A 4D video game?

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Started by Legend, Feb 27, 2018, 04:58 AM

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Legend

For the longest time I've wanted to make a true 4D video game. Sure lots involve higher dimensions and some have really well done 4D elements, but there are no games that really take this to the next level.

I want a game that doesn't treat the 4th physical dimention as different from the first 3. It would be just like how in Mario 64 you can't think of it as 2D mario with depth, since it's a true 3D game.


So how would this be possible?

No clue. What way would you do it?

The big hurdle imo is graphics. 4D objects are hard to display on 2D screens. The common method is to use wireframe 4d objects and cast them into physical 3D shadows and then render the shadows like standard 3D objects onto the screen. I don't like this because it makes the scene feel 3D not 4D, and the graphics are limited to just lines.

I'd prefer to project the 4D scene into a 3D volume exactly like how a camera works. This volume would be thick and could maybe be viewed in VR if it was slightly transparent. Another, stranger, method would be to somehow map this 3D volume to a 2D space that would then just act as an image on the screen. Could mayber use a hilbert curve to map the 3D volume to a line and then another hilbert curve to map it into a 2D picture.

This resulting image would look like a random mess of colors. My hope would be that it'd visually give enough feedback though for the brain to figure things out. Not a "good" solution but would be cool.