[basecamp8,mxCoder]

I found a venus fly trap in King’s Quest VII.  Maybe that is the game you are looking for?  It has a Halloween theme in one part.  There is an alien in King’s Quest V that pushes Graham through a port hole.  Other creepy games are Phatasmagora and Gabriel Knights.

[basecamp8,mxCoder]

It’s amazing how complicated these games are.  Right now it takes 2 minutes in Excel to load a 320 x 190 bitmap.  It takes 36 seconds to move Laura Bow once.  Whats complicated is how to control the priority numbers.  All of this is being done in the speakeasy scene with no added dancers, ziggy, or other npcs.  I need to adjust the ego priority but how do I break up the screen in conjunction with the objects in the room?  As she moves back (up) her priority should decrease but not so much that the piano or mic is in front of her. 
    Then add: scipt, sound, control map, timer sequence, more sprites, multiple ego views plus scaling, triggers… Wow this was much easier in Tomb Raider’s Level Editor.  LOL

[basecamp8,mxCoder]

Thanks for the information.  I know ANSI C programming but not C# or C++.  I do miss the ability to use dynamic memory allocation (maloc), link list, and recursion in VBA.  VBA gives me the ability to program on any computer. Will the IDE for xbox work for Windows games?

[basecamp8,mxCoder]

I am attempting to mirror the animation of Sierra games in Excel.  I have been able to load a 24bit bitmap into the cells of Excel as a background.  Then I blit the background with a series of animated egos(sprites) that are also cells in Excel.  Using a priority map I can place the ego behind a fence.  Here is the code for loading a 24 bit image into Excel.  The other code is too much to show here.

Sub openbinfile()
    Dim testdata As Byte
    Dim mypix As pix
    Dim datasize As Long
    Dim lsb As Byte
    Dim msb As Byte
    Dim hres As Long
    Dim vres As Long
    Dim blkByte As Byte
    Dim bufferbites As Long
    Dim temp As Long
    Dim strFile As String

    ‘Clear data from spreadsheet
    ‘Cells.Select
    ‘Selection.ClearContents
   
    ‘Select 24-bit bitmap file to display
    With Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogOpen)
        .AllowMultiSelect = False
        If .Show = -1 Then
            strFile = .SelectedItems(1)
        Else
            Exit Sub
        End If
    End With

    ‘Open bmp file for reading
    Open strFile For Binary Access Read As #2

    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
   
    ‘Select upper left cell
    Range(“L52”).Select
   
    ‘Get horizontal resolution
    Seek #2, 19
    Get #2, , lsb
    Get #2, , msb
    hres = CLng(msb) * 256 + lsb
   
    ‘Get vertical resolution
    Seek #2, 23
    Get #2, , lsb
    Get #2, , msb
    vres = CLng(msb) * 256 + lsb
   
    ‘Calculate buffer size.  Rows are padded to be
    ‘multiples of 4 bytes with zeros
    bufferbites = hres * 3 ‘Each pixel is three bytes (RGB)
   
    ‘Determine what the next 4 byte boundary is
    temp = 0
    While temp < bufferbites
        temp = temp + 4
    Wend
   
    ‘Calculate the number of buffer bytes used for padding
    bufferbites = temp – bufferbites
      
    ‘Get the total length of the file
    datasize = LOF(2)
   
    ‘Draw bitmap
    For y = 0 To vres – 1
        ActiveCell.Offset(1, hres).Activate
        datasize = datasize – bufferbites + 1
        For x = 0 To hres – 1
            ActiveCell.Offset(0, -1).Activate
            datasize = datasize – 3
            Seek #2, datasize
            Get #2, , mypix.Blue
            Get #2, , mypix.Green
            Get #2, , mypix.Red
            ActiveCell.Interior.Color = RGB(mypix.Red, mypix.Green, mypix.Blue)
        Next x
        datasize = datasize – 1
    Next y
   
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
    Close #2 ‘Cleanup by closing file
End Sub

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