Toronto student creates RPG video game in Excel

http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/630334/toronto-student-creates-rpg-video-game-in-excel/

by will_lam • 13 years ago

34 17 13 years ago

pokoleo• 13 years ago

Wow, that's devotion. It's a huge platform, and the understanding that "even I can make that" is super-easy. I'm scared that it's Excel: it's such a crappy program, and wish it had a better language than VB.

Unrelated: Metronews aims at a very low grade-level.

derefr• 13 years ago

Why not Powerpoint? Same access to VBA, but lets you use graphic assets. Powerpoint is basically equivalent to Flash, given VBA as the "ActionScript". I'm surprised there isn't more (satirically) done with it.

sanswork2• 13 years ago

Easier to use cells as pixels.

comex• 13 years ago

The author of the game did an AMA on Reddit yesterday: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c7lka/im_cary_walkin_...

a_p3• 13 years ago

Microsoft used to include easter eggs in their programs, but stopped in 2002 as part of the "trusted computer initiative". [1] Excel 97 had a hidden flight simulator, Word 97 had a hidden pinball game, Access 97 and 00 had a magic 8 ball simulator. Office 4.3/95/97 had a hidden Doom-like gamed called "The Hall of Tortured Souls". There is also a car driving game in Excel 2000.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_eggs_in_Microsoft_produ...

olgeni2• 13 years ago

> Office 4.3/95/97 had a hidden Doom-like gamed called "The Hall of Tortured Souls".

Wouldn't that be Access?

mickeyp• 13 years ago

MS Access is actually a very very useful piece of kit; it's a surprisingly good database considering its limitations, and it's infinitely better than keeping your data with your business logic in an excel spreadsheet.

... Why people hate on it I'll never know.

a_p3• 13 years ago

No. The "tortured souls" are the programmers that worked on Excel[1]. Look at this page [2] for videos of the game in action.

[1] http://everything2.com/title/The+Hall+of+Tortured+Souls

[2] http://www.eeggs.com/items/719.html

Qantourisc• 13 years ago

The horror. And the bravery :)

jasonjei• 13 years ago

All I can say is that this guy is slightly insane for dealing with Excel VB, but kudos to this guy's perseverance! I know I wouldn't have even bothered if I knew I had to implement it in Excel :), it's almost as bad as writing obfuscated C!

Tunga• 13 years ago

It says in the article that the author is an accountant working on her MBA. The relationship that accountants and MBAs develop with Excel spreadsheets is now legendary.

walrus• 13 years ago

This reminds me of http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel...

sanswork2• 13 years ago

Back when I was first starting to work in IT around 2000 I was working in an IT call centre that was part of a big consultancy. It wasn't the most exciting work and our PCs were locked down pretty tight but myself and another employee who also enjoyed programming would make little games(nothing to this scale) in Excel to then trade to the other workers. Reimplemented most of the kde games at the time and a simple pacman clone. Was working on a battleship clone but the networking from excel vba was a pain at the time and I got transfered shortly after to a real programming role within the company.

It's fun seeing other people doing this(and taking is very much further).

jere• 13 years ago

One of the successful 7drl entrants this year was made in excel. If I remember correctly, one of the devs was an accountant: http://7drl.org/2013/03/16/7drl-completed-excelent-rogue/

Someone• 13 years ago

This is so trivial that I wonder how this got any comment at all ;-)

The real challenge is to build arcade games such as Pacman or Space Invaders: http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/

Toronto student creates RPG video game in Excel

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