ACDG3- the rpg game

[Zeiter]

Hehehe, I've been fooling around with spreadsheets lately, and recently I thought about trying to make an RPG game out of SMAC on a spreadsheet. Well, 4 days and a couple thousand if/then equations later, the ACDG3 rpg game is finished.

Basically, it's like one of those really old rpg games from the 1980's. You move around on a map, fight enemies that randomly appear, gain experience and gold (in this case, energy credits) and you can buy better weapons and armor, potions to restore health (longevity vaccine and clinical immortality vials), etc. The object of this game is to make a dangerous journey to The Hive and defeat Chairman Yang and his entourage in rpg combat. Along the way you'll fight 10 different kinds of enemies. Here's a screenshot to show:

[Zeiter]

Now, I must warn you all: this game will probably seem VERY boring, except for the slight novelty value. It requires a tiny bit of player input to make it work. But for the most part, it runs on its own, which I thought would never happen. The hardest thing was getting the combat engine to work right. And even now I'm not totally sure that its working 100% as I intended, but it seems to be working well enough from the little bit I've played on it.

Here's another screenshot, this one of part of the World Map:

[Zeiter]

So, here it is, both in xls format and wks format. I hope it works on other computers, but it might not, because my computer is sold old (a windows 98) that it might generate files that are incompatible with the newer computers.

There's a brief tutorial on the left-hand side of the spreadsheet, but if anyone has anyone questions, comments, or ideas of how I can improve it, please let me know.

[Kassiopeia]

You have way too much time to spare

I'll give it a try if I can get any of my programs to open up either file. Looks like fun though, RPG designing can be rather engrossing (and make you pull out hairs by the dozen...).

[Zeiter]

Yeah, I've got this whole summer off from school, and there's not much else to do but read, check the ACDG, and find something else to occupy my time with. This last week, it's been trying things out with spreadsheets.

The biggest hair-pulling-out inducer for me was getting the combat engine to work properly. First I kept getting "ERR" in the cells, until I realized that sometimes the equations were having to divide by 0. So I got that fixed, but then I would get wierd combat results, like my level 1 character doing 20,000 damage. So I got that fixed (I think ) but then I had to figure out a way to tally the experience and ECs after each battle. Then I had to incorporate factional bonuses, the two healing items, and some other stuff into it all. Designing the combat engine alone took 2 days of over 10 hours a day. The other stuff wasn't quite so bad. Building the random enemy generator on the map was tedious but straightforward. But overall, the whole project took about 4 days of work. It started out as a simple "Gee, I wonder if I could do this..." and gradually snowballed in complexity. Anyway, I hope you are able to open it.

[Snowflake]

Actually it might be fun if we run it right here as a group game. Zeiter run it and tells us the event. Anybody who wants to participate post here. We may actually have some rules like at least three people must agree when we move to a direction, etc.

Not sure how much stuff you've got in your game. It might be interesting if you got lots things that can be manipulated. Also people have to find where Yang is, and then enter his building where more traps and such is around. The person who takes up some action may face some risks like being injured or die but could also be rewarded individually. Etc.

[Maniac]

When I open the file, it says L93 has a circular reference. Is this normal?

[Snowflake]

If you go to Tools/Options/Calculation and check the iteration box this should solve the circular reference problem, if the circular reference is indeed intensional.

[Snowflake]

The spreadsheet could improve somewhat. For example, in cell T13 you have entered a long mulitple if function. You could easily use a Vlookup funtion to look up the armor value. Check the help for details about how to use the function. If you need further help just ask.

Also direction is not very clear. You could insert some names so that people can jump to wherever you want them to go, instead of asking people to find "start here" or something like that. You could even insert a form upfront for people to fill in name and faction, then use a macro to take them directly to where you want them to start.

[Snowflake]

Formula P13 is in error. Should be "=(M13*5+11)-T13", instead of T6.

[Snowflake]

Formula S39 is wrong.
"=IF(J50=0,0,IF(P50=0,S39+1,0))"
It references to itself. This is perhaps the origin of the circular reference.

[Snowflake]

Also P50=0 is wrong, should be P50=false.

[GeoModder]

Snowflake is working in her off-duty time!!!
You sure seem to know how handling spreadsheets.

[Snowflake]

I noticed that you have many self reference cells, like when you calculated accumulated experiences and ecs. Excel doesn't work this way. You need to write VB codes for this.

Well I suppose the feedback is enough for you to work for a while now.

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by GeoModder

Snowflake is working in her off-duty time!!!
You sure seem to know how handling spreadsheets.

Yeah I simply can't resist the attraction of spreadsheets. That's why I like my work. I got to do lots of those kind of stuff.