It's cool and all and I typically enjoy lowres renditions... unless, it actually impacts gameplay.
Since the gameplay is so much about 4D, clarity in what you see becomes more important and the extremely low resolution actually impairs the player rather than serve a positive (typically 'leaves more to the imagination').
It wouldn't take much of an effort to double or triple the resolution which I think would help the gameplay.
somat 15 hours ago [-]
The reason it is so low res is actually more interesting than simple aesthetic choice. Think about the sensor(or eye) needed to view a 3d scene, it is 2d right. So this is a 3d sensor(voxels) for a simulated 4d camera. and then we are looking at the 3d sensor. (with our 2d sensor(eyes)), it's sensor inception.
So it is as low res as it is because it is a bunch of voxels simulating a 4d camera.
The dev put out an interesting video on the topic.
There have been other 4D video games with actually good performance though.
Citizen_Lame 6 hours ago [-]
They should have used Gaussian Splats, surely this would reduce processing overhead.
isomorphic- 8 hours ago [-]
The low resolution didn't bother me too much, but the controls made this completely unplayable for me.
fxtentacle 9 hours ago [-]
Fully agree. The low-res makes this unnecessarily hard to navigate. Which is a downside if your core gameplay is to teach players to navigate in a challenging environment.
adzm 15 hours ago [-]
Agreed this is not even 4d Wolfenstein but still a really neat concept
somat 17 hours ago [-]
I just watched the associated dev video And if I understand it, what the author is doing is kind of interesting.
The sensor to see a 3d scene is 2d(eye or camera). What is being done here is simulating a 3d sensor(for a 4d world) then we are looking at this 3d sensor using our 2d sensors (eyes). I don't know if this is the common way of rendering these 4d physics simulations. But it is the first I have heard it described this way. It is also why the narrative of the game focuses on eyes, because that is what it is doing.
Nitpick - your eyes are, in combination, a 3d sensor. Individually they're 2d sensors, but together they can detect three dimensional information.
dtj1123 5 hours ago [-]
Strictly speaking this doesn't make them a true 3d sensor, but rather a 2d sensor with an accompanying depth-map. In order for them to be true 3d sensors they'd be have to transmit information about both the near and far sides of an object simultaneously, for example.
_main 2 hours ago [-]
Very true, a 4 dimensional being with 3 dimensional eyes would be able to look inside closed boxes, and see every side of every object at once. (just like we can see every part of a 2d scene all at once)
Not merely 2d + depth perspective.
dickiedyce 4 hours ago [-]
Hmmm...
Agreed that they're mostly 2D sensors, but apart from near-field the post-processing brain can use depth-cues to for us 'see' in 3D. Also, you don't see in 3D unless your head/eyes/target is moving, right?
AndrewDucker 4 hours ago [-]
You definitely get 3D from just having twin perspectives on an object. You get even more when moving your head.
UltraSane 13 hours ago [-]
Reminds me a bit of a guy who created a functional virtual camera in Blender with lenses and film layers.
I don't want to be the guy who has to use this level editor (although, in a similar way, doom was 2.5d, and so the level editor could essentially be 2d, so maybe it's not so bad?)
If this is 4d doom, i wonder what 4d quake could be
jitl 16 hours ago [-]
I read a novel when I was 14 or so who's premise is all about creatures inhabiting higher-dimensional space called "The Boy Who Reversed Himself" by William Sleator. I loved Sleator's books, they introduced me to really interesting concepts from theoretical physics as a youngun. If you find 4D Doom intriguing, I encourage you to borrow the book from your favorite ebook library, it's a quick fun read (at least, I remember it that way).
Darmani 16 hours ago [-]
Fun fact: William Sleator's brother is the famous computer scientist Danny Sleator, inventor of the splay tree.
UltraSane 13 hours ago [-]
Part of Greg Egan novel Diaspora takes place in a universe with 5 spatial dimensions.
ConceptJunkie 20 minutes ago [-]
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the statement in the book (IIRC) that it takes 8 legs to be stable in 5 dimensions. I'd assumed it would be 6, but this is a layman's intuition. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.
Awesome book regardless.
Narishma 12 hours ago [-]
Why does it require WebGPU when it looks like something that would run fine in software on a 386?
gipp 17 hours ago [-]
The problem with these attempts always seems to be that you can see in dimensions 1-3, but never in dimension 4, so any movement or exploration along that axis is always just blind fumbling. The extra dimension is not equivalent to the others
The only answer would seem to be an extra axis of rotation, but (a) doesnt work well with existing input methods, and (b) would be even more of a brain-breaker
pasquinelli 1 hours ago [-]
no, you do see along the fourth dimension when you're pointing that way. i think you have a deep confusion here actually, but i can't really help because i don't actually understand your confusion. but, for whatever help it will be:
- all the dimensions are treated the same
- you only actually see two dimensions.
(it goes without saying that it's actually me who's confused.)
jitl 16 hours ago [-]
I think you could approximate a 4d projection onto a 3d display, much like we approximate a 3d projection onto a 2d display. So perhaps one could enjoy a fun and intuitive game of 4d doom if you have an appropriately fancy volumetric display. Pity they're so rare/expensive.
tenthirtyam 2 hours ago [-]
I've commented elsewhere about an 4D maze (https://urticator.net/maze/ - I am not the author) which mimics this by creating two 3D retinas in red/blue stereoscopic mode - when you cross your eyes just right you see a single volumetric 3D retina.
Nevermark 11 hours ago [-]
Exactly. I prefer my 4D games projected into my Vision Pro’s surrounding 3D space. Please.
heyethan 14 hours ago [-]
Feels like in 3D you can move continuously and build intuition.
But in 4D there isn’t really an equivalent control, so it ends up feeling more like toggling something you don’t fully understand.
martin-t 9 hours ago [-]
Could transparency help?
Ordinarily, a 3D scene rendered in 2D only allows you to see a cone from your eye up to the first surface the ray encounters, thus defining the 2D projection which you see.
But you can make the surfaces transparent so the ray continues, and each additional surface adds a bit to the final pixel. This can look like a mess if you stand still but if you wiggle your movement left and right (or any other direction), your brain suddenly manages to process it into the full 3D structure.
Can something like this be done in 4D?
yetihehe 16 minutes ago [-]
Something like "wiggle stereoscopy"[1], but for 3d scenes instead of 2d images. Wiggle tesseroscopy?
Perhaps Ive been missing out on the 4D gaming revolution but I do not understand what the 4th dimension is here. Feels like I am missing out on a lot of context.
pasquinelli 1 hours ago [-]
it's a fourth spatial dimension. if you imagine a cube, it has width, height, and depth. a 4d cube would have width, height, depth, and zhlerp, which is its size along a fourth spatial dimension. in three dimensions you can go forward and backward, left and right, up and down. in four dimensions you can go forward and backward, left and right, up and down, and zlep and wizz, moving along the fourth spatial dimension.
amlib 11 hours ago [-]
I find it fascinating that it turns into a "descent like" (6dof fps) when using the ability to "peek" the 4th dimension.
heftig 5 hours ago [-]
The perspective shifts so that the up-down direction becomes the hidden dimension. So the ceiling and floor disappear (and you have trouble avoiding lava) and you only see the walls of the space.
npodbielski 3 hours ago [-]
Enabling webGPU on Firefox still does not allow it to run. It worked on Chrome but I feels kinda like it was not worth it. Maybe if you could change resolution to something better. And starting every time from the same room, through some conversation with NPC? Feels like I have better things to do.
knolan 19 hours ago [-]
I found 4D Golf a great game to explore higher dimensional space.
The person goes over quite a few technical details on their Youtube, though they talk about a bunch of other coding experiments too.
danbruc 17 hours ago [-]
Some of the scenes from the video remind me of Manifold Garden [1] - only 3D but a 3-torus [2] and you can change the direction of gravity, i.e. what is up and down. And also visually beautiful.
The advantage of this one is that it offers a stereoscopic (red/blue) view of the 3D retina. Not sure if this one does too.
forthac 15 hours ago [-]
If you're on firefox, go to about:config and set dom.webgpu.enabled to "true".
DoctorMacArthur 39 minutes ago [-]
Cant wait to see ZeroMaster speedrun this
dluan 11 hours ago [-]
I feel like now that I'm older, my brain just can't fully understand it say as quickly if I were younger. Makes me wonder if younger more plastic brains can adjust to having to juggle more dimensions than crochety old ones like mine with very rigid 3D grooves baked in. Or brains from other animals.
I guess taken to the logical extreme, what does the brain of someone/thing that's good at playing this (or any game of N dimensions) look like?
ConceptJunkie 4 minutes ago [-]
I feel the opposite. I'm 61 and I feel like I understand ideas more quickly than I ever did before, so much so that I'm surprised at how shallowly I thought about some things in the past.
While there is definitely something to the plasticity of young brains, for example in language acquisition, or the fact that the Fields Medal eligibility ages out at 40, I believe it's not a linear thing and not a one-way thing.
fredrikholm 9 hours ago [-]
If you don't mind me asking, how old are you, and how did this progress? I'm in my mid thirties and am noticing some minor deterioration, but I'm writing it off to loss of sleep due to having small kids.
My curiosity is if this is like you suggest, ingrained patterns, or if there is actual slow down with age. I hear different opinions and am finding it difficult to navigate as I deal with my own, albeit mild, aging.
dluan 9 hours ago [-]
Mid 30s, also have kid and sleep loss but not as bad as before.
I actually noticed serious mental decline when I was burned out in my late 20s. There were real physical symptoms like not being able to look at a text editor for more than 2 minutes. Post recovery of that, I actually feel like my brain recovered a lot once I started learning languages very seriously (mandarin and japanese), starting a few years ago. Brain feels healthy now but I'm acutely aware of where it's not as sharp as before. Playing around with this felt a little like when my brain is trying to build a new grammar dictionary.
gloflo 10 hours ago [-]
It's not actually Doom, but a Doom-like.
backspace_ 5 hours ago [-]
with those low res graphics, I'd say Wolfenstein like
The guy is just a troll. I doubt there's an actual game beyond a cool tech demo.
They haven't showed anything for like a decade.
hiccuphippo 17 hours ago [-]
Oh yeah. I remember it every couple of years just to go to wikipedia and see it's not been released yet.
UltraSane 13 hours ago [-]
I wish I could stay focused on a project that long.
razorbeamz 10 hours ago [-]
The AI generated logo image is a very big put-off.
superxpro12 19 hours ago [-]
Ok... he was right. It broke my brain.
braelyn 18 hours ago [-]
that was incredibly cool
17 hours ago [-]
saberience 18 hours ago [-]
That's not 4D
integralid 17 hours ago [-]
That's exactly 4D. Just like "non euclidean"[1], this term is often abused in entertainment to mean something else, but the post here is about the real 4d world rendering.
[1] For this check out zenorogue work btw
bsza 18 hours ago [-]
Then what is it? I'm seeing 4x5 transform matrices in the code, looks 4D enough to me.
Since the gameplay is so much about 4D, clarity in what you see becomes more important and the extremely low resolution actually impairs the player rather than serve a positive (typically 'leaves more to the imagination').
It wouldn't take much of an effort to double or triple the resolution which I think would help the gameplay.
So it is as low res as it is because it is a bunch of voxels simulating a 4d camera.
The dev put out an interesting video on the topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKDMcLW9OnI
The sensor to see a 3d scene is 2d(eye or camera). What is being done here is simulating a 3d sensor(for a 4d world) then we are looking at this 3d sensor using our 2d sensors (eyes). I don't know if this is the common way of rendering these 4d physics simulations. But it is the first I have heard it described this way. It is also why the narrative of the game focuses on eyes, because that is what it is doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKDMcLW9OnI
Not merely 2d + depth perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9rEQAGpLw
If this is 4d doom, i wonder what 4d quake could be
Awesome book regardless.
The only answer would seem to be an extra axis of rotation, but (a) doesnt work well with existing input methods, and (b) would be even more of a brain-breaker
- all the dimensions are treated the same
- you only actually see two dimensions.
(it goes without saying that it's actually me who's confused.)
But in 4D there isn’t really an equivalent control, so it ends up feeling more like toggling something you don’t fully understand.
Ordinarily, a 3D scene rendered in 2D only allows you to see a cone from your eye up to the first surface the ray encounters, thus defining the 2D projection which you see.
But you can make the surfaces transparent so the ray continues, and each additional surface adds a bit to the final pixel. This can look like a mess if you stand still but if you wiggle your movement left and right (or any other direction), your brain suddenly manages to process it into the full 3D structure.
Can something like this be done in 4D?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiggle_stereoscopy
Steam link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2147950/4D_Golf
The person goes over quite a few technical details on their Youtube, though they talk about a bunch of other coding experiments too.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/473950/Manifold_Garden/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-torus
https://urticator.net/maze/
The advantage of this one is that it offers a stereoscopic (red/blue) view of the 3D retina. Not sure if this one does too.
I guess taken to the logical extreme, what does the brain of someone/thing that's good at playing this (or any game of N dimensions) look like?
While there is definitely something to the plasticity of young brains, for example in language acquisition, or the fact that the Fields Medal eligibility ages out at 40, I believe it's not a linear thing and not a one-way thing.
My curiosity is if this is like you suggest, ingrained patterns, or if there is actual slow down with age. I hear different opinions and am finding it difficult to navigate as I deal with my own, albeit mild, aging.
I actually noticed serious mental decline when I was burned out in my late 20s. There were real physical symptoms like not being able to look at a text editor for more than 2 minutes. Post recovery of that, I actually feel like my brain recovered a lot once I started learning languages very seriously (mandarin and japanese), starting a few years ago. Brain feels healthy now but I'm acutely aware of where it's not as sharp as before. Playing around with this felt a little like when my brain is trying to build a new grammar dictionary.
https://youtu.be/u8LMyWcKL_c?si=XZrCdSSSk9PtpNIP
i managed to kill three enemies before succumbing to my fate
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miegakure
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yW--eQaA2I
[3] https://xkcd.com/721/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/355750/Miegakure_Hide__Re...
They haven't showed anything for like a decade.
[1] For this check out zenorogue work btw