Mapish Consorts

This is a partial thread repost from one of the Webbie boards I'm posting about my game on. I figured I would repost it here so that other people can read it as well.


Thanks for the update!

What you have is very good, I hope it will be as fun to play as it is to read about. However what you seem to have is more of a 3D cube than a 4D hypercube.

A 4D hypercube has 8 cubical sides (or hyperfaces). Each cube is connected to 6 other cubes through its 6 sides (or hyperedges).

This is much like how there are 6 faces on a regular 3D cube, and each each face is adjacent to 4 others, all the other faces except the one on the opposite side.

Although it doesn't matter to me how many dimensional realities you wish to have, I think your present explanation would be more consistant with a 4D hypercube if there were 8 total. If the space folded continuousely as in the animation, each reality would only connect to the adjacent 6, however passing through the middle or 'interstice' as you call it would allow you to connect to all 8, altho the space folding transformation would not be as continuous.

Actually, that gives me an idea. What if the interstice was one of the hyperfaces, and each reality is a hyperface adjacent to the interstice? Then with the 6 realities, the interstice, and the hyperface oposite the interstice (some kind of anti-interstice?) you would have the 8 hyperfaces your hypercube needs.



Thanks for the info, I'll see about incorporating your ideas into it. The "science" of the story definitely needs some ironing out. I'm not trying to make it extremely exacting, but I would at least like it to be semi-plausible and at the very least believable by the average player. It's the old "Hollywood Illusion" as it were. Convincing the audience that sheer bullshit is actually plausible, potential reality.

*Mipsus goes off to eject the warp core and realign the pattern buffers for the transporter*

^__^



Yeah, I know it doesn't have to be scientificly perfect. Sorry, I just had to post that because my math sense was tingling.

*athomson quantum teliports instantly to the other side of the universe by hitching a ride on a stream of entangled electrons* :-)



Nah, yer post was good, it gave me some good ideas. Critiques, suggestions, maps, character forms, story lines, art work and ideas are always welcome. If there's something you want to see in the game just tell me and I'll see about incorporating it. The game's going to be big enough to include plenty of ideas, so there's tons of room for expansion.

I just finished up making one of the basic maps:
4th Space Map 1

Each pixel represent a 32x32 tile. Dark green represents forest, light green is grass, tan is dirt/sand, dark brown is lower mountainous areas, dark gray is high, rocky mountainous areas, white is snow, faded green is snowy forests, light gray is snowy mountains, the blue is water obviously and the light bluish outlines are shorelines or shallow waters.

I think how I'm going to make this work is that the worlds are going to come in sets, so each world will have a kind of "mirror world", that'll be somewhat the same, but slightly different. Like in this one, the alternate world is going to have a complete land mass on the bottom right there and it's going to be explained that the reason it's mostly gone in this world is because of some nth level, cataclysmic destruction.

The original universe is going to be a mirror of our own, but basically a few thousand years older with some various small changes in events, land mass, etc. Along with highly advanced technology since they'll be a few thousand years ahead. It's going to be that the 4th Space, the alternate realities, were basically created accidentally in an experiment gone awry. The original experiment was to try and travel through time, but instead it fucked everything up and cubed the universe into various, fragmented, folded dimensional realities.

In some respects it'll be similar to the episode of Farscape when the ship tried to travel at warp and then everything went wrong and it got split into four realities with holes between the four in various locations. Only on a universal scale. That's basically where I got the idea from. That and the episode of Voyager, "Shattered", as well as the "mirror universe" in Star Trek were also inspirations.

The over world maps are going to work a little different from traditional RPGs. As they're suppose to represent an entire planet you're not going to be able to just wander around on foot, which is kind of ridiculous. So in each world, to travel around you *HAVE* to find various means of transportation. Each world will have different forms of transportation, some more advanced than others. Also, as you're traveling around, in some worlds you'll encounter random enemies of various sorts and in others not, depending on the circumstances of that particular world.

One of the things you'll be able to do as you're traveling is to stop on the map screen and "get out" of your transportation. Which in most cases will lead you to a random, generic map that matches the terrain you stopped on. Most will have nothing there, maybe some common items, maybe some monsters. There will be a few spots though in which there will be really good/hidden items, quest items, people to talk to, houses, "Easter eggs", various puzzle related factors, etc, etc. You'll be able to find these hot spots via researching, sleuthing, talking to people, etc, etc.

In some respects it'll be similar to Zelda, "The Ocarina Of Time", where if you have a rumble pack you can find hidden chambers that can be bombed open. That's what the idea is based upon. Basically the whole game is sort of like a massive conglomerate of all the best ideas and my most favorite ideas that I've seen in other video games, anime, cartoons, movies, etc. Along with my own original story. Although even my story is going to be based somewhat on mainstream tropes that I'm fond of, in anime, as well as video games, TV shows and movies. They'll then be refined, expanded upon, broken apart and combined in various ways and developed more indepthly (so as to avoid obvious cliches).