Introduction

The goal of the Fortuna project is to bring to live Internet Casino gaming the same quality as found in the very best selling role playing games (RPG) and real time strategy games (RTS) which have dominated in the multiplayer game market. The current market is saturated with virtual Casino software and developers are scrambling to add entertainment values in order to achieve product differentiation. Fortuna is our vision of how a product which would truly stand out should be designed.

Concept

The design of Fortuna is based on a very popular paradigm of a virtual adventure world in which the participant solves puzzles. In the case of Fortuna the puzzles are the actual games of chance that the player wagers on, and the virtual world is a casino in which players can interact with each other and non-player characters (NPCs). The NPCs can provide information about the games including the type of information system players usually want such as table history.

Differentiation

The paradigm recognized in the design of Fortuna will undoubtedly be considered by other high end gaming products seeking to differentiate them. Fortuna however adds to the paradigm a design which will put programmability of both the virtual casino environment and the embedded games of chance at the forefront and in fact extend authoring capabilities to the players themselves.

• Gaming Programs: Script-defined gaming interfaces enabling users to design new games of chance.
• World Construction: Design of worlds and avatars using tile-based map editors.

Game Screen

The virtual world will consist of a top-down view of the casino world, similar to an RPG. The player may walk his avatar through this area, talking with NPCs and other players alike. When he finds a table he likes, he can join, in which case his view shows a close-up of the gaming table.

One allure of Fortuna is that virtual casino worlds may be constructed by anyone and can include any combination and number of tables, both standard games (typical real-world casino games) and original ones (games of chance designed by other players). These virtual worlds will be interconnected, allowing players to easily travel from one world to another. (This is very similar in practice to MUDs and MUCKs, which are multi-user RPG games that often allow for players to construct their own areas and link them together with other such areas.)

Features

• User avatars: Represents players and spectators in virtual gaming world.
• Live video: This would show an actual gaming machine and operator which determines the result.
• Clustered navigation: The system must accommodate groups of related Federates (servers) which may correspond to Casinos owned by a single entity.
• Filtered radar: Location of open selected game tables and location of friends may be highlighted using a customizable filter.
• Gaming wizards: Display of information giving statistics on tables etc.
• Gaming systems: Support for cash management systems through dialogs.
• Gaming view: Replaces virtual room view with a gaming table view which may or may not include other virtual participants.
• Chat: Text and voice options.