A 4D video game?

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

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Legend

Something I was thinking about earlier, was having a game use both analog sticks for the camera.  Each dimension is important just like all the others.  

On your 2d tv, you'd get your 3d representation of a 4d space.  
Thinking about this more, a Doom style game in 4D could map to a regular controller.

Left joystick left/right would move you left/right. Up/down would move you 4D+/4D-. R2/L2 would move you forward/backward. You move along 3 dimensions just like how in Doom you move along 2 dimensions. Moving up and down would just use a jump button.

I like this setup because it'd work well with the 3D picture of the 4D world. Left joystick would push all objects in the 3D image the opposite direction, with closer objects moving faster. Moving forward/backward would be look zooming in and out from the center of the 3D image. Pressing jump would move things in the 3D image down and then back up.

Camera would just be the right joystick. Since it's Doom like and you can't look up or down, it restricts the camera to spinning around the axis perpendicular to ground. In 4D an axis can spin in 2 different ways (pretty sure just 2) so that fits the joystick. Left/right would turn left/right and up/down would turn 4D+/4D-.

How would this game feel to play? The 3D picture of the 4D world would be positioned right in front of the player. Up would be up, left would be left, and forward away from the player's position would be 4D+.

If the game was set on an infinite plane with the camera looking at the horizon (but in 4D), the resulting 3D image would be divided in half. Top half has the sky color, bottom has the ground color. If you had a slow moving hypersphere bullet and fired from the center directly forward, the 3D image would get a sphere put in the center but large enough to fill the volume. Everywhere the sphere is, it cuts away at the sky and ground color. (A spot in the 3D picture can only belong to one solid object). As the bullet flys forward, this sphere in the image would get smaller and smaller. Eventually it'll get so small that it can't be seen any more (it's really far away in 4D). If the bullet fired fast, it'd only be visible in the 3D image for a few frames.

Now imagine there is a target. This will also be a hypersphere to make things easy. The hypersphere will be twice as tall as you and resting on the ground, so in the 3D image it looks like a sphere positioned right between the sky and ground. If it is close to the player it is large and if it is far away it is small. It can be at any point along the sky/ground boundry in the 3D image, just like how an enemy in doom can be at any point to the left or right in the screen. This hypersphere could be outside the edge of the 3D image and be behind you.

If the hypersphere is moving, you'd want to keep it visible within the 3D image. This would mean rotating the 4D camera. If in the 3D image the sphere image of the hypersphere is to the left of center, pushing the right joystick left would bring it back to center. If the sphere in the image is forward of the center, pushing the right joystick forward would bring it back.

This on its own could be the basis of a 4D game. Shoot hyperspheres at moving targets and rotate your camera to aim at them. Would probably need a high field of view and/or a tracking system since finding enemies off screen would be hard. A normal 3D game just has you swing the camera around to see everything yet here that method would miss a lot of area. Also having objects within the scene would really help to keep the player from losing track of their direction.

The graphics would be really important. With a 2D image of a 3D scene we understand size and distance but with a 3D image of a 4D scene this would be very hard. Is a hypersphere large or is it close? A checkerboard like pattern on objects would help with this. If you always know the pattern is the same size, then 3D images with small patterns would be far away. Shadows and lighting would also really help with this.

On the other hand, the 3D image itself will be hard to understand if there's too much detail. A dot like texture for all objects could work really well both for understanding the scene and understanding the 3D image. Would make it more abstract though.