Sorry, I wasn't very precise about what I meant. I wasn't
suggesting any
changes regarding the invisible face, but rather the hyperstickers on
the
outside 'edges' of all the visible faces.
The reason being that when you are trying to place the inside
cubelets
of each face, part of the problem is actually verifying what colour
they
are, since they are obscured by the outer hyperstickers. I found
myself
wiggling it round a lot to see between the gaps.
If you could make the outside hyperstickers transparent (e.g.
wireframe,
so you could still tell they were there) this would make the job
easier,
since the inside cubelets would then be clearly visible. But then
perhaps
I'm just lazy :)
This only applies to the 4^4 and 5^4 since they have substantial
inner
bits (2x2x2, 3x3x3) that need arranging.
Jon
P.S. (OFF-TOPIC) I recently moved to Paris and am having trouble
finding a
job in software testing/development. If anyone has useful
contacts/advice
I'd be very grateful. Thanks.
--- End forwarded message ---
Sorry, I wasn't very precise about what I meant. I wasn't
suggesting any
changes regarding the invisible face, but rather the hyperstickers on
the
outside 'edges' of all the visible faces.
The reason being that when you are trying to place the inside
cubelets
of each face, part of the problem is actually verifying what colour
they
are, since they are obscured by the outer hyperstickers. I found
myself
wiggling it round a lot to see between the gaps.
If you could make the outside hyperstickers transparent (e.g.
wireframe,
so you could still tell they were there) this would make the job
easier,
since the inside cubelets would then be clearly visible. But then
perhaps
I'm just lazy :)
This only applies to the 4^4 and 5^4 since they have substantial
inner
bits (2x2x2, 3x3x3) that need arranging.
Jon
P.S. (OFF-TOPIC) I recently moved to Paris and am having trouble
finding a
job in software testing/development. If anyone has useful
contacts/advice
I'd be very grateful. Thanks.
--- End forwarded message ---
> Sorry, I wasn't very precise about what I meant. I wasn't
suggesting any
> changes regarding the invisible face, but rather the
hyperstickers on the
> outside 'edges' of all the visible faces.
> The reason being that when you are trying to place the inside
cubelets
> of each face, part of the problem is actually verifying what
colour they
> are, since they are obscured by the outer hyperstickers. I found
myself
> wiggling it round a lot to see between the gaps.
These X resource values:
MagicCube4D*eyew: 8
MagicCube4D*stickershrink: .4
make the 4^4 cube a lot easier to see. You can put the above two
lines in the .Xdefaults or .Xresources file in your home directory.
(If you already have one, use that one. If not, .Xresources is more
standard and supported by most distributions, but .Xdefaults is almost
certain to work in any environment. It depends upon how your login
environment loads your resources -- if it uses xrdb, which it should,
then .Xresources is your better bet.)
You can play around with these and other parameters. Look at the
readme files for details. I was thinking about having the system
automatically calculate values for these based on the number of pieces
per side. When I brought this up a few years ago, Don offered the
following, which I haven't looked at recently:
> For an nxnx... puzzle, to get the stickers on a cubie to meet,
> set F=faceshrink in terms of S=stickershrink as follows:
> F = n / (n-1 + S)
> For example:
> n=3 S=1 F=1
> n=3 S=.5 F=1.2
> n=3 S=0 F=1.5
> I think it looks better with a small crack, e.g. S=.5,F=1.19.
> Other interesting values are S=.95,F=1-- this makes it look
and act like
> a 3-D Rubik's cube (as long as you don't click on corners or
edges).
> However, most of these interesting non-standard values
> show up the inadequacy of the depth-sort algorithm, even when
> sitting still.
Good luck!
Jay
--- End forwarded message ---
> > If you could make the outside hyperstickers transparent
> > (e.g. wireframe, so you could still tell they were there) this
> > would make the job easier, since the inside cubelets would then
> > be clearly visible. But then perhaps I'm just lazy :)
>
> > This only applies to the 4^4 and 5^4 since they have
> > substantial inner bits (2x2x2, 3x3x3) that need arranging.
>
> ah, ok. an no, you're not lazy. your suggestion is extremely
reasonable.
>
> jay, would you please add jonathan's suggestion to the wishlist?
It has been added. I agree -- this is a really good idea. I don't
think I would want to undertake the 5^4 version of the puzzle without
this change. Though I will point out again that you can improve the
usability of the larger puzzles dramatically by messing around with
some of the drawing parameters in the environment as I described in an
earlier message. At least for the time being....
I verified that I still can't build a cleanly functioning X version of
the puzzle with the latest library. One day in my spare time, I'm
going to spend a day and track this down or rework the code to avoid
it. Unless someone else beats me to it, that is. :-)
Jay
--- End forwarded message ---