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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.
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.
My work here is dung.
This article was written by the most hideous of triangles.
Actually i think the poster stole it from him.
Now I know what us 6 digit users must look like to the 5 digit users..
which is totally what she said
...You insensitive clod!
Didn't they get to number six with "Baby I Want your Love Thing"?
If there's nothing to download, how did he play it?
I haven't wtfv (watched the video), but 4-D can be represented in 3- and 2-D using projections, just like we regularly watch 3-D images projected into 2 dimensions (TV, video games).
Think of a cone, a 3 dimension shape. In the 3-to-2 dimension projection, that cone can look like a triangle, a circle, an ellipse, or an ellipse with a point, all depending on how you rotate it.
Now imagine that there's a 4-D shape whose projection changes appearance as the shape is rotated about its fourth-dimensional axis. There's no reason you can't have one projection of it that shows a cube, and another of the same object that shows a sphere.
It's tough to conceive of what this shape looks like since we can't see or experience it in four dimensions. But it's still possible to develop enough of a concept of the shape to recognize its various projections, learn how they're connected, and eventually be able to navigate it.
Projecting a shape from 4 to the 2 dimensions of a screen will lose an awful lot of information, but we seem to be good at developing a 3-D concept based on motion and visual cues.
Interesting stuff.
You want to know how a character in a fictional cartoon universe played a game that doesn't exist yet?
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
He copied it from abstrusegoose.com
http://abstrusegoose.com/88 ->
http://abstrusegoose.com/secret-archives/across-the-third-dimension
providing no unique, testable predictions for over 20 years...
Actually, there is a demo to download. You just have to move your mouse along the w-axis to reach the link.
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.
It's more than a shadow dimension. Objects can extend into any of 4 dimensions, x,y,z,w. it's a game of visualizing how an object is shaped while only seeing 3 of those dimensions. The shadows are a hint of what's in the unseen dimension. At any point, that unseen dimension could be x,y, w, or z.
when you are manipulating the objects, it's not like the shadow world in zelda where a door might simply not be there. that shadow world is like a parallel world in the same dimensions. This game is all about one world in 4 dimensions. You have to hold in your head, a 4 dimensional image of what the volume of the object actually looks like. Often the puzzles involve manipulating the objects through many dimensions.
It bears a lot of similarity to the paper mario games, except it's easy to imagine and hold a 3 dimensional model of the world in your head. the 4th dimension is (for most people) hard to visualize.
try imagining a cube in x,y,z, then imagine that it has some planes extending out in the z,w and x,w planes. wtf does that look like? Where do you need to be in x,y,w to be standing on the right plane in x,z,w?
Has anyone of you noticed the pun behind A. Square's words?
Guy: "Hey, A. Square, how's flatland?"
A. Square: "Still flat. What's up?"
Take a look at the picture, and notice that there is no "up" in flatland. So, was A. Square's question metaphorical, literal or philosophical?
There were playable demos at both GDC and PAX. I presume he was at one of those, possibly both.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
That's why there are only five elements, Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Quintessence, instead of the hundreds those wrong-headed "scientists" seem to think must exist. They claim there exist so many that they have to lay them out in a table to even make any sense of them! What's worse, they don't even know how many more there can be.
And Newtonian physics is far simpler than quantum theory, as well as simpler even than relativity. Aether is simpler than space-time. Creation is simpler than evolution. Homeopathy is simpler than medicine.
And don't even get me started on chaos theory!
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.
I've seen that video before, and sorry, but it's a load of rubbish - there is no mathematical or scientific basis to what he talks about above 4 dimensions.
The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is just an interpretation - quantum theory does not tell us that it is true. But even if it was true, it makes no sense to call this the 5th dimension. Yes, colloquially in sci-fis, we call in "travelling to another dimension" when people travel to parallel universes, but mathematically it makes no sense to call it a dimension (which implies a continuum - if the universe splits into two, what's the universe halfway between them in this 5th dimension?)
To then say that the 6th dimension is simply magically jumping through this 5th dimension makes no sense at all. From this point onwards, there isn't even any vague relevance to science - he's just making it up as he goes along.
And lastly, this has nothing to do with the dimensions of string theory - if these exist, these would be additional spatial dimensions, not the nonsense that he's made up.
The frustrating thing is that the video is presented in a friendly way that makes it seem convincing - no doubt the reason why it's been propagated around the web, and you got modded up for it.