The central server is designed to serve multiple functions: it acts as the progressive award controller for numerous gaming machines simultaneously, manages player accounts, tracks wagers across different machines, and determines progressive award winners. This universal platform allows any gaming machine in the network to participate in progressive awards without requiring machine-specific dedicated controllers, significantly improving adaptability and scalability while maintaining system stability.
3Adaptability or versatility
If a central server-based system is implemented, then the adaptability and scalability increase, but the device complexity changes from distributed to centralized
Solution Approach 1:
The progressive award control functionality is extracted from individual gaming machines and consolidated into a separate central server. This extraction allows gaming machines to remain simple clients that only need network connectivity, while the complex server handles all progressive award calculations, tracking, and management. The separation of concerns reduces complexity at the machine level while centralizing the computational burden in a dedicated server infrastructure.
4Quantity of substance
If multiple gaming machines can participate in progressive awards through a central server, then the number of participating machines increases, but the loss of information about machine-specific progressive awards may occur
Solution Approach 1:
The central server segments and maintains separate progressive award accounts for each gaming machine, ensuring that machine-specific award data is preserved and tracked independently. Each machine has its own progressive award balance and wager history stored in the server database, allowing the system to scale to many machines while maintaining complete information about each machine's specific progressive award status. The segmentation ensures no data loss even as the number of participating machines increases.
Data Source
AI summary
A gaming system including a central server linked to a plurality of gaming machines. The central server includes a plurality of progressive modules. Each progressive module maintains one or more progressive awards and is associated with zero, one or more of the gaming machines in the gaming system. Upon a determination that a designated one of the progressive awards will be provided, one of the gaming machines associated with the progressive module which maintains the designated progressive award provides the designated progressive award to the player of such gaming machine.