A note on cantr geography

General out-of-character discussion among players of Cantr II.

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new.vogue.nightmare
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Postby new.vogue.nightmare » Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:31 am

Being programmed in 2 dimensions, cantr has no third dimension. Just as we, being three dimensional, cannot move through any kind of fourth dimensional means (i'm not counting 'time' as the fourth dimension here). Erm. Carl Sagan wrote some great stuff about comprehension of other physical dimensions. Yay for theoretical physics!
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Postby DELGRAD » Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:54 am

new.vogue.nightmare wrote:Being programmed in 2 dimensions, cantr has no third dimension. Just as we, being three dimensional, cannot move through any kind of fourth dimensional means (i'm not counting 'time' as the fourth dimension here). Erm. Carl Sagan wrote some great stuff about comprehension of other physical dimensions. Yay for theoretical physics!



Well... I was going to bring time into it, but you cut that off.
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formerly known as hf
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Postby formerly known as hf » Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:55 am

The closest 3d representation of the 2d Cantr map is not a torus, but a hollow cylinder.

(Take a piece of paper, fold it in half so the top and bottom sides meet, then wrap it around so that the left and right sides meet.)

This isn't 100% accurate, as there will be a difference in the curvature of the inner and outer parts of the cylinder - and it's still a toroid, just made with an incredibly elongated elipse.
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kinvoya
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Postby kinvoya » Wed Dec 20, 2006 10:14 am

I just watched a show on PBS the other day with a physicist talking about a fourth dimension as possibly being a place in the universe where certain things exist that don't exist in our celestial neighborhood. I think she called it a brane. She postulated that in this other brane gravity is stronger than in our brane thus explaining some physics mystery that I didn't know existed having to do with weak gravity in our chunk of reality.

On topic: Gravity exists in Cantr. Things fall down. Isn't rl gravity created by the mass of the earth? If Cantr is two-dimensional can it have mass or enough mass for gravity to pull things downward?
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new.vogue.nightmare
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Postby new.vogue.nightmare » Wed Dec 20, 2006 10:37 am

Nobody says it falls 'down' actually....you 'drop' it and it appears in the location. Also note that there is no 'height' parameter to anyone or anything. only mass and x/y coordinates. So it's not a bunch of 3-dimensional occurrences on a flat plane of a world; rather everything is in that plane. As such, since objects are incapable of moving 'up' or 'down,' being in a two-dimensional existence, the gravitational effects would not be to keep things on the plane, just as objects in space don't mysteriously change their fourth-dimensional coordinates and disappear entirely from our universe.

Don't try using three dimensional logic in a two-dimensional universe--you'll just confuse yourself.

If anything, gravity would only affect one's tendency to change x/y coordinates, and nobody's mass is quite enough to do anything noticeable. Perhaps if we gathered a few billion grams in a single point, everyone would be drawn towards it? >.> Actually, let's not. Two dimensional physics make my brain hurt after too long ; ;
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Postby west » Wed Dec 20, 2006 5:50 pm

All incidental text portrays cantr as a three-dimensional world.

Whether or not the world is "flat" with mystical teleportation wrapping or in fact toroid, the characters exist in a three-spacial-dimension-plus-time world.
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Jos Elkink
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Postby Jos Elkink » Wed Dec 20, 2006 6:36 pm

new.vogue.nightmare, what happens to your theory once we implement flying? :)
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Postby Talapus » Thu Dec 21, 2006 7:02 am

new.vogue.nightmare wrote:Also note that there is no 'height' parameter to anyone or anything.


And there you are wrong. A crowbar not only has a weight (and yes, it is weight :D ) of 215 grams, but it also has a length of 15, width of 7, and height of 40. There are many such entries in the database. Also note that resources have densities which implies a volume (three dimensional space).

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