Excel-sior!

By: Derek Yu

On: May 22nd, 2008

Fact: indie game developers enjoy games so much that they will try to put games anywhere, even where they “don’t belong” (which, of course, is nowhere). Case in point, apparently there’s been some headway made in putting games on the most corporate of software environments, the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

I guess it really began with Microsoft itself, whose wily programmer’s embedded a 3d “game” into Excel ’95 called The Hall of Tortured Souls. Although technically not made with Excel itself, it may have planted the seeds that have since sprouted into the Excel game development community as we know it today. It also gets bonus points for helping prove that Bill Gates is really the Anti-Christ.

Gamasutra put out a feature a couple months ago that touts Excel as “the next revolutionary 3d engine,” and makes a compelling case for it. The article highlights Excel’s arithmetical facilities, rendering environments, and non-traditional approaches to source code and debugging. Here it is in action:

But yes, leave it to the Japanese to start putting some actual games on this unconventional platform. Chikada’s VBA Action Game website has dozens of Excel games – everything from arcade remakes to shoot ’em ups to dungeon crawlers to fighting games. The menu at the top of the site lets you browse the collection by genre.

(Note: You will have to let macros run freely in Excel to play most of these games. A lot of them didn’t work for me, either.)

DEX-EV (pictured at the top of this post) is one of the more impressive shoot ‘em ups on Chikada’s site. And Shadow Slash, the creator, is a prominent Excel developer who keeps a series of 73 Excel game development articles on his blog. If you can read Japanese, check it out. There are also two Japanese books (one and two) on game development using VBA, the Visual-Basic based macro programming language included with Excel.

Next up: a heart-warming story about a man who put DOOM on his grandpa’s pacemaker and prevented a heart attack by killing the Cyberdemon.

(Sources: Brandon, via Insert Credit, and the2bears)

Posted in Community, Developers, Windows

Goose

I set macro security to low and still can run it :(

I get an error say “Compile error in hidden module: Module1”
Tyheam

Same here. :(
Pacian

This certainly makes me feel great about my own VBA spreadsheet (for work) crashing away merrily in the background…
http://www.distractionware.com Terry

Excel is actually pretty cool – back when I worked in finance I did something a bit like this. Not nearly as advanced, though :P

http://www.distractionware.com/files/pointless.xls
http://www.distractionware.com Terry

By the way, the macro security issue: just go to Tools, Macro Security, and set to medium or low. You’ll have to restart. Excel doesn’t run macros by default :(

You guys know about the Flight Simulator in Excel 98, right? :D
http://www.sophiehoulden.com GirlFlash

guh, I’ll have to hijack a friends computer, it dont work in open office :(

also, the whole Bill Bates = anti-christ thing is really flawwed, the real number of the beast is 616 and 666 is a mistranslation. though if I’m honest there are enough cyphers like that you can keep throwing a name through different ones and you’ll get the number you want in no time =p

(dont get me wrong though, hes the anti-christ foreals… I totally saw secret footage of him eating children!)
Stryguy

I’m thinking it doesn’t work for office 2007 cause even with no macros and trusting the visual whatever it still has errors opening modules up the wa-zoo
Tondog

I also get tons of errors when opening it in Excel 2003. And I was really looking forward to this one. :(
.

So let me get this straight – its being touted as the next big thing. Its benefits are spelled out for us above. Positive examples of what can be achieved are posted for proof.

But in reality its a chunk of shit.

Am I right?
BeamSplashX

This totally takes my macros and renders them in beautiful 3D.

Sexually.
Derek

Darn, I was hoping you guys would have better luck with the Japanese Excel games! I managed to get some of them to work, though. Try EXCELLASER if DEX-EV doesn’t work for you.

Could be a language issue. :'(
Tyheam

Excellaser works. And yes I always had macros enabled (needed them for some EVE Online skill spreadsheet :D).
Melly

Uber Nerdiness.

It’s like John Carmack.
Magallanes

It is the true spirit of a indi, to put a game where “no game has gone before”.
Krux

I really think that platforms like exel could really be the future of Programming, because, they feature a bette debugging, and a two dimensional workspace. Programming code is so one dimensional, and take much time to write.
PHeMoX

Someone gave me a link to something like this the 1st of April, but I didn’t dare to click. Seems like it’s the real deal after all! Nice!