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Betting mechanic for racing game?

2 replies [Last post]
Thu, 01/30/2014 - 22:26
EdWedig
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Joined: 09/15/2009

So, I had a glimmer of an idea this morning about a zombie racing game. The idea is that each player is the owner of a racing zombie. The zombies start in the middle of a hex map, and move semi-randomly toward the edge. Similar to frog/turtle racing.

I was thinking that players, after each round of movement, could place bets on other zombies for which place they would finish: Win, Place or Show. Obviously, the owner of a zombie should make more than one of the bettors, but I was thinking that an owner whose zombie is not performing well could make several bets on other zombies and still come out ahead.

So, my question is this: does anyone have an example of a game with a betting mechanic like this, where players can change their bets during the race? Gold Digger, while not a racing game, has claims on different mines, so it's sorta similar.

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Thu, 01/30/2014 - 23:34
#1
Evil ColSanders
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Joined: 12/08/2010
There is no point in changing

There is no point in changing bets in the middle of a race. It's dumb and destroys the idea of betting. If you see a clear winner, what's to stop all the other players from changing bets?

What you need is a few random elements. Assign zombies stats. If say a zombie has move 3, it means that zombie rolls 3d4 for movement. Actually, use those special 6-sided dice from smallworld. 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2. This way, the luck element allows for random chances of a trailing zombie to get a miracle push or a zombie in the lead can run out of gas.

Secondly, you can have the players themselves spend a money to buy cards which help the zombies along or hinder others. You can either: A) Spend X dollars to draw 1 card. or B) Flip cards equal to # of players. Each card has a dollar amount required to purchase it. or C) a Combination of A and B.

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Fri, 01/31/2014 - 03:51
#2
RGaffney
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Joined: 09/26/2011
I disagree with ColSanders.

I disagree with ColSanders. You could have a mechanic such that the earlier you bet the higher your margin is on potential to profit. A simple way would be that it costs money just to place, and then there is the money you actually bet.

So to start with it's $10 to place and every Zombie is at %20 to win. second round the price goes up and the odds are more specific. Just before the end of the race it's $100 just to place a bet and the zombie in the lead is valued at %95 to win, meaning that a $100 bet will earn you $105.

To make it more interesting you should have attributes of the zombies that make them ore or less likley to win. How well fed are they? how smart are they? What is their record in previous races? Preferably these things would change in response to in game events (so i could feed a zombie and increase it's chance of winning) and it would be really interesting to see if there was a way to have some hidden information. So the owner known more abouttheir zombie than anyone else, but limited info on other zombies.

...finally I'm not sure about the start in the middle of a hex map idea. So the goal is to move a certain number of hexes in any direction? It seems like moving in a direction is more relatable and provides more opportunity for zombies to interact with one another. It could still be hexes. just a field of hexes with a start and finish line

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