Skip to content

The Casino

Give your crew somewhere to unwind. The Casino is a hangar-bay hangout: a bar with regulars who trade gossip, eight games of chance, and a pilot market where winnings buy real ship upgrades. It runs on an Arvonian card deck — the computer-loving Arvonians play with bit-based cards, and the house dealer in some games is flavored as the Understander, their revered master computer.

It's optional and self-contained. Add it and a Casino tab appears in the bay; leave it out and nothing changes.

Looking for the rules of each game as a player? See How to play the Casino. This page is for authors adding the casino to a mission.

Add it to your mission

You need the hangar (the casino lives in the bay) and the casino addon. In your mission's story.json, add both to the mastlib list:

{
    "mastlib": [
        "artemis-sbs.LegendaryMissions.hangar.v1.4.0.mastlib",
        "artemis-sbs.LegendaryMissions.casino.v1.4.0.mastlib"
    ]
}

That's the whole setup. When a pilot is in the hangar, a Casino tab shows up. No other wiring, and the hangar still works fine if you ever remove the casino line.

Every visitor starts with a small stack of chips so they can play right away, and they can always buy back in — nobody gets stuck.

What your crew finds

  • The bar. Bitters the Torgoth barkeep pours drinks; regulars like Ghost (a quiet pilot) and Cogs (a mechanic who hears things) sit around. Buy a patron a drink, toast the room, or ask them for a rumor.

  • Eight games. Pick one from the lobby list; each has a "how to play" blurb and a Play button.

    Game Feel
    Nibble Blackjack-ish on the Arvonian deck — a tough table
    Gates Bet on which logic-gate hand wins (baccarat-style)
    Choga Arvonian stud poker vs. the Understander
    KoraTa (3-bit) Head-to-head opcode duel — build your run, corrupt theirs (values 0-7)
    KoraTa (4-bit) The wide KoraTa table — same duel, values 0-15
    Blackjack Classic 21
    Video Poker Jacks-or-Better, hold and draw
    Parity A fast "wheel" — bet even/odd or high/low

  • The pilot market. Spend winnings on craft upgrades and gear. Chips go first, then the crew's shared credits, so a big upgrade can dip into the ship's funds.

  • Trust and rumors. Every patron has a reputation. A tip from a trusted patron usually pans out; a burned one loses your trust and starts steering you wrong. Earn enough trust and the market's grey market opens up.

Make it your own

You don't need to be a programmer to change the flavor. The whole social layer of the bar — the regulars, their rumors, and the ambient chatter — is one authored file, casino/bar.amd. It reads like a script: copy a block, change the words.

Add a rumor a patron can tell

In casino/bar.amd, each patron is a # heading and each rumor is a ## heading under them. The line the patron says is the prose under the heading; the payoff shown if it pans out is the intel: line. Add one under a patron:

## [rumor: minefield](ghost_r4)
---
intel: "Ghost was right - and it's carrying salvage."
---
Something big is squatting in the old minefield.

Whether a rumor turns out true is rolled against that patron's reputation, so you don't mark it true or false yourself — just write the line they say and the good outcome. Give each new rumor a unique key in the (parentheses).

Add a bar regular

Add another # heading in casino/bar.amd. The --- block sets their call sign, face, and starting trust; the prose beneath is their vibe:

# [Sparks](sparks)
---
call_sign: Sparks
face_kind: terran_male
reliability: 0.6
---
A comms rating who overhears half the sector and repeats a third of it.

face_kind is torgoth_male, terran_male, or terran_female; reliability (0.0–1.0) is how often their rumors ring true to start. Ambient one-liners the regulars mutter live in the # [Chatter] block at the bottom of the same file — add lines to its lines: list for more color.

Add a drink

The bar's drink stock is in casino/bar.mast (the top few lines):

shared bar_martinis = 10        # change the numbers to restock
shared bar_beer = 10
shared bar_vodka = 8

Add something to the market

Open casino/casino_market.py and add a line to the catalog. Each item has a short name, a price in chips, a section, and a one-line desc:

{"key": "targeting_uplink", "name": "Targeting Uplink", "price": 900,
 "section": "upgrade", "desc": "Sharper weapons lock for your craft."},

Sections are upgrade, consumable, cosmetic, or blackmarket (grey-market items only appear once the pilot has earned a patron's trust — set how much with "min_rep": 0.8).

Prices are in chips. Big-ticket upgrades are meant to cost a lot — a pilot has to win big, or the crew chips in from shared credits.

Add your own game (a bit more advanced)

Every lobby entry — games and the market alike — is just a labelled "room" the casino discovers automatically. To add one, make a new file in casino/ with a route at the top. Give it a help metadata block (and a min_bet) — the lobby's detail panel renders help as mini-markdown, so a $t title and - bullets read nicely:

//casino/game/roulette "Roulette"
metadata: ``` yaml
help: |
  $t Roulette

  Spin the wheel and bet on where it lands.

  - Pick a number or a color.
  - Watch the wheel; matches pay out.
min_bet: 10
jump show_roulette

=== show_roulette == # ...your screen here... ```

...then add import roulette.mast to casino/__init__.mast. It appears in the lobby on its own — no other edits. The simplest existing game, parity.mast, is a good one to copy from.

The rules and payouts for each game live in casino/games/ as plain, testable Python, kept separate from the screens — so a designer can tune odds without touching the display.