4 ms·

I asked astra to make playable 4D chess

37 points by mikiyas 26d ago

ljf 26d ago
A quick reminder as to just how bad I am at classic chess, but this is really fun and brain bending
tlarkworthy 26d ago
I was expecting it more like a filled hypercube but its more like two surfaces? Probably better the way it is.
amelius 26d ago
If it is only 4x4x2x2 then this has fewer hypersquares than a proper version of 4D tic tac toe, e.g.: https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~r345liu/ https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~r345liu/
- throwuxiytayq 26d ago
  In game design, restraint can be a virtue.
  - K0balt 26d ago
    Yeah, if it was properly 4D it would be pretty unplayable I think, you’d need 4 each 4 layer cubes, and they could not be nested in any physical configuration.
    - amelius 26d ago
      You can show them as 4x4 boards of 4x4 squares.
      - K0balt 25d ago
        Yes, but they can’t be meaningfully nested like the proposed one is. Thats the elegance of The solituon provided, but it necessarily sacrifices symmetry to get there.
hermannj314 26d ago
Excellent job, this was very fun to play. I liked the explanations, graphics, interactive tesseract, all nice attentions to detail. How much guidance did you give Astra? Did you give a single prompt, an example site to mimic or was there more to the design and make process?
- mikiyas 26d ago
  yes, a single prompt: "Create a single html file 4d chess game. By 4d it means 4 dimenstional space. It needs to be playable with understandable rules." It created the working game with the four boards but since it was impossible to understand from just the board I told it to add a Tesseract.
skyfantom 26d ago
Not astra made but my mom and nephew say it's a fun thing to play https://chesspoly.com https://chesspoly.com (https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/chesspolly/id6798789898 https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/chesspolly/id6798789898)
shmoil 26d ago
Did it also make a 4D chess Stockfish 19 for you?
- mikiyas 26d ago
  Well it did make a very good search function that is almost like stockfish for humans in 4d chess
airza 26d ago
I think flipping the tiling between light and dark on the top left and the bottom right (or vice versa) would make more sense. Then bishops stay on one color and the knight always alternates between colors (like 2d chess)
thousand_nights 26d ago
very cool. that being said, I have never not wanted to play anything more than this :D
jtxt 26d ago
Very cool! (For learning/ease of use, it would be helpful for me to be able tap enemy pieces to see where they could go next. (But with a different indicator.))
12h-qwq 26d ago
"i made this!" No, Astra didn't "make" anything. It plagiarized from old ideas before LLMs like (2020): https://en.chessbase.com/post/what-on-earth-is-5d-chess https://en.chessbase.com/post/what-on-earth-is-5d-chess
- sebzim4500 26d ago
  This is clearly not the same thing. Other than both of them adding additional dimensions to chess they have nothing in common.
  - 12a6a 26d ago
    Do humans have to search all 10000 4d-chess ideas before LLMs to find the exact one that was plagiarized?
    - sebzim4500 25d ago
      If you want to accuse it of plagiarism then yes (or have an LLM do it for you I guess)
  - omnicognate 26d ago
    https://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi?do=show;id=380 https://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submiss...
    - mikiyas 26d ago
      that has 32 pieces this one has 20 not to mention that the peice setup and how the pieces travel across dimensions is totally different.
Keyframe 26d ago
I asked Astra to try and fix an issue in my codebase I've been battling for a month. Day and half later on high and it's still circling the drain. Seems like with each new model we praise it based on toys, but then reality hits the ground soon and we wait for the next model. In the meantime, good ol' brain.
- pluc 26d ago
  As long as it keeps AI in the news
- dwallin 26d ago
  I’m just trying to understand, there’s an issue you’ve been unable to deal with for a month, and Astra not being able to handle it in 36 hours is disqualifying?
  - Keyframe 26d ago
    On and off for a month, not straight month and not dedicated time. I am quite confident I will be able to solve it within a week or two of dedicated time. Here, on the other hand, we have this supposedly powerful thing that can do magic, unlike myself. We'll see. I'm not even confident, by looking at what it does, that it will even be able to solve it. Only thing I saw that I like is it's better in communication style compared to Fable and Opus.
  - pllbnk 26d ago
    Long time ago I had one particular hardware issue, which Opus 4.6 found a workaround to fix. I don't remember the workaround and being careless (I thought I could ask an LLM again if I needed) I lost that solution. Some time passed and I needed it again - neither one of the newer models is able to come up with a nice solution I had back then. They can solve the issue and find a different workaround eventually, but not as nice. On a side note, I could use 4.6 again of course and try to reproduce it, somehow I only thought about it now writing this comment. Anyway, my point is that I think these frontier companies are advertising their one-shot model abilities, but underneath the models aren't getting so much better as they try to make you believe.
MeteorMarc 26d ago
It feels unnatural that a white bishop can move to black squares.
navane 26d ago
There is already 5d chess, it's been out for years on steam. It's very polished, has tutorials and puzzles. Time travel and parallel universes.
omnicognate 26d ago
I think this (from 2000) describes exactly these rules: https://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi?do=show;id=380 https://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submiss... There are many, many other such games with all sorts of variations on the rules.
- rlkamn 26d ago
  For the record: Once you had found the source of plagiarism, the entire submission was flagged from the front page within 10 minutes. The reach of any embarrassing news must be limited, and there are hundreds of new AI advertisements in the pipeline that will crowd out this one.
- mikiyas 26d ago
  that's a totally different game. It has 32 total pieces while this one has 20 and the piece configuration is also completely different.
cwmoore 26d ago
I made 3D sudoku, books on paper called SUDOCUBE, with a coded index for the clues, using Opus 4.7 I think it was, which came up with the algorithm and extended my own pre-LLM Kakuro codebase: https://www.kakurokokoro.com/sudocube https://www.kakurokokoro.com/sudocube
- Kuyawa 26d ago
  Have you seen ColorDoku or MeowDoku? Much better for me to fill colors than numbers. Colors would fit perfectly in a 3D cube, just an idea
- mypalmike 26d ago
  A couple years ago I wrote a rough CLI based proof-of-concept of a different form of 3D Sudoku. Funny enough, just this morning I was thinking about using Claude to turn it into something actually playable.

37 points by mikiyas 26d ago

ljf 26d ago

A quick reminder as to just how bad I am at classic chess, but this is really fun and brain bending

tlarkworthy 26d ago

I was expecting it more like a filled hypercube but its more like two surfaces? Probably better the way it is.

amelius 26d ago

If it is only 4x4x2x2 then this has fewer hypersquares than a proper version of 4D tic tac toe, e.g.: https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~r345liu/ https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~r345liu/

throwuxiytayq 26d ago
In game design, restraint can be a virtue.
- K0balt 26d ago
  Yeah, if it was properly 4D it would be pretty unplayable I think, you’d need 4 each 4 layer cubes, and they could not be nested in any physical configuration.
  - amelius 26d ago
    You can show them as 4x4 boards of 4x4 squares.
    - K0balt 25d ago
      Yes, but they can’t be meaningfully nested like the proposed one is. Thats the elegance of The solituon provided, but it necessarily sacrifices symmetry to get there.

hermannj314 26d ago

Excellent job, this was very fun to play. I liked the explanations, graphics, interactive tesseract, all nice attentions to detail. How much guidance did you give Astra? Did you give a single prompt, an example site to mimic or was there more to the design and make process?

mikiyas 26d ago
yes, a single prompt: "Create a single html file 4d chess game. By 4d it means 4 dimenstional space. It needs to be playable with understandable rules." It created the working game with the four boards but since it was impossible to understand from just the board I told it to add a Tesseract.

skyfantom 26d ago

Not astra made but my mom and nephew say it's a fun thing to play https://chesspoly.com https://chesspoly.com (https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/chesspolly/id6798789898 https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/chesspolly/id6798789898)

shmoil 26d ago

Did it also make a 4D chess Stockfish 19 for you?

mikiyas 26d ago
Well it did make a very good search function that is almost like stockfish for humans in 4d chess

airza 26d ago

I think flipping the tiling between light and dark on the top left and the bottom right (or vice versa) would make more sense. Then bishops stay on one color and the knight always alternates between colors (like 2d chess)

thousand_nights 26d ago

very cool. that being said, I have never not wanted to play anything more than this :D

jtxt 26d ago

Very cool! (For learning/ease of use, it would be helpful for me to be able tap enemy pieces to see where they could go next. (But with a different indicator.))

12h-qwq 26d ago

"i made this!" No, Astra didn't "make" anything. It plagiarized from old ideas before LLMs like (2020): https://en.chessbase.com/post/what-on-earth-is-5d-chess https://en.chessbase.com/post/what-on-earth-is-5d-chess

sebzim4500 26d ago
This is clearly not the same thing. Other than both of them adding additional dimensions to chess they have nothing in common.
- 12a6a 26d ago
  Do humans have to search all 10000 4d-chess ideas before LLMs to find the exact one that was plagiarized?
  - sebzim4500 25d ago
    If you want to accuse it of plagiarism then yes (or have an LLM do it for you I guess)
- omnicognate 26d ago
  https://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi?do=show;id=380 https://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submiss...
  - mikiyas 26d ago
    that has 32 pieces this one has 20 not to mention that the peice setup and how the pieces travel across dimensions is totally different.

Keyframe 26d ago

I asked Astra to try and fix an issue in my codebase I've been battling for a month. Day and half later on high and it's still circling the drain. Seems like with each new model we praise it based on toys, but then reality hits the ground soon and we wait for the next model. In the meantime, good ol' brain.

pluc 26d ago
As long as it keeps AI in the news
dwallin 26d ago
I’m just trying to understand, there’s an issue you’ve been unable to deal with for a month, and Astra not being able to handle it in 36 hours is disqualifying?
- Keyframe 26d ago
  On and off for a month, not straight month and not dedicated time. I am quite confident I will be able to solve it within a week or two of dedicated time. Here, on the other hand, we have this supposedly powerful thing that can do magic, unlike myself. We'll see. I'm not even confident, by looking at what it does, that it will even be able to solve it. Only thing I saw that I like is it's better in communication style compared to Fable and Opus.
- pllbnk 26d ago
  Long time ago I had one particular hardware issue, which Opus 4.6 found a workaround to fix. I don't remember the workaround and being careless (I thought I could ask an LLM again if I needed) I lost that solution. Some time passed and I needed it again - neither one of the newer models is able to come up with a nice solution I had back then. They can solve the issue and find a different workaround eventually, but not as nice. On a side note, I could use 4.6 again of course and try to reproduce it, somehow I only thought about it now writing this comment. Anyway, my point is that I think these frontier companies are advertising their one-shot model abilities, but underneath the models aren't getting so much better as they try to make you believe.

MeteorMarc 26d ago

It feels unnatural that a white bishop can move to black squares.

navane 26d ago

There is already 5d chess, it's been out for years on steam. It's very polished, has tutorials and puzzles. Time travel and parallel universes.

omnicognate 26d ago

I think this (from 2000) describes exactly these rules: https://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi?do=show;id=380 https://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submiss... There are many, many other such games with all sorts of variations on the rules.

rlkamn 26d ago
For the record: Once you had found the source of plagiarism, the entire submission was flagged from the front page within 10 minutes. The reach of any embarrassing news must be limited, and there are hundreds of new AI advertisements in the pipeline that will crowd out this one.
mikiyas 26d ago
that's a totally different game. It has 32 total pieces while this one has 20 and the piece configuration is also completely different.

cwmoore 26d ago

I made 3D sudoku, books on paper called SUDOCUBE, with a coded index for the clues, using Opus 4.7 I think it was, which came up with the algorithm and extended my own pre-LLM Kakuro codebase: https://www.kakurokokoro.com/sudocube https://www.kakurokokoro.com/sudocube

Kuyawa 26d ago
Have you seen ColorDoku or MeowDoku? Much better for me to fill colors than numbers. Colors would fit perfectly in a 3D cube, just an idea
mypalmike 26d ago
A couple years ago I wrote a rough CLI based proof-of-concept of a different form of 3D Sudoku. Funny enough, just this morning I was thinking about using Claude to turn it into something actually playable.