
What Happened to 'Miegakure,' the Game That Promised the 4th Dimension? (2018) - zeristor
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmknd/what-happened-to-miegakure-the-game-that-promised-the-4th-dimension
======
tehsauce
I exchanged a couple emails with him years ago, as I wanted to share an
interface I designed for viewing 4D (or higher) geometry. It runs in the
browser and you can try it at
[http://transdimensional.xyz](http://transdimensional.xyz)

The each column is a slider with previews of how it will look when the slider
is rotated

~~~
Angostura
That’s a beautiful bit of UI design that almost manages to make the
intrinsically unintuitive feel actually intuitive. I doff my hat to you.

~~~
Razengan
Some [optional] labels for axis and a way to reset would be nice.

~~~
Etheryte
Any labels you can assign are arbitrary, there's no intrinsic height or width
etc.

------
sp332
Update from May 17, 2019: "Still working on Miegakure?" "Yes"

[https://twitter.com/marctenbosch/status/1129523036015681536](https://twitter.com/marctenbosch/status/1129523036015681536)

Not much to go on since this article came out.

------
jameshart
So the trouble with coming up with an innovative game mechanic, publishing
information about it, then being slow to produce your game, is...

Someone will implement it in minecraft or roblox first. Came home earlier this
week to find my son playing a Miegakure clone in minecraft.

Here's CaptainSparklez doing a let's play of it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSNlvtvvQ-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSNlvtvvQ-M)

Here's where you can download it: [http://www.minecraftmaps.com/puzzle-
maps/the-hypercube](http://www.minecraftmaps.com/puzzle-maps/the-hypercube)

~~~
rangibaby
The most popular Counter-Strike maps of all time (de_dust and dust2) were
visual copies of a map from a trailer for TF2, and were released in 2000. TF2
finally came out in 2007, sporting a completely different look.

------
failrate
The dev has released a toy box built on his work:
[http://4dtoys.com/](http://4dtoys.com/)

It's... confusing, but as far as I can tell, accurate.

~~~
flatline
That was my experience too. I mostly got the idea but still failed to
anticipate what would happen when I made the shape move in some particular
way. We don’t think in 4D and it’s just not easy.

------
ianbicking
Looking at the 4d toys video, it occurs to me that we can't really see in 3d,
we only see these 2d projections. But it's far more information rich than a
slice, and we can mentally model 3d. Some of this is certainly an innate
ability to model 3d, and familiarity with the component shapes. But it also
comes from shading and other surface area effects.

Could 4d be projected onto 2d in this fashion? Not a slice, but more like a
shadow with surface effects. Maybe with red/green/blue lights in different
positions in 4d space?

~~~
jackfraser
Check out this link from the venerable Ken Perlin:

[https://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/demox/Hyper.html](https://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/demox/Hyper.html)

There's a hard-to-get-running-due-to-age Java applet there which, when it used
to run easily, was very powerful for getting me to understand 4D in an
intuitive way.

It has a variety of stereo viewing modes, ranging from eye-crossed 3D (and
wall-eye), to red/blue glasses, and so forth. It also has an excellent option
for "thick" lines, that accentuates the position of the 4D object by making
lines closer to the camera thicker.

The trick is to use your brain's two different depth perception mechanisms in
different ways. You have hardware depth perception in the form of parallax
difference between your two eyes, and you have software depth perception in
the form of your brain's image analysis capabilities that, given a 2D
wireframe, can determine a 3D projection of it. This is always fun with
optical illusions, where you can see that your brain only really uses small
localities for these calculations - observe the traditional "blivet" fork for
an example.

Anyone who has looked at an isometric rendering of a wireframe 3D cube on
paper knows that there are two ways you can perceive this shape, and that's
the key to getting 4D intuitive perception going. You should already be
accomplished at mentally switching the cube back and forth without even
closing your eyes before you move on to another dimension!

If you use a hardware stereo mechanism like crossing your eyes to get one
depth axis, you can concentrate and use that software depth perception to get
the second depth axis. In particular, it's important to note that different
mouse buttons and key combos will rotate the shape in different axes, so just
make gentle movements with each to get a feeling for the range of motion. One
set of axes will rotate the cube as though its 3D projection was one of the
two possible software-depth-perception interpretations of it, and the other
set of axes will rotate it as though the other interpretation was correct. You
can seamlessly move back and forth between those states!

Perlin's applet features a variety of shapes, from the classic hypercube, to a
simplex with the fewest possible edges (akin to a triangular pyramid in 3D) on
to a sort of Klein bottle. It's really tricky to figure that one out, but in
the end it's basically a sort of hypertorus where the inside and outside can
become one another. Yeah, that's not really conveying very well in text, is
it....

~~~
MrEldritch
I can't get this running at _all_ , which is a shame, because I find the thing
you're describing incredibly fascinating. Any advice?

~~~
jackfraser
Nah, I have no idea. Find an old machine with Win XP and IE 6 maybe.

------
IIAOPSW
I'll hazard a guess as to what happened.

The dev is terrified to release anything less than perfection and is insanely
good at adding more content and can always justify to themselves
procrastinating on release by working on more content.

What? I'm not projecting. You're projecting. Shut up.

~~~
Nadya
But this is also fine! It's also unexplored territory. In the words of Mr.
Miyamoto: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever
bad."

Releasing it when it is _ready_ rather than releasing it to release it is
probably better in this case. Especially if the creator ever plans on other 4D
game projects, since he has his own game engine to create them now. Better to
not have someone's first experience with a 4D game be "This was garbage." in
that case.

~~~
nck4222
Duke Nukem Forever would beg to differ. The risk with delaying is that you may
not be prioritizing the important things. Because you just bought yourself
more time, it's easier to do the part you enjoy, instead of the part that's
needed.

~~~
Jach
DNF was fine, it just wasn't the amazing masterpiece people expected.
Miyamoto's quote can be true, but it can also be true that while delays can
get you to 'good', that doesn't mean they can get you to 'great', and 'great'
might sometimes only be achievable through aggressive cutting to the core
experience. Not necessarily rushed, but not without deadlines and hard choices
either.

For games pushing a new gimmick this seems even more true, and especially the
idea of iterating on things that maybe aren't even quite "good" in order to
learn more and eventually understand how to make something great even if a lot
of the time greatness seems accidental. Two examples come to mind... Doom was
made in a year, but was a culmination of even shorter projects successively
refining what FPS meant. Portal was done in a little over 2 years, but was
also built on the experience of Digipen students' project game that introduced
the gimmick mechanic along with others at Valve with experience making FPSes
(along with some writers who knew what they were doing).

~~~
rincebrain
DNF felt like a pretty good Duke Nukem game.

Unfortunately, at least my tastes and expectations in games have changed in
the intervening 15 years, and it no longer suited them at all.

~~~
archagon
DNF had nothing to do with what made D3D actually good: amazing level design,
creative weapons and enemies, fantastic music, tons of secrets, and a variety
of weird environments. D3D took all the joys of shareware, episodic DOS gaming
and brought them to 3D. DNF took all the juvenile bits and wrapped them in a
half-baked CoD shell.

If only the game was as good as the 2001 E3 trailer.

------
modernerd
Jonathan Blow played a preview build of Miegakure at PAX East 2016 in his
“Storytime” talk, where he solves some of the early levels:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwBl7Rnkt78&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwBl7Rnkt78&feature=youtu.be&t=25m16s)

His analysis of the game is great — he says it parallels early sci-fi and
speculative fiction, which started by asking “what if?” questions to build
stories around worlds constructed from the answer (“What if the world was four
dimensional?” in the case of Miegakure, or “what if the world was two
dimensional?” in Flatland.)

Braid was born of asking similar questions. (“What if you could play with the
flow of time?”) Jonathan suggests that games elevate the art of asking that
question further than fiction because you actually have to _build_ the world
spawned from your “what if?” question rather than write it. But it creates
some of the most interesting games — he demos some others in his talk.

It's great to learn that Marc ten Bosch is still working on Miegakure. I
really enjoyed the previews and the concept art on his own site:
[http://marctenbosch.com/news/](http://marctenbosch.com/news/)

------
djsumdog
A first I thought this was a time shifting game like Braid, but this feels
sorta like FEZ, except instead of a character learning about a 3D world from
his 2D origins (which most people can understand playing SNES/Genesis games vs
modern console games) into something way more bizarre that we can't even
visualize.

The 2nd video on the page is really great at explaining this.

I haven't heard of this game before .. hopefully I'll forgot about it until it
gets released. :)

~~~
rincebrain
This reminded me of the enormous mess surrounding Fez 2 and Phil Fish's exit
of the game industry At Speed.

Regardless of any other opinions I may have about the game industry's
toxicity, I'm always somewhat sad to recall that, as I wonder what it might or
might not have turned out to be.

~~~
chii
what happened to Fez 2 and Phil Fish?

~~~
kkarakk
Short story is the same ol, same ol. Creator creates beloved thing, People
want to get to know the creator, Non PR savvy creator says awkward things with
good intentions, People recoil and Creator recoils from reaction.Creator self
destruct - in this case Phil Fish cancels Fez 2 in a reactionary manner. Phil
still works in game dev as a consultant from what i remember of my cursory web
stalking

------
ericol
I remember seeing one post then, another post later, about the journey the
developer was making when coding it.

I was attracted by the ideas used, but that "4th dimension" thing, really
didn't seem so solidify much.

I'm guessing that in the end, it was all about playability, and that probably
the novelty of the game dynamics wore off rather fast, leaving behind a dull
game.

I think the developer probably got a lot out of the journey as well, thus
making releasing the game very likely irrelevant.

~~~
soup10
i played a build a long time ago and it had a "charming indie game" thing
going for it beyond the 4d stuff, i think he will release it eventually.

------
corysama
While you wait, you can play with
[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/learn-the-ways-of-
the...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/learn-the-ways-of-the-fourth-
dimension-with-a-bonkers-vr-playset/) from the same guy.

------
RyanShook
Designing a 4D World: The Technology behind Miegakure
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZp0ETdD37E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZp0ETdD37E)

------
adonnjohn
This article didn't really say that much, aside from that the game still isn't
out and still doesn't have tangible details about a release.

I really do hope to play it one day, but I'm starting to think that the game
is on a death march and will end up unsatisfactory no matter what. I am
eagerly waiting to be proven wrong.

------
escapecharacter
What makes a good blog post, or trailer does not make an enjoyable game.

------
danappelxx
At a short glance, it reminds me a lot of Monument Valley, which cleverly
changes the dimensionality of the world with rotation.

------
aasasd
Afaik Mr. Bosch has finally engaged an artist sometime in the past couple
years, when the levels were done or nearly so. They went on looking for the
final look of the game—which is quite different from the earlier shots,
judging by illustrations on the blog (though it's unclear how close they will
be to the finished product):
[http://marctenbosch.com/news/](http://marctenbosch.com/news/)

So it seems that currently it's time or art, implementation of said art, and
polish.

------
ydj
I wonder if it would be more intuitive to display a projection of the 4D scene
in 3 dimensions (then projected onto a 2d screen), rather than a 3D cross
section of the 4D scene.

------
beefield
I have been wondering, what would be the major challenges to create a 4d
"space" in virtual reality with some kind of sensors that would let sense the
orientation and maybe even speed/acceleration in the 4th dimension?

------
salutonmundo
Makes me wonder what would have happened if it had been developed bazaar-
style.

~~~
wolfgke
> Makes me wonder what would have happened if it had been developed bazaar-
> style.

I am not aware of any good game that has been developed bazaar-style.

~~~
Jach
Battle for Wesnoth? I liked it a lot anyway. It was developed with making it
easy to get more developers, too:
[http://aosabook.org/en/wesnoth.html](http://aosabook.org/en/wesnoth.html)

~~~
teddyh
Also 0 A.D.

[https://play0ad.com/](https://play0ad.com/)

------
piinbinary
Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/721/](https://xkcd.com/721/)

~~~
Lowkeyloki
This comic mentions Flatland, which is an excellent book. Reading it might
give some insight as to what observing our 3D world would be like from a 4D
context. You have to extrapolate it from the idea of viewing a 2D world from
our perspective. Honestly, it would probably be disturbing. You'd be able to
see everything at once. Like, inside and outside of everything from all
perspectives at once. I'll pass.

This probably won't help you figure out how to play Miegakure, though.
Although I thought the comparison to FEZ was apropos.

~~~
100100010001
We live in a 4D world. Just because we can only move through one of the
dimensions at a steady rate in one direction doesn't mean it's irrelevant.

------
jaunkst
It didn't disappearing

------
crimsonalucard
Technicality. These worlds are 5D. Time is a dimension. Your overall shape is
represented by four dimensional geometry traced across space-time.

The only difference between time and space is that entropy propogates across
time but not space.

~~~
Analemma_
Nobody refers to our own world as “4D” or flat cartoons as “3D” though. In
colloquial speech, the number before the D is the number of spatial
dimensions, so “4D” is correct here.

~~~
crimsonalucard
You're absolutely correct. But notice how I used the term technically?

I just wanted to point out that time is basically a spatial dimension and we
have alot of experience with 4D objects. The temporal aspect of time is
entropy; that is the only difference.

Other than that the equations literally call it spacetime and treat it as the
same thing.

The 4th dimension you experience in the game is literally time with the arrow
of time removed.

------
100100010001
So far, every "3D" game is actually 4D. This game could be a 5th dimensional
game, but then the main character needs to see all other 4th dimensional
realties (like in Rick and Morty). I had the same problem with Rick and
Morty's "A Rickle in Time". However, they got the monster (who is actually a
5th dimensional being not a 4th dimensional) right by being able to see all
the uncertain possibilities. This game would need that type of awareness to be
considered 5D. Otherwise, it's a normal 4D game.

~~~
drdeca
What?

Saying that "the fourth dimension is time" when people bring up the idea of
things with 4 dimensions of space, is a frustratingly common confusion.

No. One can think of "3 dimensions of space and one dimension of time" as a 4
dimensional thing, but that does not mean that every time that someone talks
about 4 dimensions, that they would be properly interpreted as talking about
time.

4 spatial dimensions usually just means that it takes 4 coordinates to pick
out the points (though one could also be talking about, like, the Hausdorff
Dimension of something, but whatever.)

... are you making a joke?

~~~
100100010001
I’m not confusing anything. The game has time interwoven into the game play.
Therefore the fourth dimension of space is the fifth dimension of the game. I
really hope you are joking.

~~~
drdeca
Dimensions aren’t ordered like that. There isn’t a dimension which is “the
fourth one”. The game has 4 spatial dimensions, and, like basically all games,
has 1 time dimension.

People don’t talk about the time dimension because it is irrelevant (edit:
because there is always 1 time dimension, so no new information is conveyed by
mentioning that the game has a time dimension).

Do you really think, when someone talks about a “2D game” that they mean that
the game world has one dimension of space and another dimension of time? Of
course you do not! That would be foolish! They are obviously talking about a
game with 2 dimensions of space.

The whole “the 4’th’ dimension always means time” idea is a stupid convention
from bad sci-fi, which also brings us nonsense like “a journey into the
seventh dimension”.

Call time “a” 4th dimension, as in, other than the 3 of space, sure, fine,
people can tell what you are talking about. That just is imposing an order
based on the order you are referring to things at the time.

~~~
100100010001
I actually get really annoyed by the misnomers! Just because you think time is
irrelevant doesn’t mean it is. Without it there would be NO movement. Btw,
space and time aren’t separate. That’s why we call it space-time.

