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

[Anonymous Coward]

Time is not "the fourth dimension." It is very much like a spacial dimension, speaking as a physicist; however, it is also very different. This is clear both from experience (ever try to move back and forth in time?) and mathematically (via the signature of the metric of spacetime).

In this game, the fourth dimension is simply an extra spacial dimension. Consider the analog of "linking two rings" in a 2-D world: put one circle inside another. Well, if you're stuck in a plane, it cannot be done -- simply move outside of that plane into 3-D, and it's simple. In Miegakure there is a 4th spacial dimension. You can move in this fourth dimension without moving in any of the other three.

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.)

Re:So Many Questions

[Monkeedude1212]

Miegakure suggests that there is a fourth spatial dimention, just like the three you are used to seeing.

Take a read through Flatland, its a short story based on a square who lives on a 2 dimentional plane. Basically how he can only see things in 1 Dimension (a line) because him and his world are on a single plane. Now, imagine his world lives within our 3d Realm. His life doesn't change much, until we choose to interfere. Imagine if you slid a ball through his 2d plane. He would at first see nothing, then a dot, then that dot grow into a line, then it shrink, into a dot, and disappear.

Basically someone took this idea, and imagined what it would be like if there were a 4th spatial dimension we were unaware of (physics has however shown us that there isn't one). If someone pushed a 4d Cube (or hypercube) through our 3d plane, what would we see? Nothing at first, then a cube show up, then it grows into its full size, then shrink back down, and disappear.

Now someone has taken that idea and put it in a game. The programming is actually simpler than it seems. Instead of testing XYZ co-ordinates you are testing WXYZ co-ordinates.

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

[ZXDunny]

Take a read through Flatland, its a short story based on a square who lives on a 2 dimentional plane. Basically how he can only see things in 1 Dimension (a line) because him and his world are on a single plane.

The XKCD alt-text contains a nice in-joke about flatland (IIRC) - all women are straight lines, and the more important a member of society, the more sides he has - a priest would be almost a circle, as he has so many sides he looks circular. The alt-text goes: "Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest." Which is what the flatlanders would see when a stick-man enters their world :)

Re:So Many Questions

[Monkeedude1212]

Think about it this way:

You put a box inside a safe. That safe has no doors. How do you get the box outside the safe? You slide it through the fourth dimension - so that the walls of the safe are no longer in the way. You change its XYZ co-ordinates, slide it back through the fourth dimension so its about where it began. The box is now outside the safe.

If thats still a little tricky to understand, we'll explain it flatland style.

You draw a circle inside of a square on a piece of paper. How do you get the circle outside of the square (assuming you can't move the lines through each other). Well, if you had the ability to take the circle off the paper, move it a few inches, and place it back on the paper, you would have moved it outside of the square with no intersection taking place.

The same thing is happening here, you are taking two rings, sliding them among a dimension that they do not occupy (thus removing any chance for collision) and then putting them back. Its tough to wrap your mind around, I know.

Re:xkcd

[toastar]

Actually i think the poster stole it from him.

Re:xkcd

[somersault]

Now I know what us 6 digit users must look like to the 5 digit users..

W-axis

[AlpineR]

Actually, there is a demo to download. You just have to move your mouse along the w-axis to reach the link.

Re:W-axis

[moonbender]

I think there's an option in xorg.conf to make the mouse wheel do that.