Message #1

From: David Vanderschel <DvdS@Austin.RR.com>
Subject: Fwd: Re: phew, at last… [4^4 solution]
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 19:19:02 -0000

Date: Sat Apr 6, 2002 12:28 am

— In MC4D@yahoogroups.com, dgreen@s… wrote:
congratulations jonathan! i’ve updated the "hall of fame" page to
include your
accomplishment.
i’m always amazed by all you guys. there really seems to be no limit
to the
reach of the human mind.

i hope it’s ok with you that i expand the recipient list to include
the mc4d
mailing list. this is definitely the place for these discussions so
don’t be
afraid to use it.

regarding graphics programming, my strongest advice is to use java
instead of
c++. i found myself literally 4 times as productive using java due to
it’s
simplicity, robustness, and excellent class libraries. as a complete
coincidence i happen to be doing some scientific programming using
the java3d
library which though it has a huge and often confusing api, takes
care of most
of the really nasty details of driving the native 3d graphics
libraries, video
cards, etc.

regarding toggling visibility of the invisible face, we briefly tried
that but
found the resulting display was totally unusable. you
mention "transparency"
though which would be slightly different but i suspect won’t be
helpful. my
dream would be to model the precise 4d analog of a 3d mirror and
place it in
the 4d scene such that the invisible face becomes visible from a
different
direction. i guess that the 4d "reflection" would appear as a 3d
object
embedded within a 3d mirror appearing like a solid block of glass. i
have no
idea how to do this though. perhaps you’ll figure it out!

regardless, i wish you good luck with the 5^4.
go for it!

-daniel

Jonathan Vaughan wrote:

> Hi Daniel,
>
> Have just finished 4^4 (without macros), and wanted to email
you to say
> a massive thankyou for the Linux version of MC4D. It is fantastic,
a really
> superb implementation and a joy to play with.
> Seeing as I now have Linux :) I would like to start doing some
C++ and
> graphics with it, and I figured that poking around in the source
code for
> MC4D should give me somewhere to start. I was wondering whether I
could try
> adding a feature that toggled the transparency of the outer layer of
> hyperstickers - this would make 4^4 a bit easier in the early
stages and
> give me a chance of doing 5^4 :)
> Any advice about development environment for C++ under Linux?
Is there
> an equivalent of Visual C++ or does everyone just use GCC and Emacs?
>
> Thanks once again, Jonathan
— End forwarded message —