

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

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a_p
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_eggs_in_Microsoft_products)

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

Wouldn't that be Access?

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mickeyp
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.

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olgeni
Revision control aside, MS Access is not that bad for what it does.

However... I've seen management people write a couple of VB functions, think
they magically turned into "Developers" (with a Capital D), and start barking
random orders to people doing totally unrelated things with totally unrelated
tools.

The actual danger is psychological, much like when the new iPhone user on the
block magically turns into a "Design Expert" (Caps!) and starts hunting
innocent bystanders...

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sanswork
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).

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Someone
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/>

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jere
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/>

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pokoleo
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.

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jasonjei
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!

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Tunga
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.

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

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Qantourisc
The horror. And the bravery :)

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derefr
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.

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sanswork
Easier to use cells as pixels.

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walrus
This reminds me of
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php?print=1)

