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.
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.
I tried pretty hard to increase the rendering efficiency on consumer GPUs. The biggest issue is that the main view is actually a 96x96x96 grid of "pixels" (or voxels). This makes scaling brutal: going up to 128x128x128 we'd double the total amount of pixels, to around as much as 1920x1080 resolution. Doubling the grid res to 256 would get us 16M voxels, which is about the same as two 4K displays. On top of that simple 4D object meshes scale much worse in terms of tetras than 3D objects do.
A quick solution could be to give the user a few resolution options, so they can bravely test the limits of their hardware.
So I've just modified the engine to allow you to specify a custom resolution in the URL:
(Higher resolutions might break rendering entirely if the accel structure doesn't fit in allowed memory anymore. I was able to push it to 160x160x160 on my machines)
I'll also try to think of other ways to make the rendering more efficient, maybe a BVH instead of my simpler grid-based acceleration structure? My background is not in computer graphics, so others here might have better ideas.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Arguably, humans are 4-dimensional beings living in a 4-dimensional world—it’s just that one of the dimensions is accessible with much fewer degrees of freedom.
(Not unlike how a seemingly 2-dimensional world of a top-down FPS is actually 3-dimensional, you just have to follow way more rules when it comes to moving in the third one.)
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?
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
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).
Loved this book! Part of this project started from wanting to make 4D creatures and train them to walk with RL. One interesting fact I learned is that ants would probably have 8 legs in 4D.
Why? Well, apparently ants have 6 legs because this allows tripod-gait, a simple leg movement that always keeps 3 stable points on the ground[1]
In 4D, you'd need 4 points on the ground, hence tetra-pod gait (4+4 legs).
You could of course do with less, I'd guess even as low as 1-2 if you have lots of muscles and good balance.
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.
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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
The additional code he wrote to make a 4d game work in the Unity game engine is available on github and MIT licensed: https://github.com/HackerPoet/Engine4D
When I first saw the title, I assumed this game was implemented in the same engine. I believe there are a few already.
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
interesting, very cool demo, but its not the 4d that hurts my brain and/or soul, its an FPS with an inverted X mouse axis... its like the backwards bike, sure it can be done, but my wiring isn't rigged for that!
Some random unsolicited feedback: Doesn't work on iPadOS/iOS without an external keyboard, and the arrow keys don't work probably because there's no apparent ability to go full screen or capture focus of scrolling keys. The wasd etc. controls sort of work but are confusing and don't work as expected. Probably needs a full screen toggle and a virtual keypad for touchscreen UX at a minimum. Toasts should probably appear in the window rather than below because it messes with the viewport/layout and it starts scrolling unexpectedly.
Btw, it runs on iPadOS/iOS 18.x by turning on WebGPU under Settings > Apps > Safari > Advanced > Feature Flags
I'd definitely prefer a human made one. If you know any artists willing to make a proper version of the cover art, I'd be happy to commission one (paid, of course).
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.
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.
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.
Here the video (from the bottom of the page)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKDMcLW9OnI
There have been other 4D video games with actually good performance though.
They should have used Gaussian Splats, surely this would reduce processing overhead.
I really appreciate your feedback!
I tried pretty hard to increase the rendering efficiency on consumer GPUs. The biggest issue is that the main view is actually a 96x96x96 grid of "pixels" (or voxels). This makes scaling brutal: going up to 128x128x128 we'd double the total amount of pixels, to around as much as 1920x1080 resolution. Doubling the grid res to 256 would get us 16M voxels, which is about the same as two 4K displays. On top of that simple 4D object meshes scale much worse in terms of tetras than 3D objects do.
A quick solution could be to give the user a few resolution options, so they can bravely test the limits of their hardware.
So I've just modified the engine to allow you to specify a custom resolution in the URL:
https://dugas.ch/hyperhell/levels/the_bargain.html?vox_resol...
(Higher resolutions might break rendering entirely if the accel structure doesn't fit in allowed memory anymore. I was able to push it to 160x160x160 on my machines)
I'll also try to think of other ways to make the rendering more efficient, maybe a BVH instead of my simpler grid-based acceleration structure? My background is not in computer graphics, so others here might have better ideas.
The low resolution didn't bother me too much, but the controls made this completely unplayable for me.
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.
Agreed this is not even 4d Wolfenstein but still a really neat concept
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKDMcLW9OnI
Reminds me a bit of a guy who created a functional virtual camera in Blender with lenses and film layers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9rEQAGpLw
Nitpick - your eyes are, in combination, a 3d sensor. Individually they're 2d sensors, but together they can detect three dimensional information.
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.
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.
Arguably, humans are 4-dimensional beings living in a 4-dimensional world—it’s just that one of the dimensions is accessible with much fewer degrees of freedom.
(Not unlike how a seemingly 2-dimensional world of a top-down FPS is actually 3-dimensional, you just have to follow way more rules when it comes to moving in the third one.)
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?
You definitely get 3D from just having twin perspectives on an object. You get even more when moving your head.
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
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).
Fun fact: William Sleator's brother is the famous computer scientist Danny Sleator, inventor of the splay tree.
Part of Greg Egan novel Diaspora takes place in a universe with 5 spatial dimensions.
Loved this book! Part of this project started from wanting to make 4D creatures and train them to walk with RL. One interesting fact I learned is that ants would probably have 8 legs in 4D.
Why? Well, apparently ants have 6 legs because this allows tripod-gait, a simple leg movement that always keeps 3 stable points on the ground[1]
In 4D, you'd need 4 points on the ground, hence tetra-pod gait (4+4 legs).
You could of course do with less, I'd guess even as low as 1-2 if you have lots of muscles and good balance.
[1] https://dugas.ch/4d_creatures/tripod_gait.html
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.
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
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?
Something like "wiggle stereoscopy"[1], but for 3d scenes instead of 2d images. Wiggle tesseroscopy?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiggle_stereoscopy
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.)
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.
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.
Exactly. I prefer my 4D games projected into my Vision Pro’s surrounding 3D space. Please.
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.
You may need more than 1 extra axis of rotations, unfortunately. https://youtu.be/tKDMcLW9OnI?t=309
Why does it require WebGPU when it looks like something that would run fine in software on a 386?
I found 4D Golf a great game to explore higher dimensional space.
Got a link?
I imagine they are taking about 4D golf by CodeParade, as seen here: https://youtu.be/y53UNskR-zU?si=iUfCkxYqkACx955t
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.
The additional code he wrote to make a 4d game work in the Unity game engine is available on github and MIT licensed: https://github.com/HackerPoet/Engine4D
When I first saw the title, I assumed this game was implemented in the same engine. I believe there are a few already.
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.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/473950/Manifold_Garden/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-torus
I find it fascinating that it turns into a "descent like" (6dof fps) when using the ability to "peek" the 4th dimension.
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.
If you're on firefox, go to about:config and set dom.webgpu.enabled to "true".
I can't play this online (no webgpu) but from the description and comments here it sounds like the 4D Maze from 2002!
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.
Thanks for the link, 4D Maze is amazing and I had somehow never seen it.
Also, here's a CPU-based prototype that led to the Hyperhell engine:
https://dugas.ch/4d_creatures/4d_camera.html
It's not actually Doom, but a Doom-like.
with those low res graphics, I'd say Wolfenstein like
Shameless plug: Horizon (Before the name got saturated), a 4D third-person game https://youtu.be/R6qTi3TCM2U
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?
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.
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.
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.
His dev log linked from GitHub is really neat. Mind-bending stuff.
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.
this is visually interesting, but crucially it's also actually fun to play.
i managed to kill three enemies before succumbing to my fate
Its really a cool project, i loved playing doom game in my childhood hood, and i loved this fast paced Action FPP game…. plus the retro looks great,
Hey , did any one played “Total over dose”?
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.
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.
Reminds me of this 4D minecraft clone:
https://youtu.be/u8LMyWcKL_c?si=XZrCdSSSk9PtpNIP
interesting, very cool demo, but its not the 4d that hurts my brain and/or soul, its an FPS with an inverted X mouse axis... its like the backwards bike, sure it can be done, but my wiring isn't rigged for that!
Better title: HYPERHELL, 4-Dimensional DOOM-Like
Is that the geordie version?
This is an awesome experience. Very useful tool to get exposure to thinking in "higher" dimensions!
Now waiting since 16 years for the release of Miegakure [1][2][3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miegakure
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yW--eQaA2I
[3] https://xkcd.com/721/
It's still on my steam wishlist.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/355750/Miegakure_Hide__Re...
On mine, too, forgot that link.
Oh yeah. I remember it every couple of years just to go to wikipedia and see it's not been released yet.
I wish I could stay focused on a project that long.
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.
Neat.
Some random unsolicited feedback: Doesn't work on iPadOS/iOS without an external keyboard, and the arrow keys don't work probably because there's no apparent ability to go full screen or capture focus of scrolling keys. The wasd etc. controls sort of work but are confusing and don't work as expected. Probably needs a full screen toggle and a virtual keypad for touchscreen UX at a minimum. Toasts should probably appear in the window rather than below because it messes with the viewport/layout and it starts scrolling unexpectedly.
Btw, it runs on iPadOS/iOS 18.x by turning on WebGPU under Settings > Apps > Safari > Advanced > Feature Flags
Cant wait to see ZeroMaster speedrun this
At least project it onto a 3D screen.
Can't wait for the hardware. Only a matter of time until someone makes the first 4D game projected to a 3D hologram.
that was incredibly cool
You have a great website
The AI generated logo image is a very big put-off.
I'd definitely prefer a human made one. If you know any artists willing to make a proper version of the cover art, I'd be happy to commission one (paid, of course).
Ok... he was right. It broke my brain.
[dead]
That's not 4D
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
Then what is it? I'm seeing 4x5 transform matrices in the code, looks 4D enough to me.
Why not?