This seems like a good thread to talk about my own homebrew Duel attempt.
I help run a small gaming get-together around New Year's, and one of my major responsibilities is the implementation of the Friday Night game show. Last year, I did the World Series of Pop Culture (which reminds me, I should make the emcee software I wrote available for download once I get back home). This year, I'm doing Duel.
I'm going to break the game into two halves -- one where the entire audience plays, which produces top scorers, and then the duels themselves, which will play like the show.
In the first half, there will be a series of questions. Each question will have a series of answers read to it -- some right, and some wrong. Every time you hear an answer you agree with, you hit your buzzer. You take 1 point every time you hit your buzzer. You take 7 points for failing to hit your buzzer for the right answer. Low scores at the end play Duel in a single elimination tournament.
Because we know the total number of chips in the tournament, we can award them a dollar value and convert them into money for prize support purposes. Players who win a duel keep the chips they save, and the grand champion takes all of the spent chips as the jackpot prize. We have a local game vendor who shows up with a lot of the Essen releases so that our winners can go crazy with their earnings.
I plan to write flash-based emcee software that is four screens in size. (I know I could write seperate apps and have them talk, but this is less time-consuming, and I can test them all at once. Also, I used a two-screen system to do the World Series program last year, so I'm comfortable with this.) Two of the screens will be for each player to see. One of them will be seen by the emcee and audience (to display all information), and one will be seen by me (the control panel for everything).
They can use the colored buttons of the BUZZ controllers to select and deselect their answers (as a toggle). The red button will be hit twice to hit in answers (I want an "Are you sure?" to reduce accidents). Additional presses of the red button use a press.
I'm not worried about my question-writing ability, and other staff members help me verify facts. Two big concerns are length of matches and number of presses per side. I always hated two presses per side because it consumed over half of the game. My current inclination is to allow one each instead. But I also want to impose a a one minute time limit per question regardless, simply because it's a live show and I need to keep things moving. With that time limit in place, I'm not worried about losing audience interest, based on what we've run over the past three years.
I now throw myself out to you for the mandatory evisceration.
