Message #807

From: Roice Nelson <roice3@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] 5D interface
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:39:09 -0600

Hi Kyle,

By "Change it so that clicking a face alters the cubies in that face", I
figure you mean "Change it so that clicking a face alters the *stickers *in
that face". This is an interesting idea. It might be good to use Rubik’s
TouchCube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waY_evu6D_Y> for analogies.
There, you can drag your finger along a row of stickers in a face to define
a twist of an adjacent face (one that your fingers did not touch). As
you’re pointing out, this is in contrast with MC5D, where you "drag" the
sticker of one 2C piece to the sticker of another 2C piece, twisting the
face containing the stickers.

So I definitely think there is "some there there" in your suggestion, but I
also think it is not close to clearly defined yet, and a lot would need to
be worked out to make it viable. The main issue is that there are so many
possible twists to choose from, and a single twist needs to be fully
specified by what the user clicks (this was a difficult aspect in coming up
with the current workable interface). Without having really thought
it through, here are some off the cuff questions which might help direct
ideas:

(1) Which type of cubie(s) will the user need to click? Right now in MC5D,
it is only 2C cubies. In the TouchCube, it is a corner/edge/corner.
(2) How many cubies does the user need to click? MC5D: 2, TouchCube: 3.
(3) How to define which face to twist? Currently, it is the face containing
the clicked stickers. In the TouchCube, it is the only other face sharing
all the specified cubies.
(4) Can this be done such that the complete set of twists are available? We
need the coordinate-axis-aligned twists at a minimum, and there are 12 of
these per face.

I think a good goal is to keep the number of clicks to a minimum. My guess
is that a new approach along the lines of this suggestion could likely
require 3 or even 4 clicks, but I’m not sure. If so, that is a big downside
in my opinion to the 2 clicks we have now. I still occasionally wonder if
there might be some magical way to specify a twist with one click, and I’d
love it if someone could figure out how. The specification is much more
difficult than the coding!

Take Care,
Roice

P.S. A relevant historical post on this is
here<http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/message/234>.
Scroll down to the section titled "User Interface for the Twists"…

On 12/30/09, kygron <kygron@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I said a while ago that I would critic the 5D interface, apparently I
> wanted to do more than I am willing, so I’m writing the quick form here and
> you can ask questions if I’m unclear.
>
> My problem is one of attention. There’s too many things on screen to attend
> to all of them at once. (I know, that’s the point, but…) There IS a way to
> change the interface to help with this, while still maintaining the essence
> of the puzzle.
>
> When I started the puzzle, I picked a (5)face, got a picture in my mind of
> how it looked, clicked a few cubies, and…. nothing happened! Sure, the
> thing rotated, but all the cubies stayed in the same relative positions to
> each other. I would have had to look elsewhere to see the manipulations I
> caused.
>
> Change it so that clicking a face alters the cubies in that face and you’ll
> get alot more people able to enjoy manipulating your puzzle.
>
> Hope that helps
>
>
>
> ————————————
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>