7. December 2022 Excel Racing Simulation – The Desert Race

Remember: Today is ABAPConf!

I am very happy to announce the Matjes Grand Prix 2022 which takes place online on December 11th in the Desert of Qatar.

Marco Matjes, a friend of mine, started the project on August 2017 as a VBA programming learning project.

Marco, a former winemaker, learned how to program Visual Basic this way. By the years, he added uncountable tiny, ironic, humoruos details to his game. Just have a look at the marvelous pixel art graphics!

There were not only horses running, but also pigs. Donkeys and goats were planned but not realised so far. This year the race will be run by camels. All participating animals can be designed online. You can define colurs and racing tactics. In the race all kinds of weather and other conditions will be respected.

In the Corona Cup 2021 it was possible that a horse was tested positive for Corona, so unfortunately it couldn’t start then. 🤷When the race starts, it also may happen that a horse refuses to start. Marco even published his own racing newspaper GALOPO.

Matjes Institute For Racing Simulation

Marco also founded the Matjes Institute for Racing Simulation. The institute researches all kinds of racing environments, tactics and side effects of races. Very hilarious is the Total Mudflat Algorithm (Gesamtwattalgorithmus), that describes how the racing simulation works in the Watt of the german North Sea.

This article describes, how the finishing photo will be calculated to grayscale.

Participation

You can design your own Camel and register for the participation in the Race 2022. You will have to pay a starter fee what will be donated to Große Hilfe für kleine Helden. Register here and follow the instructions on the website (Google translate or DeepL will help if you do not speak german).

Live Broadcast

You can follow the race live on TwitchTV on December 11th 2022 14:00 CET.

2 Euro auf Colomano

The latest Coup of Marco is his VBA book 2 Euro auf Colomano. He describes very detailed how everything in the Excel Racing Simulation works. If you ever wanted to have a really fun book about Visual Basic programming, then I can highly recommend you this masterpiece!

All the source code is available on github.