# Excel Gaming Site



## Bartek (Sep 12, 2006)

Hi,

Most Excel user sooner or later discover some Excel games - different variants of snake, arkanoids, card games etc. Recently I made my own game and decided to create a site devoted to discuss Excel gaming:

http://www.DzikoSoft.com

At that moment, I included GMEXCEL section - general essay on Excel entertainment, Calculor's Dungeon - my own arcade/puzzle in Excel, and Links. 
What do you think about the idea of a site devoted to Excel games? I would be grateful for remarks and suggestions. I would also welcome any contributions - your games, articles, and programming tips for Excel game developers. Thanks in advance for any feedback!


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## SydneyGeek (Sep 12, 2006)

Bartek, 

Thanks for the link -- looks good! I am going to try a few of them out when I get some spare time...

Denis


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## gingerafro (Sep 12, 2006)

These aren't excel games, but I got sent Tetris, Sonic The Hedgohog, PacMan (original 70's version) and a golf game to play on Excel today.

Have no idea how it works, but the quality is very good.  Am currently at work so have also not extensively tested them, but just having the ability is fantastic...


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## erik.van.geit (Sep 12, 2006)

Hi,

played a bit "Dungeon": nice little game 
tried to do all kinds of stupid things (just as I do when testing my projects)
selecting other sheets while game is running runs into bug

you might check out all those stupid actions users could do

greetings,
Erik


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## Bartek (Sep 12, 2006)

Hi,



> tried to do all kinds of stupid things (just as I do when testing my projects)selecting other sheets while game is running runs into bug
> you might check out all those stupid actions users could do



Thanks for your comments. The game uses constant refreshing with DoEvents and thus is rather vulnerable to any stupid actions. Protecting against all of these would require a lot of additional coding and might slow everything down, so I decided only to apply basic protection (hide sheet tabs, protect worksheet, set scrollarea). 

Advanced user could easily bypass it, as he could "cheat" by pausing the game in other way than by pressing space bar. I think I will add some additional protection anyway, especially to prevent random errors. For example, my colleagues run into trouble when they accidentally press left ALT (activate the menu) so I added a code to handle this.


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## erik.van.geit (Sep 12, 2006)

> Thanks for your comments. The game uses constant refreshing with DoEvents and thus is rather vulnerable to any stupid actions. Protecting against all of these would require a lot of additional coding and might slow everything down, so I decided only to apply basic protection (hide sheet tabs, protect worksheet, set scrollarea).


some options (difficult without seeing the code)
perhaps you could hide the other sheets when playing
OR
you could add the sheetreferences to your code: when users goes to other page, code could continue to run ... (punishment for leaving that way  )
OR
you could call the pausefunction when another sheet is activated
(workbookmodule worksheetactivate-event)

this said: it's a nice game


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## Bartek (Sep 13, 2006)

Hi,



> some options (difficult without seeing the code)
> perhaps you could hide the other sheets when playing



This is the easiest option - I added few lines of code to hide two other sheets during the game and uploaded updated file to my site. By the way: it always bugs me why minor change, like adding this few lines of code result in .xls file suddenly becoming 20kb bigger (zipped file is only 1kb bigger)


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## erik.van.geit (Sep 13, 2006)

talking about filesize:
when finishing a project I always rebuild the entire thing from scratch
sheets, forms + modules
generally this takes a few hours, but I find it worth the time

perhaps I'll start a thread about that to share experiences and learn from others ...

greetings,
Erik

EDIT
thread: http://www.mrexcel.com/board2/viewtopic.php?t=232835


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## Bartek (Oct 9, 2006)

Hi,

Finally, I added an *Excel Games Library* to my site. It lists over eighty Excel games with short descriptions, links to websites and downloads:

http://www.dzikosoft.com/gmexcel/library.html

Minesweeper clones seems to be the most popular among Excel developers, but you may find many other puzzles and arcades in the library. I will be adding new games soon, I think it is possible to hit a hundred games this year.


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## erik.van.geit (Oct 9, 2006)

Hi,

Minesweeper is indeed nice, although the layout could be easily enhanced to my point of view...
I looked quickly to a few games: some have bugs, at least on my system.

How do you determine the quality of the games you list over there ? Just thinking about the reputation of your site 

best regards,
Erik


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## Bartek (Oct 10, 2006)

Hi,



> I looked quickly to a few games: some have bugs, at least on my system. How do you determine the quality of the games you list over there ? Just thinking about the reputation of your site



I included games I was able to play on my system. Some of these games are quite old, some have bugs and most are "open to abuse" and could be crashed by user. To some degree, I treat the library as a kind of "museum" - museum exhibits need not to be in perfect condition, they are there to show different people's attempts to develop new things   

By the way: congratulations for approaching 10,000 posts!


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## Scott Huish (May 27, 2007)

Colo's site has some Excel games on it:

http://www.puremis.net/excel/downloads.shtml


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