Message #1269

From: Roice Nelson <roice3@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: Announcing MC4D for Android
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 10:41:51 -0600

Hi Melinda,

One nice feature I’ve seen on laptop touchpads is the use of multi-touch
dragging to control browser panning. If Android can distinguish between
normal single-finger dragging and multi-touch dragging (and it seems like it
might since it has pinching), the latter might be a viable way to support a
4D rotation mode.

On my laptop, browser panning (both horizontal and vertical) is controlled
by single-finger dragging along the edges of the touchpad, so that could be
another option.

Take Care,
Roice

On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 10:29 PM, Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>wrote:

> Andrey,
>
> I’m glad that you got it installed and have been playing with it. There
> are certainly several big usability problems with the first version and
> I intend to address some of them but it is really not meant to be
> anything but a toy to fool with and show off. I would feel somewhat
> horrified if anyone attempted a real solution with it, especially as
> there is no way to save and load log files. I don’t want to encourage
> that and almost didn’t include a "full" scramble option for that reason.
> Still, I would like it to be somewhat useful as a portable practice
> tool. I don’t want to add a control panel or menu modes for this reason.
> The one mode I would love to support is the 4D shift-dragging which is a
> wonderful way to show off the 4D nature of the puzzle and to get at the
> invisible face. I just don’t see a good way to do any of these things.
>
> Note too that there is no control, shift, or other modifier keys
> supported since there is no natural way to do that in Android that I can
> see. I implemented counter-clockwise twists as long taps, so if you hold
> your finger down for more than a quarter second before releasing, it is
> supposed to twist CCW, but obviously that’s difficult to do without
> triggering 3D rotation.
>
> I definitely want to tune the autorotation threshold which I agree is
> too sensitive. It makes me crazy too.
>
> I also need to not perform scrambling twists on the outer face because
> there is no way for the user to deal with them.
>
> I’m considering just turning this into a 2^4 puzzle because it is so
> hard to accurately select from such tiny stickers, even with
> pinch-zooming, and it’s very hard to twist on the central face because
> of this and the difficulty of reaching between the other faces. I would
> appreciate anyone’s opinion on the choice of puzzle because I would be
> sad to not offer the full 3^4 but it may just be too un-fun.
>
> The tablet platform seems like another thing altogether. Large puzzles
> may be usable there, and a large, high resolution plus a multi-touch
> interface may provide a much more direct experience with the puzzle than
> our current desktop applications. When I went back to the desktop app I
> found that I missed that sort of direct, tactile connection with the
> puzzle. I definitely need to think about the possibilities for this
> platform a lot more.
>
> One nice thing is that I have gotten the better part of 1,000 downloads
> in less than 48 hours, so it is generating a good bit of interest. Much
> more so than my other apps so there is certainly some interest out there
> which I hope will lead more people to try the full-featured app and to
> join our nice little community of hyper-puzzlers!
>
> Thanks for testing and for your suggestions,
> -Melinda
>
>