Miegakure, 4DToys {mtbdesignworks}

Summary of every 4D Toys update, including all the stuff from the newest Mega-Update ®™! ➥ youtu.be/U9TK65sVI_4

@Jonathan_Blow @Terran42K @HeXiang125 @mathelirium I wrote some thoughts on this 11 years ago (!) marctenbosch.com/news/2015/12/a…

@Terran42K @HeXiang125 @mathelirium I am a person who implements things. I think about how things might be implemented, including "territory". If you are unable to imagine this, then we are having a discussion on two different levels.

Physics feels stable, predictable, and well-behaved largely because we learned it in 3D. That comfort hides a trap. In 1907, Paul Ehrenfest pointed out something unsettling. If you take the laws we treat as fundamental and transplant them into a different number of spatial dimensions, they often stop working the way we expect. Not just numerically different but qualitatively different. The issue isn’t the force law by itself. It’s geometry. Gauss’s law ties inverse-square forces to the surface area of spheres, and sphere geometry depends on dimension. Change the dimension, and the same-looking force produces a different potential, a different balance of attraction and inertia, and a different fate for motion. You can see this cleanly with a single problem of central force motion. In d spatial dimensions, flux conservation gives F(r) ∝ 1 / rᵈ⁻¹ so the potential scales as V(r) ∝ −1 / rᵈ⁻² (for d ≠ 2) Now add angular momentum. The effective radial potential becomes V_eff(r) = L² / (2 m r²) − C / rᵈ⁻² In 3D, those two terms balance in just the right way to allow stable bound orbits. Small perturbations stay small. Atoms don’t collapse. Planets don’t spiral away. In other dimensions, that balance breaks. In 2D, the force becomes 1/r, the potential becomes logarithmic, and bound motion sits on a knife edge. In 4D and higher, the attractive term becomes too steep. The centrifugal barrier loses the fight. Orbits plunge or escape. Same equations. Same initial conditions. Different dimension. Different physics. This isn’t science fiction. It’s a warning label. So it's clear that a lot of what we call physical intuition is really three-dimensional intuition wearing a lab coat. #Physics #MathematicalPhysics #ClassicalMechanics #DynamicalSystems #Geometry #Ehrenfest

@DeveloperPerso3 @Jonathan_Blow Lots of freedom!

@mtbdesignworks @Jonathan_Blow Neat! Don't break NDA or anything, but how much freedom did you have on the team? Were you able to make little requests to make puzzles you felt would be more fun?

I designed many puzzles for @Jonathan_Blow's new game: Order of The Sinking Star! It's been super fun.

@Jonathan_Blow x.com/Jonathan_Blow/…

@Jonathan_Blow x.com/Jonathan_Blow/…

Likely releasing two games next year, but the specific ones might be unexpected...

But you can scale the rotors by sqrt(2), and after multiplying you have to divide by the result by 2 at the appropriate times. This way the coordinates always stay integers. Works in any number of dimensions.

Random thought: you can have matrices with integer coordinates if they are only products of 90 degree rotations, but what about if you want to use rotors (quaternions) instead? Because of the double cover it's not as trivial...

Random thought: If subtraction were flipped, by defining the negative sign as a postfix operator instead of prefix operator (so: 7- means "negative 7", and 3 - 10 means "subtract 3 from 10") then the vector from a to b would more conveniently be (a-b) instead of (b-a)

In earlier days of the internet people would say “don’t read the comments” but now the entire internet is the comments.

A picture makes it incredibly clear:

There's this question about how should you order the components of 3D bivectors, like should it be lexicographic (XY,XZ,YZ) or should it match the dual (X,Y,Z)->(YZ,ZY,XY) and I'm firmly in the lexicographic camp because it generalizes to nD.... *but then* there's this whole other annoyance where (XY,XZ,XW,YZ,YW,ZW) is not "memory compatible" with the 3D case.. the XW is inserted right in the middle... #4dproblems

If OS people actually wanted to improve OSes that's the kind of stuff they would do instead of liquid glass or whatever.

Every dialog box that only has Yes/No options should have keyboard shortcuts where F1 means Yes and F2 means No (or whatever). And also shortcuts for the mouse (if it has enough buttons). I waste too much time just moving the mouse around to click these dumb buttons.

Valve could make a SteamDeck-like Tablet. It could have a chance to unf*ck the mobile games market.

@Jonathan_Blow @MadMaraca Yet another way to think about this: if you could design the entire game in your head it would not contain a lot of surprises, which means it would not be interesting to play.

You're welcome! One other way I think about it that may be useful... If any new project is complex/deep, I don't understand very much about it at the beginning. So if I try to make big decisions about the right design or the right way to implement things, they are likely to be wrong, because I am just inexperienced in the domain of this particular creative space. So the job of the initial explorations, or really the whole first half of the project, is just for me to get more experience in that area. After I have more experience, then I am in a much better position to make better decisions. This helps a lot with decision paralysis: if you can't decide between two ways something should be, you just pick one and see how it is, and if this is the "wrong" decision it at least expands your experience in this domain such that you can make a better decision later. (And hopefully this decision was not so foundational that it can be changed later.)

❓Question for game devs: WHEN do you actually start prototyping? Is it when U just have a vibe & a rough idea? Or after mapping out the whole lore, mechanics, characters, plot twists etc..,? Asking as a curious noob who may or may not be spiraling 👀 Teach me your ways🙇‍♀️🙏