AMPU Playtest Excel

[vcczar]

@MrPotatoTed

So the thing I've been trying to figure out is how to populate the US Senate and US Rep tabs. Once I do this, I'll do the election tabs, which seems more advanced. 

Hopefully, he gets back to you, but could you ask @Mark_W if he know of anyway to make excel populate based off typing  keyword. 

For instance, every politicians has a "Politician ID". The trait "Charisma"  is the same column on every statesman tab. I wonder if there's a way to type in Alexander Hamilton and then it can be programmed to just fill in the charisma in the programmed spot for that. I'm guessing this is what happened with the dropdown menu. But I'm wondering if just typing it in could work. A drop down menu with 100s of names will be cumbersome. 

I'll confess I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this high-level excel. In the past hour, I've been trying to find just the right formula with no success. I see things I know how to do. Things I could do, but won't be helpful, and then things that are so complex that I don't even know what it is actually doing. Hopefully, I can figure it out. 

[vcczar]

I found how to make the drop down menus, but I can't figure out how to get them to extract data from several sheets. I might not be enough of a STEM person to accomplish what needs to be done anytime soon. Part of it is I just find high-level programming so dull that I zone out as I'm reading everything, and then I have to start over again.

Part of being someone with ADHD is that I'm hyper-focused when something interests me (creating AMPU, reading history books, etc.) and I can multitask between a variety of things naturally too, and I can work swiftly when it is something I'm interested in, but I can't control my mind from daydreaming or zoning out to save my life if something doesn't naturally appeal to me (high-level excel programming or any programming, really), and I ultimately make little progress at all.

I'm going to keep trying and hope something clicks, but @MrPotatoTed I'm thinking we should just greatly simplify the forum rules for anything that will take you more than an hour to process or something like that. Keep any processes regarding elections and congress that you enjoy enough to keep doing. Otherwise simplify them. 

Here's what I recommend, but you have total control of how you want to do it, so you can ignore this:

• We can skip the part  in which some politicians defy their faction and stuff. 
• We could just stick with the initial vote.
• We could skip committee phases, but keep committees just so we know who proposes. 
• We could simplify the elections to die roll + modification of some traits (fewer than those listed). Pick maybe just three. 
• Simplify state biases if that is something taking up too much time. 
• Feel free to skip anything all together. We could just have presidential elections in the general just based off the meter + die roll + charisma or something like that for the sake of this playthrough
• Open to anything that makes your job easier. 

Obviously, keep anything you want to keep. I'm confident these phases will work on CPU, so we don't need to test them. I'm more concerned with how the game looks by, say, 1850 from this point on. 

Anyway, let me give it another hour trying to figure this excel thing out.

[MrPotatoTed]

Sure thing.  I have ADHD as well.  It's not necessarily the rules that drain me sometimes, it's the constant cross referencing across multiple excel sheets.  That's why I'm willing to pay someone to automate that part of it. so I can have the info I need for any phase on a single sheet.

We can definitely trim the rules intead, but that may render most of the traits irrelevant so I'm hoping to avoid that.  

[vcczar]

32 minutes ago, MrPotatoTed said:

We can definitely trim the rules intead, but that may render most of the traits irrelevant so I'm hoping to avoid that.

I'm okay with that since we really need to test lingering, meters, and things like that. Definitely reduce cross-referencing. 

I can't figure out how to do what I want to do in excel. It sort of make some sense to me but it would take me like weeks to put it together, I think, and then it probably won't work. 

[MrPotatoTed]

11 minutes ago, vcczar said:

I'm okay with that since we really need to test lingering, meters, and things like that. Definitely reduce cross-referencing. 

I can't figure out how to do what I want to do in excel. It sort of make some sense to me but it would take me like weeks to put it together, I think, and then it probably won't work. 

Ok.  I think I have some time tonight to see if I can.  I find a page that seemed to explain how to do at least half of what I want to do, so I’ll see if I can replicate that.

[Cal]

48 minutes ago, MrPotatoTed said:

Sure thing.  I have ADHD as well.

 

2 hours ago, vcczar said:

Part of being someone with ADHD

What are the odds that this many people involved with the project (including myself) all have ADHD? Maybe there’s some correlation between that and throwing yourself at this sorta thing.

[MrPotatoTed]

1 minute ago, Cal said:

 

What are the odds that this many people involved with the project (including myself) all have ADHD? Maybe there’s some correlation between that and throwing yourself at this sorta thing.

There definitely is.  The ability to hyper focus on things you enjoy for long periods of type is a big ADHD thing