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Excel - The Ultimate Halo 2 Accessory

Posted by Zonk on from the what's-your-ROI-with-the-shotgun? dept.

Lev13than writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that a Microsoft Employee has hacked up an Excel spreadsheet that performs 'advanced analysis' on a player's Halo 2 stats. The spreadsheet tracks statistics including average kills, deaths and ranking over time, and displays them with charts and graphs. There's even a decent UI to set up reports. Data is refreshed automatically via RSS feeds from Bungie.net. The file can be found here." Bungie's RSS tracking is something we've touched on before.

34 comments

  1. wowsa! by BortQ · · Score: 3, Funny

    Say what you will, but MS sure knows how to integrate all their technologies.

    --

    A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
    1. Re:wowsa! by SeaEye420 · · Score: 0, Troll

      Yeah, it's called vendor lock in. It's not new, and it's certainly not cool.

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      Wort Wort Wort!
    2. Re:wowsa! by metalhed77 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ummm, that's curious because the technology which allows the integration, rss, is an open standard not developed by MS. It's parent standard XML is one that MS has refused to adopt for MS Office instead locking you into the proprietary and hard to reverse engineer .doc format. It integrates because MS is acting out of character.

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      Photos.
    3. Re:wowsa! by hunterx11 · · Score: 1

      Although I have to admit that I'm against MS's many lock-in schemes, at least they'll be moving to XML for Office files in the future.

      --
      English is easier said than done.
    4. Re:wowsa! by sepluv · · Score: 1

      Ummm...raaaight....you just believe that....

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    5. Re:wowsa! by sepluv · · Score: 0

      Also if Microsoft spent as much time fixing bugs in their software as they do on Halo2....

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    6. Re:wowsa! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When do you think WordPerfect will be moving to XML? How about acrobat?

      Gimme a break.

    7. Re:wowsa! by DavidD_CA · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wow. Please try crawling out from your rock and take a look at the last two versions of MS Office.

      Both 2002 and 2003 have been totally integrated on XML formats and supported it back and forth. Every program imports/exports to XML. Excel can pull data from XML documents like Access from an SQL server. Even FrontPage can edit XML data nativly.

      The new Infopath program uses XML as its native file format.

      Microsoft has done everything *but* refuse to adopt XML.

      MS also has supported RSS. Take a look at their website news articles (the Expert Zone, for example).

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      -David
    8. Re:wowsa! by metalhed77 · · Score: 1

      Hmmm, I was under the impression that MS XML wasn't an open standard (that it'd be as difficult as .doc to reverse engineer). If MS truly does support then great. Of course, it still won't really help me until the default file save option is XML so that when a client sends me a word document they send it in a format that's easier to read.

      --
      Photos.
    9. Re:wowsa! by DavidD_CA · · Score: 1

      In that case, you'll be happy to know that starting with Office 2003 a user (or admin) can change the default Save Format by going to Tools, Options, Save, and looking at the bottom.

      You could also coach your clients to choose File, Save As, File Type, and "XML" if you really wanted to. :)

      With InfoPath's native format being XML, you can bet that it won't take too many more versions until other MS files do the same thing.

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      -David
    10. Re:wowsa! by duguk · · Score: 1

      Woo. Office supports XML. C'mon, they can't even get HTML right! (not even in Frontpage...)

  2. Great Idea by mwielgosz · · Score: 1
    Could the same game also ignite sales of Microsoft Excel?
    Dont push it too far Microsoft...

    But in all seriousness, this application is just what Halo 2 needs...I remember when Perfect Dark for Nintendo 64 came out with it's stat tracking abilities, I spent hours getting my stats higher than all my friends. Now I can do the same thing and get bragging rights to my wins!

    Next we just need support for other spreadsheats than Excel. Maybe we can track stats with a MySQL server someday?

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    -Mike
    1. Re:Great Idea by Safety+Cap · · Score: 2, Funny
      Next we just need support for other spreadsheats than Excel. Maybe we can track stats with a MySQL server someday?
      Sorry, MySQL is not a spreadsheet, let alone a proper RDBMS.
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      Yeah, right.
    2. Re:Great Idea by bonzoesc · · Score: 1

      Fortunately, it fits into a role right between them - "nuclear spreadsheet" or "toy RDBMS that's also sorta fast"

  3. H2SA kicks ass by SeaEye420 · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those that don't want to spend $300(or whatever the going rate is for Excel2003, which is required) just to see some fancy stats, check out this Halo 2 Stats Aggregator. It's cross platform(actually, it's just a perl script) and it's GPL, so if you like some stats that aren't calculated yet you can just code them up yourself. And, you can probably submit patches to Matt so that we can all benefit from your beautiful work. :)

    Thanks Matt, H2SA rocks!

    --
    Wort Wort Wort!
    1. Re:H2SA kicks ass by BorgHunter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Or you could just get a copy of OpenOffice and have the ability to track your stats AND open other Excel files as well. Not to mention Word and Powerpoint.

      --
      "Excuse me, did you say 'Trekker'? The word is 'Trekkie.' I should know; I created them." -- Gene Roddenberry
    2. Re:H2SA kicks ass by bersl2 · · Score: 1

      It's cross platform(actually, it's just a perl script) and it's GPL, so if you like some stats that aren't calculated yet you can just code them up yourself.

      Which is why this article qualifies as pure advert.

    3. Re:H2SA kicks ass by darkpurpleblob · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Have you tested the spreadsheet it in OpenOffice? The current spreadsheet only works in Excel 2003 Professional, so I am somewhat dubious it would work in OpenOffice.

    4. Re:H2SA kicks ass by rhpot1991 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Doesn't work in OOo, it more than likely uses VB code.

    5. Re:H2SA kicks ass by russint · · Score: 1

      What? This guy over at thepiratebay.org told me office was free...

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      ^^
    6. Re:H2SA kicks ass by bonzoesc · · Score: 1

      I grabbed H2SA yesterday, and I must confirm that it does rock, especially once you start modding it to output compliant XHTML 1.1, use functions for writing out table rows (eliminating false precision on floats), take usernames from args, and so on.
      My stats page (updates 0400 EST)
      Bug me if you want the modified source.

    7. Re:H2SA kicks ass by SeaEye420 · · Score: 1

      Did you try sending your modified source to his g-mail account? I'm sure he'd be happy to add your stuff in, as it looks very nice. If he's not interested, maybe you could post it on your web page somewhere so I can download it and take a look?

      Either way, looks cool, thanks for the neat alternative! :)

      --
      Wort Wort Wort!
    8. Re:H2SA kicks ass by bonzoesc · · Score: 1

      Actually, he's merging some of the stuff back into his version (the valid XHTML for sure), but I'll go ahead and put my version up.
      h2sa-mod perl script

  4. Product Placement by Red+Moose · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This is advertising and product/brand placement gone too far. When I read this stuff in a newspaper I wonder does anyone believe it's an actual article or is it basically advertising - there's no need to mention:

    Microsoft (14 times) Halo 2 (12 times) Excel (11 times)

    Halo 2 stuff was everywhere - marketed to the kids but now they are trying to get to the money market of 25-35 yo people (the PS2 market).

    It's a sure fire way to get people to pirate copies of Office XP though. This Seattle Times "article" is an advert, nothing more.

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    Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better

    1. Re:Product Placement by Have+Blue · · Score: 1

      No. All Microsoft did was publish Halo 2 stats via RSS. These spreadsheets were developed entirely by fans, with no support from MS.

      I'm not terribly surprised that an article about a product mentions that product. By that logic, Slashdot is nothing more than a giant shill for Linux (cue +5-rated replies rationalizing why that's a good thing).

    2. Re:Product Placement by Have+Blue · · Score: 1

      (Yes, I realize the spreadsheet in this article was developed by a Microsoft employee. He's not the first by far, there were many others developed by fans.)

    3. Re:Product Placement by AvantLegion · · Score: 1
      >> but now they are trying to get to the money market of 25-35 yo people (the PS2 market).

      I'd target Halo as being far more for the 25-35 market than the ridiculous Japanese RPGs that are often quoted as the PS2's biggest "advantage" over the Xbox.

  5. Two Things by The-Bus · · Score: 1

    First, you need Excel 2003 Pro, although he is working on making the file work with all versions of Excel. (I'm not sure if he means Excel 2003 Student edition or Excel 97 onward).

    Second, he's a pretty crappy player, or he picks his teams poorly.

    Now it just makes me want to play Halo 2... Grr.

    --

    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

  6. My roommate made something similar by ClutchUGA · · Score: 2, Informative

    My roommate coded something similar using MS's C# Express beta. If you want to check it out go here:

    http://www.opedog.com/BungieNetStatsDisplay/

    The only downside is you need the .NET framework 2.0.

    --
    Awww, there is only one beer left and it's Barts.....
    1. Re:My roommate made something similar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks, but I won't be selling my soul today.

  7. Get out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get out of this discussion.

  8. OpenOffice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, but will it open in OpenOffice.org?

  9. H2Stats.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is a stat tracker done in Flash at http://www.h2stats.com./ It's pretty cool, although it doesn't allow as much analyzing.