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Games

Here's How a 4D Video Game Actually Works

Math-puzzler 'Miegakure' is a thought experiment made real, and it's confusing as hell.
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Your mind wasn't designed to handle the video game world of designer Marc ten Bosch's 4D adventure puzzler, Miegakure. You read right, that's 4D: four-dimensional action in the crazy beautiful world Bosch has spent the last six years inventing. As creatures who physically exist in three dimensions of space, the concept of four is particularly difficult to understand—we tend to cop out by saying it's "time," and leave it at that. But if time is a dimension, then Miegakure is a 5D game, because it deals with four dimensions of space.

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If you're brain is aching, you're not alone. Bosch's time-tested explanation of 4D space is mathematical. A point in 2D space is represented by two numbers, coordinates on a graph. A point in 3D space has three numbers. Miegakure was born when Bosch wondered what a point in space represented by four numbers would look like. Watch his latest video explaining the concept, as well as the technology he's using to realize it, in the video below.

Bosch's work on Miegakure has sparked a whole host of new questions about our own reality in the artist's head. "When making this game I have to take each concept and strip away the part that does not generalize to higher dimensions," he tells The Creators Project. If a square is a slice of a cube, then a cube is a slice of a 4D object like the ones Bosch is building for Miegakure. The process of extrapolating each shape up one dimension is what he means by "generalizing to higher dimensions." He continues, "By doing this you get rid of things that are specific to 3D, and you reveal the much more fundamental core idea."

Essentially, Miegakure is a mathematical proof that you can run around in and explore. Maybe this model reflects an unknown dimension of our own world, or maybe it's as made up as Star Wars' hyperdrive. In the new video, Bosch says, "While you could ignore all this while playing the game, to me it feels even more beautiful when you know more about what is happening." We agree.

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While Marc ten Bosch hasn't announced a release date, he assures us that Miegakure will be done soon. Learn more about Miegakure on the official website, and our previous coverage below.

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