Animations in excel - is this possible or not?

[johandenver]

Hello,

I have a question to all you experts out there regarding excel and animations.

The thing is this:
I've converted a track & field board game to excel and it currently works just like I want it to.
However I'd really like to add some more "flavour" to it with some sort of animations and I have no idea how to go about doing that. Or even if it's possible.

I'm guessing that 100 meters is one of the easier events perhaps so I'll use that as an example.

The event is split into 3 parts (start, midrace and finish).
Each athlete will get a time calculated for each of these parts.
My idea then is to use this value in some sort of animation to represent the race visually (the values I'm talking about are columns K, M and O in the screenshot)
For 100m it would be a straight track with flags (or figures) moving from start towards the finish line according to how good their times are.
Of course, other events would be more complicated but I thought I'd start with one of the "easier" events.

Does anybody have a clue how to do this, or if it's even possible?

Regards
/Johan
2017-08-14 13_30_25-100m_w.xlsm - Excel.jpg

[BellyGas]

Animation is most definitely possible in excel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs2XUffK-1w

:-) That's just one example using ASCII art. Having stick figures moving along a row/column would be very easy. Alternatively, you could use an image / shape that is constantly deleted and replaced slightly further over as the code runs.

[johandenver]

I've managed to get a couple of flags moving in the document at http://www.cwdb.se\track.xlsm (I couldn't get the upload working). Is it possible to get the three flags moving at different speeds according to a specified value?
Let's say I set a value of 10 seconds for the first flag to make it take 10 seconds to complete its movement. Is that possible?

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[BellyGas]

I've had a play around, have a look.

[AliGW]

What are we supposed to see?

[BellyGas]

Run the macro you dippy mare. ;-)

I'd have put a button on the sheet to run it....well ok, I did put a button on the sheet to run it but on my system the button being there caused excel to crash (dodgy, crappy, IT dept installed O/S and office).

[AliGW]

Good point! paperbag.gif

Bit of an anti-climax, though ...

And it has crashed my Excel too, so maybe nothing to do with crappy IT department, and more to do with crappy VBA???!!!!

[BellyGas]

That's weird. Here's the VBA:

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[BellyGas]

Doh. Yeah, soon as I post it I spot the issue. When the (endtime - starttime) is bigger than the steptime......

Change that line to:

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It's possible the resolution of the display updates could come down a bit also.... 1 screen update per lane per meter may possibly be too many.

[johandenver]

Thanks for your effort but I couldn't get your example working (I got a message that I need to update the code to be able to run it on a 64-bit system, which my installation of Excel is)

However I got an animation working for 100m somewhat similar to what this guy is doing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fh5yBE6Moo
Here's a link to my file: http://www.cwdb.se/100m.xlsm

The problems now are these two:
1. This only works if the object is to move in a straight line. Is there some way to "predefine" the path along which the object is to move?
I want to be able to simulate a race around a race track.
2. There will be 8 objects moving at the same time and all must move at different speeds according to values I get from a specific cell

Am I trying to do the impossible here?

[xlnitwit]

Thanks for your effort but I couldn't get your example working (I got a message that I need to update the code to be able to run it on a 64-bit system, which my installation of Excel is)

You would need to add PtrSafe after the Declare statement for both functions.

Am I trying to do the impossible here?

No, but asking a lot for a free forum I would imagine, unless you find someone both bored and capable.