Excel Breakout Game

In this post we recreate the Arcade Breakout game in Excel using VBA macros. Shape objects are used for the paddle and the ball. Movement is achieved using the Windows Timer API (SetTimer function) that calls a moving procedure repeatedly. The ball position is then updated as per the value in increment variables for row and column. We move the paddle using keyboard or mouse.

Breakout game

Breakout is another classic arcade game released by Atari a long time ago. It is fundamentally similar to another arcade game we saw earlier in this blog (see Pong game here). The goal of the game is to destroy a formation of rows of bricks at the top portion of the screen, by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them.

 

 

This version of Breakout in Excel tries to recreate the first versions of the original game. One of the key features is that the ball can take different trajectories depending how is hit. The latest versions of the game have additional functionalities and effects that are not contemplated here. 

 

Game display

The playground spans a range from cells B2 to I21 with interior color black. There is a formation of bricks throughout rows 4 to 7. The bricks and player’s paddle are rectangular shapes and the ball is an oval shape.

 

 

The first macro (StartGame) defines the Shape objects and variables that are used. Note that these are declared at module level. That macro can also initialize the position of the player and ball, as well as the initial direction of the ball, which is defined by the increment added to the horizontal and vertical position of the ball.

  Set player = Sheet1.Shapes("Player")
  Set ball = Sheet1.Shapes("ball")
  ball.Left = 135: ball.Top = 98
  ballColInc = 1: ballRowInc = 1

StartGame calls another macro to add the bricks. These are rectangular shapes that span the dimension of each cell along the playground from rows 4 to 7. There are a total of 32 bricks in this version of Excel Breakout.

 

Ball movement

In order to achieve the continuous movement of the ball, we need to call a “moving” procedure (MoveBall) every certain time interval, and that time interval should be in the range of milliseconds. We can do that using the SetTimer function of the Windows API library (user32.dll). We have already seen how to create movement in Excel with SetTimer in previous posts (Excel Circles Movement, Excel Tron Game, Excel Geometry Dash, or Excel Snake Game). The timer routines have been added to another module (M2_Timer).

 

SetTimer creates a timer that triggers an event after a certain number of milliseconds have elapsed (35 milliseconds in this game). It has been configured to call the TimerEvent procedure, which calls the MoveBall procedure in the Main module of the Excel Breakout Game VBA project. The timer continues triggering events between intervals until is removed using KillTimer. That happens in the StopTimer subroutine, which is called when the player misses to hit the ball on its way down and the ball reaches the bottom, or when pressing the Stop button.

 

Paddle movement

We can move the paddle with the right and left keyboard arrows or with the mouse cursor (much easier using the mouse). To use the keyboard, we link the right and left arrow keys with the corresponding macros to move right or left the paddle using Application.OnKey.

  Application.OnKey "{LEFT}", "moveLeft"
  Application.OnKey "{RIGHT}", "moveRight"

However, pressing a key in Excel repeatedly slows down code execution or even stops it until the key is released, so using the keys does not work very well in Excel Breakout. There are some tricks to come around this problem but, ultimately, using the mouse is a better alternative.

In order to move the paddle with the mouse we need to get the position of the cursor each time the moving macro is called and see if the vertical position has changed to move the paddle in that direction. Excel does not have the built-in functionality to get or set the cursor position. However, we can use the GetCursorPos function of the Windows API library (user32.dll) to get the current cursor position.

We need to declare GetCursorPos at module level as indicated below; this has PtrSafe to avoid error if not 64-bit. GetCursorPos requires a variable declared as a custom data type (POINTAPI) that holds the values for the x and y position of the cursor.

 Declare PtrSafe Function GetCursorPos Lib "user32" (Point As POINTAPI) As Long
 
 Type POINTAPI
     x As Long
     y As Long
 End Type

The following function returns the horizontal coordinate of the cursor. That’s what we need to check each time to move the paddle either left or right if the horizontal coordinate is less or more than before respectively. We could also get the vertical coordinate with Hold.y, but is not needed here because the paddle only moves horizontally.

 Function CursorX()
     Dim Hold As POINTAPI
     GetCursorPos Hold
     CursorX = Hold.x
 End Function

Conditional statements in the moving macro check whether the cursor has moved using a variable the holds the horizontal position of the cursor (x). The value of the variable is updated each time. Note that the variable x is declared as Long.

  If CursorX < x And player1.Left > rng.Left + 6 Then
    player1.Left = player1.Left - 6
  End If
 
  If CursorX > x And player1.Left + player1.Width < rng.Left + rng.Width - 6 Then
    player1.Left = player1.Left + 6
  End If
 
  x = CursorX

Another macro checks whether the ball hits any of the bricks by comparing the horizontal and vertical position of the ball against the position of each of the bricks. If the ball intersects with any of the bricks, the shape is deleted and points are updated.

 

Download Excel Breakout Game