4D Doom

(github.com)

164 points | by chronolitus 4 days ago

18 comments

  • keyle 5 hours ago
    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 3 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.

    • adzm 3 hours ago
      Agreed this is not even 4d Wolfenstein but still a really neat concept
  • jitl 4 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 4 hours ago
      Fun fact: William Sleator's brother is the famous computer scientist Danny Sleator, inventor of the splay tree.
    • UltraSane 2 hours ago
      Part of Greg Egan novel Diaspora takes place in a universe with 5 spatial dimensions.
  • somat 6 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.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKDMcLW9OnI

    • UltraSane 1 hour ago
      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

    • gentleman11 5 hours ago
      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

  • Narishma 37 minutes ago
    Why does it require WebGPU when it looks like something that would run fine in software on a 386?
  • knolan 7 hours ago
    I found 4D Golf a great game to explore higher dimensional space.
  • Brendinooo 2 hours ago
    His dev log linked from GitHub is really neat. Mind-bending stuff.
  • omershapira 3 hours ago
    Shameless plug: Horizon (Before the name got saturated), a 4D third-person game https://youtu.be/R6qTi3TCM2U
  • gipp 5 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

    • heyethan 2 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.

    • jitl 4 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.
  • bstsb 7 hours ago
    this is visually interesting, but crucially it's also actually fun to play.

    i managed to kill three enemies before succumbing to my fate

  • forthac 3 hours ago
    If you're on firefox, go to about:config and set dom.webgpu.enabled to "true".
  • scordata 7 hours ago
    This is an awesome experience. Very useful tool to get exposure to thinking in "higher" dimensions!
  • xnx 5 hours ago
    Better title: HYPERHELL, 4-Dimensional DOOM-Like
    • gerdesj 4 hours ago
      Is that the geordie version?
  • danbruc 6 hours ago
    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/

  • braelyn 6 hours ago
    that was incredibly cool
  • superxpro12 8 hours ago
    Ok... he was right. It broke my brain.
  • saberience 6 hours ago
    That's not 4D
    • integralid 5 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 6 hours ago
      Then what is it? I'm seeing 4x5 transform matrices in the code, looks 4D enough to me.
    • lanternfish 6 hours ago
      Why not?