10 ms·
4D Tesseract: Fourth Dimension Game
- BoppreH 13y agoA few months ago I made a 4D puzzle console game in Python: https://github.com/boppreh/anakata https://github.com/boppreh/anakata It's an amazing experience to think of visualizations. I ended up with a grid of grids, like you see in the readme. Each smaller grid is a 2D slice of the world, each column a 3D stack, and the set of all columns the full 4D space.
- CodeCube 13y agoFor those trying to wrap their heads around this ... I find this segment by Carl Sagan from the original Cosmos to be pretty well presented on the topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0
- keammo1 13y agoHis explanation is more or less adapted from "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" http://www.amazon.com/Flatland-Dover-Thrift-Editions-Abbott/dp/048627263X http://www.amazon.com/Flatland-Dover-Thrift-Editions-Abbott/...
- pawn 13y agoI read that book in high school for extra credit in a math class, and really enjoyed it.
- jvandonsel 13y agoIf I give this to my kids (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimsy_Were_the_Borogoves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimsy_Were_the_Borogoves) will they disappear?
- jsonmez 13y agoI'll just be the first to admit that I am indeed too dumb to grasp this concept. I've stared at it for a long time, but I do not get it.
- joshdick 13y agoI had a math professor who put it this way: Just think of a general n-dimensional Euclidian space, and then set n=4.
- cobrausn 13y agoMy first CompSci professor told me that he had trouble at MIT grasping some of his early math where they were using n-dimensions, and when he asked his professor what the 'n-ball' was, he drew a circle on the board and said 'that, when n is equal to two'. Fun times.
- finnh 13y agoCounting sheep is easy: just count the legs and divide by four.
- _Adam 13y agoYou're probably trying to think about it in spatial terms. But it's impossible to understand a 4D object with 3D spatial reasoning. I would say ALL humans are too "dumb" to grasp this concept. Of course the math is fairly simple, but there's a difference between understanding the math and truly understanding what a world with 4 spatial dimensions would be like.
- 3rd3 13y agoOne can, though, get an intuitive spatial understanding for the projection of a higher dimensional object into 3D space.
- bladedtoys 13y agoIt's tricky because there is just no way to show 4D phenomenon without a lot of sacrifice. I ended up using a combination of "perspective" for size and differing transparency and a fair amount of movement. All of these are artificial of course. The explanation on the page takes another approach: all black and white line drawings and a lot of brevity. But it's really a hell of a lot of fun tying to figure out how to present impossible to visualize phenomenon. And you are not remotely too dumb: if my story didn't come through it's my fault.
- csandreasen 13y agoFor a more in-depth discussion on 4 dimensional geometry, I highly recommend the Dimensions films[1], which are available for free download. It's a little bit mind-bending, so to speak. [1] http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_E.htm http://www.dimensions-math.org/Dim_E.htm
- roywiggins 13y agoWhee, looks like fun! Adanaxis[1] is a 4 dimensional space shooter- only sort of playable but still fun. http://www.mushware.com/ http://www.mushware.com/
- fredley 13y agoIt doesn't work well on my Nexus 5, the tutorial text was clipped off the edges, I can't seem to zoom out.
- bladedtoys 13y agoI will look into that. Thank you for posting.
- recursive 13y agoI'm getting the same behavior on a Motorola Photon 4g
- cpfohl 13y agoI've always thought a 4d first person game where you could toggle pairs of dimensions could be really interesting. At any point you could swap between wxy/wxz/xyz. The rendering would be standard 2d projections of the 3 dimensions you have toggled on...Add guns and you have the trippiest FPS I've ever heard of.
- cpfohl 13y agoTeach me to post before reading. Looks like someone already posted this exact concept game...Although my idea always involved gravity somehow....
- danmaz74 13y agoThis could help... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-WyreE9ZkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-WyreE9ZkI
- dameyawn 13y agoCool idea, and it has potential, but it's missing fun! Touching all surfaces != fun. Maybe collecting an item(s) on some surfaces could be ok. Or a "finish line" box to go through on some surface. It's more fun, IMO, to have specific goals. Uninstalled for now but am excited to see where you might take it.
- Jun8 13y agoIf you think that us 3D people will never be able to wrap their heads around 4D, you have to read Charles Hinton's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Howard_Hinton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Howard_Hinton) The Fourth Dimension (https://archive.org/details/fourthdimension00hintarch https://archive.org/details/fourthdimension00hintarch). This is the guy who coined the terms ana and kata (from Greek) for the two additional 4D directions, analogous to up/down, etc. (he also invented a gunpowder baseball pitching machine that, some say, led to his dismissal from Princeton, due to player injuries). Now that's interesting on its own, but his sister-in-law, Alicia Boole Scott (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Boole_Stott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Boole_Stott) is also amazing. She was the daughter of the famous Boole, and made big contributions to higher dimensional mathematics, especially 4D, e.g. she proved there are exactly six regular polytopes in 4D. She "made beautiful cardboard models" of 3D cross sections of these. This, while she was working as a secretary in Liverpool (sad reality of early women scientists/mathematicians). They don't make them like that anymore! It would be interesting to have documentary on 4D based on these interesting people. EDIT: Also, in catastrophe theory, the Swallowtail catastrophe, which has 3 control and behavioral dimension was named by the French mathematician Bernard Morin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Morin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Morin), who is blind since he was 6!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bdg 13y agoPlease fix UI bugs like not being able to exit. :(
- zokier 13y agoAnother 4D game: Miegakure http://marctenbosch.com/miegakure/ http://marctenbosch.com/miegakure/ As referenced in a XKCD http://xkcd.com/721/ http://xkcd.com/721/
- Mithaldu 13y agoWhen you mention miegakure you should mention that it's been in development for about as long as DNF and might be done in 2020. :)
- idProQuo 13y agoGiven the timeframe I'd call it the video game equivalent of Jay Electronica's album Act II.
- marctenbosch 13y agoWell, experimental games take a long time to make! It's to be expected.
- Mithaldu 13y agoOf course. :) I love every blog post you write and every image i see released of the game. It's just that i've come to terms with the high possibility that i simply might not get to play this game at any point. I'm simply trying to say that the path to the realization should be made easier for other people before they become enamored only to face the harsh reality of the last paragraph on the game's website. ;)
- marctenbosch 13y agoIt's actually highly unlikely the game will not come out.
- Mithaldu 13y agoIt's heartening to see this confidence. That makes me happy. :)
- GhotiFish 13y agoAnyone else think it's funny how he labels w as a dotted anomaly, even though z is just as anomalous?
- NAFV_P 13y agoReminds me of the time that Sting sang "Message in a klein bottle". Of course, as soon as the bottle was thrown into the sea, the water seeped in destroying the message on the paper. "Bollocks", said Sting. "There goes my proof of the Riemann Hypothesis."
- jonpeda 13y agorelated: http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2013/coinheist.com/rubik/the_maze/index.html http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2013/coinheist.com/rubik/the_m...
- efferifick 13y agoAnother 4D game: 4D rubik's cube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aonf34s0Bqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aonf34s0Bqg