I can't believe I am attempting this, but I am going to attempt to make a sports betting mod on my own. It actually doesn't look like it would take long, but of course I have not done programming other than adding coding to the reviews system, so it may be bigger than I think. it honestly looks to me like it would not take me long to do a BASIC one and then add some features as time goes on. I already have figured up what needs to be in the data base and what settings there would need to be and I do know how to add all of that, so we shall see.

I am going to try to finish up the Reviews System today and then attempt to start the sports betting and hopefully I will manage to finish it quickly. If it were for only 1 matchup at a time, it would probably take me a matter of hours to make a basic one, but for one with multiple matchups, it will probably take longer. We'll see.

I am extremely pleased with my progress on this system. And not only that, but I realized a way I can add a bowl pick area very quickly. I see the first bowl game is still more than 2 weeks away. I should easily have this finished well enough to use for betting and bowl picking well before that date.

I will edit this post with my progress in a little while. I got a ton done this morning.

edit: ok I am going to bed. I finished such a huge portion of it, honestly I will PROBABLY have it good enough to open for betting by tomorrow. If I wasn't rushed right now, I would show a photo of the huge add form I made for myself to add matchups and sports categories. It's a very big form. All I have to add now for it to be able to at least FUNCTION is the betting form for you members to use and also the payout form for me to pay out to the winners. Both of those combined should take MUCH less time than this form took and I did it all this morning.

Hard to keep up with all of this huge interest. But anyway I got most things done. I finally got stressed working on it and stopped before finishing the function for adding the bet into the database. I just need to finish that (probably would only take 10 minutes), do a little skinning, add default pages to 2 areas stating they aren't open yet, and do the page where I select who won the games and have it pay the winners. That one will be complicated becuase I added a couple interesting unique features and the math may get a tad complicated. I think it won't be hard to finish in a day though. I hope.

I'm glad you are finally doing this on your own. To bad nobody suggested it to you this time last yr. :closedeyes:

BTW, can you please find a wink smiley? I was forced to use the 1 above, but it really doesn't represent the sarcasm that was meant in my statement.

A lot of people have told me to program before you told me to. I have eben doing it becuase the reviews system author went back on his word to fix it and I was forced to figure it all out on my own and now I know a lot.

The wholke smiley situation is annoying. I can't even change what you type to make them appear for this set of smileys. It's really ridiculous. I have to either use the default group of smileys or else keep them as file names. I think I will just move these smileys to the default group. Because it annoys me that such things as and and don't make smileys!

edit: well as you can see there is indeed a wink one already. So 2 of my 3 examples DO work actually.

Well I got a lot done (as you can see in the bug tracker, there were quite a few bugs I had to fix though). I probably could have finished it enough to open it now, but I had some things to do and didn't want to push it. I have a lot of complicated math finished up so now there is not anything very complicated left. I surely hope I open it by Friday morning. All I have to do is make the payout funtion, test it, and change the look of some things. I will probably open it even if I don't finish all of the look of it.

Assuming there are nos etbacks though... I should be done with it in a couple hours time. Then in the future there is more I will add.

Sigh. I really had a weird day where I just flat out was slow even realizing what I was needing to do.

I THINK I have everything fine now except just needing to touch up the look. So in other words the coding itself for the betting seems fine. But I am going to test it later today rather than now when I don't even know what I am doing. lol

So long story short: I will open it tonight or tomorrow morning. It will be less than 1 week from when I started writing it.

I will then try to have a bowl pickem done within a week or elss also. Then I have until March to get the ncaa tourney pickem done obviously.

It's weird that I was overcomplicating things today. Yesterday I was soaring through everything and then I had some sort of "block" going on today.

Well one display page took me a lot of hours today becuase it is very complicated with a lot of if statements all within each other and was just a mess.

So anyway assuming I properly did the payout function (I haven't tested it yet), I should have this open after about 1-2 more hours work later tonight. All I have to do is finish setting up a table and then test the payout. The "My Bets" page has so much data, it is complicated figuring a way to display it without having 10+ columns!

So I should still ahve it open tonight, which is 1 week after I started this.

In fact if I have to, I will release it without the my bets page or the since last visit page even working. At least betting would work. Oh that reminds me I have to also better organize the betting page too. So it may take me 2 hours instead of the 1.

I'll probably put an NFL game up to bet on before Sunday. Then if anyone gets paid out incorrectly I will know there is a bug and fix it.

Hate to mention this but the Bet link only works with the Got Talk Black skin. I use the orange skin and I got a fatal error message when clicking bet.

That's becuase I was only working on it for the main skin. I now put it in all skins.

HOWEVER, it is still not open becuase I ran into a problem.

I have totally finished it, but when I tested the payout, first of all it paid out matchup #3's totals to members of matchup #2. Secondly, although it did pay 1 member properly (other than it being from the wrong bet), it paid the other one an incorrect amount.

I worked so many hours this morning to finish it becuase I wanted to be able to put an NFL game up for today, but I guess I will have to wait.

I am going to be gone all day Sunday, so late Sunday night I will track down the problem and then put the Monday Night Football game up for betting.

Thank You

Wow I noticed the problem within 5 minutes of looking at the coding I wrote again this morning.

I have tested a lot of outcomes in bets and they all work thus far. So I will test a few totally again just to make absolutely sure it's fine to use now.

Since I am already doing this I will see if maybe I can put the search function in too before I go sleep. That is the only function missing at this point. I may try to start the bowl pickem part too. That will pretty much just be me copying my own coding and changing it where the form only has you pick teams instead of betting points I guess. Or I may make it where you STILL can bet on it, but it counts towards the tournament pickem also.

I have minimum bets set per matchup so I can leave them at 0 for those who want to bet just for fun and for the tourney. Yeah i think I will keep it exactly the same except it counts towards a pickem also. Thus it will take me almost no time to add this part.

Then next year I can redo that part to make it separate and be cooler I guess.

Now the NCAA Tourney picker I will definitely have to do separate, but that doesn't start for months anyway.