Tutorials/Getting Started

*4D Miner* works a lot like other sandbox games, but some of its defining features might not make much sense to beginners.

This tutorial focuses on the core mechanics of the game, and explains how to create and navigate an in-game world.

## Key concepts

The main premise of *4D Miner* is that the player exists in a world with four spatial dimensions, made out of 4D blocks. Since humans can only directly experience three spatial dimensions at a time, the game will only show the player a **3D slice of the surrounding world**.

The concept of a "3D slice" of something that may seem confusing at first, but *4D Miner* includes an interactive tutorial that allows the player to directly visualize how it works.

The interactive tutorial can be opened by launching the game and clicking on the "tutorial" button.

The tutorial has a few introduction slides that introduce a few key concepts before opening the main interactive section.

The interactive part of the tutorial allows the player to control a 2D character named Frank, who exists in a 3-dimensional world. Since Frank is 2D, he doesn't understand what 3D objects look like, and therefore can only directly interact with a 2D slice of the surrounding 3D world.

If Frank only has access to one slice of the 3D world around him, he won't be able to fully explore it and understand the 3rd dimension. For this very reason, the player can rotate Frank's 2D slice of the world by scrolling with the mouse wheel.

In a similar fashion, *4D Miner* allows players to explore a **3D slice** of a **4D world**, and like Frank, they can rotate their slice of the world by scrolling with the mouse wheel.

Completing the tutorial will take the player back to the title screen.

## Creating a world

New worlds are created from the "singleplayer" menu, which can be accessed by clicking on the "singleplayer" button on the title screen.

The "New World" button in the "singleplayer" menu will open up the world creation menu.

The world creation menu has a text field where a name for the new world can be entered. By default, the world name is "New World."

The world setup is finalized when the player presses the "Create New World!" button at the bottom of the menu. As soon as this button is pressed, the world will begin generating, and the game will start a session in the newly-generated world. For new players following this tutorial, it might be best to read the "Controls" and "Getting basic tools" sections before starting a new world. Alternatively, after the world first generates, the game can be quickly paused by pressing the `ESC` key, which will bring up the pause menu and give the reader time to look at the next-two sections. The world can also be exited from the pause menu by pressing the "quit to title screen" button, which will save the newly-created world, and it will remain accessible from the worlds list in the "singleplayer" menu.

## Controls

The controls can be viewed by clicking on the "Controls" button in the settings menu. The settings menu can be accessed directly from the title screen, or from the pause menu.

The player can walk around using the W, A, S, and D keys on their keyboard, and jump with the space bar. As in many other games, W = forward, A = left, S = backward, D = right.

Looking is done with the mouse.

The player can rotate their 3D slice of the world by scrolling with the mouse wheel, which will allow the player to see different features of the surrounding 4D world, as well as uniquely-shaped slices of 4D blocks. The player's rotation in 4D space can be reset by pressing `CTRL+R`.

### Hotbar

The player's hotbar contains 8 hexagonal slots and is displayed on the left side of the screen. The active slot will be fully opaque.

The active slot can be changed by pressing the number keys 1-8, or holding `CTRL` while scrolling with the mouse wheel.

### Inventory and crafting

The inventory and crafting menu can be opened by pressing the E key. The player's full inventory contains 40 slots, including the 8 hotbar slots. Items can be rearranged in the inventory by clicking on them, which will add the item to the player's cursor, and then clicking on a destination slot, which will move the item there.

The crafting menu is on the right side of the screen when the inventory menu is open. It will show all of the available items that can be crafted from the materials in the player's inventory. Crafting recipes are displayed as clusters of hexagonal inventory slots with different items in them. The green slot in a cluster contains the result of the crafting recipe, and the remaining slots show the ingredients for the recipe. Clicking on the item in the green slot of a given recipe will craft that item and remove the associated ingredients from the player's inventory. The crafted item can then be placed into the player's inventory by clicking on an empty slot.

Result:*

### Using items

Many items can be stored in the player's inventory, but when the inventory menu is closed, the player can only perform actions with items in the active hotbar slot.

Pressing Q will throw the item in the selected hotbar slot out of the player's inventory as an item drop. Item drops are entities that exist in 4D space, just like the player and the 4D creatures of the game. Item drops can be picked up and added to the player's inventory by standing on top of them.

When the player looks at a block that is close by, it will become highlighted, which means that an action can be performed on that block, depending on what item is in the active hotbar slot. Holding left click will attempt to mine the highlighted block with the active item. Only tool items can mine blocks, with the exception of leaf blocks, which can be mined even if there is no item in the active hotbar slot.

If a placeable item is in the active hotbar slot, the player can place that item on a highlighted block by right-clicking.

Non-placeable items can be used in other ways, depending on the item. For example, health potions can be consumed by right-clicking if they are in the active hotbar slot.

## Getting basic tools

After starting a session in a new world, the first thing the player needs to do is acquire basic tools. When the game starts, the player will have no items in their inventory.

The player will be defenseless at first and may be killed by enemies if they appear before the player gets any tools for self-defense. This isn't a very big issue, however, because the "retry..." button will bring the player back to the world with full health.

The first item that the player can get is the stick, which can be used as a digging tool and a basic weapon. Getting a stick should be the player's first objective when starting a new world. Sticks are obtained by mining red leaf blocks, which can be found on trees in the Grassy Hills biome. The sticks will fall to the ground as item drops when the leaf blocks are mined. They might not be visible to the player at first, so after mining several leaf blocks, the player should look at the ground beneath the blocks that were mined and slowly scroll back and forth with the mouse wheel until they appear.

The primary enemy in *4D Miner* is the hyperspider, which is a 4-dimensional creature with many legs. Once the player gets a stick, they can use it for self defense against the hyperspiders by left-clicking on them when the stick is active in their hotbar and the hyperspider is close enough. Hyperspiders will be killed after several hits with the stick, and they will drop an item called hypersilk, which is important for crafting a more powerful tool than the stick.

The only blocks that the player can break with the stick are leaf, dirt, and grass blocks. Breaking dirt and grass blocks with a stick has a 50% chance of dropping a rock item. If the player has a stick, hypersilk, and a rock in their inventory, they can open the crafting menu by pressing E, and they should see the hammer in the crafting menu. Once the hammer is crafted and placed into the hotbar, it can be used to mine more block types, including iron ore, which can be used to make even better tools. The hammer also deals more damage to enemies than the stick.

Result:*

The main objective of *4D Miner* is to acquire items that assist the player in navigating the surrounding 4D world. The compass, for instance, shows the player their in-game 4D coordinates (X, Y, Z, W) and has a visual representation of the player's orientation along the 3 horizontal directions. The 4D glasses allow the player to see items that exist outside of their 3D slice of the world, which assists in locating enemies, item drops, and chests.

In order to obtain these key items, more types of resources need to be obtained using different tools.