Comments on: Sweating the small stuff

By: realtimecollisiondetection.net - the blog » Catching up

realtimecollisiondetection.net - the blog » Catching up — Sun, 24 May 2009 09:32:48 +0000

[...] can go even simpler, using a spreadsheet as a level editor. The Toolsmith blog has two different posts on using Excel for this purpose. Over at Coderhump Ben Garney talks about using [...]

By: Top Posts « WordPress.com

Top Posts « WordPress.com — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:03:35 +0000

[...] Sweating the small stuff I have a co-worker, Darius, who is creating a game for a small game system called the Meggy Jr. Watching him work on t [...] [...]

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:36:44 +0000

Great article. A lot of people overlook the creativity of programmers. One day history will show the artistry involved in solving complex computer programming challenges and coming up with more efficient ways of doing it.

By: James

James — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:15:57 +0000

Ok but the array already looks like the level… only difference is that it isn’t coloured in.

By: Darren Torpey

Darren Torpey — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:57:02 +0000

Careful, Darius. A few more tools like this and Jeff might pressure you into becoming a contributor to the blog.

Seriously, though… now I’m just torn on whether I should learn Tiles or Excel next… Tiles is probably faster and more effective for 2d level-design purposes since I don’t know Excel, but Excel is useful for so many things, as this post and in particular the comments have made clear. (good point about Bradan about sys/net admin work)

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:02:39 +0000

Lol, you noted that it may look dirty, but to me it looks incredibly elegant. The simplest solution is best, not the most “correct” one. After all some dude working in Java or something would define the correct one as generating it using some kind of complex SWING app generating everything from XML.

By: some coder

some coder — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:46:04 +0000

it could have been done even faster – in 0 minutes. In other words, no need to modify excel to build a bitmap when you already have a bitmap editor. Just read the bitmap in directly.

By: Matthias Dangers

Matthias Dangers — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:08:09 +0000

@terr: talk about fools with too much time on their hands.

By: terr

terr — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:12:42 +0000

doi: Gamasutra article about excel as a 3d engine.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3563/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php

By: Brandan N

Brandan N — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:11:46 +0000

This is also useful for sys/ net admin work… changing a range of cisco vlans or enabling/ disabling many ports is done quickly with “=CONCATONATE”…