Recursive Space

Creators: Alexander Bruce
Engine: Unreal Tournament 2004
Modification: UT2K4 Level Component

Last Update: 14th July 2007
Current Status: Working. Minor fixes left.
Further Development: Improving interaction with trace weapons
Download: Not yet available

Description: Bringing an old mechanic to a new dimension...

Page 1 - Demonstration - Recursive Space in action (2.6MB)

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Page 1 - Purpose - Where did this idea start?

Remember those games like Asteroids and Snake, where you could go out one side of the screen and magically come back in the other? These games were described as existing within a toroidal world, where the screen can be imagined as wrapping around a toroid so that all sides connect back upon each other. I used to love these kinds of things in old 2D games, but when we jumped to 3D, they seemed to have disappeared.

Sure, we had games where the field was mapped to a sphere, but this isn't the same, because this is still effectively a 2D map placed around a 3D object, and disregards the Z-Axis introduced by 3D games. Spherical worlds in 3D would be the equivalent of a Circular world in 2D, where only 1 plane connects upon itself.

Toroidal World (invalid application)

Sonic 3 Bonus Rounds on a Spherical Plane

Spherical World

Now, I'm sure some people may be reading this and be thinking of recent games like Portal and Prey, as a means to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about and that these things do in fact exist within new games. Well, to a certain extent, that's true. The portals found in these games do indeed break up space, and allow you to just keep running in a straight line if you wanted.

The main reason I liked toroidal worlds in some of the old 2D games I'd played was because of the complete freedom they allowed. There were no walls, because you didn't need them. You didn't need to open a portal to link sections in space, because there was no distinction between start and end to begin with.

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