[HN Gopher] MAR1D: First-Person Mario
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       MAR1D: First-Person Mario
        
       Author : rendaw
       Score  : 355 points
       Date   : 2022-10-12 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mar1d.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mar1d.com)
        
       | CodeWriter23 wrote:
       | I'm just saying this hack is the work of a deranged programmer.
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | > Site proudly uses no javascript
       | 
       | Great! There should be a way for google to prioritize this kind
       | of site.
        
         | takoid wrote:
         | Marginalia does this surprisingly well:
         | https://search.marginalia.nu/
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | ojr wrote:
       | "this site proudly uses no javascript", nerdy sites that don't
       | use modern css and or modern javascript most of the time have
       | subpar user experience, I don't read past the first sentence, it
       | traps yourself into a niche of developers who don't mind an ugly
       | Design tradeoff
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | vlunkr wrote:
         | In what way could you make the experience of this site better
         | with js?
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | i think they are just taking the piss out of people that say
           | similar regarding sites that put up dark UI elements that
           | prevent/slow down the reading of a site so that people bounce
           | quickly. only, it just wasn't a good attempt at whatever was
           | being attempted (humor/parody/sarcasm???). then again, maybe
           | i'm just being way too nice to a non-coherent thought?
        
           | nfw2 wrote:
           | You could actually play the game
        
             | vlunkr wrote:
             | It's not a browser game, so no you couldn't.
        
               | nfw2 wrote:
               | I meant that with JS, you could make a browser game,
               | which would be a better experience.
        
       | JadoJodo wrote:
       | Something I've never understood about 2D/Flatland as a "visual"
       | idea:
       | 
       | In the case of this Mar1d, if I'm on the X-axis, and can only see
       | the Y-axis, wouldn't any amount of detail in the Z-axis
       | constitute a 3D image? The Y-axis stretched even a single "pixel"
       | along Z would make it 3D, right?
       | 
       | Similarly, for Flatlandia: If I'm a 2D square on the X-axis, and
       | can see "around" me on the Z-axis, wouldn't my ability to see
       | anything make the Y-axis be > 1?
        
         | LeifCarrotson wrote:
         | The Z axis can be imagined to be infinitesimally narrow.
         | There's no information in the stretching of the Z axis, so you
         | can make that single color of data in the as visible as you
         | like without adding any information.
         | 
         | Our eyes see in two dimensions, so a Mar1d world with a Z axis
         | one Plank length wide would still have the same colors, but
         | it's impossible to see.
        
         | tomxor wrote:
         | Yes, it wouldn't be 3D, but what you are alluding to is
         | projection (X onto Y, or more generally instead of X which
         | would be orthogonal only, a 1D plane of any orientation - AKA
         | line segment) ultimately you are still looking at a 1D image,
         | but it has a 2D shape projected onto it that changes depending
         | on both your orientation and position, so that you can perceive
         | part of the 2D shape's surface as you move.
         | 
         | And this would be more physically correct than either Mario or
         | Mar1D.
         | 
         | The generalisation, starting in 3D, is that you can project the
         | _surface_ of a 3D object onto a 2D plane (which is how we
         | see)... we get a little bit more by gauging depth through
         | stereo separation but ultimately we only get to see one 3D
         | projection onto a 2D plane at any point in time, i.e the entire
         | 3D surface is not accessible, we can 't see behind it, or
         | inside it, and the perception of 3D is constructed in our mind
         | from a combination of general learned/evolved intuition of 3D
         | space and shape and temporal samples for a particular scenario
         | e.g looking around the object from different angles.
         | 
         | Projection can extend to higher and lower dimensions, e.g in 4D
         | space the surface of a 4D object can be projected onto a 3D
         | "plane"; and as you are suggesting, for 2D space you can
         | project a 2D object onto a 1D plane. The projection changing
         | depending on the orientation and position of either the shape
         | or eye/camera.
         | 
         | Normal 2D game rendering doesn't really make any physical sense
         | as a projection unless you consider them to be a narrow 3D
         | world (consider the fact that you can see the entire surface of
         | a square _and_ inside of the square, but Mario the character
         | cannot possibly see this, only a small part of the surface).
         | 
         | But this is all based on a "projection" with the assumption of
         | a lot of opacity... if each particle received from the
         | projection also contained accurate enough depth information and
         | was a vector of all depths traversed for some limit, then full
         | 3D could be perceived in a single 2D projection within a 3D
         | world i.e if you could see "through" objects while still being
         | able to sample each depth.
        
           | couchand wrote:
           | Your last comment reminds me of being in thick fog, where
           | distances can be easily estimated by gauging how obscured the
           | object is.
        
         | d23 wrote:
         | I think you're right, and while I think something simple like
         | fading in and out the elements based on distance would be
         | reasonable (since the game would be unplayable otherwise, as
         | you'd be able to see the entire level), the choice they appear
         | to have made (something non-orthographic) seems to essentially
         | be fully encoding the extra dimension. Otherwise, I can't see
         | how the goomba would appear to get bigger as it gets closer to
         | mario.
        
         | Bakary wrote:
         | In a properly 2D universe, there would be the equivalent of
         | some sort of planck length that is essentially the only length.
         | The equivalent of a string of one-bit messages that shift
         | around. We chose to visualize it through something that has
         | width because we are unable to properly understand the
         | alternative.
        
         | ryanisnan wrote:
         | If the width of a pixel along the Z-axis is arbitrary, and you
         | only see one, no, it would not be 3D. It's still 2D, you just
         | have the ability to more easily see. You gain no new
         | information.
        
           | cassianoleal wrote:
           | I'm with GP on this one. You say "width of a pixel". That
           | width is a dimension. If that dimension exists, along with X
           | and Y, then it should 3D.
           | 
           | And that's when talking about video-games or computer
           | graphics. In the Flatland example, there are no pixels. The
           | characters shouldn't be able to see each other or the
           | structures on their 2D plane at all.
        
             | Bakary wrote:
             | They can if you see it as some sort of one-bit messaging as
             | opposed to traditional vision
        
             | bee_rider wrote:
             | Characters in a flat universe would have different sensory
             | organs than us, talking about "sight" seems more like a
             | translation for humans. "Sight" is a highly directional,
             | high-resolution, low-latency sense, the physics of it... I
             | mean the characters might not even understand it, we didn't
             | for the vast majority of human history.
             | 
             | All of physics would have to be different anyway, down to
             | really fundamental stuff like how quantities which spread
             | from a source radially operate, since we'd be looking at
             | perimeters rather than surface areas.
        
             | jakelazaroff wrote:
             | Don't think of the "width of a pixel" as what you'd see
             | from the perspective of that 2D plane -- think of it as a
             | _2D projection_ of a 1D space.
        
             | fnordpiglet wrote:
             | No, it's not. A dimension requires freedom to be
             | parameterized and independence from other dimensions. In
             | this example "Y" is invariantly defined as 1. Similarly a
             | level surface defines a dimension to a fixed value and
             | provides an n-1 dimensional view of a n dimensional view.
             | Mapping this to a level surface you declare Y=1 and only X
             | is varying. Y has scale but no dimensionality due to its
             | lack of freedom.
        
         | bee_rider wrote:
         | I think we have to imagine 2D Mario, as a being which lives in
         | a 2D world, has his "sight" via an organ which has evolved
         | differently from a human eye. So, the the viewport with a
         | single wide pixel is really just an appropriate visualization
         | for us 3D beings.
        
         | EmilyHughes wrote:
         | Correct. That's why this game is 3D and not 1D.
        
         | chc wrote:
         | I think you're imagining a projection of a 2D world into three
         | dimensions and correctly observing that it's three-dimensional.
         | 
         | Imagine a 2D world with two squares and a circle. One of the
         | squares pushes the circle and it rolls into the other square,
         | impacting it. This is all plausible in a purely 2D setting,
         | right? Assuming that these objects can't take up the same 2D
         | space, it makes sense that the square would be impacted by the
         | circle. This is how vision works -- photons bounce around and
         | our eyes sense them. There wouldn't actually be any Z-axis to
         | what you're seeing, you'd just be registering 2D photon-
         | equivalents moving in two dimensions. But in order to represent
         | it as something our brains can recognize as "seeing," we have
         | to project the input into some non-zero dimension.
         | 
         | A different representation could emphasize this point better.
         | You could have this same basic game, but instead of first-
         | person, have it be third-person but with actual vision
         | simulation, so that you only see the parts of objects that
         | Mario would see and everything else is simply absent.
        
         | babypuncher wrote:
         | It's basically a 2D game but they replaced the width dimension
         | with depth. Wolfenstein 1-D [1] is a true 1-dimensional game.
         | The game is represented by a single straight line of pixels,
         | and player movement is restricted to a single axis.
         | 
         | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_1-D
        
         | derefr wrote:
         | A thing photographers / image-effects people think about a lot:
         | pixels aren't little squares; they're _sample points_.
         | 
         | If you've ever played around with graphics-rendering -- UV
         | coordinate sampling, convolution, etc -- then you know that you
         | can think of a (2D) raster image as really being a grid of
         | samples of what color you get when you look at the UV
         | coordinate represented by the center of that grid-point on some
         | underlying hypothetical continuous texture.
         | 
         | Which is to say: if you have a pixel-art image (i.e. one
         | created at pixel scale, pixel by pixel, rather than created
         | with continuous-art techniques and then scaled down), and you
         | want to scale it up "conservatively", without making up any
         | information that doesn't already exist in the image -- then the
         | right way to do that _isn 't_ to blow up the pixels themselves,
         | nearest-neighbour style (as if the hypothetical underlying
         | texture is a tessellation of infinitely-sharply-bounded little
         | squares); but _nor_ is it to stretch the image with bilinear
         | /cubic/etc. resampling (as if the hypothetical underlying
         | texture is a continuous blend from the color at the center of
         | each sample into its neighbours.)
         | 
         | Really, the _conservative_ approach to enlarging a pixel-art
         | image, is to throw your hands up and give up -- because you
         | actually _don 't have the information_ for what occupies any UV
         | coordinate of the underlying hypothetical continuous texture,
         | other than the exact center-point of each grid square, where
         | the pixel-art pixel sample is located. A pixel-art image,
         | created from scratch _as_ pixels, only really _tells_ you what
         | 's at the exact center point of each grid-square. Every _other_
         | possible sample-point in each grid-square is left undefined. If
         | you picture an infinitely-small dot in the center of each grid-
         | square, with the rest left  "empty", _that 's_ the data you
         | have about the "underlying image", from seeing a pixel-art
         | image. Anything beyond that is "compressed sensing" -- an
         | inference, not a logical deduction.
         | 
         | But to directly address your point: you see pixels, because
         | that's how the game has to be _rendered_ -- as a 2D extrusion
         | -- for it to show up on a screen for you to see. But in
         | concept, the game is giving you a one-dimensional array of
         | sample-points -- a sampling of an underlying hypothetical _one-
         | dimensional_ continuous texture.
        
         | fnordpiglet wrote:
         | No. To be a dimension there needs to be freedom. In this case
         | the Y is quantized at one pixel and there's no independent
         | parameter in that direction, just an invariant quantum.
        
       | grimgrin wrote:
       | my buddy once made a '1d roguelike'
       | 
       | it is exactly what it is lol (aka 110 lines of bash)
       | 
       | https://github.com/rupa/YOU_ARE_DEAD
        
       | metadat wrote:
       | Lol, this is hilarious.
        
         | xtiansimon wrote:
         | I was thinking a lot of weed was consumed in the making of this
         | project.
        
       | hijinks wrote:
       | waiting for the first group of people to speed run this
        
       | chadlavi wrote:
       | ow ow ouch my brain
       | 
       | this is neat
        
       | an1sotropy wrote:
       | If you like this, you'll like Planiverse (1984)
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse
       | 
       | A bit like the classic Flatland book, this also imagines a 2D
       | world, and also fosters thinking about higher dimensions. But
       | there's a nice shift: if there's an "up" in Flatland, it points
       | out of the world, whereas in Planiverse, the up is in-world, and
       | we visit the world by looking at it from the side, rather than
       | from above. So the creatures of Planiverse would be _great_ at
       | playing MAR1D.
       | 
       | Planiverse also creatively thinks through a lot of the physical
       | and mechanical realities of living in a 2D world, and is wrapped
       | in a poignant narrative about using computers to connect to
       | alternate realities.
       | 
       | (ah shoot I just learned that the author has turned into a 9/11
       | truther, but Planiverse remains a cool book)
        
         | lioeters wrote:
         | Planiverse is one of my all-time favorite books. Some tasty
         | morsels:
         | 
         | The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World -
         | Engineering Designs in Planiverse -
         | https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/project...
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | > Dewdney wrote The Planiverse as..an allegory for his search
         | for a reality deeper than that of scientific enquiry, and his
         | subsequent conversion to Sufiism.
         | 
         | We're the ones living in flatland, a planiverse of limited 3D
         | perspective, who yearn for higher dimensions of experience, a
         | glimpse of the beyond. Unfortunately it's not without risk, as
         | this way madness lies - either as a trap of illusion, or at
         | least as a step toward fundamental truth (if any).
        
           | egypturnash wrote:
           | _subsequent conversion to Sufiism._
           | 
           | Huh. That makes a lot of sense from what I remember of the
           | way the whole thing ended, with Yendred's time under the
           | tutelage of Drabk the Sharak. Hello weird names still stuck
           | in my head after thirty or so years.
           | 
           | Not that this wasn't also a theme in Abbot's earlier
           | _Flatland_ , most of _his_ other writing was theology, and
           | it, too, climaxes with a mystical experience for its 2D
           | protagonist. But A. Square ends up back in his flat world,
           | writing from a madhouse, rather than transcending it and
           | going on to... something inexplicable.
           | 
           | I have spent time poking against this sort of thing and
           | madness is definitely a possible result.
        
         | hobo_in_library wrote:
         | > I just learned that the author has turned into a 9/11 truther
         | 
         | I don't get those folks. Personally, I identify as a 9/11
         | falser.
        
       | worewood wrote:
       | Well, we see the world as a 2d projection BUT we (usually) have 2
       | eyes so we have some amount of 3d-info.
       | 
       | Maybe mario has 2 eyes too, which would give him some amount of
       | 2d-info. (Just like an MRI can construct a 2d slice from 1d
       | info). So the first person game should have maybe a depth info on
       | those pixels.
       | 
       | What I mean, mario does not see only a line. He sees a silhouette
       | of what lies ahead of him.
        
         | samwillis wrote:
         | I think it would require one eye above the other to have depth
         | perception in his 2d world.
         | 
         | Eyes can't even be side-by-side as that axis doesn't exist.
         | 
         | Having said that, the human brain is capable of reconstructing
         | a 3d perception with only one eye through learnt understand and
         | interpreting the picture change over time as you move. I image
         | it's the same for Mario, but in 2d.
        
           | bmitc wrote:
           | > I think it would require one eye above the other to have
           | depth perception in his 2d world.
           | 
           | Is his world actually 2D though? Or a 3D world projected down
           | to 2D? The latter is what I would expect.
        
           | diob wrote:
           | Yeah, as someone with a lazy eye 3d honestly isn't much
           | different than 2d.
        
             | WastingMyTime89 wrote:
             | But eye don't really see in 2d anyway. There are plenty of
             | tricks involved in the vision cortex based on how your head
             | moves and how your eye scans and accommodates for its 3d
             | field of view. It's far more complex than just producing a
             | 2d image for the brain to interpret.
        
           | wellthisisgreat wrote:
           | In original Mario he does have only one eye though, and it's
           | on the side of his face?
        
             | dfxm12 wrote:
             | No, Mario has two eyes. You can see the other when you go
             | the other way.
        
           | dusted wrote:
           | exactly, if mario had stereo vision, it'd have to be his eyes
           | were on top of each other.. And just like how 3D games
           | projected onto a 2D monitor are not much different from their
           | VR counterparts, a 2D game projected into stereo 1D wouldn't
           | be much more interesting either..
           | 
           | I thought about it, how our eyes are placed on the sides,
           | probably because we're very earth-bound, and horizon lies
           | that way and such.. It'd be really interesting if we had an
           | additional third eye on our forehead, it'd give us a bit more
           | detailed depth perception, but I don't think it'd be that
           | much more useful.
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | Also, human eyes aren't passive sensors like cameras. We move
           | them (consciously and unconsciously) to gather more info as
           | we need it.
           | 
           | And we have a few unconscious abilities like seeing light
           | polarization that can help:
           | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4528539/
        
         | xwdv wrote:
         | 2D Mario doesn't have two eyes, he has one. If he is drawn with
         | two eyes the second one would be inside his body and would not
         | see anything as it's view is blocked by pixels.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | If you look at the initial zoom, his eye actually lies within
           | his head, so it's unclear how he can see anything at all.
        
             | xwdv wrote:
             | That is strange.
        
               | checkyoursudo wrote:
               | Semi-transparent head, probably. But it means he can only
               | see light intensity, which is why he falls into holes and
               | runs into dangerous objects on the regular.
        
           | UmYeahNo wrote:
           | If we take it further, even the eye "we" _can_ see is blocked
           | by the bridge of his nose, so I doubt he actually sees
           | anything.
        
             | zeristor wrote:
             | What would the people in a Picasso picture see?
             | 
             | There's one for Dall-e Mario level as painted by Picasso
        
           | pyrale wrote:
           | You can see Mario has two eyes on his death animation,
           | though.
        
           | sebastialonso wrote:
           | this is the kind of arguments I come to Hacker news to read
           | about.
        
             | tysehr37 wrote:
             | It's beautiful
        
       | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | meitros wrote:
       | no wonder he needs your help to complete levels
        
       | joshxyz wrote:
       | thats hilariously good, well done sir
        
       | layer8 wrote:
       | Article about the 80s version: https://hard-
       | drive.net/retrospective-we-look-back-at-super-m...
        
       | jamesjyu wrote:
       | I bet you could still train a neural net to complete the levels
       | only using the 1D slices as input.
        
         | Bakary wrote:
         | Would it even be that much more difficult for the net than 2D
         | Mario?
        
           | jamesjyu wrote:
           | My gut says it'll be a tad more difficult since you won't
           | have any data beyond what's directly in front of mario. Maybe
           | the AI will end up doing a bunch of rapid peeks to determine
           | next move, especially when there are large pits.
        
       | bitwize wrote:
       | I get it, but I still prefer these:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBb9wFP7uZM
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf-2Imh6a54
        
         | commandlinefan wrote:
         | Ha, that's more or less what I was hoping the link would be.
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | Correct me if I'm wrong, but those seems to be 3d
         | renderings/animations rather than interactive games, different
         | class :)
        
           | jerf wrote:
           | I think the idea is that just because Mario takes place on a
           | 2D plane doesn't mean we're obligated to assume that Mario is
           | literally a mathematical two dimensional figure. These videos
           | may still be very silly in terms of a real-world situation,
           | but they're no more or less "correct" than the linked video
           | for the original post.
        
       | piggybox wrote:
       | LOL, that's pretty hard
        
       | ClassAndBurn wrote:
       | This is like the first half of Flatland visualized[1]!
       | 
       | I always found imaginating Square's point of view a fun
       | challenge. Seeing a world, I otherwise recognize the same way
       | gives it a whole new dimension.
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland
        
       | cheschire wrote:
       | This is neat. I love fun with dimensions like this. This 4D
       | minecraft clone is a similarly fun thing.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8LMyWcKL_c
        
         | tysehr37 wrote:
         | Interesting, their way of demonstrating a 4th dimension is very
         | unique. love how it became a game mechanic
        
       | imbusy111 wrote:
       | That is a terrifying way to live your whole life.
        
         | nigerianbrince wrote:
         | Someone out there might feel the same way about us. (2d vision)
        
         | vadansky wrote:
         | Now you know how Tralfamadorians think about us
        
         | smoldesu wrote:
         | Plumbing does _not_ get any easier when you lose a dimension 's
         | worth of eyesight.
        
           | OscarCunningham wrote:
           | You can't even connect three houses to three utilities.
        
       | thomastjeffery wrote:
       | Reminds me of Fez
        
       | seanmcdirmid wrote:
       | This approach lacks perspective (well duh). It reminds me of the
       | Flatland book, when people from 3D worlds experience 2D ones.
        
       | yissp wrote:
       | See also, the glEnd() of Zelda http://tom7.org/zelda/
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | That's 3D though, not nearly as interesting as 1D Mario :)
        
           | mzs wrote:
           | sort of, start here: https://youtu.be/xDxjbXAqTPg?t=647
        
       | dusted wrote:
       | I wonder if I still have my prototype somewhere, exactly the same
       | thought.. We humans exist in 3D space, yet perceive the world in
       | 2D (with some additional depth perception added).. Sooo.. our
       | perception is 1 dimension less. If someone were to inhibit only 2
       | dimensions, they'd perceive one dimension less, so 1D. Now, to
       | translate that back into something a human could see, it'd just
       | be... bands.. My engine had the bands extend the entire width,
       | but same thing. I also made a 1D version, where you.. yes, move
       | along a single axis, and your perception is thus 0 dimensions,
       | simply a point (extended to fill the entire screen) that changed
       | brightness.
       | 
       | I also made another one were you were a a typical 2D platformer
       | character, but with the ability to rotate around your own Y axis,
       | so the levels were fully 3D environments, and it sliced a plane
       | through the world with the origin being the player character. You
       | had to turn around yourself a lot to get an idea of the
       | environment.
        
       | nfw2 wrote:
       | - Site proudly uses no javascript
       | 
       | Embedding the game into the browser using JS and WebGL seems like
       | the obvious way to let people experience it easily. Most people
       | aren't going to download it.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | latchkey wrote:
       | Darn, I was hoping to see things rotated 45' ccw and viewing from
       | the back of mario running forward towards a horizon (almost
       | appearing to run uphill) and then jumping onto blocks and pipes
       | as if they are coming at him.
        
       | mynameisash wrote:
       | I was hoping to see something that would be even half as fun to
       | play as Mari0 [0], which is a SMB + Portal mash-up.
       | 
       | [0] https://stabyourself.net/mari0/
        
       | twic wrote:
       | Made me think of another one-dimensional crawl game, Line
       | Wobbler:
       | 
       | https://wobblylabs.com/projects/wobbler
       | 
       | I'm not sure how well the site and videos explain it, but you
       | control a green dot trying to travel along a line. You have to
       | beat or evade enemies, lava, etc along the way. You control it
       | with a spring door stop, but that's not what it's about.
        
       | bscphil wrote:
       | I love this.
       | 
       | Another way to 3D-ize a 2D (sidescrolling, platform) game, if
       | someone wants to take it as inspiration: rather than assume the
       | (infinitely thin) 2D plane of the game to be 1 pixel thick,
       | assume that everything in the 2D plane has _infinite_ depth.
       | 
       | Because of perspective, this will look very different than 1
       | pixel stretched horizontally, which is what this game does. In
       | fact, with a little shadowing and applying the object textures to
       | the z-y axes of the object rather than the x-y axes, I expect
       | many 2D games would actually be playable like this. I think the
       | results would be bizarre, but extremely fun for fans of the game.
        
       | imwillofficial wrote:
       | I don't get it, what am I missing
        
         | forgetfulness wrote:
         | We normally see Mario's world from an external vantage point
         | that doesn't exist in his.
         | 
         | Imagine a normal brick in our world, what we see are
         | projections of the outside surface, but we of course can't see
         | inside the brick, not without breaking it at least, but then
         | you end up with a series of smaller objects that you can only
         | see from the outside, again.
         | 
         | Likewise, Mario wouldn't be able to see the shapes we see
         | because we're looking at the totality of them, the outside and
         | the inside, all at once, because we're 3D, but they are not.
         | 
         | He would only be able to see the outside, which in his case are
         | the lines making up the contours of the bricks, goombas, etc.
        
           | imwillofficial wrote:
           | If it's 2d only, wouldn't his perspective be an infinitely
           | thin line? Or am I being too literal and missing the point
        
             | forgetfulness wrote:
             | Probably, but there still would be distinct "points" in so
             | far he can perceive them. We need them stretched out a bit
             | but there's not two pixels in this game's width dimension,
             | it's the same point stretched out in our screens, never is
             | there more information besides one pixel than another in
             | our screen in the horizontal axis from what I can tell.
        
       | justusthane wrote:
       | I'm surprised by all the dismissive comments here. This is a
       | really clever and thought-provoking idea, and I believe that is
       | the spirit in which it is intended (rather than as an "actual"
       | game).
        
         | mrmuagi wrote:
         | It's reducing a 2d game into a 1d one which kind of nauseating
         | -- I thought by the title it would be like Super Mario Oyssey
         | with a first person camera.
        
         | incanus77 wrote:
         | When I want a game where a plumber gets warped into a mushroom
         | kingdom and fights turtles by jumping on them, I want realism,
         | dammit!
        
           | tomrod wrote:
           | Game of Thrones style?
        
         | tomcam wrote:
         | It's a brilliant, creative idea and the small-mindedness here
         | is disappointing.
        
           | joshl32532 wrote:
           | You can't call all criticism as small-mindedness.
           | 
           | This might be brilliant and creative to you, but to some this
           | is just not that impressive, technical or otherwise.
        
             | tomcam wrote:
             | > You can't call all criticism as small-mindedness.
             | 
             | You appear to be hallucinating. Where did I do that?
             | 
             | > to some this is just not that impressive
             | 
             | Of course I agree with that point because, you know...
             | opinions
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | Y_Y wrote:
           | Well I think it's shit. It's a not-so-interesting view of the
           | kind of perspective change you get from something like
           | http://tom7.org/zelda/ and I resent the suggestion that the
           | reason I don't like it is my own smallmindedness. I have many
           | flaws but that isn't one of them.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | nano9 wrote:
         | > This is a really clever and thought-provoking idea, and I
         | believe that is the spirit in which it is intended (rather than
         | as an "actual" game).
         | 
         | It seems more like an elaborate joke to me. I can see people
         | being annoyed after being teased with the notion of a new game,
         | only for it to be a gag.
        
       | danjoredd wrote:
       | inb4 Nintendo DMCAs
        
       | ugh123 wrote:
       | TBH I was hoping for something a little more "realistic". I just
       | see a line of squares moving around and seems unplayable.
        
         | olah_1 wrote:
         | Yeah I was hoping for something more like the Cruis'n USA
         | racing games where the world is scrolling at you and your
         | character stays stationary.
        
         | dm319 wrote:
         | There are several VR 3D Super Mario Bros adaptations which are
         | easily found on google. But of course they have to take
         | liberties in the Z plane.
        
         | tomerv wrote:
         | Something like this?
         | 
         | http://tom7.org/zelda/
        
           | dan_quixote wrote:
           | tom7 is awesome. He made an awesome and hilarious video years
           | ago about his SIGBOVIK paper/research on AI playing NES:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCurBYI_gY
        
       | WFHRenaissance wrote:
       | I vaguely remember this being a thing in ~2014? Maybe earlier?
        
       | ogoparootbbo wrote:
       | how is this 1d when there is a second dimension albeit small?
        
         | the_af wrote:
         | If you mean the line doesn't have a single pixel width, this is
         | what the website explains:                   How is this 1D?
         | The game is more than one pixel wide!                  The game
         | width can actually be adjusted, including to a width of one
         | pixel. That's how I prefer to play, but other people had
         | trouble seeing what was going on.                  Regardless
         | of how much you stretch it though, there is only one dimension
         | of information, the horizontal smear is entirely redundant.
         | Your computer's pixels have some amount of depth to them, but
         | that doesn't mean the games you play on them have 3 dimensional
         | viewports.
        
       | malkia wrote:
       | What if you create several parallax projections and play how many
       | would be enough to get something more playable - 1.5D :)
        
       | ffhhj wrote:
       | Expected a Wolfenstein 3D kind of game like:
       | 
       | https://youtube.com/watch?time_continue=650&v=xDxjbXAqTPg
        
       | furyofantares wrote:
       | Mario has very poor eye placement for a 2d character and
       | shouldn't be able to see anything but his nose.
        
       | Shared404 wrote:
       | I quite enjoyed the writing style on the landing page as well as
       | the content.
       | 
       | Very reminiscent of BDG/Unraveled.
        
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