Message #1310

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] 5D Pacman v 0.11
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:30:23 -0800

Andrey,

Yes, the right-drag rotations are cool and I like the fact that the
model has the general shape and topology of hypercubes but I don’t see
the game as being in anything other than 3D. It could even be done in 2D
if it is made clear when two lines intersect or are just crossing each
other without interacting. I therefore imagine that any well-chosen
parameters that make all edges appear roughly similar in length and
easily distinguished from each other will work just fine. Maybe it could
be interesting to know that short edges take the same amount of time to
traverse than lines that look long, but again there needn’t be anything
"higher dimensional" about them. Color differences could always indicate
length or the lines could be bent into loops of appropriate length. I
would probably only consider this a higher dimensional version of
Packman if the men can move freely in D-2 hyper-paths.

Regarding the difficulty of making your little guy execute the turns
that you intend, it might be easier to let the user click on any of the
dots which then causes your guy to take the shortest path to that goal.
That would also give the player more of a chance to plan longer
sequences which I expect would be more fun than worrying about whether
his guy will make the intended turns.

-Melinda

On 12/29/2010 1:05 PM, Andrey wrote:
> Melinda,
> As for 4D and 5D - try to use right button and drag the image. You will see that different parts change their color and some points go deeper in the screen while other go backward. Actually it’s rotation in the (depth, color) space. For example, if you right-drag on right, points behind the Pacman go violet, points before it go yellow, yellow points go from you in the screen and violet points go back to you. Up-drag does the same with red/blue pair.
> It may be useful when you try to turn in the pass that goes to the side of your way, looks very short and has far end of some bright color. All this means that this pass goes from your main 3D space in some another direction, and it will be difficult to turn in it in 3D. So it’s better to make "color" rotation that will move far end of the pass deeper, and then orient it along Z axis. At first it is very tricky, but I hope that with some training we’ll be able to understand all this 4D/5D turns and use them better.
> Also there is right-click that changes screen coordinates to color coordinates and back. But when I use it I quickly get very flat glaphs and it’s difficult to make them 3D again.
>
> Andrey
>
>
>
>
> — In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, Melinda Green<melinda@…> wrote:
>> Andrey,
>>
>> The new version works a lot better. It took me a while to understand the
>> UI but once I did I found that it is quite usable. Like most people, I
>> tried to figure things out without looking for instructions so it took
>> me a little while to get it. The one thing that I would not have figured
>> out is that the user’s packman always tries to go deeper into the
>> screen, but I remembered that from your description and now it makes
>> sense. It might be helpful to very briefly list the main instructions at
>> the bottom with a menu checkbox to toggle them on and off.
>>
>> Also, I found it a little tricky to use the mouse for both scene
>> rotation and pause/resume but I got used to it reasonable quickly. BTW,
>> the Start button should switch to "Resume" once the game is paused, not
>> "Start". See how I did the buttons on my Tetris applet
>> <http://www.superliminal.com/tetris/Tetris.htm>.
>>
>> Finally, I don’t really see what is 4D or 5D about those choices other
>> than the fact that their graphs are similar to hypercube edges. It seems
>> to me that all graphs from 3D on up are all really just 3D since there
>> is room enough in R3 to embed any graph. Maybe in 3D the men should be
>> able to roam around 2D surfaces instead of 1D lines, etc.? Regardless, I
>> think that your 3D version may be more fun than the original 2D so I
>> encourage you to continue polishing it. The next thing I would love to
>> see would be sound effects.
>>
>> Nice job!
>> -Melinda
>>
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