Message #2380

From: schuma <mananself@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Escher-style puzzle on Hyperbolic plane
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2012 05:59:57 -0000

Hi Roice,

I don’t have a clear vision about how MagicTile supports Escher-style images. I understand it’s tons of coding to do. I just think that if you make Escher-style images in MT, it’ll attract more people because it’s more artistic. Maybe for public (or common geeky people), Escher’s paints are more famous than the term "hyperbolic tessellation".

I can imagine two possible ways to introduce the images.

One way is that the stickers are painted with the images, and the cuts are circles as before. This is like the Rubik’s cubes with picture stickers. I think this is what you meant.

The other way is to say each bird/rabbit/elephant/etc is a piece with irregular shape, and mimic the movement of the pieces in Circull. In the first level of Circull

http://a4.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/078/Purple/10/fb/2c/mzl.wibirnew.320x480-75.jpg

two adjacent birds can swap. There are two cases: (1) two birds’ beaks meet at one point. In this case the birds will turn by 45 deg around the beaks. (2) two birds’ wings and tails meet each other. In this case the birds will turn by 180 deg around the tails.

Case (1) can be made in the twisty puzzle: maybe all eight birds whose beaks meet at a point can rotate as a 8-cycle. Because the cut is not a perfect circle but a zig-zag "circle", the tails of moving birds may sweep over the other birds’ wings. But I’ll think it’s OK.

Case (2) is more complicated. I don’t see a good way to make a 8-cycle version of it. If we don’t allow this kind of move, the twisty puzzle would be trivial. But we can make our own rules any way.

Any thoughts?

Nan

— In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, Roice Nelson <roice3@…> wrote:
> You asked about whether MT could support twisty puzzles of this style. By
> that, do you mean puzzles where the faces are Escher-style images? It
> would take coding since the program currently has no concept of sticker
> orientations, but it’d certainly be possible with some effort.