
A look at the Technology behind the 4D Game Miegakure [video] - krmkaos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZp0ETdD37E
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Analemma_
Still sounds wonderful, but when's the damn thing coming out? I first heard
about Miegakure in an xkcd from 6 years ago, and was immediately ready to hand
over my money. It's been hard to maintain that enthusiasm through one and a
half Presidential terms...

~~~
StavrosK
I guess it's hard to do level design in a dimension you can't even
comprehend...

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bladedtoys
As the creator of a 4D game, I can attest how hard it is to make such a thing
fun.

Even though simpler, I think what I built is only partially successful at
this. In the end I think the audience for my toy and Marc's game will only be
people excited about new concepts and toying with theoretical math ideas where
the bulk of the fun is just from that rather than game play.

I believe much of a game's fun comes from matching the users existing abstract
ideas about the world. I suspect that 4D manipulation of objects is so deeply
counter intuitive that doing this is extremely difficult.

But I for one will be thrilled by any from of Miegakure that is ever released
whatever it's state or level of fun.

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nickpsecurity
This is amazing. It matches the description I read in Michio Kaku's Hyperspace
as a kid. Except the visuals, although similar, were said to be blobs. I'm not
sure.

I like that the game creates the ability to move through a 4D space while
seeing the effects in 3D. The fundamental is great. Also, how a 4D person
might move through walls via the fourth dimension. I think an even more
interesting angle might happen if a game tries to break the assumption that 4D
movement is wide open: put obstacles in the way where a person must use
intuition to navigate it by making a 2D/3D map of that space as well. Maybe
the game does that, too.

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marctenbosch
Thanks! Each puzzle is about doing some crazy thing that only a 4D being could
do, such as binding two rings without breaking them, or stealing something
from a building that is closed from all sides but not in the fourth dimension.
We'll show more of that soon.﻿

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nickpsecurity
"such as binding two rings without breaking them"

I can't wait to see that.

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logicrook
Most of the transcript of the video is on the main page
([http://miegakure.com/](http://miegakure.com/)), along with illustrative
images and gifs.

They evoke how their inspiration was flatland, which when I read it I found
strikingly unimaginative. To explain, the characters are 2D objects; the book
describes some of the problems these beings encounter, but doesn't really
solve them, so the described society doesn't really hold up. One instance is
that their field of vision is just a line with a dimension for color, so you
need to see a form move into space to understand what it is (maybe I'm wrong,
but I think the author does not say clearly that points do bear some 'depth'
and 'texture' information, otherwise this wouldn't work). But there are
creative ways to solve these problems: for example the beings could 'see'
using a bat-like interpretations of echoes to get a sense of the space around
them (we see in 3D, not in 2D). Life under different constraints ends up
having different features than us humans. So in a sense, it is a bit like
somebody who would stumble upon a mathematical paradox (say, the barber's one)
and would just deduce 'how funny are words and numbers' (well, a bit like
Lewis Caroll).

~~~
arijun
I think the real cleverness of that book is the comparison of 2D creatures to
3D, and use that to guide our otherwise non-existent intuition of what 4D
space would look like. I could imagine one thinking of that analogue before
reading the book, making it seem less novel. But you have to remember that
we've lived in a society that's had that book for nearly 150 years, so it
would not be surprising if some of the ideas from the book became a mainstream
meme.

~~~
logicrook
But Erewhon came in 1872, and contained many ideas that are still very strong
(emergent life, creation of the technological system and clash with the
ancient order (Church))...

It's a bit like the 'Seinfeld is unfunny' trope; even at the time, some people
found it unfunny. It does not mean that this effect does not play a role, but
you seldom hear "well, Copernicus is such a greaaat guy for discovering that
the Earth revolves around the Sun", while it does suffer from it.

And I wouldn't be surprised if the Greeks had devised such stories
illustrating some mathematical concepts; it's just that more than 150 years
ago, the audience for 'geeky stories' was not so big, as well as the potential
writers for such stories weren't so numerous (although Gauss seems a bit
cheeky on his portrait). HN just wasn't there.

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yexponential
"What you see is a 2D projection of a 3D slice of a 4D object".

Poetry.

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raus22
But is it fun? The 4d is good and all, but is it playable and enjoyable.
Otherwise it is just a gimmick, a cool gimmick but a gimmick.

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lobo_tuerto
Key sentence:

"When you finally get to play Miegakure"

When it's going to be released!? Been waiting a long time now...

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radarsat1
Beautiful. Get someone else to narrate the video. But beautiful.

~~~
jasonkostempski
I don't know if it changed since your comment but there was absolutely nothing
wrong with the narration.

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Mithaldu
As a non-native english speaker: He absolutely rushes through his explanation
at break-neck pace, and he rarely changes the tone of his voice from a droning
monotone. For me that makes it incredibly difficult to process and retain
anything he talks about.

~~~
elevenfist
As a native speaker he was speaking at a fairly normal pace, and his
intonation was fine, just more subtle. Voices like his are not uncommon,
especially in engineering. That being said, based on his accent it is possible
that english is not be his first language.

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wangii
is the avatar in the game 3D or 4D?

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wnkrshm
if they make the argument that the 3D level geometry is a slice of 4D
geometry, then a 3D animation frame of the character is also a slice of 4D
geometry (the 4D geometry interpolated from 3D keyframes and timing curves)

~~~
zardo
A 4d collision boundary would limit the players ability to explore, just
taking a few steps would require solving a 4d puzzle.

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simonebrunozzi
What the hell is a 4D game? I just hate buzzwords.

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lifeformed
Watch the video?

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kordless
What the hell is a video? I couldn't resist.

~~~
Synaesthesia
A 2D slice of a 3D object.

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77pt77
Projection, not slice.

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wolfgke
An image of a video is a slice of it for some constant time coordinate.

If you instead fix a spatial coordinate you get images as the two left and
center images in

>
> [http://electronicimaging.spiedigitallibrary.org/data/Journal...](http://electronicimaging.spiedigitallibrary.org/data/Journals/ELECTIM/929595/JEI_23_1_013016_f002.png)

~~~
77pt77
You changed the assertion because you're including time.

The parent said "A 2D slice of a 3D object."

And that's wrong, it's a 2D projection of a 3D object.

If you include time then it's a slice in the time component, right, but that
wasn't being discussed.

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wolfgke
The third dimension _is_ time.

Videos can also be generated without using projections (though cameras use
this method).

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logfromblammo
Time is a different type of dimension than the spatial dimensions. If you're
really going to bring time into it, you need to use a dimensional signature,
wherein one number represents dimensions that square to a positive number,
another represents dimensions that square to a negative number, and another
represents dimensions that square to zero.

A video is either {2,1,0}-D or {1,2,0}-D, depending on the mathematical sign
convention you chose for your spacelike dimensions.

When people use a single number, they invariably mean spacelike dimensions, as
null dimensions and multiple timelike dimensions tend to give people the
screaming jibblies when they try to visualize them.

