Arena.Xlsm Version 1.2 Preview
Arena.Xlsm version 1.2 is in the works and it is a major content update. Here are some of the main things to look forward to!
New Tiles: Bottomless Pits and Cracked Terrain – Bottomless Pits are pits of certain death. You want to avoid these! Cracked Terrain are weak terrain that has cracks in it. This will break and turn into a Bottomless Pit when walked on or shot at. The new terrain is being integrated into the rest of the game in the form of new arenas, new enemy types that take advantage of the terrain, and new spell effects. Here is a sample showing one of the new arenas with new challenges that uses all of the different terrain types in Arena.Xlsm:
I’m also looking at: spell balancing, combat balancing (melee attacks can now attack first!), cosmetic changes, new collections, collection completion rewards, and bug fixes!
Another feature that I am looking to implement for version 1.2 is to import game data from an earlier version of the game (such as version 1.1b) so that players can continue their adventure in the latest version without losing any of their progress or achievements. In order to do this, I need to create a macro that lets the player navigate to their old game, then copy 3 worksheets: “Game”, “Achievements”, and “Variables” from the old workbook into the new workbook. Then replace data in the new workbook with the copied worksheets. I am having some difficulty on the middle part of copying the worksheets from the old workbook into the new workbook. So I’m asking the community for some help, particularly those of you who are better with VBA than I am! If you know how to do this, please send me a workbook that includes a macro that can copy the worksheets from another workbook into the current workbook. Note that it should be able to work with the following code to get the old workbook:
Dim UserPath As String
UserPath = Application.GetOpenFilename(“Arena.Xlsm Files (*.xlsm),*.xlsm”, , “Select a file to Import”, , False)
If you can help me with this you will have: My sincere gratitude, a credit in version 1.2 as “VBA Coding Support”, and version 1.2 released sooner to everyone as I can save time from failing at this repeatedly!
Edit 4/11/13: VBA Guru Grant Lemasters has graciously volunteered with a solution to this problem! 😀
Thanks! Please let me know what you think about the upcoming changes and if there are things that you want to see make it into version 1.2!
Regarding the release timeline: All of my assignments in all of my classes are due this week, and next week I have final exams. So… no promises but I love you guys and want to get this out as quickly as I can! 🙂
Edit 4/19/13: More photos and details about Version 1.2 are available here: Arena.Xlsm Version 1.2 Progress Update
Cary Walkin.CA 
Hello. Thanks for a superb game 🙂 Could you please add a diagonall movement for total 8 ways to move? Thanks and keep doing your great work.
Thanks for the feedback. Movement limitation to 4 directions was a design decision. It allows for more strategic arena environments as enemies can move in 8 directions but the player can only move in 4 directions. If the player can move in 8 directions it can 1) run away from an enemy indefinitely without much strategic thinking. 2) can navigate certain arenas way too easily.
So with that in mind, I’m going to keep it to 4 directions unless you can provide feedback as to why that is a poor design decision. Thanks!
Hi. It is OK if it was intended.
I found one “bug” – when I am standing in the middle of battlefield at position K11-P11 and an enemy is approaching from the left, he gets stuck at F12 and cannot go further, which is pretty easy to kill him.
Bye.
I have not been able to replicate this, are you sure the enemy was not exhausted which is why it could not move?
Didnt save the game. Probably was something else. I also cannot replicate the same conditions either.
Good luck and hope the new version will be out soon 🙂
I forgot – it was the arena with Alec Trevelyan
I was thinking that a decent enhancement might be to rank the Hall of Fame entries by the number of turns it took to complete the game. Obviously, incomplete games would be ranked by Fame below the complete ones, but this would give a better indication of how well each game was played and a better goal to shoot for, increasing replay value. At the moment, the total Fame you can get can barely vary from game-to-game since all games stop at level 35. Basically if you have a weapon with a fame modifier bonus, you can get a little higher, but that’s it.
I’ve played through from start to finish a lot of times, and really the measure of how well I did is how quickly it went more than anything else.
Thanks again for an awesome game!
This is an awesome idea, I will try to squeeze this into V1.2. Thanks! 🙂
No problem! The other new changes sound awesome as well. Looking forward to it.
Hi Bill,
I just wanted to let you know that I needed to push this feature to version 1.3 to get 1.2 out sooner. However Version 1.3 will also include a new Statistics feature that will gather this information and much more such as total enemies killed, most used spell, highest damage attack, etc.
hey,
Can i have the password so i can view the code of the game/
Sorry but no, I’m not releasing the code into the open for now. I may do this in the near future but not for the moment. If you have something specific you want to do please e-mail me. If you want to tinker, please have a look at the VBA4Play series here: https://carywalkin.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/vba4play-part-1-movement-and-collision-detection/
Animated planetary system in Excel:
http://excelunusual.com/3-body-planetary-system-with-options/
Animated Lissajous model in Excel:
http://excelunusual.com/dynamic-lissajous-emulator/