BETA: vBookie
 

vBookie

Beta release

What is vBookie?

vBookie is a 'bookmakers' or betting extension to vBulletin. It enables authorised members to post Events and Outcomes that forum members can bet on. Each Outcome has its own set of odds, and odds can be modified through the life of a bet.

Once the results are known, Events can be settled and forums members awarded their winnings.

vBookie uses its own vCash by default, but this has no more use than as 'bragging rights'. However, vBookie also comes with a built-in switch to allow it to use uCash instead. That means that all bets are paid for and settled using uCash, making betting even more attractive than just for fun on forums with uShop installed. Although vBookie does not have any built-in facility to integrate with any other store hacks, it's a very simple job to hack vBookie itself to integrate it with any store/points system you care to use. For example, you might wish to link vBookie with Petz, so that Petz players can gamble their points. It would be possible to reduce the amount of points awarded for posting etc. and make betting the best way to make money, which might go some way to tackling the 'forum spamming' that seems to be part and parcel of a Petz installation. If integration with any particular store hack or other system seems popular, I will build it in to vBookie, so please let me know if there are any requests.

For a more detailed explanation, the beta manual is online here.

Why is this a Beta?

I have tested vBookie on my own PC and on my main forum, and it works OK in both situations. However, there are quite a lot of changes, and there is also an installer that only I have run, so I would like to get some other people to check it out before I claim it's a release version.

Expansion

vBookie requires manual intervention for the settlement of bets as a human being has to select which outcomes are winning ones, and also to specify the available outcomes in the first place. However, if you have a PHP-based web site that has ladders or leagues/matches with a scoring system, it should be a fairly straight forward job to hack vBookie so it can be plumbed into that other system. No doubt some people will come up with other ideas, too. You could take an automated stock ticker and bet on the final value of Microsoft after each day, or something. =)

Feedback & Bugs

I welcome feedback, particularly the positive sort. ;) If you find any bugs please do let me know. If they are esoteric, please try to give instructions for how to reproduce them.

Image attachment uploads don't seem to be working at the moment (I've tried GIF and PNG) so view the manual for screenshots.

Enhancements Not Yet Released

From 0.7 Beta 1

• Added switch to specify whether punters may bet on more than one outcome
• Added "decimal odds" display as well as the UK style fractional display
• Added graphical display of the relative popularity of each outcome on a bet (like poll results)

TODO

This is the current list of things I plan on adding to vBookie imminently:

• add option to award a gratuity to all users when a new bet is placed
  (so everyone always has *something* to play with, even if it's only a
  small amount). Alternatively, only make awards to people on zero.
• Add 'accumulator' bets
• Add "each way" betting
• Build in a switch to use Petz points instead of vCash
• Improve user feedback on bet status and why they can't bet.

Please email me any requests or add them to this thread.

Updates

Changes in 0.6 Beta 2

Daylight savings time is taken into account when editing events. That is to say, it's assumed that the person editing is entering the time they want in their local time, whether or not daylight savings is in effect or not.

To upgrade from 0.6 Beta 1 to 0.6 Beta 2 simply overwrite the vbookie.php file.

omfg, how long have i been waiting for this, thank you so muc this will be installed and tested asap :D

ps could this at all be set up to have a certain userid put in charge of moderating this.

just read it seems that anyone can make a vBookie event, i really need to install it to check it over properly.

Very nice, Ive been waiting for this!

this is just amazing.... :devious:

fantastic idea thank you!

be cool if you could set it to work with paypal

That's a pretty cool idea TJ... :nervous:

Only people in usergroups with permission can create them (or should be able to). So give permission to the Administrators group only. If you're not the only administrator, then set up a new group called Bookmakers, and give that group permission, then add it as a secondary group for yourself and you should be the only person able to set them up or bet using them.

At the moment, it's all open to anyone to try on my Respawned forum (registered users), so you could take a look on there if you like:

http://www.respawned.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=7

very cool, looks like it would be good for sports forums or other :)