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Microsoft Excel as a Revolutionary Game Engine?

gamasutra.com — Peter Rakos warns that using Microsoft Excel as a game engine is "only for determined experts." Nonetheless, it can be done, he says, and in this Gamasutra feature, he explains how. For one thing, he says, few people know that Excel has not one, but two embedded rendering subsystems.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 7, 2008

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  • frogman54, on 03/07/2008, -2/+296I have always played games in Excel. My favorite is called "I Have No Money."
  • JointheCult, on 03/07/2008, -3/+150This is one of the most thought provoking things of read on digg in some time. I hope that this article doesn't drop off digg's radar.
  • Shawn4168, on 03/07/2008, -6/+148Goodbye, DirectX. Hello, DirectExcel.
  • juckman, on 03/07/2008, -8/+106"But will it run Crysis?"

    YES! I've always wanted to say an overplayed comment.
  • hydroplane, on 03/07/2008, -0/+83Can't wait for first person pivot tables.
  • johnflan, on 03/07/2008, -2/+79Thats dam incredible, we need to see more of this stuff on digg
  • cquilliam, on 03/07/2008, -2/+79From Eeggs.com:
    1. create a new sheetin openoffice.org Calc (spreadsheet)
    2. enter this formula in a cell :
    =game()
    and validate (validation button or enter)
    3.the cell will display "say what?"
    4. Enter this formula:
    =GAME("StarWars")
    5. a new window will open with a little game star war game.
    6. But if you type again this formula, the cell will return the display "oh no, not again!"
    7. to be able to play again, you need to close the file, close openoffice.org and the QuickStarter, and then make the same.
  • cgruber, on 03/07/2008, -0/+62Is that the sequel to "I have an Ex-wife"?
  • MindTrigger, on 03/07/2008, -2/+60What a great tech article. Reminds me of the good old days of Digg when I signed up in 2005. You know, before Digg was attacked by MySpace and FaceBook users.
  • SushiCW, on 03/07/2008, -2/+58This is cool. Not because Excel is a good rendering engine (it isn't) but because it lets you more clearly see all the math that goes into it. It's an excellent learning tool.
  • classhelper, on 03/07/2008, -17/+68Where's the OpenOffice.org version :) ?
  • elfprince13, on 03/07/2008, -0/+39anybody else remember the Excel flight simulator?
  • equallyunequal, on 03/07/2008, -3/+37I for one welcome our over-used-internet-meme overlords!
  • Scrappy1850, on 03/07/2008, -0/+24im going to use it to make it draw ***** (a weird pseudo-passion of mine)
  • flytronix, on 03/07/2008, -0/+23DirectXcel
  • Gryffydd, on 03/07/2008, -1/+22This is what happened when digg quit being a tech site.
  • Scrappy1850, on 03/07/2008, -1/+21in mother russia excel renders you!
  • Postmodernism, on 03/07/2008, -6/+25When it comes to game engines, I prefer Hyper Card.
  • stung47000, on 03/07/2008, -1/+17Tools -> Macro -> Macros (Alt-F8)
    Then run the shorter named macro. Neat stuff.
  • mattmcm, on 03/07/2008, -0/+15Here's some more Excel goodness. This guy has made Pacman and Space Invaders clones:
    http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/
  • doctechnical, on 03/07/2008, -0/+14Kudos to the author for thinking outside the box. Now I'm tempted to see if I can make it draw snowflakes (a weird pseudo-passion of mine).
    I seem to remember some version of Excel having a sort of flight-simulator built in as an Easter Egg.
  • Ramble, on 03/07/2008, -0/+13That's View -> Macros in Excel 2007. You have to enable them first in the trust centre, which is found in the options.
  • Christbait, on 03/07/2008, -7/+19Breaking News: All 8th Generation games will all be coded in Microsoft Excel.
  • DarkDx, on 03/07/2008, -1/+13I see what you did there!
  • active1x0, on 03/07/2008, -0/+12My bank LOVES to play that game too. So far, they are winning.
  • AlucardX24, on 03/07/2008, -0/+12I coulda sworn I played a space mmo that's strikingly similar to Excel. Oh yeah.. EVE Online.
  • insertAliasHere, on 03/07/2008, -2/+14Don't pat yourself on the back so hard, you might break it.
  • mister711, on 03/07/2008, -2/+13I downloaded the Excel sample files http://gamasutra.com/images/RakosExcel.zip
    Does anyone know how to start the cube?
  • solistus, on 03/07/2008, -0/+11So it's an empty budget spreadsheet?
  • adrianmonk, on 03/07/2008, -1/+12DirectXLS
  • JasonCox, on 03/07/2008, -1/+11X97 L97
    :-)
  • Jpardue, on 03/08/2008, -0/+10↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A
  • solistus, on 03/07/2008, -2/+11Yeah, damn those kids with their myfacing and hip hopping and all the newfangled trends...

    Seriously, Digg is fine. The only differences are 1) now there's a ***** ton of content of all types, not just the geeky sections, and 2) every time a 'geeky' story makes front page you get a bunch of comments like yours waxing nostalgic for the 'good old days' when Digg was 100% populated with stories like these. What kind of geek bemoans expanded content submission and page hits? The fact that it's now "mainstream" to use Web 2.0 social linking sites like Digg doesn't excite you?
  • yohnstoppable, on 03/07/2008, -0/+9Ugh, I need to stop eating Gushers while reading digg comments. ***** gross
  • IllBeBack, on 03/07/2008, -0/+9And now you've done it! Now you may leave. Goodbye.
  • gencha, on 03/07/2008, -0/+8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_whSnPErl7c&watch_r ...
  • pnmoore, on 03/07/2008, -2/+10That's no budget spreadsheet, it's the source code for Duke Nukem Forever!
  • UnstableMind, on 03/07/2008, -1/+9Alt-F4...does that still work?
  • trogdor282, on 03/07/2008, -3/+11Does anybody have the link to that tv clip where they play prince of persia on xbox and when the game ends it switches to Excel and reveals all the incriminating haxor data?
  • JettaMan, on 03/07/2008, -6/+13Microsoft rules.
  • markp93, on 03/07/2008, -0/+7...or, if you are running office 2007, do 'view->macros', then run the macro. ESC to stop.
  • khellendros1984, on 03/07/2008, -1/+7Woooo! Myst!
  • patm1987, on 03/07/2008, -3/+9I guess it makes sense, why simulate excel with games like Masters of Orion when you can just use excel?

    On a more serious note, I like how they specify one of the advantages as being able to render with polygons and not triangles. After writing rasterizers for both (not the engine, the math for drawing the polygons and triangles), drawing triangles is noticeably faster (even on just the CPU and written in C). If you feel out working out the math for linear interpolation along a triangle (hint, barycentric coordinates) you will find that it becomes more efficient to just tessellate the polygons and using linear interpolation along the resulting triangles than using the often-taught line-filling algorithm. The point I'm trying to get to with this, is that some people have already pointed out that this can't be efficient written in Visual Basic and Excel. They just don't get that this is probably limited entirely to slower (preferably turn based) games. And that the "It draws polygons and not just triangles" thing is not really a divine feature, it just makes your physics programmer hate you and lowers your framerate even more.

    Due to the relatively small install base of Excel (I'm assuming this just from the people I know and myself, very few of us have actual Excel), and inefficiencies, I doubt that much will come out of this, but I guess the same was thought for RAD tools prior to Myst. I could see this being used similarly to my use of MatLab or SciLab, testing and debugging new algorithms before trying to implement them in a language less friendly to my naive blunders, but I would say don't expect to need to go out and "attain" a new copy of Excel unless Microsoft decides to start touting this new cross platform (Windows and OSX) game development toolkit.
  • vofuse, on 03/07/2008, -0/+6I was going to post a link to the video of the TV show where the drug dealer uses Prince of Persia to display an Excel file, but it seems to no longer be on YouTube...

    http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/13/nbcs-life-invest ...
    http://ozymandias.com/archive/2007/11/12/excel-on- ...
  • doctechnical, on 03/07/2008, -0/+6Yes, I admit it, I find hexagonally symmetric chicks hawt.
  • haiduz, on 03/08/2008, -1/+7I am very offended by your use of caplocks. That type of last century thinking has no place in today's society.
  • theYevvin, on 03/07/2008, -0/+5If I remember correctly, Insomniac Games first game "Disruptor" was written in Excel and it was a 3D FPS. The code base for that could be very interesting, i.e., mind numbing. I wonder if it's available anywhere.
  • IllBeBack, on 03/07/2008, -0/+5TMI dude...
  • Stopher, on 03/07/2008, -0/+5Tried it at home and it runs pretty fast. Then here at work it's much slower and it took me a while to realize I have a Core 2 Duo 2.66 at home and a 2.79 P4 here at work. You can really see the difference. This is a pretty good way to visually benchmark a system.
  • solistus, on 03/07/2008, -1/+6Relatively small install base? For an app from MS Office? I hope you are kidding. The Office apps probably have the largest consumer and corporate user base of any software on the planet. Also, if that's the biggest practical hurdle you see here aside from polygon physics, I think you missed the point ;)
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