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Got Excel? Need volunteers to beta-test a game
whuppins
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This thread is mod-approved.
I'll try to keep this brief. I've written a game in Excel that has recently come close enough to 'finished' to where I am comfortable releasing it to the public. It's not just a Tetris or Minesweeper clone; it's actually a very full-featured, robust game. It's very polished and has a sharp look to it -- it doesn't really look like Excel at all for the most part. What type of game is it? It's a zero-player (ouch) simulation (uh) based on a sport (oh shit)... a fictional sport (Jesus, WTF). If you made it past that last line without throwing your keyboard in disgust, I salute you. It's certainly not everyone's idea of fun.
The point of this thread is that, though it's been in development for over 3 years now, it's only ever been playtested by one person: me. I imagine there's still a good deal of flaws and bugs that I've missed, but at this point I think most of them could only be found by an independent playtester. So, if you'd like to help me out and play a weird little Excel game at the same time, please download it from this site and start goofing around with it.
Is this sitewhoring?
No, I swear to God, it's not. You'll see no ads on that site, no registration, no "free trial" versions, nothing for sale, period. There are no links or other traffic-generating bells and whistles, it's not indexed on any search engines; doesn't even have a hit counter. NFA 2005 has been a 100% labor of love for me and that site only exists as a place to host a three-and-a-half-meg zip file. Of course, it also has some screenshots and a general overview of the game, and I encourage people to read it before they jump right in, but that's only so they know what they need to do to run the game, and have a vague idea of what the fuck is going on once they start playing.
So, what do you want me to do?
Go to the site I linked. Read the info there -- at the very least, read the Requirements section to make sure you can run NFA 2005 without any problems. Download the game, unzip, open nfa2005.xls, and start playing. Of particular interest to me are any UI or game engine improvements (I'm keen on tweaking the engine for a very realistic simulation of sports leagues, despite NFA 2005 being based on a fictional sport) that you think would make it more enjoyable, and, of course, any show-stopping bugs. As long as you play by its rules (read as much of the built-in Help doc as you can stomach), you shouldn't ever see an actual Excel error window. If you do, I'd be very interested in what you did to make it happen. Try to save a copy of nfa2005.xls in the error state and let me know what you were doing when it broke. Feel free to try to break it, of course. It's not supposed to be ironclad, but it should have enough error handling that you can't break it by accident. Also watch out for things that look odd, like if the first player on each team's roster has suspiciously high point totals, or something. NFA 2005 uses hundreds of thousands of Excel formulas and a lot of times, a faulty formula will not be apparent until the numbers have been piling up for hours.
What's required?
In a nutshell, all you need is a version of Excel from the last 10 years. Sorry, people without access to Excel can't help. The NFA 2005 website and the built-in help file will give you more detailed hardware and software requirements.
Feel free to PM me with any bugs, suggestions, or other comments you think of while playing. You can also reply here, though I think the mods would appreciate it if this thread didn't last any longer than the usual H/A thread. If you prefer email, please use nfa2005@cox.net, not the address listed in my profile. If certain questions keep appearing in the next day or so, I'll address them here; otherwise, I'll let the thread die gracefully. I'm doubtful that anyone out there shares my not-even-the-hip-kind-of-geeky interest in this game, but if I can get even one person to try it out and give me some feedback, I'll be happy.
Thanks to anyone who volunteers.
I'll try to keep this brief. I've written a game in Excel that has recently come close enough to 'finished' to where I am comfortable releasing it to the public. It's not just a Tetris or Minesweeper clone; it's actually a very full-featured, robust game. It's very polished and has a sharp look to it -- it doesn't really look like Excel at all for the most part. What type of game is it? It's a zero-player (ouch) simulation (uh) based on a sport (oh shit)... a fictional sport (Jesus, WTF). If you made it past that last line without throwing your keyboard in disgust, I salute you. It's certainly not everyone's idea of fun.
The point of this thread is that, though it's been in development for over 3 years now, it's only ever been playtested by one person: me. I imagine there's still a good deal of flaws and bugs that I've missed, but at this point I think most of them could only be found by an independent playtester. So, if you'd like to help me out and play a weird little Excel game at the same time, please download it from this site and start goofing around with it.
Is this sitewhoring?
No, I swear to God, it's not. You'll see no ads on that site, no registration, no "free trial" versions, nothing for sale, period. There are no links or other traffic-generating bells and whistles, it's not indexed on any search engines; doesn't even have a hit counter. NFA 2005 has been a 100% labor of love for me and that site only exists as a place to host a three-and-a-half-meg zip file. Of course, it also has some screenshots and a general overview of the game, and I encourage people to read it before they jump right in, but that's only so they know what they need to do to run the game, and have a vague idea of what the fuck is going on once they start playing.
So, what do you want me to do?
Go to the site I linked. Read the info there -- at the very least, read the Requirements section to make sure you can run NFA 2005 without any problems. Download the game, unzip, open nfa2005.xls, and start playing. Of particular interest to me are any UI or game engine improvements (I'm keen on tweaking the engine for a very realistic simulation of sports leagues, despite NFA 2005 being based on a fictional sport) that you think would make it more enjoyable, and, of course, any show-stopping bugs. As long as you play by its rules (read as much of the built-in Help doc as you can stomach), you shouldn't ever see an actual Excel error window. If you do, I'd be very interested in what you did to make it happen. Try to save a copy of nfa2005.xls in the error state and let me know what you were doing when it broke. Feel free to try to break it, of course. It's not supposed to be ironclad, but it should have enough error handling that you can't break it by accident. Also watch out for things that look odd, like if the first player on each team's roster has suspiciously high point totals, or something. NFA 2005 uses hundreds of thousands of Excel formulas and a lot of times, a faulty formula will not be apparent until the numbers have been piling up for hours.
What's required?
In a nutshell, all you need is a version of Excel from the last 10 years. Sorry, people without access to Excel can't help. The NFA 2005 website and the built-in help file will give you more detailed hardware and software requirements.
Feel free to PM me with any bugs, suggestions, or other comments you think of while playing. You can also reply here, though I think the mods would appreciate it if this thread didn't last any longer than the usual H/A thread. If you prefer email, please use nfa2005@cox.net, not the address listed in my profile. If certain questions keep appearing in the next day or so, I'll address them here; otherwise, I'll let the thread die gracefully. I'm doubtful that anyone out there shares my not-even-the-hip-kind-of-geeky interest in this game, but if I can get even one person to try it out and give me some feedback, I'll be happy.
Thanks to anyone who volunteers.
whuppins on
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I'll see if I can find my CD's later and install whatever the hell it is Office wants me to install. If you're collecting an FAQ or troubleshooting guide though, maybe through it in there, just in case someone else comes across it. The exact error: "This workbook has lost its VBA project, ActiveX controls and any other programmability-related features."
I'll play around with some Office installations when I get the chance to see exactly which components are required. Thanks very much for the info.
Edit: According to this KB article, it looks like this is just a case of VBA not being checked in the Office installation. I'll update my requirements documentation in the future. Thanks again!
When I get around to installing it, I'll let you know which component it was, for future reference. I'm sure there's others out there that do the same thing as me.
Technically speaking, using Auto Pick is no different from hitting the button to pick a name over and over again. It's running the exact same code, so the time it takes to pick 900 names should be equal to the time it takes to pick one name, times 900. Even if a single name can be picked in, say, a half-second, that translates into over 7 minutes that it will take to pick 900 names. The best I can tell you is that it's slow for everybody, try to be patient, and you won't have to pick anywhere near that many names again.
Knowing that the initial player name generation would take a while, I thought about including a default set of names (like I defaulted in team data) to skip that part entirely, but I kind of liked the idea of each person who downloads NFA 2005 having a completely different experience out of the box. If it turns out to be a bother for people, as you've mentioned, I might take a look at including default names after all.
Thanks for the feedback!
I don't believe it - I'm on my THIRD PS3, and my FIRST XBOX360. What the heck?