# Advice required on Excel games



## Thargoid (May 26, 2008)

ExcelRocks and SimpleRPG are fine enough but do they come close to the majesty of the SquariaSoft games on http://www.dzikosoft.com/ ?

Squaria Adventure
Rotation
Invasion Fours
KlaXL

Quite probably they do, but I keep on releasing them...

Anyway, what kinda games do people want to see in Excel?

I've currently got prototypes for...

Another couple of RPGs.
A Racing Game
A Puzzle Game
A Shoot-em-up
A Platformer.

I keep diving between then all and as a result am nowhere near to finishing any.


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## clut (May 26, 2008)

I'd like to see you do a racing game.

I made simpleRPG, and I've seen a few platformers out there, However I don't think I've seen a racing game in Excel yet (at least not a decent one!), so I'd like to see you put one together.

I've also developed a management game, but due to it's nature, I can't advertise it. That said, you can get to it by following the link in my sig. You have to request the game via e-mail, but it's well worth it.


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## MorganO (May 26, 2008)

I agree.  A racing game is something unique to the Excel Gaming universe.  All the others have been done before several times.  A racing game might be quite a challenge due to the limitation of Excel and the requirements of a racing type game!

Take care,

Owen


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## clut (May 26, 2008)

What might be cool is a racing game with some RPG elements.

Basic game is racing, but you (or your car) has adjustable stats (handling, acceleration, top speed, y'know, all the usuals) that can be increased over time either by buying upgrades, or increasing skill based on time spent driving, or some other, more original method.

The underlying game is still racing, but there is still an element of self-progression.

p.s Who remembers Super Sprint and Championship Sprint??? Collect 3 golden spanners and you get to pick an upgrade.


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## Bartek (May 26, 2008)

Racing game would definitely be cool, I think it may combine cell graphics for the background (highway, landscape) and shapes for sprites (car, trucks).

Thinking of some other oldies that may look great implemented on Excel, the Moon Patrol immediately comes to mind - loved the game when I was 20 years younger . Anyway, there are dozens of great ideas for Excel games, so I am sure you will end with another cool game.


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## Thargoid (May 27, 2008)

Looks like people are clamouring for racing.

I've a couple of ideas for that so I'll work on those a bit more.

That said, I'm nearing the end of development for the sequel to KlaXL so I'll probably still be switching between the two.


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## clut (May 28, 2008)

Maybe we should try to form some sort of collaborative environment to thrash out game ideas.

Often I've got lots of good ideas, but no time to code them, and other times I've got time, but can't think of anything interesting. 

If there were a place to share ideas, whoever had the time could then use those ideas. Even if two people set about coding the same idea, they'd both end up with different games...


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## Thargoid (May 28, 2008)

Excellent idea Clut.

I've a myriad of ideas but my coding skills just aren't up to par yet.


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## clut (May 28, 2008)

Another benefit it would/could bring, is the availability of beta testers... If someone has a working prototype of one of the ideas, I'm sure people there would like to beta test it.

I know you can go to almost any forum on the net asking for beta testers and get a ton of responses, but most people just want to play the game, and moan when it crashes. That's not beta testing, and the few people that do understand it's not a finished game, don't seem to like having to give lengthy feedback on the game.

I think the people in this environment would understand the requirements of beta testing, as they are also developing (or want to be developing) games themselves.


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## MorganO (May 28, 2008)

When I set out to get beta testers for Excel Rocks I didn't think it would be much of a problem.  Boy was I wrong.  I posted to several reputable Excel sites (including this one) and even asked friends for input. Nada were the results.

Aaron Blood from XL-Logic.com has a thread devoted to Excel Gaming on his site but it has very limited conversations going.  He mentioned to me in my post that getting beta tester for an Excel Game is probably harder than getting testers for Excel Add-ins (http://xl-logic.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=802#802)

Maybe if there is enough interest here on MrExcel, we could convince an admin (Starl where are you!) to devote a top level forum to this endevour?  Or maybe we could start an appropriate thread and get it 'Stickied' within the Lounge. 

I would certainly be willing to assist.

Owen


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## clut (May 29, 2008)

I think a separate forum would be a fantastic start to furthering the resources available to Excel game developers. Let me know if you want me to send a PM to someone as a form of petition.


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## Thargoid (May 30, 2008)

PM away kind Sir.

My current collaborater has disappeared taking most of a game with him (it's mostly a load of creative writing and he doesn't know how to code so I'm not that bothered).

A place to share ideas would be excellento.


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## Thargoid (May 31, 2008)

Actually, if anyone's interested, I've got a game that needs testing.

There's a bug in it somewhere that I just can't find that completely knackers your game up, but it's still playable enough.

It's called "Web Defence" and is a pretty simple turn-based affair that I knocked up in a couple of hours.

PM me if you'd like a copy and I'll email it to you.


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## Bartek (May 31, 2008)

A separate forum (or sub-forum on general Excel forum) for Excel gaming and crazy stuff in general would be a great idea. 

In fact, I was thinking about running a Forum on my website, but I have not enough time and skill to manage and moderate it - there is a lot of technical issues involved, high threat of hacking, spambots etc. If someone is able to manage the technical part, I could support a domain and bandwidth


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## clut (May 31, 2008)

I've have the same problem.

I've had my own forum running before, but it was constantly hacked, regardless of how up to date I kept the installation. I did manage to prevent most spambots, but the hacking just got tiresome, so I stopped running the forum.

Are any of us here more familier with the mods on this site? Judging by our post counts none of us (at least on this page) are regulars, which might make things difficult (a bunch of non-regular members requesting a whole new forum are not likely to get it. If they did that for everyone it'd be chaos).

That said, I'd be happy to put forward case to one of the mods for a new section.


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## schielrn (May 31, 2008)

clut I like the simpleRPG game. One thing I would maybe think about is when you have upgrade points and click upgrade there is no way to take them back if you didn't really want to upgrade something. That would probably take quite a bit more code though, just to make sure that people weren't taking more away than was allowed. But great job with it.

The only problem I see with a separate forum is the lack of file sharing on this board.  You would either have to store it on a file sharing site with just giving out the password and then using the forum to communicate what has been done.


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## MorganO (May 31, 2008)

The easiest way to start this off would be just to post an appropriate topic of discussion within the lounge - Maybe "Excel Gaming".  We could then share ideas as appropriate, and use external methods to share the actual in process coding efforts.  This board is probably the best candidate for this effort as the number of Excel coders is probably the highest of any on the web, thus we are more likely to get those people who are coders interested in the efforts.

We would likely need a thread 'lead' to manage things.

If the thread really takes off and becomes a hot topic of discussion, we could then see if a moderator will Sticky it to the top of the lounge.

Just my three cents (inflation you know!)

Owen


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## clut (Jun 1, 2008)

bloody inflation! now I can't even afford an opinion.

Anyway, I'm happy to manage the thread by way of keeping the first post updated with ideas, listing the projects underway, finished games, that sort of thing.

I can also host finished (or beta test version) games if anyone needs it. I can either expand my site (see sig) or create a separate one. 

That said, it may be good practice to use bartlomiej's site for finished games and I can host beta versions and unfinished games, with a link to all in the first post.

Nice to see this is moving forward.


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## clut (Jun 1, 2008)

schielrn said:


> clut I like the simpleRPG game. One thing I would maybe think about is when you have upgrade points and click upgrade there is no way to take them back if you didn't really want to upgrade something. That would probably take quite a bit more code though, just to make sure that people weren't taking more away than was allowed. But great job with it.



I shall add this to the list of possible changes/additions/fixes. If you finish a game with a good score, E-mail it to me and I'll include your score in the next versions download file.
(note, I can only accept the bolded score entry, which is the most recently played game as I'm able to verify that entry to ensure the player hasn't cheated in any way and adjusted their score)


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## Aaron Blood (Jun 4, 2008)

Since MS made Visual Studio a free download, it seems almost a waste of time to bother with VBA as a game development platform anymore...

VBA being non-compiled really puts a damper on game animation.  Whole forums out there dedicated to the hobbyist game developers using VB.Net or C# in Visual Studio 2008 (not to mention XNA).  I found myself feeling too constrained with Excel and VBA... 

Check out the Coding4Fun blog for instance.

Just a lot more cool stuff to explore over there.


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## Bartek (Jun 5, 2008)

Aaron Blood said:


> Since MS made Visual Studio a free download, it seems almost a waste of time to bother with VBA as a game development platform anymore...
> VBA being non-compiled really puts a damper on game animation.



Well, you seem to miss a point here. Of course, Excel is not a perfect game development platform - it was never supposed to be - but this is a very reason to develop a game on it - it's a kind of "less is more" philosophy mixed with the desire to make something a bit crazy.  

Developing a game under serious constrains imposed by the platform, like in case of MS Excel, may be very beneficial to the quality of game mechanics and to the success of a project. This looks like a paradox, but makes sense: probably only a tiny fraction of "indie" (independent) game projects fail because their developers could not cope with limitation of the engine. It seems that the cast majority of projects fail because of the exactly opposed reason - the desire to find better and better engine, endless changes associated with it and so on. 

Of course, there are some other factors involved, like making a perfectly "boss secure" game - no employer will disable the Excel Application in his office


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## clut (Jun 5, 2008)

Another factor here is that I work 46 hours a week + an hour driving time each day, I have a family, including a 3 year old son and various hobbies I like to engage in. This all leads to having very little time to devote to any one single project.

For me, Excel is a perfect games development platform because I don't need to write code to pull all sorts of data around in a game, or to perform calculations on multiple items as Excel can do these things with simple worksheet functions like vlookup.

This allows me to spend more time designing the game mechanics (as Bartek mentioned) and less time bug hunting.

Another factor that Blood mentioned was the animation. For me graphics can kill a game and many developers these days think that fancy graphics makes a game good. I disagree and believe sound mechanics, good re-playability, interesting premise and intuative design make for a good game.

Yes Excel may be very limiting, and VBA not the optimal langauge for generating fancy graphics, but they suit my needs just fine.


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## Aaron Blood (Jun 5, 2008)

I don't think I'm missing any points here...  

I should remind (or inform) some here that I maintain probably the largest collection of Excel-based games on the internet.

I like doing games in Excel...  

I've completed a few pretty good ones in Excel.  After you do it for a bit you'll get the urge to migrate.  One of the main reasons is lack of interest in Excel-based games.  Hard to find beta testers and so forth.

Most offices that would allow the installation of MS Office could be easily persuaded to also install the free Visual Studio (tell em it's a more powerful version of VBA, and you want to use it to compile custom function DLL's).  

But if you want to play with Excel stick to what it's good for...  (not driving games!)  Excel makes a good platform for:  board games, card games, dice games, puzzles, typing tutor, strategy and/or RPG's that are turn-based are also doable.  Although, if the strategy game has any depth at all, developing AI that's fun to play against will be the most difficult task.


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## PaddyD (Jun 5, 2008)

"... I maintain probably the largest collection of Excel-based games on the internet."

For those who _do_ need reminding / informing:

http://www.xl-logic.com


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## MorganO (Jun 5, 2008)

Aaron,

Your posts on Visual Studio intrigue me.  I have never programmed in pure VB so I am wondering if the transition from VBA to VB is very difficult.  I picked up VBA through a lot of dabbling (self taught myself pure pure BASIC back in the late 70's) so I wondering if you think it would be a fairly easy transition to make from VBA to VB.  Although I have enjoyed seeing how far I can take Excel VBA, I am certainly interested in moving to a more powerful programming platform at some point.  

I do agree, Excel is certainly more suited to certain types of games than others.   For me, Excel Rocks started as a much simpler 'WingDings' font game and kind of just spiraled almost out of control.  I ran into many roadblocks that I could not overcome; primarily speed - VBA just isn't capable of.  With VB, that is not as much of a problem, and I could have probably nearly duplicated Boulderdash perfectly in VB.

But, I really do love the 'Wow - you can do that in Excel?' reaction I get when I show people an impressive Excel Game. 

Owen


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## Cbrine (Jun 6, 2008)

Owen,
     I made the transition to VB 6.0 and VB.net just fine.  If you have dabbled in ADO, class building, referencing the excel object from another program and API's.  I would say you should be able to move to vb 6.0 without any major issues.  You will have a few things that are done different in the setup of the IDE, but the actual coding will be pretty close.  The VB 6.0 coding you do can still be used in VB.net, but VB.net has implemented better ways to do the same thing.  I ended up taking a course for it, which helped me get a grounding in the basics.  I think it might be easier to learn VB.net without and knowledge of VB 6.0, since you then have no preconceptions.

HTH
Cal

PS-I won't speak about about VB 6.0's distribution packages setup...cause that's a bit of a nightmare, although 3rd packages are available that make this easier.  The VB.net setup packages were implemented in a much better way IMO, but they are still complex.


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## Bartek (Jun 6, 2008)

> I should remind (or inform) some here that I maintain probably the largest collection of Excel-based games on the internet



Well, my Excel Games Library list over 130 games, being probably the biggest one, but size is not an argument here 

I once wrote a complete shareware RPG game with C++ (in the ancient era of unfriendly DOS) so I am not afraid of hard-core programming. The reason to use Excel is based on it being the very unique and interesting engine. In that sense, Excel is not inferior to typical programming platform, is only different. There is a funny and well-written article in Gamasutra exploring this approach:

Microsoft Excel: Revolutionary 3D Game Engine?



> One of the main reasons is lack of interest in Excel-based games.



Well, it depends. When I wrote my first game it became so popular it interfered with the operation of the entire department of important governmental body (people were playing it instead of working on important IT project)  

I think that people will not be very impressed in playing Excel implementation of known popular games, like, let’s say, Tetris. They may like it, play once or twice and that’s all. But making a unique Excel game with high load of "excelness" factor... that’s another story.


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## Aaron Blood (Jun 6, 2008)

Bartek said:


> Well, my Excel Games Library list over 130 games, being probably the biggest one, but size is not an argument here



OK... well I didn't associate "Bartek" with dzikosoft...  If I recall, you started your collection by emailing me and asking if it would be OK to contact all the game authors on my website for permssion to include them on yours.  I haven't bothered to reciprocate in that practice.


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## clut (Jun 6, 2008)

Bartek said:


> But making a unique Excel game with high load of "excelness" factor... that’s another story.



This is something I've wanted to do for a while...

the basic idea is have a simple worksheet with some figures and graphs on. It all looks pretty boring and business like. Your task is to change some data. When you try to change things, Excel starts fighting back... Graphs go weird, your changes aren't accepted, it moves the cursor around for you and gives you insulting message boxes... that sort of thing. This then develops into a kind of You vs Excel type game, where you must conquer Excel and bring it back under control.

I haven't nailed the finer mechanics yet. Half of me thinks this would be boring as hell, and half of me thinks it'd be really cool. I haven't decided yet.


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## Aaron Blood (Jun 6, 2008)

MorganO said:


> I do agree, Excel is certainly more suited to certain types of games than others.   For me, Excel Rocks started as a much simpler 'WingDings' font game and kind of just spiraled almost out of control.  I ran into many roadblocks that I could not overcome; primarily speed - VBA just isn't capable of.  With VB, that is not as much of a problem, and I could have probably nearly duplicated Boulderdash perfectly in VB.



Visual Studio is very interesting in the sense that it allows people with different programming  backgrounds to essentially all work with the same object models, libraries, and compiler.  You can write an app in VS using VB.net and then compile it with the same C# compiler and you end up getting close to (if not identical) performance in the compiled app.  

Graphically speaking, you can access and program the GDI (graphics development interface) or work with DirectX.  It's up to you.

There's a learning curve in migrating to vb.net, from VBA.  Although if you're well familiar with VBA, you'll find the leap can occur easily inside of a week or two.  Some of the things you learn in getting into vb.net can then translate into another transition down the road to C#.  Personally, I just like the structure and layout of vb code better than C# and I'm getting to equal performance with vb so I'm not that inclined to move yet.

You will find that you are generally programming at much lower levels than VBA (or even VB6 for that matter!) and it will take you awhile to develop your own libraries of components to work with.  But once you have those in your toolbox it translates to rapid development.  For instance, you'll have to learn about hit-testing and how to go about building your own "retained mode graphics" systems.  

You'll spend a lot of time contemplating what sort of classes you need and building exactly the types of controls you want to play with.  As opposed to VBA or even VB6 where you are confined in your choices.  

My top goal for the moment in vb.net is to develop graphic object controls that live in the GDI environment with characteristics similar to the drawing controls you get to use in Excel.  I want the user to be able to right-click a GDI drawing object at runtime and see a property window that can be manipulated.

That's where I'm at for now...


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## Aaron Blood (Jun 6, 2008)

clut said:


> ... a kind of You vs Excel type game, where you must conquer Excel and bring it back under control.
> 
> I haven't nailed the finer mechanics yet. Half of me thinks this would be boring as hell, and half of me thinks it'd be really cool. I haven't decided yet.



Hahaha... 

I've always thought that game came pre-installed!


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## clut (Jun 6, 2008)

Aaron Blood said:


> Hahaha...
> 
> I've always thought that game came pre-installed!




lol! V funny.

Saying that, if it's a battle to take control of Excel, it must be like trying to stop a nuclear explosion with nothing but paper bags when you're trying to take control of Word!


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## Aaron Blood (Jun 6, 2008)

Yeah, I think MS beat you to that game...  it's called the "Office 2007 Ribbon"


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