I''ll just stick to the design boards, thanks... So, we''ve all heard argued that time can be considered the 4th dimension. Yet some scientists insist there is a 4th spatial dimension that cannot yet be seen. You know, the whole "take a cube and draw a hypothetical 4th right angle inside it" argument. I say it''s a mixture of both. Time can be treated as a spatial, that can be bent, traversed across in both directions, et cetera. I argue that if someone were to make visible dimensions smaller, time would somehow also seem smaller. For example, if you were sucked into a black hole, I contend that you would never reach the center. You would possibly be crushed to death, but millions of lifetimes would pass, and the center could never be reached. Kind of like that whole "square wave" thing. Look it up. But all revelations aside, I''ve written up a sort of screenplay that could be used in either a movie or a game that deals with time being less of what dictates our lives. Allow me to explain: Our hero leads a miserable life involved with galaxy-wide oppression through a 20-year war between humans and aliens. The aliens aren''t necessarily evil, by the way. After the war, he is involved in a secret faction that looks for power to reunite the races. He comes across a subspace signal announcing a millenia-old tournament that offers infinite power to the being that survives. Fast forward to after the victory(of course he won). His grand prize is a one-way ticket across the universe through aligned planets that catapults him at super-light speed into the edge of the universe. Bear with me. He finds that the universe is infantecimally small, and watched over by a race of alien scholars. The invention of matter was apparently a huge discovery in their dimension. Anyway, our hero''s wish is to rectify his past mistakes and find out who murdered his family and started the war. It''s at this point I should note that the story starts. The player doesn''t really know this right off, but a number of things happen(seeing his younger self and such) that trigger the backstory. So here''s the crux of the matter: are there any odd things you''ve heard about time travel that you''d like to have dispelled? It''s a hobby of mine to sit down and contemplate things like this. I''ve thought of a few: HYPOTHESIS #1: "The same matter can''t occupy the same space!" Yeah, well, the universe isn''t going to explode if you shake the hand of your younger self. The laws of physics take care of that. If your particles merged with ANYTHING (a cinder block, a rabbit, a grape), I''m pretty sure the results would be disasterous all over the board. HYPOTHESIS #2: "But if the guy kills the guy who murdered his parents, the young guy doesn''t have a reason to go back, and then etc. nothing has changed!" That''s a good one-- but I can enstate the hypothesis that time takes time just like everything else. Time traveling results in alternate realities, and the problem with that is that one of your selves will always have murdered parents. The law of nature is that everything goes back to zero. Our hero would have to devise a way to ensure the murdered-parents reality ceases to exist. SPOILER: In the end, you discover that the man responsible for the galactic war is our hero''s OLDER SELF, driven mad from the futile attempt to change the past. It seems he had discovered that source of power, realized that it would be near-impossible to do anything beneficial with it(due to hypothesis #2) and opts to be more selfish with his newly-acquired power. Our hero discovers that the POWER that is inside him is driving him to madness, and he uses the power against itself to give it physical form. In the final battle, our hero manages to create an action so philosophically unstable that he fights with his older self on neutral ground: the abstract world of Infinite Possibility. It''s there that he draws the physical form of power out of his enemy(himself), and then takes the power out of himself, effectively making the POWER destroy itself. The game(or movie) ends with the war-torn world dissolving into nonexistence and taking the evil power with it. So, yeah... sorry for the long post, but I just had to get that all out. B. Bradley: The number 2 mind www.numbermind.com(coming soon)

Wha?? I''ll tell you what. You''ve got a few neat plot ideas there, some rudimentary theories regarding time travels and efficient causes, and a neat idea for a creation myth. A few questions:

How many dimensions are you using here? Time is 4, but you bust out probability to justify theory #2. That''s five dimensions (at least), but you only use the fifth one when it''s convenient for you. If you want an example of probability as a dimension, check out "Sliders" or Jet Li''s "The One".

If the "aliens" invented matter, then what are they made out of? You can either wuss out and just make them gods or something, or you can try really, really hard to justify it with pseudoscience, and address the problem of material dualism. Good luck. I cast my vote for fudging it.

In response to hypothesis #1, you''re misusing that particular physical law. Especially if a span of seven or more years has passed, his body won''t contain any of the same atoms that his younger self is comprised of. The problem is that when he modifies his path through time, he might not wind up in a position to modify it again, and so it will revert, and then reassert infinitely in a loop. That''s one possibility. Or maybe nothing will happen, depending on the nature of time. There are other possibilities, including the destruction of the universe, but since they''re all academic, you can feel free to pick one.

The same phenomenon governs Hypothesis #2. Just make sure that you pick a theory and stick to it. Imaginary physics are fine, because nobody can disprove them. Inconsistencies are easily spotted, and reek of poor writing. (see also The Matrix, Evil Dead)

Theres the theory that the past can never be altered, that no matter what choices or actions you make the future is predetermined and will always arrive at the same result.

for instance the charcter goes back in time to prevent his parents death or stop the war, no matter what he does both still happen. In fact he could be the very catalyst for those events.

-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

According to string theorists there are actually in the region of 11 dimensions and possibly countless parallel universes. I am sure that you could have some creative fun with all those dimensions.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions (www.obscure.co.uk)
Game Development & Design consultant

you can try to handle mathimatically
let''s say that there a hero with the coordonate {X,Y,Z,t}

if time and space are independant
then hero {X,Y,Z,t} != {X,Y,Z,t+1}
there could be only one instance at the same time

if time and space are a continuum
then hero=(f(t)={X,Y,Z})
then if the hero go back time it would take the same state at the given time (then memory would gone) just like tracking in mp3 player, since time is reverse, memory would be as well
then going back in time would be equal to die! (since there is no more future enable and you are ''reset'')

then we need another dimension for time ,T, a time which would flow regardless of t

using math you can now run simulation and toy with all possibilty

this is a while where i was toying with concept of time in various way (2D or 3D time dimension, circular and helicoidal time, fractal time, non linear time, etc...)

actually such a time was propose by a famous physician specialist of black hole and paraplegic and don''t remember is name >_< (stephan hawkins i suppose) in his theory of ''brane''

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If the hero has 4D coordinates, why wouldn''t everyone else? If you travel back in time to when your parents died, you''d be all alone, since your parents (or their corpses, at least) would be at temporal coordinates in the "present" while you were flouncing about in the past. Stephen King''s "The Langoliers" uses this model. The Langoliers are weird beings that follow time, destroying the world in the wake of the present. A handful of people get warped back about fifteen minutes and have to get back before the Langoliers delete them (Read: eat them).

On a more extreme level, the whole damn world would have already come and gone, and so you''d be in a spaceless void. Or you''d be in the world that God created an hour after He got done with ours. Maybe infinite parallel universes are hitched together, passing through time like a train of realities, so when you develop your fancy time-travelling device, you put yourself into phase with a parallel universe instead of the past. Oops.

Your best bet for time travel is to just make something up, and ignore the chaos theory crap around it. Magic machine zips you back in time, you save your girlfriend, you rush to the future to find that she is sitting beside the machine waiting for you. Charming story, happy ending, total bullcrap.

OR. There was an episode of "Gargoyles" (old cartoon on Fox, I think) where the main characters get accidentally sucked back into time to the middle ages. The rich character gets a few gold coins, writes a letter, puts it in a little box with the coins and entrusts the package to some order of monks. It''s to be delivered to him, in his youth, before he''s rich. The coins are worth a small fortune by then, and the letter has instructions for investing successfully and making this trip into the past. It turns out that that''s how he got rich in the first place, and so there''s a stable temporal loop in place that serves only to make sure that this guy is wealthy. You could do that.

You go into the past to prevent JFK''s assassination, but while you''re there you give a letter to the young man who will later be your father. He is to give that letter to his son. It contains instructions on how to build a time machine and how to reproduce the plans and letter for the next "self". (Note: If he just used the same plans and letter, it would age throughout the time loops and eventually fail to carry out its intended purpose, thus interrupting the cycle.) Now, there may be some wibbles in the system, as the influence that you had on your dad and other events back then iron themselves out (heck, your dad might marry a totally different woman, and have a totally different son, but he''ll get the letter, and go back in time, and give it to Dad, and eventually everything will be properly synchronized with zero variation, so that your intent to save JFK will be achieved, even if everything else changes).

Well, I appreciate the feedback, and I''ll admit I was pressed for time, unable to discuss the ''finer'' points about the story. Now, let''s continue because this is fun. I think.

Iron Chef: Probability, for the purposes of the story, is a constant(in a perfect world there should be only one). Our hero inadvertantly opens up multiple probabilities by traveling back in time. Three ultimate consequences are possible, all of which could be addressed in the story. One, a universe''s weight is constant, and containing multiple histories forces it to diffuse like light through a spectrum-- effectively causing it to decoagulate. Put simply, a very slow cataclysmic explosion. Second, the power of time travel is so great that it spawns alternate universes. Along the time coil(assuming the universe just makes a big circle), the alternate universes grow backward, seeking an origin. The gravitational pull of universes along this other dimension means they will have to merge at one point. Very slow cataclysmic implosion. Third, there''s hypothesis #2, which is actually addressed in the story. The hero and his friends resign themselves to the fact that they may be doomed to making the circle complete, forever reliving their crusade every 20 years. The fact that they were given this power has nothing to do with probability. It''s a gift from omnipresent beings.

As for said "master race", they are not quite physical beings, but a mix of abstract ideas. Not quite gods, but in a reverse world of sorts, one which is constructed on physical properties other than time, matter, energy, etc., hence the idea that they can view the universe and its entire timespan as a singular object. They exist outside of the universe, containing it in a sort of museum or command center. They grant our hero the power of time travel because they fear the EVIL POWER he has, a power which would be most powerful outside the properties of the universe(since its birth is related to the real-world separation of matter and energy). In addition, this awareness of the universe outside of time allows them to drop off our hero and the exact place and time that he wishes.

Another thing I should note is the post-aternate-reality story that we get in the screenplay. Try and wrap your heads around this one: seven years after our hero returns, he has his first opportunity to change his past. Of course, up to this point he has been attempting to ease the friction between humans and aliens to avoid the impending war. This is the point in the story where he tries to save his parents. The invasion occurs, and he successfully thwarts it-- only to be attacked by an unknown assassin. After defeating him, he realizes his attacker is HIS FRIEND-- who assisted him throughout his journey. Dying, the friend explains that they have accomplished nothing. The war still took place, but the aliens won instead of the humans. Since their crusade was over the span of 20 years, the reality shifts between the two every 20 years. The people involved with the time-travel crusade experience this firsthand, being thrust between several realities in a surreal event that surely must be traumatizing. The friend, after experiencing this a few times(he has quite a long life span), tells our hero that the futility of it all has driven them all insane. He sought the "master race" again, and came back to kill OUR HERO. Only now, seven years later, our hero thwarted the friend''s attempt, changing history EVERY SEVEN years. The player then is treated to this horrific event of shifting worlds. Switch back to another reality, our hero is standing alone in the very same battlefield, only the invading fleet is departing, and everyone around him is dead. It''s then that he finds his very young self discovering his dead parents. The memory flashes into him, and he experiences the pain of seeing it through "two sets of eyes".

I''m sorry if this is all too confusing for you guys, my writing habits are incredibly dodgy... thoughts?



B. Bradley: The number 2 mind

www.numbermind.com(coming soon)

Since you are setting the weird index pretty high, here are a few suggestions.

For time travel ideas....

- You are not really time traveling. You take a "snap shot" of all the molecules in your body in the current time and have a way to assemble these exact molecules in the exact pattern at some time in the past (where ever those molecules might be) thus creating a present day "you" in the past. So if you go back a couple of days, the "you" at that time will be ripped apart making the present "you" since so many of the molecules in the present "you" will be the same. If you travel several decades you "you" at that time will be intact. This way you are not transferring any mass across "time lines".

- Planets revolve around the sun, the sun revolves around the galactic core, and all objects are moving away from the "big bang" point. You have to take into account that if you travel 1 year into the past, the planet you are on will be several hundred thousand miles away from your current location leaving you in the vacuum of space or worse yet, the middle of another star.

- You need a "time portal" at both ends (times, whatever), thus limiting you to when you can go and taking care of the "everything moving" aspect I mentioned above.

For the story....
As a final plot twist, you are actually one of the "master race" (dude, you have to come up with a better name) that was some how sucked into the physical dimension with a sever case of amnesia.

OR

The physical universe is the equitant of game where every person is controlled by a corresponding "master race" member or is really a NPC controlled by some computer (or what ever mechanism you want).

If his parents werent murdered he wouldnt even go into the past to try and change that, so, basicly, he can''t alter what happen cause it would simply denie the fact that he was trying to alter.. do I make any sence here?

Hmm... If you went back a year, spent a year doing something, and then got in a time machine and went back a year, and continued that, you''d create a temporal "feedback loop", like when you set a microphone on the speaker that it''s connected to. The sound from the speaker is read by the mike, which routes that data through the speaker, increasiting the volume minutely. This increased volume is read by the mike, which sends a slightly louder signal to the speaker, and after a while, the speaker maxes out at the well-known screech. If you did that sort of thing in time-travel, you''d basically age a zillion years in that one year, until finally you would be unable to haul your arthritic bones into the time machine or complete your mission objectives, at which time the task would be undone and time would revert. That''s why a time traveller would have to send a message to his future self instructing him to complete that task, so that time doesn''t loop up on him. Even if it''s only an hour, or a second, or a nanosecond, the feedback loop would hold you for an eternity.

So your idea about seeing the probale universes cycle back and forth indefinitely is problematic. Unless the time machine restores your youth as it carries you back, that is. Could be neat.