Gaming in the 4th Dimension

Wolf pointed me to a video clip demonstrating this game: "Miegakure is a platform game where you explore the fourth dimension to solve puzzles. There is no trick; the game is entirely designed and programmed in 4D." Nothing to download yet.

Comments

So Many Questions

[eldavojohn]

So I've traditionally known "the fourth dimension" to be something like time. Although you can call it space-time or the relationship that our three dimensional world has with our concept of time. And in games like Braid (which is like an interesting two dimensional scrolling platform with four dimensional control), you get to have fun manipulating this time so that you can predict where your little character is when you slide back in time. It's where you were before.

In Miegakure, it appears that the player is controlling a fourth dimension except it's not too clear what fourth dimension actually represents to me. If Miegakure's fourth dimension was time, we would see some indication of natural decay of the environment to give us visual cues that it's aging. For example, if one ring were made of steel and the other of wood, the wood one would decay as we go to the future and then we would make some action that is "special" (meaning that it is not subjected to our time control) and then move the steel ring into the wood ring and blast back to when the wood ring existed. Our special action could not be undone otherwise you wouldn't get anywhere with being able to control time.

Miegakure seemed to invent non-natural transposed states of the environment that I, for the life of me, could not understand. How did I know which blocks would appear and disappear leaving only shadows? How do I know how far to go in a fourth dimensional direction? Must the player explore the available transposed states before planning their movements along all four dimensions? So that they can construct an interleaved solution?

And what happens with a now block exists in a shadow space and you try to transposition yourself to the point when the shadow space is occupied by another block? Does the game block you from making that transposition? What if you want to transpose to a point beyond that when it is a shadow space again? Is this a blocking mechanism that will add to the difficulty of the puzzle?

As someone ravaged by the Adventures of Lolo series on the NES, I could see a potentially high level of addiction here.

Re:So Many Questions

[pushing-robot]

Today's XKCD might help a bit. It's a world that has four spatial dimensions, like a hypercube.

We haven't been able to find any evidence of "real" higher spatial dimensions (though theories abound), but thinking in an extra dimension is an interesting mental exercise nonetheless.

Re:So Many Questions

[Monkeedude1212]

Well it depends on its rotation as well. For example a cube entering flatland would either pop up, stay the same, disappear, or dot-grow-shrink, depending on whether you are introducing the cube with one of the sides in parallel with the plane, or whether you to so with a vertice entering first.

Re:So Many Questions

[somersault]

This doesn't seem so much like a "fourth dimension" as a form of "subspace" or an alternate 3D reality (then again I haven't played the game and maybe am picking things up wrong from the video).

I don't see how adding another dimension can magically allow two objects to become linked when they were unable to be linked in a lower dimension. Two circles on a piece of paper cannot physically merge with each other if you assume their boundaries are solid and cannot pass through each other. Neither can 2 rings lain on a table, or two cylinders or two spheres be overlapped without breaking them somewhere. So how would adding another dimension allow you to join two 3D objects with a hole in the middle, even if you only moved one of them into this higher dimension?

Re:So Many Questions

[pushing-robot]

Yeah, it's weird. I'm not entriely clear as to what the shadows represent (except, maybe, for a helpful reminder as to what is "next" to you.)

I think that's the idea. It's hard to tell from the short video, but the blocky nature of the world implies to me that the game limits you to arbitrary "jumps" in each dimension. Just like the world could be divided into fixed-width planes in the X, Y, and Z dimensions, it looks like the W dimension is composed of distinct layers. Which would explain the shadows; they represent what would appear if you jumped to the next adjacent "slice" of 4d-space.

Re:So Many Questions

[Garble Snarky]

Here's one way to think about it: You have two concentric circles in a plane, they can't pass through each other in two dimensions. In three dimensions, the concept of "passing through each other" is no longer necessary for getting them "unlinked".

Re:So Many Questions

[somersault]

Hmm... well that would similarly work for a sphere containing another sphere.. but a torus or any other object with a hole is surely a different class of object.. I'm not sure what the 2D representation of a torus would be..?

Another 4d game

[danhaas]

If you want to try another 4d game while Miegakure doesn't release, check http://harmen.vanderwal.eu/hypercube/ The objective of the game is to push the big ball towards the blue cross, then move the cursor to the square. You will then be outside the box and have to reach the green square again, while you avoid the small ball. Try it in 2d and 3d before going to 4d.

OK, lets try this in 1D:

[s-gen]

a line:
______________________

a "ring" called "A":
__A_____A_____________

and another "ring" called "B":
__A_____A___B_____B__

lift "B" into the second dimension:
_____________B_____B__
__A_____A_____________

slide "B" across:
_____B_____B___________
__A_____A_____________

drop "B" back onto the line:
__A__B__A__B_________

"A" and "B" are now "linked" in the 1D universe.