"YOU ARE PLAYING A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION" "No, Excel actually."

Next video, Forcing Unreal Engine to be a Microsoft Excel Engine

Now recreate DOOM in Excel.

i paused the video and did the maze 😔

What I was ready for: Making a basic maze game in Microsoft Excel What I got: Making a basic maze game with RAYCASTING in Microsoft Excel My Wolfenstein 3D loving heart was completely hooked.

I was in the Army at 2005, we had variety of games purely made of Microsoft Excel. I liked a turn based strategy game most.

At the point you start talking about rendering a 3D world I just kept going "Yes, now you're getting it" as you delved deeper and deeper into how the hell games are 3D, and why that's actually much harder to do than people think. Next Step: Explaining a Graphics API...lol

Render into a cache, then copy all cells once completed. You'll skip the jarring background redraw and because you've done all of your calculations on the first pass, it'll make the draw faster.

finally someone who gets it (unironically i have two entire management sims, one for F1 and one for airlines, that I run through Google Sheets)

The slightly desperate tone of your voice throughout the video is just perfect lol

I was content to call it a video game when you just had 1 simple maze done, but then you just kept going, absolute madness. I love it.

As a coder for 30 years, this is brilliant.

0:07 [cries in Godot]

if you wanted to make it so you can't see the maze being drawn, you could draw it on another spreadsheet and copy it over once it has finished drawing

I feel so sorry that you had spent THAT amount of time in VBA... But luckily, the KZfaq algorithm is going to reward you

seems to me like VBA is the game engine and excel is only the render pipeline. I would have expected huge sets of self referencing formulas to create a game loop that gets updated when pressing F9...

This is an absolutely amazing video. REALLY didn't expect it to go to the direction of ray-casting, but it's always nice to see, as it's one of the coolest core principiles of game creation. It's insane how I, a person with zero coding or computational knowledge, understood ABSOLUTELY everything in this video. The script was extremely fun and engaging to follow too. Great job.

my favorite part of thsi video is that it doesn't even approach answering the question. 10/10, great work

this video is phenomenal, i love the constant "... that was too easy, lets go deeper" reminds me heavily of Ronnie-Onnie Edwards' style.

honestly, the madness settled in by the time we got . but i gasped when i realized you did a 3d render IN EXCEL . amazing work

This brings back memories. Ages ago I took Intro to Programming and started to learn my first language, C++. By the end of the class, I had made several games using a library I found called n-curses. My best one was snake. Along with a survival mode, it had a campaign with 40 something levels. I had a map builder in excel to make adding levels a breeze.

Honestly, this is what they should be teaching to people, who seriously want to start programming games. Forget programming languages, before that, let's learn the concept by trying some stuff in Excel, software every programming enthusiast has come into contact with! This "fundamental flaw in the initial concept", as you put it, should be the core drive, motivation and passion for programmers. Forget the limitations we're under: Let's do the best we can with what we've been given! I applaud you for this masterpiece of a lecture!

Where can I download this?

But does it run doom?

Bro won the youtube algorithm lottery. And you deserved it with this cool project!

16:05 I don't see that as a problem since it now makes it look like a Spiritual Successor to "3D Monster Maze" since that game also allows playes to see each frame as it renders

i remember learning about the hidden dev 3d first person "game" easter egg in certain versions of excel

That was pretty cool ngl. not really into game developing, but i was thoroughly engaged. This needs more views

This is absolutely brilliant, I don't think I've audibly gasped as loudly at a KZfaq video as I did when you projected the map into 3D. Subbed, can't wait to see your other stuff, you deserve all the recognition omg

This video was fascinating and delightful. There was something off about the "fundamental flaw with the initial concept" that made me think if it would be possible to optimize performance (through a reduction of horizontal or vertical resolution) using vector graphics, drawing features, or image insertion (like sprite based videogames), and that led me down a rabbit hole that led to a place called excelunusual that has blog posts about 2D and 3D graphics and animation! So if you ever want to make a sequel to this wonderful video, that's probably a good place to do the research necessary to make this run well enough that you would be able to combine your raycasting mechanic to create a setup in which it would be possible to make pretty much anything that doesn't require a player to look up and down. Personally I'd love to see that. This was delightful to watch😁

As a game dev I grinned the entire way through. Great stuff here.

your narrative style is absolutely captivating!

i adore this video. this may be one of my favorites on the entire site. ive studied gamedevelopment mostly to get into the nitty gritty of the technology behind games, to see how they function in the basics. your explanation is spot on and your incredulousness during the entire process is amazing to hear. and then the implicit realisation all that modern games are, is actually just more complex and bigger versions of this excel thing. i love it so much.

This is one of the best videos I've seen in a while. Really cool project but also really funny! Subscribed!

This is such a creative video. I love how you just went step by step to craft a game. That’s super cool

This video is absolutely incredible writing. I put this on intending to play a game to fill my hands but you held my attention the entire way through! Thank you very much, I've seen other videos talk about it and I went in with an intuition of: "A game engine is a piece of software that can simulate and render a space, enabling the user to attach logic to that space and entities in it" but the writing, the music, the presentation and the preempting of my questions as you went through was perfect! Thank you Ellie, and thank you Tatyana for the work that went into making such a tightly written video!

This is eldritch and fantastic and insanely impressive. It's also incredibly well described in accessible language (mostly), this horrendous experiment is a *perfect* video. Well done, you should be proud.

the third example should probably be godot...

I hope everyone understands just what this all represents in game development and how amazingly well it was presented. Thank you.

This video is brilliant - looking forward to watching this channel grow

I instantly wondered how deep into this madness will you go. You did not disappoint.

Definition of a game engine a system in which you can use tools to create a game and then run the game on

14:44 A slightly more in depth explanation: The distance to the wall determines how tall the wall is drawn in that column with closer walls drawn taller and further walls drawn shorter. The color is determined by the direction the wall faces with north/south walls drawn with light green and east/west walls drawn in dark green.

I have seen people make many different games in Excel but I have never seen someone make such a complex game in it. The way you explained the whole process step-by-step really helped me understand the concept instead of getting bored. Great video! 👏

that was a~maze~ing! very nicely done! looking forward to more :D

I did a snake simulation in Excel about 20 years ago. Very simple at first. Move randomly forward. If there was food (an f and a F), the snake would grow. Was OK. Then I added "sight" and "smell". And the thing went like a seeker. Smell was just what seemed to be ahead in the 3 forward quadrants, and further than sight, which was the immediate cells ahead (centre, left and right). Been meaning to redo it ever since to add "learning". Started with it back then, but never completed it. Learning would be something along the lines of "last time I had to choose form 2 same results, moving (e.g.) left was best. It is amazing what you can do with Excel.

I just love your thought process. This makes helped me. Understand how to build a videogame much better than any masterclass

what an absolute ride. my life has been changed.

As someone who uses Excel on a daily basis, i applaud both your dedication and your bravery

The comedic timing in this video is sooo good! Love it :D

Fantastic! Exciting to see what's next!

Excellent video! Funny, good production value, great quality animations, and an interesting concept

Making a map editor was actually such a genius approach. I was gonna say just ask chatgpt to generate you a vba script that makes a maze with a set width and height. I remember having to program a maze generator in C for learning recursions (this was over 2 years ago now so I have no idea how I did it, somehow I passed that class)

This is the coolest thing ive seen this year. Genuinly

The ending of this video made me feel like a mad scientist cackling over a hideous creation.

And here I thought I was brilliant when I created a basic battleship spreadsheet, sent a copy to my coworker, and the two of us played through the company chat client throughout the day while we worked. Extremely well done; I audibly gasped when I saw the 3d render!

Love the organ music! Kinda fits the decent into madness.

This is crazy, crazy I tell you, what a madlad. Subbed

When I was studying the Numenta neural network at university, I realised that for all the fancy OOP that went into it, you were making a database of cells, their connections, and their connection strengths. So you could run an AI in SQL.... Or Excel! With the right mapping, you could save your whole brain state in a CSV. It's that a nice thought lol.

This was incredibly impressive. And informative too!

This was super cool! When you talked about doing a first person view I thought you might be doing an "Eye of the Beholder" style psudo 3D sort of thing but you really went all out.

Cool. Now put an Dinosaur searching the player inside the Mazes and You just made an Horror game

Damn you got me with that pause thing. We're too predictable. Also, I expected this video and your channel to have way more views/subs. I suspect that it's only a matter of time if you're content continues to be this fucking good dude. I'm excited to see your next video!

Brilliant. This is such goofy fun and imaginative use of a seemingly inappropriate technology, that it sparks actual joy. Amazing.

Excel is great for making games. I spent a few years in prison, and they had an education program that involved business studies - mostly just working with Microsoft Office. Once I finished the course they let me stay as a tutor. I spent an hour helping other prisoners learn how to read, write, do basic math, etc. then I spent an hour messing around in Excel. I got a book from the library on VBA and taught myself how to program. By the time I was released I made blackjack, snake, space invaders and had even started remaking a game I played as a kid in the 90s called "Stars!". The limitations of Excel, combined with not having internet actually made it easier to "think like a programmer" and I ended up developing pretty good problem solving skills.

This is brilliant. And enjoyably presented, too. Thank you!

You excelled my expectations

Now it just needs a loading screen despite not needing any, where it shows the logos for publisher, for your studio, and then "Powered by Microsoft Excel" in large bold letters.

back in 2007 there was an excel sheet that could play sonic 1&2, doom and Wolfenstein that we played in comp lab. What a time to be alive.

I don't mind seeing the frames render one at a time. I am annoyed that it draws top to bottom then left to right though. This was dope as hell.

Okay, to reduce but not eliminate the visible drawing, you can use two game sheets. Draw to one, then draw to the second, then flip the user to the second, draw the first, flip the user to the first, and repeat. Basically, always use the other sheet to draw, then change to the second sheet once it's drawn.

This is the most mad genius project I've seen unfold, thank you.

This is a brilliant breakdown.

I remember this one game where the Excel had stickmen running across the screen and be shot, kinda like an FPS and the guns could be swapped. It feels like a fever dream because i can't find the game anymore, this was over a decade ago.

When I first saw Excel, I think about 20~25 years ago, my first thought was that I could make a game in this. But never developed the idea into anything... But just seeing what was possible with VBA is something that still helps me almost every day

Procedurally generated maps would be a nice touch

this video inspired me to pick back up working on my in-progress game engine in lua! thanks ellie

This was great. I taught myself VBA to make a program for my boss to render accurate models for his clients instead of drafting engineering diagrams that aren't as intuitive for laymen to read. It took a while, but since I got it working I've continued to add onto it and now we do most of our product planning from a spreadsheet. Rather than just backfilling cells, I hide and unhide custom objects and move them around based on the cells and given dimensions. Each cell represents a quarter inch, so I just use basic multiplication to quadruple all the dimensions we're given. I know there are better alternatives and that my code isn't efficient, but since it was all I had access to with no knowledge of writing code, I am still impressed by how capable Excel truly is. I was disappointed in your efforts to showcase that in this video UNTIL you began rendering 3D first person POV shots. Very well done!

This became insanely more incredible than I thought it would be

The ray casting explanation is great

Excel game engine is crazy, GG ngl good job

Loved this video. Thank you!

My co-workers made an online multiplayer of Battleship about a decade ago in Excel. It was as basic as you could get since neither of them were programmers but they used the Shared Document feature and some VBA to check hits and misses and it worked. I've always said it's actually not terrible for rapid prototyping since the UI and Graphics management is essentially done for you.

Dude. I’ve been wanting to do this for so long. I saw a video one day of someone building Doom in excel. I’m now one step closer. Thank you. Please. Please tell us how you coded this? I’m desperate.

This is such a good video, thank you for making it :D

love the music, great job

I knew what you were going for because I saw how Ray casting worked, I'm just floored that Excel can do it. I just fricken LOVE Excel.

this is hands down one of the greatest fucking vidoes i have ever watched. masterclass in so many different aspects of designing and developing practically any software.

When I was taking a class on Microsoft excel, it wasn’t for video gaming. It was learning how to make tables and charts.

Here I got you with a better definition from a software engineer: "A game engine is a library of code assets written and designed to be used in any number of combinations allowing the reuse of assets allowing a focus on asset quality without sacrificing cost" So basically you write a bunch of code with a focus on quality and modularity so that you can reuse all of that code in different combinations so make better games cheaper

What we can actually do is have a window port view of the maze, so we only show say, a 5x5 or 7x7 top down view of the maze centred around the player, with the view port stop panning when the edge of the map is reached. Think Into the Eagle's Nest. ;) Wrote something like that back in the late 80s. Also, back in the days, I wrote a procedural maze/map generator, so there's no need for creating maps manually. Just specify the dimensions of the map and it will generate the map.

this feels like a griffpatch tutorial and i’m here for it

I was expecting an actual explanation of what a game engine was... i almost quit when i realized it'd be excel all the way through... I'm glad I didn't! cool stuff!

I used Excel to model cellular automata, being, well, cell based, it worked quite well. While it was used as a simulation a cellular automata could be gamified. I could imagine different cells representing player and enemy territory

Incredible madness. Two thumbs up :D

dude. that was literally amazing

0:27 Super Mario World is a Game Engine Man, I was first wondering how you could even move the block with custom inputs (the arrow keys), but the ending was mind-blowing!

This video taught me that I know absolutely nothing about Excel.

Incredible work

Dude when I saw you were gonna make it 3d I went "no fucking way". But this actually gives me an idea and I appreciate the value I found here. I was fascinated the whole way through and learned all kinds of cool things!