Simone
Simone is a memory training game that I made in my spare time. Follow the pattern and improve your memory!
Cary Walkin.CA
Cary Walkin on the Internet
Posts Tagged ‘ gaming ’
VBA4Play Part 2: Animation in Excel
This is the second part of the VBA4Play tutorial series. This tutorial is going to leverage off some of the code in VBA4Play Part 1: Movement and Collision Detection so be sure to view that prior to starting.
By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to make your own customized animations within Microsoft Excel. This tutorial is going to cover three different types of animation techniques: Uncontrolled, Wait, and Real-Time. Each type of animation has its own benefits and drawbacks so I’ll be going through the implementation of each of them step-by-step so that you will have the skills to use them in your own projects. Animation appears in every type of game so it’s important that we understand how to make effective animations so that we can make bigger and better games!
Okay, now let’s get started!
Open Call for Localization Volunteers!
Currently Arena.Xlsm is in a state that I am happy with, the game mechanics are all in and they seem to be working well together. Now that there will be few game changes, I can now proceed with localization of the game into various languages. Arena.Xlsm was designed in Microsoft Excel for free to be accessible to the largest number of people as possible. By localizing the game into various languages, more people will be able to enjoy the experience!
The most commonly requested languages are:
- Russian
- French
- Portuguese
- Italian
- Dutch
- Chinese
If you can speak any of these languages and English fluently and would like to help translate Arena.Xlsm, please contact me via e-mail or comment below. If you want to translate the game into a language not listed above, please contact me and we can discuss the viability of getting another localized version out.
If you’re interested in helping make the game accessible to more people in another language, this is your opportunity to make it happen!
Thank you so much for your continued support!
Arena.Xlsm Version 1.3 Released!
Arena.Xlsm Version 1.3 is now available here: Download Arena.Xlsm
This update contains a number of new features and content. Here are the highlights:
- New Feature: Keyboard Controls. Access the controls through the new control button. You can now customize hot-keys for your most frequently used spells!
- New Feature: Hard Mode! Unlockable after completing a play-through on Normal. Blood harvested from enemies is decreased by 1. Fame required to level up is increased by a factor of 2. The player does not start with any heals. Enemy health and damage is increased by 25%. Exhausted enemies do not lose their immunities.
- New Feature: Statistics. The statistics will track your actions across multiple games.
- New Feature: “Boss Key” – The Statistics spreadsheet is unlocked and can be quickly accessed by pressing the F key from within the game. You can add corporate logos and work to this spreadsheet to mask the fact that you are playing a game at work. NOTE: If you feel the need to use a “boss key” you probably should not be playing this at work. I will not be held liable if you get yourself fired for playing a video game at work.
- New Feature: Title Screen. There is now a title screen when opening the game and after the player dies. The logo is dynamic and will change based on the player’s progress throughout the game.
- 3 New Terrain Types: Movable Walls, Pressure Switches and Switch Walls. Move the Movable Walls on to the Pressure Switches to trigger an explosion on Switch Walls connected to the Pressure Switch. This can allow the player to access new parts of the arena and provides an additional challenge while you’re battling enemies simultaneously.
- 3 New Arenas: The Box, The Obstacle Course, and The Great Barrier.
- New Collection: Arena Tourist.
- 61 New Achievements!
For the full patch notes, see the Arena.Xlsm Wiki.
Arena.Xlsm Version 1.3 Preview
Arena.Xlsm version 1.3 is coming along nicely. Here are some of the main things to look forward to!
New Tiles: Movable Walls and Pressure Switches – Movable walls are heavy walls that you can push around the arena. Push a movable wall onto a pressure switch to detonate the dynamite attached to that switch. Dynamite can be attached to walls to access new areas of the map. Dynamite may also be attached to cracked terrain, explode the terrain under an enemy to cause the enemy to fall down a bottomless pit! Note that walls with dynamite attached can only be exploded via pressure switch. Be careful, if you push the movable wall onto cracked terrain or a bottomless pit, it will fall down and make the pressure switch unusable!
New Feature: Keyboard Controls – You can now control every action in the game with the keyboard in addition to the mouse. This dramatically increases the speed of gameplay!
New Feature: Statistics and “Boss Key” – The game now tracks your statistics across play-throughs. A lot of people have been requesting that I implement a “boss key”, which is a spreadsheet that can be pulled up quickly to mask the fact that you’re playing a video game. The Statistics spreadsheet can be pulled up quickly by pressing the F key while playing the game. The Statistics page is an unlocked and unprotected spreadsheet if you need it for this purpose you can customize it with work. NOTE: If you feel the need to use a “boss key” you probably should not be playing this at work. I will not be held liable if you get yourself fired for playing a video game at work.
If you want to volunteer as a tester and receive version 1.3 prior to the general public, please feel free to send me an e-mail with the version of excel you are using and I’ll add you to the volunteer tester group.
Please continue to follow me on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit for Arena.Xlsm updates and discussion. Thanks very much for your interest in Arena.Xlsm!
Arena.Xlsm Version 1.2 Released!
Arena.Xlsm Version 1.2 is now available here: Download Arena.Xlsm
This update contains a number of new features and content. Here are the highlights:
- New Feature: Import Data. You can now import old games! This allows you to continue your game in a new version without losing your progress!
- New Feature: Dynamic Player Avatar – The player’s avatar will now change to reflect how the player is feeling.
- 2 New Terrain Types: Cracked Terrain and Bottomless Pits present new situational strategies and challenges!
- 3 New Arenas!
- New Attack: Lunge. Moving offensively into the melee range of an enemy will now automatically perform a lunge attack on the enemy with the player’s melee weapon. This will make it possible for the player to have the first hit in a melee confrontation.
- New Collection: Emotional Breakdown.
- 2 New Achievements:
- My Emotions!!! – Collect all 10 Emotions.
- Darkness Falls – Cause an enemy to fall down a bottomless pit.
- New Enemy Type: Chance to Knockback.
- Final Boss fight has been redesigned and is now much more strategic!
For the full patch notes, see the Arena.Xlsm Wiki.
Arena.Xlsm Version 1.2 Progress Update
Thanks for your patience regarding the version 1.2 update. Final exams and assignments have been dominating most of my time. However, I’ve been making significant progress on version 1.2. Have a look at the few remaining items still on my to-do list for version 1.2:
- New Enemy Ability: Chance to Knockback. This will make it more challenging to avoid fire and the new bottomless pits!
- The Ultimate Evil Boss Encounter: I’m redesigning this boss fight to give it a more “epic” feel. This requires some heavy scripting on my part but I think it’ll be worth it. Without spoiling the redesign, there will be multiple targets and you will need to make a strategic decision which target to hit at any time. This will be in addition to some new counterattacks that have been added to The Ultimate Evil to deal with some of the simpler strategies from earlier versions. I’m trying to get the balance on this just right so it’s not too hard but not too easy while still being a challenge.
In regards to the specific time for release, please continue to follow me on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit for updates and discussion. I hope to get the new version to the volunteer tester group sometime next week. Speaking of which, if you want to be a volunteer tester, please e-mail me with your Excel version(s) and I’ll add you to the list. You’ll be able to try out version 1.2 before everyone else!
In addition to the version 1.2 preview that I posted earlier, please enjoy some screenshots from the upcoming update below:
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:
VBA4Play Part 1: Movement and Collision Detection
This is the first part of a new series called VBA4Play. The goal here is to use Arena.Xlsm as a learning tool to get more people to have fun with VBA. Ultimately, what I’d like to do is create new games together with you using the tools that I am going to be writing about in VBA4Play. To that end I want people to come up with their own ideas for games and put them in the comments or experiment with VBA and write some code for a future game. If your code becomes featured on VBA4Play, I may ask that you guest write the article in a step-by-step fashion so that everyone can follow along. I’m going to try to make this feature accessible to beginners so I apologize in advance to those of you who already have coding experience. Hopefully both beginners and advanced VBA users can learn from each other and build something amazing together. To that end, I am only going to guide the discussion, I would like this to be a community project so the power to see where this thing goes is in your hands.
Okay, now let’s get started!
Arena.Xlsm Version 1.1 Released!
Arena.Xlsm Version 1.1b is now available here: Download Arena.Xlsm
Special thanks to my volunteer testers, and all of you who submitted feedback and bug reports!
Note: There is currently not a way to import your current v1.0 game data into v1.1. I’m working on this feature but it will take time and I didn’t want the Excel 2007 guys to have to wait any longer just to get started!
Cary Walkin
Cary Walkin is a Chartered Accountant, has 12 Salesforce certifications, and has an MBA from York University. He uses his Finance and Operations expertise to help businesses improve their processes. Before he became a Salesforce expert, he created a full length video game entirely in Microsoft Excel. The game, Arena.Xlsm, launched to over 600,000 players and was featured by over 150 media outlets.
Recent Posts
Archives
- July 2026 (1)
- February 2023 (1)
- January 2020 (1)
- May 2019 (1)
- February 2015 (1)
- November 2014 (1)
- March 2014 (1)
- January 2014 (1)
- December 2013 (1)
- November 2013 (1)
- September 2013 (2)
- July 2013 (1)
- June 2013 (1)
- May 2013 (3)
- April 2013 (7)
- March 2013 (6)
- February 2013 (5)
Cary Walkin.CA 