Speedway Promoter Game?

[TheSmiler]

Does anybody have this? Getting rather bored lately and fancied playing this. I used to get it to work on this Windows XP, but have lost the file since then. If anybody has it and could send me a pm I'd be much appreciated.

 

Also, whilst on the topic - whatever happened to the 5-1 game? Lack of Speedway games is killing me!

[SCB]

I can send you a copy later - I think! As you said, it only works on XP though - and even then not very well.

 

You're right about the lack of speedway games. You'd be amazed at the number of times Ive started making one only to get bored and it never see the light of day. I really should make more effort! I know Im not the only person to have done this as Ive spoken to a few speedway fans who have started making games but never got anywhere.

[Humphrey Appleby]

I know Im not the only person to have done this as Ive spoken to a few speedway fans who have started making games but never got anywhere.

It's because it's actually difficult to do realistically and properly with all the different meeting types and formats, the sport does not especially lend itself to graphical representation, and there's virtually no hope of making a commercial return on such a small market. It has to be a labour of love, and few can make the necessary investment in time.

[Soul Crew]

Used to love Speedway Promoter was about as good as it could get for a management sim of our great sport, would love to fire it up again.

[AndyK86]

Speedway Promoter would be great if could turn it into a app for smart phones and update it at same time.

[Guest]

I can send you a copy later - I think! As you said, it only works on XP though - and even then not very well.

 

You're right about the lack of speedway games. You'd be amazed at the number of times Ive started making one only to get bored and it never see the light of day. I really should make more effort! I know Im not the only person to have done this as Ive spoken to a few speedway fans who have started making games but never got anywhere.

 

If you went ahead with such a venture, how many would you expect there to be as a buyer market? Would it be commercially viable to undertake such a venture?

[Humphrey Appleby]

Would it be commercially viable to undertake such a venture?

We've just developed a simple app for the iPhone which came in at GBP 40K, and currently are developing another more complicated piece of software for GBP 250K. I'd put a speedway game somewhere in-between this in terms of complexity and effort required.

 

There are maybe 150-200K speedway fans in the whole world, going on reported attendances and television viewing figures. A good percentage of those will be old and/or not interested in playing computer games, so let's assume 10% might be interested. You're already down to 15,000 potential customers that you'd have to be charging at least a tenner just to break even, and bear in mind as the price goes up, that will likely decrease your customer base for what would be a niche game.

[SCB]

It's because it's actually difficult to do realistically and properly with all the different meeting types and formats, the sport does not especially lend itself to graphical representation, and there's virtually no hope of making a commercial return on such a small market. It has to be a labour of love, and few can make the necessary investment in time.

Probably in part due to that. Also, I start it, then get a new amazing idea which takes over then I have a new amazing idea for a speedway game and work on that.... Repeat ad infinum One day.....

 

If you went ahead with such a venture, how many would you expect there to be as a buyer market? Would it be commercially viable to undertake such a venture?

 

I'll be honest, Im not a businessman so you'll have to take HA's numbers above. But tbh, I'd not necessarily expect to make much from it. As long as I enjoy doing it I'd be quite happy to make any money from it - if it happened. I guess the main "benefit" from it would not be that I'd make my fortune directly from it but I could put it on a CV and show potential employers. It's the same with speedway-stats.co.uk - it's earned me a massive 80p in commission from some sales through amazon (pointless IMO, so I removed the advertising!) but costs about £25 a year for hosting - I'm never going to make £'s from it but it's something I can show potential employers from concept to where it is now and the additional stuff I can do and have working on it that will never see the light of day for most as it's not of interest to the general public.

 

I guess if I actually thought there was a chance to actually make some money I'd put a bit more effort into, find a group of like minded people who'd be interested on working on it - but there again comes the issue - the more of you working no it, the more you have to split any profit.

 

In short, speedway games are no going to make anyone rich.

[MattK]

If you look at the most popular speedway game on Android, it has received over 50,000 downloads. Presumably also a similar amount on iOS. 3D games are easy to build if you have a good eye for design using an engine like Unity.

 

Personally, I'd go for a management style game, rather than a racing game. If you had 2,000 active users paying just £1 a month, that's a nice little second income.

[waiheke1]

It's because it's actually difficult to do realistically and properly with all the different meeting types and formats, the sport does not especially lend itself to graphical representation, and there's virtually no hope of making a commercial return on such a small market. It has to be a labour of love, and few can make the necessary investment in time.

i'm not sure the different heat formats is a major obstacle. Flying Shale is an excellent simulation game which has a huge number of formats available, and the ability to add and edit these.

 

I agree the sport doesn't really lend itself to graphical representation as there isn't a great deal of variety, so as Matt suggests a management style game is the way to go. I know nothing about programming, but taking the meeting "engine" of something like flying shale and adding the managerial type functions (buying/selling riders, finances, rider development etc.) would seem a sensible way to do it - yiu'd imagine the developers of that game must make very little revenue from it these days, so would perhaps be willing to allow such usage in exchange for a small, share of profits (if any). Matt's proposed business model would seem to be the only way to make any sort of money from it, but if the game was good maybe you'd be able to charge a fiver a month, which with even a 1000 users is a tidy sum if you were able to do the programming etc. yourself.

[SCB]

Do you really think you'd get 1000 people paying £5 a month? If you had 1000 regular players I'd be amazed if 50 were willing to pay £5 each month.

[waiheke1]

Its basically a quid a week. If you're the target market for a game like this surely that's not unreasonable?

But you could be right, I seem to recall a gp scorecard app and people were whingeing because the free download only worked for the first meeting and would then cost to work for the rest of the series.

And maybe a chunk of your target market is in poland and therefore 5 quid is too steep?

[SCB]

Its basically a quid a week. If you're the target market for a game like this surely that's not unreasonable?

But you could be right, I seem to recall a gp scorecard app and people were whingeing because the free download only worked for the first meeting and would then cost to work for the rest of the series.

And maybe a chunk of your target market is in poland and therefore 5 quid is too steep?

I might only £1 a week but Im not convinced people would pay it. I'm not sure what the answer is - but it would be a few months work to make a game, lets say 4-5 months - not if I was doing that for a client I'd expect to be paid 20-30k. How long would it take to get back the 30k? 50 people at £5 a month - thats 10 years without paying any tax!

 

I recon a quicker way to make money is to build a fantasy speedway game and charge £1 a team. Probably closer to 2-3 weeks work and you could probably get 100's of people to play. Still not going to make you as much as working for a client on a boring system for counting welds on an item on a production line!

[waiheke1]

Yeah, I dont see any way you can make morr money on aspeedway game than a "real job" - would hsve to be a llabour of love.

A decent fantasy speedway game is a good idea.

Would be a lot easier to do for polish or swedish leagues where therr is one race day, not the mish mashed uneven el fixtures.

[SCB]

Yeah, I dont see any way you can make morr money on aspeedway game than a "real job" - would hsve to be a llabour of love.

A decent fantasy speedway game is a good idea.

Would be a lot easier to do for polish or swedish leagues where therr is one race day, not the mish mashed uneven el fixtures.

My thinking is if I'm doing it for £5 a month and paying £200 i may as well do it for nothing - lower expectation levels, if something fails I get less crap as I could claim, "you get what you pay for".

 

As for messed up fixtures, not hard to randomise things. TBH, the hardest thing is deciding if you have 4 riders in a race, who wins? Highest average rider? well all that will do is give the 10 point rider a 12 point average soon enough while the 3 pointer will never score a point. Add a random factor, how random? Random based on track? Do you take into account riders gating and passing abilities? You can at a simple level just select them in random order - but every rider would end the season as a 6 point rider

[BWitcher]

My thinking is if I'm doing it for £5 a month and paying £200 i may as well do it for nothing - lower expectation levels, if something fails I get less crap as I could claim, "you get what you pay for".

 

As for messed up fixtures, not hard to randomise things. TBH, the hardest thing is deciding if you have 4 riders in a race, who wins? Highest average rider? well all that will do is give the 10 point rider a 12 point average soon enough while the 3 pointer will never score a point. Add a random factor, how random? Random based on track? Do you take into account riders gating and passing abilities? You can at a simple level just select them in random order - but every rider would end the season as a 6 point rider

 

Have you ever played the board game Speedway Scene 2? It's what Flying Shale was based on.

 

Each rider is graded from A+ down to N I think from memory. It was a simple die roll system, where you would roll 2 dice and check the chart of your riders grade to see the result.. The higher the grade of rider, the more spaces they would advance.. some of the numbers would result in some form of problem being encountered such as a fall, engine failure etc.

 

You could use a similar system, but then tailor it a little further per rider, making some better gaters, some more able to overtake on the inside/outside etc... then add a formula in to adjust that result dependant upon the particular track etc.

 

Somewhere back at home I've actually got a very developed system doing just that that accounted for riders ability, the staging track, weather conditions etc that could be quite easily adapted into a computer game.. When I was about 13/14 I would spend hours working on it to get it as realistic as possible!

 

I know a small (very small now) amount of programming and have produced a very very basic simulation of a race using some of those formulas but that's it. I don't have a clue how to take it further and incorporate all the other features of a management game.

[RedcarRacer]

http://simspeedway.jimdo.com/

[Humphrey Appleby]

As for messed up fixtures, not hard to randomise things. TBH, the hardest thing is deciding if you have 4 riders in a race, who wins? Highest average rider? well all that will do is give the 10 point rider a 12 point average soon enough while the 3 pointer will never score a point. Add a random factor, how random? Random based on track? Do you take into account riders gating and passing abilities? You can at a simple level just select them in random order - but every rider would end the season as a 6 point rider

 

It's very easy to do. If you generate several random numbers within the range of a rider's average (e.g. 0-6 or 0-12), then whilst the higher averaged rider will likely score more highly, the degree of randomness means the lower average rider can still win. If you factor in a percentage for engine failures (which is roughly similar for all riders, although top riders will probably be slightly less susceptible due to having better equipment) and falls (more likely for lower averaged riders, but still possible for better riders), then that adds to the degree of 'randomness'.

 

Track specialism wouldn't need any special factoring other than working out different averages for each track, and factors could easily be added for gating and passing, although you'd need to do some reasonably complex analysis of individual riders performance in order to grade them.

if the game was good maybe you'd be able to charge a fiver a month, which with even a 1000 users is a tidy sum if you were able to do the programming etc. yourself.

 

The problem is that in order to get a professional quality speedway game developed, you'd probably have to invest 6-12 months full-time effort before you get any return. That investment in time would have to be amortised over the potential lifetime of the game, which in the entertainment business is probably only a couple of years before people lose interest.

 

So even on the off-chance you were able to make GBP 60K per year for a couple of years, it would not be an amazing return on what is a very niche market, and frankly most decent developers could make more money for less effort doing something else. That's basically why there are so few speedway games, and those that exist are done as a labour of love.

[BWitcher]

 

It's very easy to do. If you generate several random numbers within the range of a rider's average (e.g. 0-6 or 0-12), then whilst the higher averaged rider will likely score more highly, the degree of randomness means the lower average rider can still win. If you factor in a percentage for engine failures (which is roughly similar for all riders, although top riders will probably be slightly less susceptible due to having better equipment) and falls (more likely for lower averaged riders, but still possible for better riders), then that adds to the degree of 'randomness'.

 

Track specialism wouldn't need any special factoring other than working out different averages for each track, and factors could easily be added for gating and passing, although you'd need to do some reasonably complex analysis of individual riders performance in order to grade them.

 

 

Spot on Humphrey.

 

Basic random number generation is how it works.

 

It would also depend upon whether you just wanted one calculation to determine the result of the race, or it can be done in phases to 'create a race' as such.. i.e positions after lap 1, lap 2 etc. you can then link this into various forms of text for commentary too. With SCB's skills it would be pretty basic stuff. I've done something similar for wrestling way back in the day on the good old 48K. Had 16 wrestlers to select, you'd pick the two and it would give text commentary on the match. All random number generated, but with variables thrown in for their stamina, strength etc that would deplete depending upon the events of the match. Speedway would actually be easier!

[SCB]

I hate random though. Whats the point then? There has to be some skill in picking the team. Riders have to be given ratings for passing, gating, team riding etc etc or you may as well signed 7 random riders (as Im sure some promoters are happy to do!) and they have to be used.

 

In the past Ive used random numbers for testing purposes but it's a bit too weak for an actual game and where, IMO, "Speedway Promoter" falls down - far too easy to win on it.