The Hilbert Dimension

The Hilbert Dimension is a new type of First-Person-Shooter game. Taking the best elements of the giants in this genre, the Hilbert Dimension improves upon the standard formula with a new approach to level design and a system of meaningful progression beyond the simple level grinding, culminating in a game that is compelling and dramatic to play, each and every battle.

Features

The Situation

We call them Motes. It's not an accurate name, but the term stuck and now it's the only word we use. A Mote is a spherical region of distorted dimensional parameters that looks like it's made of obsidian. They can be as small as a car or as big as a stadium. A Mote will appear out of nowhere and then vanish without warning. They started appearing in June of 2027 all over the globe with no real pattern that we could understand. Even now, no one knows where they come from, what their purpose is, or who's responsible for them. They just are. And they're our responsibility.

The organization I belong to is called the Expeditionary Mote Unit, often affectionately referred to as the EMUs. We're a specially trained corps of soldiers who are tasked with entering the Motes in order to explore, extract, and retrieve. We're sent in to deal with the problems inside.

At first, the Motes were a curiosity; an anomalous occurrence that was temporary and harmless, even if somewhat disorienting. But soon enough, those who got caught up inside them reported seeing strange and violent people. And then there were some deaths, at which point they were no longer a quirk of physics to be studied; they were now a threat to be dealt with.

Our group was formed as a special task force reporting to NATO leadership. We were all highly skilled soldiers, but we were given additional training in physics and other sciences in order to turn us into investigators as well. But thinking about Newtonian laws of motion, quantum mechanics, or string theory while engaged in combat will get a person killed. The egghead stuff is secondary. When we go in, we go in to meet the enemy.

It is generally accepted that Motes are created by some intelligent agent; that they exist in a parallel reality that they cause to overlap and blur with ours, which allows the infiltration of their kind into our world. Of course, we don't know the purpose of the Motes, and therefore do not know the motivations or our opponents.

Inside a Mote, things are strange and familiar at the same time. Your surroundings look like you'd expect; a hallway in an office building, a cafeteria in a factory, and so on. But attackers can be anywhere and they can come at you through the walls around you. The theory is that their reality doesn't incorporate the same structures, buildings, and so on, as ours. What they see is their reality and if there is no wall, then they do not experience a wall. The same is true for us; we can see them at times when they cannot see us, and they are easy targets.

The mission is the same each time; enter the Mote and repel the aggressive forces there, learning what we can about where the Motes come from, and collecting all the valuable assets we're able. We fight to survive and we fight to defend Earth, but we're not above scavenging tech and weapons. A successful mission is one where we push back the enemy with minimal casualties and where we acquire a significant amount of new stuff. And then there are the Shards.

The science teams think that they're a byproduct of the Motes, but who can say for certain? What we do know about the Shards is that they are valuable. Like irregular crystals of quartz or melting glass, the Shards range from fist to watermelon in size and they form on corners and edges inside a Mote. Easily broken off, we collect as many as we can while fighting a running battle across the Mote.

What makes the Shards valuable is the heat that they give off. It's not blistering, but it is proportional to whatever it is in contact with. If one touches a conductive material, then the heat bleeds into that material quickly. Steel has grown to red hot temperatures in seconds when touching a Shard. As a new form of clean energy, the Shards have been employed in all sorts of ways in order to provide power. As they give off heat, they shrink imperceptibly. A baseball sized Shard is estimated to last about two hundred years before it will evaporate away.

Motes form and collapse with some regularity. We can generally predict their arrival now and detect when they're about to vanish. As they collapse, the Mote shrinks; slowly at first, but increasing exponentially. This means the area of the Mote is always changing and compressing the battle toward the center. In the last moments of its existence, we inevitably meet the enemy in the center of the battlefield for a last frenetic encounter, after which, there is the scramble for the edges.

While the Mote collapses internally, externally, the thing seems to remain constant until it disappears completely. Inside, when the Mote reaches its smallest size, it immediately expands again to the original dimension. But this is the final stage of its existence and we have moments to get to the edges again where we can safely exit the Mote before it winks out for good. If you're caught inside, you never come back out.

Some speculate that a trapped person would simply be transported to the point of origin, the reality that spawned the Mote to begin with. Others are fairly confident that you're crushed to death as if in a black hole. It's impossible to say, as no one has ever returned.

The big questions remain unaddressed. Where do they come from? What causes them? What purpose do they serve? Who is responsible? So we still enter the Motes, hoping to find out someday and to put a stop to them.

The Mechanics

Players for all teams enter the Motes from their respective staging areas. Each team is assigned a given “map” of the Mote's physical reality that they have to work within. The “maps” are different for each team, though they have significant overlap and intersection. This is where they can confront each other, using the tools, weapons, and abilities that they bring into the Mote with them, or what they can acquire within the Mote.

Generally, a team is confined to their physical reality and they cannot follow opponents through passageways they do not exist in their physical reality. The same is true of the projectiles and influences of the tools, weapons, and abilities of the player. For example, while a player may fire accurately at an enemy, if that enemy is beyond a wall that exists for the player, then the bullet is impeded by the wall as well. This is why the areas of overlap and intersection are so vital; these are the areas where combat can occur.

As with other First-Person-Shooters, points are awarded for killing enemies. Unlike most FPS games, points are also awarded for the collection of Shards as well as the scavenging of tech, which is usually sourced from vanquished opponents. The number of points awarded for these depends on various factors; size of the Shard, value of the Tech, and whether or not the enemy was an AI or a player.

Killing a player who has collected Shards allows you to steal the Shards. However, the number of Shards and pieces of Tech that you are carrying will slow your movement. A player may return to the Mote Gate (the staging areas) to “Bank” their Shards and Tech. A player receives no points for Shards that are collected or Tech that is scavenged until they deposit them at their Mote Gate. Points for kills are awarded immediately and are irrevocable.

Players who are killed will usually respawn at one of their team's Mote Gates, but in some situations may be respawned closer to their point of death. Mote Gates are varied in number depending on the particular Map. Players may return to Mote Gates at any time before the Collapse begins and after the Pop. But during the period of time after the Collapse begins and before the Pop, the Mote Gates are inaccessible. At this point, players will find that the outer edge of the Mote is moving inward and their battle will become more and more focused on the center of the collapse (which is not always the center of the Mote's sphere). Shards and Tech will likely change hands a lot during this phase of the battle.

After the Pop, players should head to the Mote Gates in order to tally up the team's final score. However, there is still time to engage in some last bits of combat and scavenging even as the players retreat to their points of origin. This is risky, because players caught inside after the Wink, are lost and will not be awarded points for their Shards or Tech.

The Arsenal

In addition to the ubiquitous assault rifles, shotguns, pistols, and sniper rifles, there are new and unique weapons that are used within Motes. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Munitions

  • QT Rounds: Quantum Tunneling Ammunition for assault rifles, these bullets have a significant chance of skipping through reality phases and hitting targets outside of the players reality phase. These rounds are expensive and are generally reserved for sniper rifles or pistols.
  • EM Rounds: Electromagnetic Rounds that are devastating against electronic components like those used by Melded and Shifted. They also do some additional damage to the Ascendants and tend to stun Humans, causing some impeded movement.
  • Tracker Rounds: Non-lethal projectiles that will identify a target that they contact. Tracked targets will be illuminated on the players HUD and will attract Seeker Rounds. Trackers last for several minutes but can be disabled by damage from EM rounds or some ordinance.
  • Seeker Rounds: Once a target has been hit by tracker rounds, seeker rounds can be fired indiscriminately and they will attempt to find the nearest tracked target. Seeker rounds can maneuver a great deal, but generally cannot skip through reality phases. If there are no tracked targets within range, the Seeker rounds will behave as normal ballistic projectiles.

• Ordinance

  • RDGs: Resonance Disruption Grenades pull objects around it out of phase with their reality and temporarily pull them into the phase of the player tossing the grenade. The players effected by the grenade take some damage as their bodies are pulled out of phase and then snap back to their original phase frequency.
  • Decoherence Grenades: These nasty bits of ordinance send shrapnel through different reality phases much like the QT Rounds. They have a chance of damaging anyone caught within the blast radius regardless of their reality phase.
  • Higgs Mines: Increases or decreases the mass (and therefore gravitational pull) of objects within its sphere of influence. They are triggered by proximity of opposition forces.
  • Repulsor Mines: Mines that push the player toward the nearest Mote Gate for their team. If there are intervening walls, the player is pressed against those walls and immobilized. They will suffer some damage and the mine will only last a couple seconds. They are triggered by proximity of opposition forces.
  • Ferrets: Self-guided robotic explosives. They have limited ability to phase shift as they hunt down opposing forces.

• Tools

  • Resonance Visor: Provides a false color vision of overlapping realities.
  • Phase Jumpers: Allows the player to alter the reality phase temporarily. They can enter another reality and exist there for a given period of time. If they shift back when they would be inside an unacceptable space in their phase, they are moved back along their path until they are in an acceptable position.
  • Shard Detectors: These provide players with the location of the largest Shards and Shard forming areas.