Message #912

From: Chris Locke <project.eutopia@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] MC7D v0.01
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:48:53 +0900

Wow…. I’m speechless! I thought that the title on the MagicCube5D site,
"In the spirit of taking things too far…" was appropriate for that
program, so I have no idea what one could possibly say to sum up the
ridiculousness of a seven dimensional Rubik cube! Bravo for having the
spirit to take this on!

I’ve only just played around a bit so far and I know you are far from done,
but I have a possible suggestion I’d like to put out there. When solving
the 5D cube I had the idea that it would’ve been useful to have two separate
views of the cube to make it easier to keep track of stuff. So what would
be your thought on implementing something like that here? You could have
two separate cameras that you can control separately, so you can see more
faces at the same time. Since you can see 7 faces at a time in the
traditional view, and the 7D cube has 14 faces, this way would actually
allow one to see all the stickers at the same time. Oh yeah, and showing
animation of the actual twisting really helps to build up familiarity with
the extra dimensions, so that might be another avenue to take a look into at
some point.

Thanks again for your hard work on this! I will play around a bit,
naturally, but don’t think I’ll be trying to solve this beast considering
the time investment a mere 5D cube was :D.

Chris

P.S. I wonder if the group name "4D_Cubing" is really appropriate
anymore… ? ^^

2010/6/17 Andrey <andreyastrelin@yahoo.com>

>
>
> So… MC7D v0.01. You can download it from here:
> http://shade.msu.ru/~astr/MC7D/MC7D.zip<http://shade.msu.ru/%7Eastr/MC7D/MC7D.zip>. It’s not very convenient - it has no graphic settings, no color selection,
> no macros and no cubie search. But you can make twists with it and see
> results.
> Unfortunately, I’m not sure that it will run on your computers: it contains
> DirectX 9, and I don’t know if it will be able to find and use it in all
> situations.
>
> Suppose that you are lucky. What do you see:
> 7D space is divided to 4 main and 3 secondary dimensions. Seven large cubes
> are the sides of the cube directed to main dimensions, and they are arranged
> as faces of 4D cube. Each face is 6D cube and it’s represented as a
> Cartesian product of two 3D cubes - that is cube (in main dimensions) built
> of smaller cubes (in secondary dimensions).
> Sides of smaller cubes (we call them "blocks") are directed in secondary
> dimensions. Note that orientation of all blocks is the same, so stickers of
> 7C cubie are not collected around the corner of the face: some of them are
> on other corners of the corner block. Small stickers that attached to sides
> of blocks actually belong to "secondary" sides of the cube. So we can see
> all stickers of cubies on main sides, but only some stickers on secondary
> sides. It means, for example, that we don’t see colors of centers of
> secondary sides of 3^7. But it’s not the problem - centers of main sides are
> deep inside the cloud of cubes, so we almost can’t see their color too.
> What can you do:
> The first thing is the navigation in 3D image of the cube. Left button of
> mouse can be used to rotate the image, right button (or ctrl-left button) -
> to zoom in and out, shift-left button - to change the direction of view
> (sometimes it’s called "pan").
> Right-click of the sticker highlights other stickers of its cubie - but
> only visible stickers. Sometimes you can see more than 7 of them (up to 16),
> it’s because secondary stickers may be shown more than once: each of them
> appears at every visible main sticker of the cubie. To reject highlighting
> just click somewhere in empty space.
> Twisting is implemented in 2-click way: first you select face and one of
> its 2C centers, and then select "target" center. It’s difficult to find 2C
> cubies in the image, so there are some more ways for selection.
> If you want twist main face from main direction to another main direction,
> click any large sticker of 2C block of the face. Then click any large
> sticker of the face in the target direction, or any large sticker of the 2C
> block of the twisting face that is directed to the target direction. If
> target direction is secondary, second click should go to any small sticker
> in that direction.
> To twist main face from the secondary direction you may make first click
> either in sticker of 2C cubie (it’s inside the side - center of some face of
> the central block), or in the center of face of any not-2C block of the
> twisting side. Second click goes as it the first case.
> To twist the secondary face from the main direction click the small sticker
> of any cubie that has only one small sticker (it is at the center of face of
> some block). Second click should go to any sticker of the target face - main
> or secondary.
> To twist the secondary face from the secondary direction find some cubie
> that has exactly two small stickers. One of them should belong to the
> twisting face and another be directed in the start direction.
> If you are not sure have you made first click or not, click in the empty
> space. Next click will be considered as the first click of the twist.
> To see other sides of the cube use ctrl-click. There are 1-click and
> 2-click commands: if the first click is made not in large sticker of the
> central side, then the side containing this sticker goes to the central
> position. If you click sticker of the central side then you want to keep it
> in center but change two other sides (probably to switch between main and
> secondary ). It works in the same way as the main side twisting and requires
> two clicks.
> Another features are usual: Undo/Redo; Open/Save log file, Scramble (1-5
> twists or "full") Full scramble of 3^7 is a little slow operation (it takes
> 1260 twists). Also you can select another puzzles - from 3^4 to 5^7. Be
> careful: 3D image of 5^7 has about 800K visible stickers and requires 10M
> triangles. It may be very slow.
>
> Good luck!
> Andrey.
>
>
>