Fallout style RPG made in Excel | Hacker News Reader

Fallout style RPG made in Excel

storyteller-blog.com

125 pointsdroptablemain52 comments

Is there a demonstration of this anywhere? I'd be hesitant to open a random Excel file.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh-42-7L7B0

Seems they've made a few: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyN2mpPl_WGxaCd3QIcJ7...

Looks like their “Baldur’s Gate” and “Fallout” games are practically identical, with similar overworld map and battle systems?

https://storyteller-blog.com/2024/03/22/i-made-a-baldurs-gat...

Is it more than 1 guy?

Thanks!

omg it's actually interactive, i was expecting a spreadsheet.

This actually looks 100% playable in the office.

Me considering playing Aurora at work as long as I stay away from the map screen.

I was hoping someone would link to a Google Sheets :D

Somehow you don't see these complaints when people just straight up have you download an .exe of their video game.

Actually, we see similar concerns in Game Jams. Many people actually avoid downloading .exe files and often complain if there isn’t a web version available on itch.io

I don't know much about it but perhaps https://itch.io/docs/itch/using/sandbox.html would be an option for them? It's an end user option in the itch.io app.

I recognize it's irrational but I'm more afraid of excel files than executables in many ways

It's all good

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/dcc8833ec41be963078c932e...

Agreed. Hesitant is the nicest way to put it. "How do I get people to run my MS Office macros virus? Oh yeah, tell them it's a game or something..."

The Youtube video in a sibling comment helps though, giving a good idea of what it's about and how it looks. No need to download it to find out. :)

Some screenshots or even a video would be nice.

Watching the new Fallout show on Prime has made me miss the original Fallout and Fallout 2 games. This is great!

That's what I really want quite often. Have a game, but also enable to connect excel to stats/progress/merchants whatever data of it.

It would be much faster and easier to work with some of it in the excel than navigate cumbersome game UIs

Have you heard of Eve Online? It used to be a meme, but now it integrates with Excel, officially.

https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/816520777052...

Wanted to look at the VBA code but looks like its password protected A shame

Looks like I can open it with LibreOffice calc Interesting https://i.imgur.com/rwjlX0L.png

Does the game itself work in LibreOffice?

Edit: Just tried it. No, it doesn't. It loads but is unplayable.

Sounds cool but apparently is not compatible with Libre Office:

> BASIC runtime error. '423' Property or method not found: TopLeftCell.

I also tried exporting to XLS to try in Excel 97 on a Windows 95 dosbox but to my surprise (I couldn't expect this from a free fun project) this error encountered:

The document you are about to export has one or more protected items with password that cannot be exported. Please re-type your password to be able to export your document.

Download this excel file, haha, no.

OT: Bought Wasteland from the 80s today for $2.50 on Steam.

> simplified version of DnD mechanics

Isn't Fallout based on GURPS?

I believe it wasn't ever, but there were paper adaptations that used GURPS as the base.

From what I recall is it was then they lost the license so they make SPECIAL

Did some digging and found this: https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-rpg-origins-of-fallout-p...

Fallout 1 used GURPS in development, but Interplay lost the rights and they made their own system.

Video by producer, designer, and lead programmer Tim Cain on the conversion process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgPwfHXiBjw

My reading is that the author made a world and campaign in the Fallout style but implemented mechanics more like D&D.

It was meant to be, but:

1) they found it too complex for a game user interface, so they started to create a "GURPS-lite"

2) it was licensed from Steve Jackson Games, who didn't like the level of violence in the game. Thus began a fight over whether licensing even included veto rights on the entire game

So in the end, they tweaked their "GURPS-lite" further, named it "SPECIAL", and abandoned the licensing deal

https://web.archive.org/web/20151004175725/http://www.nma-fa...

> it was licensed from Steve Jackson Games, who didn't like the level of violence in the game.

Some people can't get over themselves.

FYI on modern Windows you need to save it outside of the Temp or Downloads folder, and right-click and choose Unblock, then when you open it add to Trusted Documents in order for the macro enabled spreadsheet download to function. At least if you use the default security settings.

I wonder how much efforts would it take libreoffice team to bring calc up to feature party with excel regarding vba in order to run files like these

Reminds me of when I was younger and creating games in whatever tools I could get my hands on. Made some hover-mouse maze games in PowerPoint

Hey, the original Myst was made in HyperCard!

I do miss actionscript in FlashMX, where you could click on an entity you just drew and insert entity specific code, independent from the main script, which was at tied to a specific global frame.

It sounds horrendous now that I type it out, but ah it was such a free and chaotic way to program

One of my older brother's friend was a great drawer and I remember him making very elaborate and impressively rendered animations using powerpoint when I was younger. He had a whole "series" going that I realize now, in hindsight, was an obvious DBZ knockoff. But, the creativity and the spirit of it all still stands out to me some 20 years later.

I guess I misread "RPG" as "FPS" 'cuz I was expecting a game a la the "Hall of Tortured Souls" Wolfenstein/DOOM-like easter egg embedded in Excel 95:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbUk_n3iOgA

I had no idea Excel was even capable of something like this. Incredible!

You can create a 3d engine with Excel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCeOEQVUWZ0

Something you may like:

I had demonstrated several classical computer vision algorithms in Excel:

https://github.com/amzn/computer-vision-basics-in-microsoft-...

This was done using just built-in Excel formulas. No scripts/VBA.

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”

This is great! With that said, I'm not going to open random Excel Spreadsheets.

But I imported to Google Sheets because I couldn't contain my curiosity.

The game didn't work on Google Sheets but I could take some screenshots:

Intro: https://i.imgur.com/m5NJuPn.png

Map: https://i.imgur.com/GHUSpnv.png

Stats: https://i.imgur.com/lMQPPdz.png

Battle: https://i.imgur.com/NIXnxKD.png

Information: https://i.imgur.com/fdn4aO4.png

If this could be ported to Google Sheets, it would be sensational. Players could copy the sheet online and play. No Excel needed.

But if its on GSheets, it could be multiplayer.

Indeed my friend. I wonder if we could implement anti-griefing and turn-based actions mechanisms using App Scripts:

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/sheets

If anyone is in the mood for throwback gaming, I highly recommend Pathways into Darkness (1993). [0]

This was Bungie before Halo... before Marathon!

Specifically, the UI, in which you see game designers grappling with resource and development limitations and creating a weird hybrid of a filesystem-storing-game-objects + HUD-via-multiple-tiled-windows.

In the same way that the original Mac Myst was a collection of Hypercard stacks. [1]

Proto-GUIs are kinda my jam. Gotta know where we came from, and the paths (into darkness) not explored!

And it's nice to have a reminder that everything doesn't have to start with building or buying a game engine. Weird is needed too.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathways_into_Darkness#Gamep...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst#Production

Is there an emscripten version of Pathways into Darkness?

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