7 ms·

3D engine made of MS Excel formulae

193 points by jbawgs 9y ago

jasonallen 9y ago
As an excel developer in the 90's, this brings up great memories. I wrote the Doom Excel credits in Office 95. I wish I'd had thought of doing this instead. Kudos.
- keville 9y ago
  (Sending some kudos your way, too, having lost many an hour to that Easter egg on otherwise-game-deprived school machines.)
- monocasa 9y ago
  Do you think there's anyway that something like that could be shipped by Microsoft these days?
  - nxc18 9y ago
    Not at MSFT but no. Easter Eggs aren’t worth the security risk of added code. See ‘Trustworthy Computing’ initiative from the 2000s.
  - jasonallen 9y ago
    A dev on my team wrote the following Excel 2000 credits (it was a flying carpet-like game). Afaik that was around the time BillG put his foot down and mandated no new credits. Enterprise customers felt these credits were both a sign of wasted engineering time ("you could have fixed x bugs instead!" and wasted disk space. It's logical, but only partly true. Shipping software on CD means a very long stabilization phase. You couldn't really "fix more bugs" because every bug fix had a risk of introducing another one. That means some Office teams would literally complete their work a year before shipping. They'd sit around half-heartedly helping other teams. That's when someone would take time to write credits. These credits were often tightly-optimized C and assembly, taking very little space. The facts couldn't overcome the optics, so that was the end of fun Microsoft credits.
- dTal 9y ago
  Ah, HN. I came to comment "anyone remember the Doom engine in Excel 95?" And instead the top comment is "I wrote the Doom engine in Excel 95". Can't top that. Kudos, sir.
- ramses0 9y ago
  My brain is desperately attempting to recall the sequence of steps to open it. Ctrl + Shift, clicking something in the Help -> About... dialog box, then F5 or something? And/or there was a star-wars scroller in one of other apps, right?
  - zeusk 9y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb9AXBowb0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb9AXBowb0E
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    I remember the flight sim easter egg in Excel 97, that was certainly unexpected!
- daveslash 9y ago
  Was the Excel 95' Doom written in VBA or something else?
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
Spreadsheets in general and Excel in particular are magic. It is very likely that spreadsheets were the killer application that drove the demand for PC's by businesses. Spreadsheets are truly the programming tool of the masses (who don't even necessarily think they are programming).
Pulcinella 9y ago
I really like how the only VBA macros are for catching key inputs so you don’t have to manually update your location cell. Most “look what this crazy person built in excel!” things end up really having VBA do all the work.
jacquesm 9y ago
That's very neat. Another nice example of the power of excel and spreadsheets in general is the fast.ai course, almost all of the basics are covered in spreadsheets.
JasonFruit 9y ago
I've always thought a data-centered programming language that compiles to an Excel spreadsheet would be a Fun Challenge™ and possibly even useful. Spreadsheets are an amazing tool. This is an amazing demonstration.
cr0sh 9y ago
This is crazy. I'm pretty floored that someone did something like this. Then again, we've all seen (or worse, have been roped into trying to convert!) some of the crazy Excel monstrosities some manager wrote that runs an entire company or such! Prior to seeing this, I had found (somewhere - dunno if it still exists out there) a "tutorial" on how a neural network works - and the whole thing was done as an Excel worksheet. I thought that was pretty insane at the time...
grizzles 9y ago
Since Excel is a pure functional programming paradigm, I suppose this will make FP people happy to see FP taken so far without mixing in any imperative constructs. It's the Übermensch of functional 3d engines.
- xjjfuudud 9y ago
  calling this a functional 3d engine is a stretch, but sure grats functional programming, you have entered the 80s
app4soft 9y ago
Could be rewrited for LibreOffice Calc?
- edent 9y ago
  It renders in LibreOffice - although I wasn't able to get the movement to work, even after enabling macros.
  - chris_wot 9y ago
    Try logging a bug, I know it might seem ridiculous but it may help with efforts to improve VBA compatibility.
    - edent 9y ago
      Sadly LibreOffice ignores user bug reports.
      - fooker 9y ago
        What? Why?
      - chris_wot 9y ago
        Hardly. Why do you say that? I have personally worked on bugs reported by end users.
        edent 9y ago
        That's been my experience. Bugs reported and then either ignored or closed as duplicates of ancient bugs. See https://tommorris.org/posts/9491 https://tommorris.org/posts/9491 (not my post, but similar experience).
        sethrin 9y ago
        Half of the problems listed are about how the app doesn't provide macOS-specific integrations. The rest are very minor usability issues that might have valid justifications for being that way. I am not inclined to view these as being terribly legitimate complaints.
EvanAnderson 9y ago
I just watched a talk this morning about doing high dynamic range photography in Excel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkQJdaGGVM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkQJdaGGVM8). Looks like now I've got something to watch tomorrow!
- f00_ 9y ago
  that is great, both of these reminded me of deepexcel: multi-layer neural networks implemented with a spreadsheet!: http://www.deepexcel.net/ http://www.deepexcel.net/
nayuki 9y ago
As a less extreme example, an implementation of the AES cipher in Excel formulas (no macros): https://www.nayuki.io/page/aes-cipher-internals-in-excel https://www.nayuki.io/page/aes-cipher-internals-in-excel
- bonzini 9y ago
  That reminds me of when my mother-in-law asked me if you could compute IBAN check digits in Excel. The suggestion by IT had been to cut-and-paste customer data into a random "compute IBAN check digit" website, one customer at a time, because they couldn't be arsed to update the database automatically.
johnhenry 9y ago
Kinda Similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8
katastic 9y ago
That reminds me of people doing 3-D engines in MegaZeux. http://vault.digitalmzx.net/screens2/cde248323538306a9712eb9c1d06ed6667293c9d446ae477af0236a2e35c9bb5 http://vault.digitalmzx.net/screens2/cde248323538306a9712eb9... MegaZeux is a ZZT successor. https://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/zzt4.gif https://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/zzt4.gif And uses ASCII characters. MegaZeux up'd the ante and allowed you to edit the VGA text glyphs so you could make "sprites." Back-in-the-day Megazeux and ZZT were like their own dedicated systems, like software console systems. It was really fun to see what people did with incredibly constrained systems.

193 points by jbawgs 9y ago

As an excel developer in the 90's, this brings up great memories. I wrote the Doom Excel credits in Office 95. I wish I'd had thought of doing this instead. Kudos.

keville 9y ago
(Sending some kudos your way, too, having lost many an hour to that Easter egg on otherwise-game-deprived school machines.)
monocasa 9y ago
Do you think there's anyway that something like that could be shipped by Microsoft these days?
- nxc18 9y ago
  Not at MSFT but no. Easter Eggs aren’t worth the security risk of added code. See ‘Trustworthy Computing’ initiative from the 2000s.
- jasonallen 9y ago
  A dev on my team wrote the following Excel 2000 credits (it was a flying carpet-like game). Afaik that was around the time BillG put his foot down and mandated no new credits. Enterprise customers felt these credits were both a sign of wasted engineering time ("you could have fixed x bugs instead!" and wasted disk space. It's logical, but only partly true. Shipping software on CD means a very long stabilization phase. You couldn't really "fix more bugs" because every bug fix had a risk of introducing another one. That means some Office teams would literally complete their work a year before shipping. They'd sit around half-heartedly helping other teams. That's when someone would take time to write credits. These credits were often tightly-optimized C and assembly, taking very little space. The facts couldn't overcome the optics, so that was the end of fun Microsoft credits.
dTal 9y ago
Ah, HN. I came to comment "anyone remember the Doom engine in Excel 95?" And instead the top comment is "I wrote the Doom engine in Excel 95". Can't top that. Kudos, sir.
ramses0 9y ago
My brain is desperately attempting to recall the sequence of steps to open it. Ctrl + Shift, clicking something in the Help -> About... dialog box, then F5 or something? And/or there was a star-wars scroller in one of other apps, right?
- zeusk 9y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb9AXBowb0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb9AXBowb0E
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  I remember the flight sim easter egg in Excel 97, that was certainly unexpected!
daveslash 9y ago
Was the Excel 95' Doom written in VBA or something else?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

Spreadsheets in general and Excel in particular are magic. It is very likely that spreadsheets were the killer application that drove the demand for PC's by businesses. Spreadsheets are truly the programming tool of the masses (who don't even necessarily think they are programming).

Pulcinella 9y ago

I really like how the only VBA macros are for catching key inputs so you don’t have to manually update your location cell. Most “look what this crazy person built in excel!” things end up really having VBA do all the work.

jacquesm 9y ago

That's very neat. Another nice example of the power of excel and spreadsheets in general is the fast.ai course, almost all of the basics are covered in spreadsheets.

JasonFruit 9y ago

I've always thought a data-centered programming language that compiles to an Excel spreadsheet would be a Fun Challenge™ and possibly even useful. Spreadsheets are an amazing tool. This is an amazing demonstration.

cr0sh 9y ago

This is crazy. I'm pretty floored that someone did something like this. Then again, we've all seen (or worse, have been roped into trying to convert!) some of the crazy Excel monstrosities some manager wrote that runs an entire company or such! Prior to seeing this, I had found (somewhere - dunno if it still exists out there) a "tutorial" on how a neural network works - and the whole thing was done as an Excel worksheet. I thought that was pretty insane at the time...

grizzles 9y ago

Since Excel is a pure functional programming paradigm, I suppose this will make FP people happy to see FP taken so far without mixing in any imperative constructs. It's the Übermensch of functional 3d engines.

xjjfuudud 9y ago
calling this a functional 3d engine is a stretch, but sure grats functional programming, you have entered the 80s

app4soft 9y ago

Could be rewrited for LibreOffice Calc?

edent 9y ago
It renders in LibreOffice - although I wasn't able to get the movement to work, even after enabling macros.
- chris_wot 9y ago
  Try logging a bug, I know it might seem ridiculous but it may help with efforts to improve VBA compatibility.
  - edent 9y ago
    Sadly LibreOffice ignores user bug reports.
    - fooker 9y ago
      What? Why?
    - chris_wot 9y ago
      Hardly. Why do you say that? I have personally worked on bugs reported by end users.
      - edent 9y ago
        That's been my experience. Bugs reported and then either ignored or closed as duplicates of ancient bugs. See https://tommorris.org/posts/9491 https://tommorris.org/posts/9491 (not my post, but similar experience).
        sethrin 9y ago
        Half of the problems listed are about how the app doesn't provide macOS-specific integrations. The rest are very minor usability issues that might have valid justifications for being that way. I am not inclined to view these as being terribly legitimate complaints.

EvanAnderson 9y ago

I just watched a talk this morning about doing high dynamic range photography in Excel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkQJdaGGVM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkQJdaGGVM8). Looks like now I've got something to watch tomorrow!

f00_ 9y ago
that is great, both of these reminded me of deepexcel: multi-layer neural networks implemented with a spreadsheet!: http://www.deepexcel.net/ http://www.deepexcel.net/

nayuki 9y ago

As a less extreme example, an implementation of the AES cipher in Excel formulas (no macros): https://www.nayuki.io/page/aes-cipher-internals-in-excel https://www.nayuki.io/page/aes-cipher-internals-in-excel

bonzini 9y ago
That reminds me of when my mother-in-law asked me if you could compute IBAN check digits in Excel. The suggestion by IT had been to cut-and-paste customer data into a random "compute IBAN check digit" website, one customer at a time, because they couldn't be arsed to update the database automatically.

johnhenry 9y ago

Kinda Similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8

katastic 9y ago

That reminds me of people doing 3-D engines in MegaZeux. http://vault.digitalmzx.net/screens2/cde248323538306a9712eb9c1d06ed6667293c9d446ae477af0236a2e35c9bb5 http://vault.digitalmzx.net/screens2/cde248323538306a9712eb9... MegaZeux is a ZZT successor. https://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/zzt4.gif https://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/zzt4.gif And uses ASCII characters. MegaZeux up'd the ante and allowed you to edit the VGA text glyphs so you could make "sprites." Back-in-the-day Megazeux and ZZT were like their own dedicated systems, like software console systems. It was really fun to see what people did with incredibly constrained systems.