4D Games: Dev-log Update 4
26 Feb 2023The last two months have been pretty busy. I have added a bunch of new 4D Shapes to the game; Created a mini tutorial for chess; modeled the Knight; and put a focus on improving the user experience.
The Knight!!!
I started an issue tracker right after I modeled all the chess pieces (except the Knight). The first Issue I added was to model the Knight.
It took several attempts until I was happy, but after 7 Months the Chess family is finally complete!
Learning Chess in 4D!
To allow players to understand how the pieces move before playing the game, I added a mini tutorial to the pre-game menu. You can check out special moves such as Castling and En Passant, as well as how each piece moves along the board.
It also allows people get the hang of navigating the 3D environment before getting into a game. (Although I have something in the works for less dexterous users, so stay tuned)
More Shapes!
Several new shapes have been added to the game, but the most notable are 3 new platonic solids and 3 prisms!
There are an infinite number of 4D prisms, which are just 3D prisms extruded along the W Axis, but I decided everything up to a hexagonal prism was enough for now.
As for the platonic solids, the Hexadecachoron (Hyper Octahedron), the Icositetrachoron (Hyper Diamond), and the Dodecacontachoron (Hyper Dodecahedron) have been added to the game; making up 5 of the 6 4D platonic solids. The only platonic solid now missing is the Hexacosichoron (Hyper Icosahedron) just because 600 faces is rather expensive to render with ray marching, and probably will not run well on the vast majority of computers, although it is still likely better than the bigger 4D mazes as of right now.
Every other shape, I have managed to define myself. However, the Icositetrachoron and the Dodecacontachoron would have taken me a whole lot longer to figure if I hadn't have found them already defined on ShaderToy by user Azorlogh, who created all 6 of the 4D platonic solids!
The 3D counterparts to all the 4D shapes have also been added to the 3D playground to view the similarities to 4D.
Data! Data! Data!
Let's start with the data for the 4D maze game!
After completing a maze, you will be able to see the time it took, the moves you made, and the minimum number of moves you could have made to complete the maze. Currently this just shows your last 10 mazes (for each size of maze), however, I am considering having your fastest/personal best time listed as well.
As for the other games, I have implemented some popup info boxes that appear when you hover over data points in the match game graphs to give the user more information on the last games they played.
Shape Match
Rotation Match
Navigation and Controls
The last 2 months were also spent improving the user experience by implementing keyboard navigation for the user interface. You can now maintain focus on different spaces on the screen and traverse between buttons, sliders, option menus and more.
Outside of the UI, I have also added rotation snapping to the Playground modes, so you can manipulate these shapes with more precision!
Weather Experiments…
I know, I know... The backgrounds still look super boring...
I have been working hard on trying to get a good looking skybox for the games, but have been struggling to really nail down a style. Here is a collage of reference images I am using so you can try and get an idea of the look I am going for at the moment. I am aiming for a very subtle grid-like techy background with some subtle but fantastical lens flare effects to hint at the idea of a sun. I don't want it to distract from anything else on screen, but I still want it to look cool, but I still have a long way to go.
Next Time…
What comes next involves a lot of polishing, and a lot of aesthetic development/improvements. Hopefully by the next update, the user interface will be in a much more final state, and the skybox will be done. However this may take a while.
My current focus is on integrating 4D Games with Steam. Setting up achievements, getting a local co-op (with Steam Remote Play Together) working for 4D Chess, as well as making a start on the store page. This is also going to take quite a bit of time, because I really want to nail down a more polished logo/title before I make a start on any other branding.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for whats next!
