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.

[tjdrico]

Originally Posted by sabret00the

installed it, installation was easy thank you, my only thing is that the templates could be worked on a bit.

Cheers.

Worked on in what sense? Some of the text isn't phrased, but they work OK. I think the presentation of a couple of things, like bet preview and View Event could be prettier, but is there anything specific?

[sabret00the]

Originally Posted by tjdrico

Cheers.

Worked on in what sense? Some of the text isn't phrased, but they work OK. I think the presentation of a couple of things, like bet preview and View Event could be prettier, but is there anything specific?

yep by working on i just mean made prettier, thiers a few things which seem (sorry can't think of a better word) illogical to me in thier presentation, but saying that i should stop being lazy and get it work the way i think would look best instead of just bombaring you with complaints, so i apologise, it's a great hack

[tjdrico]

I've got an update to put up which makes things a little better I think. It shows odds as decimals as well as fractions (outside of the UK I think decimals are more common), and also shows the popularity of each outcome using poll-style bars. There's a new option when creating a bet so that you can make it so people can only bet on a single outcome, rather than spread betting. That's in what I'm calling 0.7 Beta 1 which is only installed on my own forum at the moment, but since no one seems to be reporting any problems, I think I'm going to aim for a release version over the weekend.

In other words, if you want to hack the presentation, I'd hold off for a few days (assuming you'll upgrade to the release version).

[Beermonster]

This is a great hack especially with Euro 2004 coming up

Would it be possible to add the ability to have doubles, trebles, round robins etc, OK may be I'm going a bit to far

[high]* Beermonster clicks install[/high]

[sabret00the]

i'm unable to find an error yet, but my bet wraps up at midnight should nothing go wrong with that, i'll be sure to take a look at making the templates a little nice.

[sabret00the]

what would be good would be the ability to set an option so people can only participate if they've posted in the thread.

[Fugler]

Would it be a good idea to somehow integrate it with the arcade too so that people can take bets on who wins challanges and so on?

[Beermonster]

There's just so many options for this hack

[tjdrico]

Enhancements Not Yet Released

Completed as of 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.

[sabret00the]

sounds great, hopefully the upgrade won't be too hard